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Mexico to Abolish the Public Domain?
Anonymous Mexican Coward writes "The mexican congress is considering a revision of the copyright law. Among other changes the law will extend the term of copyright from life-plus-70 to life-plus-100, and at the end of that term, the mexican government has the right to charge royalties for works in the "public domain."
Go Mexico!
Check it out"
Wait I'm confused, isn't this a bad thing?
Why is this "Go Mexico"??
They're extending copyright and abolishing the copyright domain.
Let's fix that typo: BOO MEXICO!
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Its not like there were any groundbreaking inventions coming out of mexico... besides maybe the double-sided bong?
Imagine how efficient it would be if we all had to pay royalties every time we made a fire, or used a wheel. By the way, does anyone wonder what would happen if the government taxed the bible (which is in public domain)? I think it could get a lot of people angry.
cant wait till the RIAA starts making the argument "it is completely unacceptable that mexican authors have more protection than american authors".
They made the same argument about europe when they put in the latest copyright extention act.
The amendment has been strongly supported by authors and collecting societies but on the other hand; it has been rejected by the industry.
Really? Authors and their estate managers want longer copyright, but the industry doesn't. Isn't it usually the other way round in the USA? Does anyone who understands the issue in detail wish to comment on why?
Just because something becomes part of the public domain doesn't mean the prior owner has to release it to the public. Microsoft may very well hang onto the source code. However, if at that time somebody were to acquire a copy of that code or reverse-engineer it from the MS-DOS binaries, Microsoft couldn't sue them for copyright infringement.
"Light is faster than sound." - "Is that why people tend to look bright until you hear them speak?"
Seems to me there are a few things at play regarding this. It could be a test of public opinion, as another reader suggests. It's done, rather shamelessly, here in the US *all the time*. Other thing it could be as well, that since the US and Mexico are trying to be a bit closer together, who knows what deals are being made with them regarding copyright. Look what we're trying to do to ourselves. If certain parties who intend to serve self intrests are global, or at least multi-national, wouldn't they try to influence governments in each region they had a stake in?
So back to my question above, who set the precident first of life-term + some number of years for copyrighting works? Seems to me the US is to blame for this, even though it will really, really, really, hurt our youth and generations to come. It's poison in the resevoir. Beware Mexico.
--SuperBug
Mexicans:
Write your Deputies (by party, unfortunately) and your Senators (by state).
Just out of curiosity, is Micro$oft required to release the source of MS-DOS 1.0 when/if the copyright expires, or does just the binary form become public domain? The source is copyright too, no?
Why does copyright law apply at all? It's not as if MS ever published the source for any of its DOS versions.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Well, I would go to Mexico and protest this law, but I can't because it's against their constitution for a foreigner to do anything of the sort (Article 33).
... should be safe as long as anyone is contributing to that project (+ remaining life of that someone + 100 years).
If an open source project has not have contributions for 100+ years, then i don't really care if the Government of Mexico can charge royalties on it.
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On a side note, i suspect that the works of Aristotelis, Plato and Omero will become more expensive to buy in Mexico. Same thing for traditional Mexican music.
This will never become law. The prior "administration", whose party (the PRI) ruled the country for 80+ years is simply doing what they do best - make empty populist gestures and try to push crap through congress to see what happens.
And the current administration is unabashedly pro-business (and unfortunately pro-church as well) and since the system is similar to the US, I doubt the prez will sign it. He'll just veto it because along with his party (the PAN) he's in bed with everyone from EMI to Coca-Cola.
And the company doing this? I know them - my brother used to work here. They're used by the various families who own newspapers in Mexico to hassle each other with stupid copyright claims all the time. Of course "OLIVARES & CIA." obliges gleefully since they take a cut. Ambulance chasers of the 21st century.
This policy would of course destroy anything like Project Gutenberg if such a project existed in Mexico. Kind of like killing the original open source, no?
In Mexico, politicians can be bought... but at least there we can afford it. :)
When copyright expires (70 years after publishing, under curent law), they don't have to do anything. It would however be in the public domain and if someone had a copy they could then publish it freely. But we all know that copyright will be extended indefinitely using the "Mad Hatter's tea Party" method:
All in all, it's a bad thing but in practice in Mexico it makes no difference at all.
-- American living in Mexico for last 7 years.
The hits disappear as soon as one adds amendment, proposed, proposal to the search terms.
Those should have turned up hits even in Spanish, I think. While my Spanish sucks rocks, that's one of the languages for which machine translation sort of works.
As far as I'm concerned, given that someone else checked Mexican government sites and didn't find it, the burden of proof that this isn't a troll is on the original author.
It would be a suicidally stupid thing for a national government to do. Imagine a 6 year old having to do an intellectual property search on the Net every time she was assigned to write a story for school and then try to find the intellectual property owners... if they can be found after 100 years.
While it's hard to quantify or model the economic loss due to the inability to use public domain work as a basis for further creativity, if I wrote fiction for a living, I'd be packing if this passed where I lived. Or if I were a parent.
However, we have no credible evidence of such. What we have is a blog posting that doesn't cite a verifiable URL from a government source. This is a credibility killer given that the subject is a proposed act of public law.
The article shouldn't have been accepted without one from either the author of the original article or the poster.
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This is the real problem that I have with neoliberal capitalism. It isn't liberal, it isn't capitalism, and if I read history correctly, it isn't neo.
It's part of the privatize/nationalize cycle that wealthy and powerful people use to steal from not-so-wealthy and not-so-powerful people.
There is NO WAY that this form of dominance benefits those around the world. It's called stealing, and it's as old as the hills.
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