Slashdot Mirror
Copyright Rumblings
dcunning writes "The Economist has a short opinion piece entitled Copyrights: A radical rethink that suggests (horror of horrors!) going so far as reverting back to the original copyright term of 14 years, renewable once. The article suggests that, in exchange for this, the 'content industries' be given 'much of the legal backing which they are seeking for copy-protection technologies.' A worthwhile and fair tradeoff?"
especially given that 90% of attempted use of such material happens within a few years of its release
I hate having to debate people who use static scoring to argue against things. If the copyrights on modern living authors started expiring one-by-one, their public domain works are more likely to be taught in schools, where presently they're not because a 30 year old copyrighted book is just so expensive to buy, compaired to a fully public domain author such as Mark Twain or Charles Dickens, who has seen most of the use of his work occur long long long after their death.
Kazza might actually have something legal to do if some of the early MTV music videos were in the public domain...
when it comes to rolling stones i think some of their oldest stuff is whats still defining them, but i dont know if they go back 28 years
Um, dude, this year the Stones are celebrating their 40th anniversary as a band. They've released a 40-track double-CD collection called "40 Licks" in honour of the occasion.
-- Alastair
The European agreement you're probably thinking of is the Berne Convention, which sets a minimum copyright term for signatory countries of 50 years after the author's death. That is the term that much of the world (including Canada and Australia) still use. The US is actually in the minority, having increased copyright terms past this.
Living better through chemicals