The Mouse That Ate the Public Domain

An anonymous submitter writes: "Antitrust lawyer Chris Sprigman has written a thoughtful column In Findlaw's Writ on the issues behind the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act and the legal challenge (Eldred v. Ashcroft) to that law. I only spotted one mistake. Sprigman states that Disney's 1967 movie The Jungle Book came out a year after Kipling's copyright expired, but I can't see how, under the terms of the 1909 copyright law, an 1894 book could have had its U.S. copyright expire much later than 1950. Except for that one glitch, (if that's what it is) it's a fine column. There's no explicit mention of computer software except in the mention of the title of a 1970 article by Stephen Breyer, but everything he says about the usefulness of the public domain in literature applies with a vengeance to source code. And his is discussion of the U.S. Constitution's framers reminds us (though Sprigman doesn't develop this point extensively, and might not himself put it in as blunt terms as I'm about to) that there's even a deeper reason than utility to cherish the public domain: it is our right."

Comments

Wake up

[KDENCE]

That is the biggest problems in our laws today, the laws are slowly being updated to meet the changes in technology. So what we wind up trying to do is to apply ancient laws to new "crimes". I hope our gov't wakes up on this!

the public domain is our right..?

[perdida]

How to keep the public domain our right?

I suggest that, with all the new .$$$ domains being developed that we make one that is really public and keep it so through aggressive legislative activity.

The .org was supposed to be public but it is not. /. for example is commercial and private. we need to establish stringent standards for such a public domain and keep it as clearly registered and demarcated public groups.

your personal webpage should not be in this public domain, sites that actually advance the public interest should be.

I don't think that ICANN can responsibly deliniate which sites fall into this category. Who can? I do not know. Groups like eff.org should be involved in this decisionmaking process and corporate groups should not. The debate on what is in the public interest and what is not continues.. I don;t think that game information or whatever should be there, though.

I think things that in themselves maintain freedoms on the Internet itself should be, and that the government should be involved. On a global scale, public interest sites on the Internet should organize and lobby global orgs such as the WTO, etc. to delineate this public space on the Internet. There should be a dot-whatever URL-style that people can go to to look up environmental, technical, social, and political information from verifiably independent sources.

Re:Copyright Extention Act

[gartogg]

Your analogy is simply wrong. They are not protesting the technology, but the Idea that others have any rights to what they created in the first place. If I write a book, shouldn't I decide if other can read it, at least while I'm alive? If I invent a machine, shouldn't I decide who can get one?

Also: if you want to eliminate arbitrariness in the world, stop using base-10 numbering, and switch to base 60, or binary. Build a car with a different wheelbase width, or for that matter a train. The fact that the numbers are arbitrary is pointless, the fact that the numbers are too large is what should bother you.