Supreme Court Accepts Eldred Case

Patrick Fitzgerald writes: "The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to intervene in a fight over copyrights, deciding whether Congress has sided too heavily with writers and other inventors. The outcome will determine when hundreds of thousands of books, songs and movies will be freely available on the Internet or in digital libraries." Openlaw's Eldred v. Ashcroft page has more information about the case, which seeks to challenge the most recent retroactive extension of copyright terms.

Comments

Chart shows what could happen.

[laserjet]

This is a cool chart showing what could happen to the amount of public domain work available if Public Domain is unrestricted by term extension. It really shows how we (as a people) are crippling ourselves and restricting knowledge.

Pretty interesting concept. Is a greater public domain worth the cost of less restrictive copytights? I think so. You may not, and that is fine. But just think of the possibilites.

Slightly OT: Limitation of PDF

[ackthpt]

Just burned some CD's for official distribution at work, and got word that some pages are missing...

PDF format only seems to allow 32767 pages. 32767 should look familiar to some, to others it's the maximum positive value for 16 bit integer.

So when the DoJ was talking about it being a burden to publish items in the Federal Register, pertaining to a certain other case, there's probably a point.

For other long works which could be published on the internet, how would this be addressed?

Last but not least: A 16 bit integer? $#@!, that is so &%#* early 80's!!!! #@$&!!