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Lessig's Next Copyright Proposal
Fiver-rah writes "The Supreme Court voted for Disney in Eldred vs. Ashcroft. Lessig's next proposal is a policy solution which needs our help. He proposes that 50 years after publication, a work falls into the public domain unless a small fee ($50 in the NYT piece, but he says $1 is sufficient here) is paid to a governing board. This has two important effects. First, it allows the vast majority of works to fall into the public domain. Second, it gives us a publicly searchable database of copyright holders, so we could easily determine what was free and what was not. Support this proposal by writing to your elected officials! We couldn't make much of a difference with the Supreme Court, but we can with Congress." Update: 01/18 20:50 GMT by T : Related news: An anonymous reader writes "With the support of Lessig infoAnarchy has set up a wiki page devoted to copyright issues."
That sounds like a brilliant idea. Somehow I think it won't get implemented, because probably the corporations will oppose it on principle, as a knee-jerk reaction, but let me be hopeful for a moment...
Great move and timing on Lessig's part definitely, at the very least. The man knows what he's doing.
Daniel
Carpe Diem
The Supreme Court voted for Disney in Eldred vs. Ashcroft.
I hate the ruling as much as anyone else, but this is going a little overboard. You obviously read Lessigs blog, so you should understand that the court was put into a difficult place. I'm sure that, given the choice to repeal the Bono act, they would. They mostly ruled that it wasn't the court's place to do so, not on the merits of the act itself.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Just as an example, consider Gilbert and Sullivan. Great comic opera, in English, easily accessible to US audiences, but it never gets performed here because of the onerous fees their descendants impose on performing the works. Can you imagine having to pay a royalty to some conglomerate every time the initial notes from Betthoven's Fifth are played?
Anybody know what the market capitalization is for Disney? Specifically, how much would it cost to buy up just over 50% of the voting stock? If the problem is that Disney wants to hold onto all it's copyrighted material, the alternative way to get the business people to understand is to buy up 50% of the voting stock, go to the board meeting, propose that all content created before say 40 years ago should be passed into the public domain then call for a vote. You might have to do more drastic things, like vote in your own CEO to get the motion to happen, but given that you own enough of the company, this should be easy to pull off.
To do this, form a holding corporation or possibly a not-for profit company, "Free The Mouse", whose sole job is to sell share of itself to investors/donators. It takes the donations/investments and uses them to buy Disney voting shares. It uses the dividens and re-invests those in voting shares. In theory this should be a one man operation, that should have only about $2-10K in operating costs per year for the accounting, lawyer fees, and money handling, assuming the one man doesn't have the required skills. You'd have to make sure that the corporation's by-laws and provisions about the spending and investment, and what to do with the value and stock once Disney had successfully been addressed.
If that stupid Mouse has that much economic value, we should demonstrate directly to the business people, we're serious about freeing copyright. Once you did it to Disney, you could move on to other companies. Heck you do it to smaller companies first. There'd be a serious move on for companies to buy up the shares, and become privately held shortly there after... Even those companies could be taken on, but there, the economic power would be diluted, because your using it to give the private investors an exit strategy. However, money talks to them, I'm not sure they wouldn't happily give up the company to get cash.
I'm only half serious, but it's about the only way anybody's going to make Disney understand that we're serious about just how much damage they are causing, and we'll use economic power to bend them to our will. The only serious problem with it is if voting shareholders decide to not sell the shares to block the holding company from getting enough shares to pull it off.
I know I'm talking about buying up a company that would take something like 50-$500 Billion dollars, but it'd still make one hell of a statement. But if the company is truely beholden to it's stock holders, this is one way to show the company it's in it's own best interest to move things into the public domain. The beauty of it, is that after Wall Street gets over the fact, that those ancient copyrights don't have any value, and it doesn't affect the bottom line of Disney, maybe other companies will catch on, that donating to the public domain makes you look like a good corporate citizen.
Kirby
Make the expiration 50 years from the creation or publiction, whichever is earlier.
There may be an established definition of publication, but with the internet and other forms of publication, I can see this becoming a loophole. If it's 50 years from creation or publication, whichever came first, then no matter what the definition of publication is, the time limit is still fairly well defined. Even handing a finished manuscript to a proofreader could be considered creation.
I can just see someone claiming that just because their work was available through some means for 30 years, it was never "published". Creation still has some thorny issue (it was a work in progress, even though 99% of it was available to people generally), but by making it the limit of both it becomes much harder for corporations and individuals to abuse it.
-Adam
...as Lessig shows; we can easily see who will "let us play" and who won't. Let Disney keep their "better" ball which they paid all of $1 to retain;
once we can identify all the other public domain stuff we'll leave Disney to play on their own while we have a jolly good party and rediscover all the old stuff that is worth holding on to. And that will be a good networking project; discovering promoting the "good" old stuff.
And when Disney trot out some new toy, we'll go and pay a bit of attention till it gets old and go back to ignoring Disney again and playing with all the other old stuff.
And it still has the effect of making new stuff even better if it is to get our attention in place of the public domain stuff.
Heh heh
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
Did Walt Disney create the concept of a mouse? No. Did Disney invent animation? No. Did the idea of naming any given mouse "Mickey" originate with Walt Disney? I find it hard to believe that no one in the history of the English language up to this time hasn't seen fit to name a mouse "Mickey"
What Walt Disney created was the "look and feel" of Mickey.
In order to determine whether Disney and interests should hold ownership to Mickey for all eternity, the question, "Did Walt Disney use prior works or things and events outside himself in his development of Mickey?" needs to be examined The first work Mickey starred in was "Plane Crazy" in May 15 1928, in which Mickey tries to emulate his hero, Charles Lindbergh, and woo Minnie with his own, homemade airplane.
Should everyone who wants to build an airplane or put one in a movie have to go back to the Wright brothers, their family or their corporation for permission?
Did Walt Disney invent hero worship or even the idea that someone might want to emulate Charles Lindbergh? No. Did Walt Disney invent the art of courtship? No.
Mickey's second work "Steamboat Willie" borrows heavily from the Buster Keaton work "Steamboat Bill" In a portion of the script for "Steamboat Willie," it is written "Orchestra starts playing opening verses of "Steamboat Bill"
Lessig has proposed an impeccable scheme. In essence, the term of copyright for almost all works is automatically shortened to 50 years, and any works that remain copyrighted beyond that date (up until the maximum of 95 years) are placed in a central registry. If you find a work that may be copyrighted, but that work is over 50 years old, and doesn't have an entry in the registry, then it's public. The small number of works that will remain on the registry, for example Mickey Mouse, are so pathetically uncreative that it is desirable to avoid seeing them.
And the best part? Because Lessig proposes to allow individuals or corporations to take a tax credit from their income taxes equivalent to the amount they pay in copyright taxes, corporations probably won't care. They already know what all of their commercially-exploitable copyrighted works are, and simply listing them on their tax filings will be no problem. The main accomplishment of this law, if passed, will be to free from copyright works that are so obscure and unprofitable that their authors don't know what they are, and don't want to bother putting in the work to form a complete list. By Breyer's count, 98% of all copyrighted works over 50 years old fit that definition... I hope he's right.
Recently the Supreme Court decided against Eldred in Eldred v. Ashcroft. As you know, this means that copyright can be extended for an additional 20 years. The lawyer for Eldred in that case, Lawrence Lessig, has proposed a congressional compromise. (NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/18/opinion/18LESS.h tml?ex=1043470800&en=97d153dccaa9d220&ei=5007&part ner=USERLAND)
This compromise would put all works created more than 50 years ago that no longer generate revenue to to be put into the public domain. This compromise would have the effect of enriching the public domain, thus helping for more works to be created, while not damaging the revenues of any companies or persons who depend upon the copyrighted work. I urge you to look at this proprosal, and propose a bill in congress of the like.
Sincerely,
Me
You can write your congressperson in the house at http://www.house.gov/writerep/
House and Senate:
http://www.congress.org/
Sig!
If they are Republican/independent/other, point out this page on opensecrets.org. The jist of it is that the entertainment industry dropped 84% of their funding to Democrats for the last election cycle. The enemy is large, slow, and easily defined here, you just need to point the ones with the guns in the general direction of their enemies. If you support the repeal of this measure and others, vote and fund a less braindead canidate, regardless of affiliation.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
I really don't think the Court thought of it as a gift to Disney, but their decision was between commercial interests (Disney) and the public domain (plus relatively small commercial interests in creating derivative works), and they inclined towards the former.
Because they approved of the retroactive application, an either/or decision, they had the power to repeal that aspect of the Bono Act. The life+70 term would have stood, but Mickey would be free, at least in his old flicks. And there the error was not so much deference to Congress as logical strangeness -- copyright law (some of us thought) is supposed to inspire creative talent before the work is created, not extend monopolies long after the creation. Worse, they blew off the relevance of the First Amendment, questioning the right to speak the words of others and saying fair use would suffice. Of course, we're losing fair use...
The Court did not rule specifically on the maximum number of years allowed, and even had the question been presented, a hands-off attitude would have been best. We've seen the Supreme Court in the past be too combative with Congress on judgment calls, as during the New Deal. They renounced that course a long time ago -- though it has reappeared a bit under the guise of federalism.
Anyway, too much detail. I'm kind of thinking aloud.
You assume that the vast majority of people wouldn't pay the 50 dollars. I think they would, thus keeping the vast majority of works out of the public domain.
I LOVE this idea!
When reading the recent Supreme Court decision, after the initial sorrow, I thought of this myself.
Congress has extended copyright in an effort to protect Steamboat Willie and a few other very profitable creations of the late 1920's. The vast majority of content created at that time is unfortunately decaying in vaults and warehouses, or forgotten completely. It can't be brought back alive in the public domain, because of the copyright extension.
The idea of a registry is great. People might gladly pay the tax to be listed in the registry, to make it easier to be found! When there is a desire to reuse an old creation during a new production, and pay money to that copyright holder, oftentimes the difficulty of finding the legitimate copyright holder is too great. Nobody wants to take the risk of having somebody crawl out of the woodwork after a production is completed and distributed worldwide, and sue for damages. So the use doesn't occur, which is a lose-lose situation. The idea of a registry fixes this! I can see the issuing of copyright numbers, similar to current patent numbers.
(C) #10,000,000 - 2003 Krellan
This compromise idea is great! It allows the public domain calendar to become unfrozen and finally start advancing past 1923. It protects Disney's big moneymakers. And it generates some extra revenue too!
The minute details would still need to be ironed out. What exactly constitutes a copyrighted work? If I create an album of music, do I have to pay the tax on each individual song, and/or on the album as a whole? If I write a software package, does each program, module, etc. need its own separate copyright registration?
Rolling all the way back to 50-year expiration would be too much to realistically expect now, I think. I support going back 80 years. This between the pre-SBCTEA and SBCTEA time periods. And this is exactly where the public domain calendar is currently stalled at (1923), so it makes sense to start here. There would be no sudden rush to register works in danger of immediately expiring.
Copyright law is different for individuals vs. companies, and this might need to be sorted out before a registry can be created. The "death plus X years" rule might need to be standardized and shortened to just "X years". Otherwise it will be a source of confusion: would works revert to their individual creators after the corporate copyright time expires, and if so, who gets the copyright when there are multiple people involved?
I hope the copyright tax is fair: not insignificant, but also not painful to an average individual person. A fee of $50 to $100 per work seems appropriate. It might be a lot of paperwork to assess this annually. I would much prefer the idea of assessing it every 5 years. As others have suggested, this would make it too easy to simply lock up content forever, so I also support increasing this over time. Mathematically doubling, as some have suggested, would quickly get ridiculous. As a compromise, a simple progression: $50 for the first 5 years, $100 for the next 5 years, then $150, $200, $250, and so on. If this outpaces inflation, it will provide an incentive for some people to simply drop it and let their work enter the public domain.
I am going to write my representatives. I hope that one of them is brave enough to introduce a bill!
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
Is that this would allow certain pieces (Mickey, The Beatles, Lord of the rings, etc.) to essentially never fall into the public domain. Though at the rate the copyrights keep extending, I'm not sure it'd be very different if we didn't change.
I have allways wondered why patents last for 20 years (that time has never been increased) but copyrights have been pushed to 95 years. I know that the term extentions have been bought by the IP industries). I definatly don't think patents should be extended, even though I am wouking on some nice inventions that could be profitable. I aggree with the 20 year term for patents and I would like to see copyright cut to 30 or 40 years.
Second, why would we want to sell out to the idea that money controls the rights of the public? That's precisely what this concept would do. The rights of the public under the Constitution are not something to be decided by money. They are much too important for that. No matter what the renewal fee is, I consider it philosophically incorrect to decide the rights of the public through the direct application of money. (Yes, I understand how much money influences our rights already; that doesn't mean we need to sell out to the implicit role of money in our governance by creating an explicit one.) At most, I could see a one-time, short-term extension in exchange for something given back directly to the public -- not a token sum to the coffers of government, but something that every person deprived of public domain access to the work could tangibly enjoy.
Third, why would we settle for the 98% least popular works? What is so special from a public rights perspective regarding those other 2% except that the public will notice their lack of public domain access to those 2% far more than the other 98%?
The question should not be how we can manage the financial concerns of those who create original works. The question should be how we can manage a reasonable balance between the interests of the copyright owners and the interests of the public. I do not believe that extending copyright protections to the point that they don't disappear until everyone alive when the work was created is dead is a "reasonable balance."
No Laughing Allowed!
$1 wont fly. Make it $100 a shot after 50 years. Tell legislators how much cash they coult get from Disney for a one time big hit. They could fund all kinds of pork!!!! Then it would zip through congress.