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Public Domain Enhancement Act petition
EricEldred writes "Please sign the petition and support the proposed Public Domain Enhancement Act. See eldred.cc for details. 'This statute would require
American copyright owners to pay a very low fee (for example, $1) fifty years after a copyrighted work was published. If the owner pays the fee, the
copyright will continue for whatever duration Congress sets. But if the copyright is not worth even $1 to the owner, then we believe the work should pass into the public domain.'" See the brief description of the Act if you aren't familiar with what Eldred and Lessig are proposing.
if the copyright is not worth even $1 to the owner, then we believe the work should pass into the public domain
No wonder most open source apps are free.
Corporations will automate the process so they will never 'forget' to pay the buck.
Yep, I never spell check.
More incorrect spellings can be found he
Can't this be taken as a sign of tacit approval in the life-plus-fifty copyright that exists now? Is that what we want?
Most copywritten material ISN'T worth $1. Corporations can't afford to pay $1 for everything.
this won't ever happen, it actually makes sense and would benefit someone besides "big corporations".
Paying a very low fee would make it non trivial for a company to just perpetuate it's copyrights.
As it stands a few companies have tens of thousands of copyrights that their just sitting on for the sake of others not having access to them.
If you set some low fee, it would just legitimize their sqandering of literary material.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
So what? $1 after 50 years?!?! The problem still exists. Congress will grant copyright extensions ad infinitum to these companies who ensure that the members get elected. The concept of "public domain" has been completely eroded the last 70 years, and during our lifetime it will continue to erode. The framers of the constituion had the right idea, but their successors have perverted the concept to where it's no longer of any value. Long live piracy! ;)
-A.M.
Pimpin' all the Karma Hoes!
I believe I am going to patent the idea of automated fund submission for copyright extension.
This could the small end of the wedge that actually has a chance of sneaking in. By initially focusing on material that isn't comercially valued, this aims to get the maximum material entered into the public domain with the minimum resistance from the copyright holders. I, for one, am signing right up.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
This is completely at odds with current copyright law. Copyright law, under the Berne Convention, grants copyright immedietly upon creation of the work. There is no regisration requirement. Requiring registration on the backend is nonsensical and the Copyright Office will be unable to validate existence of a valid copyright when granting the extension.
For instance, what prevents me from paying the dollar and renewing the copyright on "The Wizard of Oz" (movie, not the book, the book is public domain)?
The generated funds will be miniscule... I don't see how this would really benefit anyone. And I doubt this tiny fee would even cover the implementation and enforcement of this new proposal.
-- n
To allow unused copyrighted works to enter the public domain after 50 years, while allowing copyright owners the full protection of the established copyright term.
Why wait 50 years? Heck if I have to pay to renew my domain name every few years... why not a copyright, too? Also, there's no reason why it should have to cost any money at all. Just fill out the paper work every 5-10 years.
Likewise, if somebody in your behalf (children, their children, etc.) continues this tradition... I see no reason why the copyright should not legally be able to be maintained forever.
Davak
Companies will automate the process so their copyrights will last as long as possible. It will only be the occasional person who forgets to renew. There's a six month grace period and the fee is one dollar so there's no reason why anyone wishing to renew can't.
I fail to see the point of this legislation. Is it currently impossible to voluntarily move a copyrighted work into the public domain?
ich muß mehr Kuhglocke haben
I doubt this would be effective because corporate copyright holders have already shown that they will fight to keep control of material which is no longer directly profitable. The issue is that if more material went into the public domain then the public would have free material to watch/listen instead of paying for something newer. It would be worth it for the MPAA/RIAA to renew for $1 or even $100 just to prevent this. What we need is a law setting a hard cap on the length of a copyright, and for a much more reasonable period of time.
This whole forever copyright thing is a pain in the ass and quite frankly a load of crap. If you want the legal protection of a copyright then you need to follow the rules, not keep profiting and profiting on it, while society is at your whim. Wuit convoluting an already convoluted system. There are other options, don't bother copyrighting something and then you don't have to worry about it being public domain in 50 years, you can keep it a secret forever.
Online petitions also don't work, they're too easy to fradulate, if you're really concerned call your representative and talk to them about it, don't put your email address on a weblog and think you've done your civic duty.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Think about how many works are *lost* to the public because it is no longer profitable for the owner to keep them published. Out of print books, movies and recordings should be in the public domian if the copyright owner isn't willing to keep them available for whatever reason. For those owners that wish to maintain thier copyrights, they can. But for others who don't care, why shouldn't the public get a crack at these?
Except, it really isn't too difficult for Disney or any other company to handle this process fairly automatically.
Maybe a last sale date would be a better method. For instance, if a book is not released within the last 5 years, it enters a public domain license. Or similar with a movie or software.
Basically its the same idea. If something copyrighted is not worth making money with, it enters public domain. Ofcourse then Disney would then be able to release Mickey Mouse every five years to not lose copyright, but then the public has access to that.
I know there are a number of CDs that I simpley don't have access to since they are out of print. This would allow me to have access to 80's hair bands that no longer get any money from their product.
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
It is useful for removing restrictions where the restrictions are merely there by default and not intent. A book that was written in the 40's where the author (and/or his/her heirs) doesn't care about the copywrite. Under the proposed system this would drop into PD even without the CW holder explicitly putting it there.
That's a fairly minimal benefit, but at least it IS a benefit and by not destroying the money-maker (extending the rights period) perhaps this could get passed? No, why bother, it's still an added hassle for the corporations that are controlling the law changes.
To me, this is no different than charging KKK members $1 to enforce local Jim Crow laws (if they don't pay $1 for each law every $50 years, then the law comes off the books). Would this be a valid way of getting rid of Jim Crow laws? No way, I'm afraid to say.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
This isn't about legitimzing the length of the terms.
It's about making it so that works that the copyright holder doesn't care about anymore, lapse into public domain after 50 years.
As things stand now, the copyright is in force for the current excessively long term, even when the rights-holder is dead, buried, and forgotten. This is a minor tweak, to make it perfectly legitimate to re-publish "abandoned" works after 50 years, rather than the longer terms now in effect.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
If the fee started at $1 after fifty years and doubled every 2-3 years after, eventually it would be highly unprofitable for the work to remain copyrighted. Which would encourage artists/companies/whoever to create new works. Which was the whole point of copyright to begin with.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
slashdot: " All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster."
All trolls will be broke in 50 years, if they want to keep their copyrights
Sounds stupid to me. And it seems that whenever laws sound stupid, they serve as loopholes for corporate weasels.
I'd rather see "use it or lose it". If something that is copyright is not available from the copyright holder, it should (sooner, rather than later) be legal for it to be made available by someone else.
While I'm at it: I think that the creator of a work should get the copyright to their creation back if the folks who bought the copyright are not distributing it.
-Eldurbarn
Not a bad idea, not really a good idea either, but it is very fair will net a positive score for the public domain campaign. The only thing bad is it might prevent stronger legislation because politicians and companies might state "Well we let that 50 year law pass, can't let a 25 year law get because it will open the doors to wide".
Insert Witty Remark Here ===>____________________________
-Jon
This space for rent, inquire within.
Mineral rights expire if not renewed regularly. If the rights are not worth renewing they don't persist forever. Systems that automatically clean themselves up are a Good Thing (TM)
IANAL but I bought some land and found out that nugget along the way
Either it passes, in which case the law is at least improved from the status quo, or it fails due to strong opposition, in which case the opponents are smoked out and shown to be fools in the public eye.
sulli
RTFJ.
If I design/create something, why should there be a time limit on it? It's 100% mine, and no one should be lining up at the door 50 years from now, waiting for my ownership to expire.
It's not like I'm renting something for 50 years. It's mine, I should be able to whatever I want with it, for as long as I want with it. And If I so happen to croak, then it should be passed on.
I intend to whole-heartedly support this petition.
However I don't think it will pass. I doubt if those $1.00 bills coming from all the companies and people that retain the copyrights would cover the cost of rechecking every copyright for its applicability every year.
Of course, I don't understand the infrastructure of the copyright office, but I imagine the passing of such an act would require the addition of many new employees and probably more funding in general, which this one dollar scheme will not cover.
Yet, I wouldn't mind seeing my tax money go to fund this positive movement for the regulation of the copyright mess we're in now. So, like I said, I'll still support it. Just doubt it would make it no matter how much support it gets.
I see a number of potential issues with the idea. First of all is the obvious automation of the renewal process which will make it easy to automatically extend the copyright. However, the $1 (or whatever) fee is per work, that is, a fee to keep a single artwork copyrighted. This is all fine and dandy for bookwriters and moviemakers with an expected total of works in the count of 10 to 20 in a lifetime. But consider photographers, who shoot thousands of photos a year, or quite likely much more. Do they have to pay for each of their photos?
...
Stock photography might radically change in view of this idea
Of course, you say, but the photographer will then have to choose among his best work and pick the ones for which he wants to keep the copyright! Blah. You can't resolve it like this. Suddenly you'll have poor artists who will be exploited because they didn't pay their copyright fee, and you'll have rich art whores who'll pay to have every single piece of their crap copyrighted.
It won't work. You might as well decide to have the copyright last ten times as long as it took to create the particular artwork. So if it's a photo, say ten days at most. If it's a book, 10 years or thereabouts.
...is the sound of the servers going down due to the Slashdot Effect.
This sig no verb.
I went to sign the petition but couldn't find the CowboyNeal option!
Online petitions are worth the paper they are printed on. They're for idiots who want to feel like they're contributing to some cause, but are too lazy to actually do anything to contribute.
If you want something, quit copping out and write or call your representative. Or better yet, pay them a visit when they're at their home office.
paintball
If a corporation fails to remedy, after repeated warnings, an illegal monopoly with a copyrighted work, it shall pass into the public domain.
I imagine it happens quite often that a copyright holder dies before 50 years elapse after he files for the original copyright. What then? Can his relatives make the payment, or is the copyright doomed?
And what's the point of the measly $1.00 fine? Basically everyone would pay that fee, unless the aforementioned case is true - they are dead.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
Make it $1 for the 51st year, and double every year thereafter. Some posters have already mentioned the "automated copyright for perpetuity" problem. If the copyright is still worth $1M after 71 years, fine, let them keep it. If it's still worth $1G after 81 years, fine, let them keep it. But copyright in perpetuity? C'mon...
Thoughts and ideas are not born in a vacuum. The public domain contributed something to those thoughts and ideas, it's only fair to give back eventually. That's the whole idea of mentioning "limited times" in A1S8. Personally I think 50 years is already too long, 25 years should be sufficient.
Constitutionally Correct
Can't this be taken as a sign of tacit approval in the life-plus-fifty copyright that exists now? Is that what we want?
Even worse, it seems like it could open the door for endless copyright, as long as the owner continues to pay the fee. It seems to imply that only works with no commercial value are worthy of the public domain. This makes me a little uneasy...
How many blockbuster movies break even the first weekend? Not many, I know, but it's something to consider. Why do we need such long copyright terms when artists are paid so much so soon after a work is released.
When this plan is shot down, as a compromise, let's propose the one mentioned in the article.
troll
progress...If you allow copyright to avoid the public domain you end up with a nation of lazy idiots living off the endeavors of their ancestors.
The society can't progress if the sons and daughters of our most brilliant citizens don't need to contribute.
Can't we do a little better than that?
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
So if a copyright holder is so un-enthusiastic about his property that he can't be bothered to pay $1 to maintain it, what are the odds he'll want to pay a lawyer to go after you, if you just ignore the copyright on it completely?
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
You're not going to change the laws that have already been passed -- there's too much money at stake and the lobbies are too powerful.
At least this would mitigate some of the damage that's been done by allowing important, un-shepherded works to pass into public domain before the paper they're printed on crumbles into dust.
Is it a perfect solution? No. But it does addres many of the major problems of Infinite Copyright.
goats.com: better than
Copyright shouldn't last even 5 years, let alone 50. This proposal treats a heart-attack with a band-aid.
Just for kicks and giggles, after signing the petition, I went to the last page of signatures and hit reload every five seconds or so for about a minute. I saw between one to five new signatures show up with each reload. For that matter, the web site says 'over 500' and when I signed my signature landed somewhere in the 1500's. This is clearly a popular move.
www.wavefront-av.com
The premise is flawed. Just because only 2% of works produced nearly a century ago are still commercially viable today doesn't mean this will be the case in the future.
Much of the material we're talking about has literally deteriorated due to the passage of time. No such deterioration takes place in the digital age.
This would essentially create perpetual copyrights.
This is a very bad idea.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
This is exacly what Disney and the entire copyright industry wants. They get to keep copyrights forever and we get shafted.
I say we fight for the real public domain and settle for nothing less. If this compromise gets passed we'll never get a chance to get the public domain back.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
A lot of work out there is NOT owned by MegaCorps, but it can't be easily used unless you track down the artist's manager's wive's new husband who holds the current copyright as part of some stupid inheritance tree. This would put an end to that.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
I would sign if the copyright turned into a copyleft rather than public domain.
Shouldn't that be $1 yearly? I see how having be a one-time deal would be beneficial for what Eldred et al. were trying to do (specifically, re-publish works whose owners were missing, dead, or otherwise unavailable), but in order to avoid having exactly the same problem 50 years hence, shouldn't they cover all their bases and make it a $1/year requirement?
Haven't signed yet on that basis. The petition, while great in concept, doesn't seem to be executed "professionally" enough to make anyone in Congress care.
AHHHHHHH! I'm burning with goodness again!
- Reakk, Sluggy Freelance
For the same reason that a patent expires after 17 years. Yes, you invented the whatsit (or maybe "invented" doing it online). Great, you get a chance to profit from it. Then, for the greater public good we all get a chance to make whatsits too.
Instead of wasting time on a move like this, I'd rather see efforts being made to *reduce* maximum copyright times to something reasonable - like 10 years. Or at least the 14 + 14 set out originally by the framers.
I can't imagine that much of anything, other than some literature and art, would be worth anything after 50 years. As is, many technological doodads fall by the wayside in 10, replaced by better mousetraps or other forms of technology altogether. And all evidence points to an ever-increasing rate of technological advancement, not a slowdown or stabilization, so in 50 years even a period of 10 years will seem ludicrous.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
This has nothing to do with corporate copyrights or the Mickey Mouse problem. That's a completely separate issue.
The reform is aimed at non-corporate copyrights, the stuff that no one will bother to renew. Say some author wrote a scholarly book in 1924, which is now considered to be important. Because it's still under copyright, people like Project Gutenberg cannot use, reprint, or archive it without the author's permission.
After 80 years it'd be very difficult to legally acquire permission, even from the author's estate. He may have multiple generations of descendants, or no descendants at all, so it's nontrivial to figure out which party has legal authority over the work. For most purposes, getting permission to use the work is simply not feasible.
This change to the law would fix that problem. After 50 years, if the author's heirs have stopped caring (or have just died out), the $1 will go unpaid and the book will become public domain. Scholars and archivers can do with it as they will. On the other hand, if the work is important enough that someone does bother to pay the $1, we'll know that the payor is the person with legal authority. Scholars and archivers will know exactly whom to ask for permission. Either way, we no longer have the problem of unused works gathering dust under unnecessary copyright.
Intellectual property rights are derived directly from the rights of people, as individuals, to own what they create. Those rights should not cost anything. No government or screaming mass of people has the right to take away property rights from the individuals who create.
samrolken
Assuming that for whatever reason, Mickey's copyright does expire, I wonder if Disney could make the argument that he's also a business trademark and thus still protected by law.
This whole copyright thing makes me want to denounce my rights as an Amerikan. Lately I have been feeling more, and more ashamed to be from this country. Our laws are pathetic. At least Eldred is trying to do something to make the country better! Donate!Now!
We just ./ed their petition!
The Big Record Companies have how many different recordings under their control? By how many artists?
$1 per recording every 5 years. I think that that would stack up to a large amount of money.
Lets look at some numbers: This page has a list of the number of copyright registrations for every year from 1790 to 2002. It lists the total number of copyrights out there as being 30,253,812.
In 2002 there were 521,041 new registered copyrights. That means that in 50 years, $521,041 would have to be paid to the copyright office to maintain those copyrights for another 5 years. Another look at the data shows that right now there are 9,213,707 registered works that are 50 years old or older. That means that $9,213,707 would have to be paid to the copyright office to maintain those works.
Now, realizing that not every work is owned by a BIG CORPORATION(tm) that is still not a small chunk of change and will ultimately result in more and more items entering public domain, or more money going to the government...(or more money being charged for copyrighted works simply to maintain this cost, copyright tax).
I don't know that this solves anything, but I like the attempt.
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
to the population interested in the material notifing us their intent to continue their copyright. This is not cheap.
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
If it was up to me copyrights would only last 10 years. Plenty of time for you to capture your market share and move on to your next product.
This 50 to 200 years crap is basically for those talent deprived one-hit-wonder companies that couldn't compete in a normal fair market place.
Wouldn't that be scary for Microsoft, they'd have to rearchitect their OS every 10 years less someone else gets control of it. I think that would be a good thing, I don't like running old software. Except for X11.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
It's a small fee at year 50 and every 5 years thereafter for the life of the copyright (which takes care of congressional extensions).
It's simple. If it's copywritten it's copywritten for the life of the work. If it's open then it's open for the life of the work. Take your pick. That would make things very simple now wouldn't it?
"Out of a month, I have to work a whole damn week for free just for the government"
Umm, no actually you work that week to pay for the roads you drive on, the people that dispose of your trash, the police that protect you, the army that conquers your oil supply, etc.
I mean if you want no taxes move to the Sudan. Just don't bitch when there is no roads, police, clean water and roving militias just come and shoot you and steal your other three weeks of pay...
I have no problem with taxpayer money going to support something like this, but the industry lobbyists will mention it to lawmakers as a reason to not pass the bill, and it may be hard to argue why it's so important for works from 50 years ago to pass into the public domain. It can be argued, but I doubt I'll see Lessig on CSPAN any time soon.
While this is a reasonable solution to the problems of creeping copyrights, maybe the fee should be something more substantial ($100? $1000?), so that there is a chance that fees will pay for the service.
Why should we sign? I don't think copyrights need to extend much past 25 let alone 50 years. It's a joke that the US Government allowed disney to extend it's copyrights longer than 50 years. Especially when the hold the trademarks on some the characters in the cartoons anyway.
Why complicate things ?!? Instead petition Congress to roll back copyright law to a simple maximum of, say, 50 years.
The problem with that is that it totally negates the (IMHO) most important part - making sure that the copyright owner's contact information is available to anyone who wants to try and licence it. As I see it, this isn't about making sure things eventually become free, but more about making sure things aren't lost because the copyright owner drops off the face of the Earth and the work is lost forever because no one can get permission to keep it alive.
Suppose an author wrote a book 50 years ago, and he dies, leaving no heirs. Now suppose I don't like the ideas in that book, and I don't think it should be available. For $1, I can see that it doesn't become available for another 50 years.
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
If I write a piece of Free Software, I'll have to pay a Dollar per Year forever, to keep it from going into public domain?
What if the Software has multiple Authors?
get 7 free Japanese lessons.
The term of a copyright can theoretically go on forever, if Congress continues to extend the term. If the term is 90 years now, that's a "limited time". In 2020, if they extend the term to 110 years, that's also a "limited time." In 2040, they might extend it to 130 years, and guess what, it's still a "limited time." Repeat ad infinitum, and no copyright would ever actually reach the end of its term.
You're right that the US Constitution will not allow the term to be set at "infinity." But, every time the term is about to run out, large media companies will lobby for another extension, so they can maintain ownership of their properties. Barring a successful legal challenge or a fundamental change in US politics, there's no reason to think Congress would stop extending.
I am not a fan of current copyright law, but how is this not an unfair burden on small publishing houses and self-publishers? A $1 fee on evey copyrighted work would be trivial to Penguin, Disney, or Microsoft but not to competitors.
Do I want the GPL on my work to expire unless we pay this fee? The money's not the problem. It's the principle of it. Why should I have to pay to have my work be protected by the law simply because my work is published media?
Creativity and its rewards should be accessable to all people, not just those who can afford it. That was the original intent of the law as framed by the constitution and that's the way it should stand.
Therefore, such a petition shoul also be forwarded to the FTAA negotiations.
-><- no
This would mean that there would be a database of all copyrighted works older than 50 years. In other words, if you have access to some potentially copyrighted work that you know is older than 50 years, you can simply look for it in the database. If it's not there, you're free to republish it!
Variable copyright dates make it extremely difficult for people to know what is and what is not copyrighted. Since articles and storied might appear in multiple publications, there will probably be quite a few mistakes made where people think an item wasn't copyrighted because it appeared in volume XXX...while it was copyrighted as part of volume YYY.
The fifty year limit sounds like an interesting start.
do you think there'd be a way to get this as a little button or something where people could sign the petition on the front page of slashdot so people don't forget about it once the news story goes off the first page? it just seems like a shame that something this important is 'just another news story.'
What is the advantage of having public domain software that are't even worth 1$??
And where's the link for the petition against the petition?
The only people who could benefit from this are not people, they're corporations. The guy/gal with the original idea is dead and buried in the multi-million dollar casket his royalties afforded him.
-j
This could get entra interesting if third parties can fund the renewal of copyrights in this way. After all, one can't expect the copyright office to keep track of which family member/friend of a long-dead artist held what right, especially when the vast majority of copyrights aren't registered in any way.
So what if third parties, seeing that a potentially competing work might enter the public domain, decides to renew a copyright? Will there be a way to dispute a renewal? Will the draw of the public domain hold any weight outside of an accidental "gotcha"?
Ryan Fenton
The duration of copyrights isn't going to be easily changed due to the influence of Big Media. Forcing people to pay a dollar or be lose copyright after 50 years is more trouble than it's worth.
My solution: a progressive tax on copyrighted works. Give the content producers a year grace period to recoup their investment. In the second year after a work is released, the government would impose a 1% tax on the gross revenues generated by the work. Each year thereafter, the tax would increase by an additional 1%. Items in the public domain would be exempt from this tax.
Copyright holders would still be able to maintain exclusive control of their work, but would have an incentive to release it to the public domain. (Or bury it forever, but that's not different from what happens now.)
Also, if a work remains under copyright for over 100 years (due to author's longevity or further copyright extension), companies would have to pay the government more money than they receive from sales and licensing.
The downsides? This requires a lot more bookkeeping and enforcement. Some companies (coughDisneycough) would rather bury their IP than release it to the public domain. And companies may make minor revisions and declare the "new edition" to have a new copyright.
An $1000 dollar fee would be more like it. Also, maybe some large tax-deductions for placing works in the public-domain.
However, this small $1 fee does put many things in the public domain. In many cases, authors no-longer care, or remember, and may no longer be alive. Also, because the fee is low, the whining liars at the SIAA can't complain about it.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
If this act passes.
The next move by Mickey Inc. (TM) (c) (R) will be to push for a infinite (or 10,000 years whichever comes first) copyright law.
That is, Disney will be able to keep Mickey locked up forever (as long as doesnt forget to pay $1 every 5 years).
-Johan
Wouldn't the original copyright length of life+28 (I think) be better? That's what the original creators of the law thought would be good, and I agree that it's plenty long enough for automatic protection. If it's worth that much to you after at least 28 years of commercial use, then you should go through the effort to register for the extra protection.
Last post!
I wish I hadn't just lost my mod points. You'd get them.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
"Requiring registration on the backend is nonsensical and the Copyright Office will be unable to validate existence of a valid copyright when granting the extension."
You are right. This scheme complicates copyright law unnecessarily. And having to register your ideas with some central authority after fifty years seems prone to corruption.
The nice thing about copyright law is it's simplicity. And it is enforced completely by the copyright holder. The biggest complaint today is that its length has been extended too much by Congress.
It might be good to look at the fair use exclusions to copyright. But Please, don't muck around with some sort of fascist registration system for content!
I think this is a wonderful idea. It speaks exactly at the desire to not let works disappear. Yet, it's not going to be widely opposed because it doesn't make it too tough for corporations and those who care about their copyrights to keep them as long as they can now.
But, I must ask: Why 50 years???
Starting it after 20 seems just as reasonable to me (if I'm thinking of the copyright holders' interests) but it would keep a lot more non-commercial, unattended information from disappearing into the unknown.
Here are some other problems that this doesn't even begin to address:
o Lack of having to register the work in the first place
o Lack of hard limits on the final length of time it's valid
o Removal of having to declare that a work is copyrighted (like in the front of a book or movie)
o Extremely long duration, preventing the Public Domain from having access to the work in a timely manner
These are just a few.
I propose that we repeal all copyright changes since the first 1790 act that provided 14 years, renewable once for a total of 28 years. I think that it is a fair duration for the author to profit from the work.
I also propose that any electronic work (either program code, etext of a book, etc) needs to be archived with the copyright office so that when the copyright expires, a copy of the source/text can be acquired for the duplication/shipping fee.
Ryan
Don't steal. The government hates competition.
I own a piece of Arizona desert worth $500. I must pay $13 in property taxes every year. The land is completely unimproved so what I'm paying for, in a sense, is police enforcement -- to kick squatters off.
"Steamboat Willie" is a valuable copyright. Disney gets free enforcement of copyright laws on this valuable piece of copyright property. "Steamboat Willie" is more valuable and needs a lot more copyright enforcement than most titles. Disney should pay more for that protection.
The purpose of property taxes are to offset the costs of providing services, like law enforcement, for the property. If Copyrights are to be considered Intellectual "Property", they must pay property taxes at their appraised value or forfeit that property.
For a copyright that could be sold on the market for $500, a fair value for copyright should be about $13/year, after the initial grace period of 14 years (perhaps with optional free renewal for another 14).
Yes but your work owes a lot to the brilliance of authors that came before you. If copyright never ended, Shakespeare, Classical Greek/Roman stories, classical music, folk music, and just about every expression we have today would still be under copyright.
With that much under copyright it would be a wonder that *any* published would today would not be infringing.
And for what? Shakespeare is long gone. He's not going to produce any more and he doesn't even know his great-great-great-....-great-grandchildren so why should he care about them recieving royalties.
And all the monks who faithfully transcribed copyrighted works to ensure they still live on past the dark ages would be pirates.
You might say, that was then and this is now. With digital data, data never dies but you're wrong. Data formats are more fragile than paper. A paper from 1903 is still quite clear and easy to read (albiet quite yellow and humidity harmed). Data from 1960 iron drums and ozone data tapes from the 1960's Aluette satalite are quite unreadable by today's hardware. Add the DMCA and DRM and you're making it impossible to even salvage that data.
I think allowing a corp to have legal status as an author is a huge mistake. Corporations are a legal method for encouraging investment, nothing more...
You know what would be nice? If a creative work is produced by a corporation, then every indivual who works on the project should be considered a contributing author, and each person should have to pay that $1 every 50 years, or drop off the list. When nobody's left to pay, it's public domain. I assume that the corporation would want to pay on their behalf (and so would need to provide proof that they're alive), as it is the entity benefiting from the work.
How does the proposed amendment to the copyright law possibly outweight the advantages we currently possess? It tries to solve one problem, which is, "How do we offset the cost to proactively obtain original works for the Public Domain?" You do it by requiring a proactive registration system?
assert(expired(knowledge));
The Berne Convention requires a minimum 50 year term of copyright and no formalities. That's what you get here.
If you're willing to pay the fee, you can get more time, but the minimum term offered is not a violation of Berne.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
Speaking as one who has literally put thousands of hours into writing a book...
Speaking as one who has literally put thousands of hours into automobile maintenance, don't I have the right to profit from those automobiles for the rest of my life? No? Then what makes you so special?
Just because you place no value on your work...
I place a value on my work. And I get paid for it too. I just don't see any reason that my work should be a gravy-train I can ride in perpetuity. And I don't see any damn reason why yours should be either.
Wow the replies redundant!
Half the people have posted something along the line of "But corporation are going to automate the process and extend the Copyrights forever!", and the other half are people saying "But that's not the problem this is trying to solve!"
To those for posted the former:
Think of it as a step in the right direction. While some corporations while renew their Copyrights forever as they do now, some will let them fall through to the public domain.
To those who posted the latter:
Excellent idea!
A photograpoher knows which of his photographs are worth protecting and which aren't.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
like abortion "discussions" at a Baptist convention :).
Win or lose it raises awareness!
KH
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
he actually has reason and logic behind his opinion
This will help solidify the imbalance already in effect, and it will not address any real problems. For the majority of the general public -- the supposed beneficiary of this proposal -- this will be meaningless. How many people will actually notice that some obscure work has slipped into the public domain? If a tree falls in the forest and there's nobody there to hear it...
If the copyright owner really believes they deserve an extension, perhaps the burden should be on them to prove, in court, that their retention of their copyright is more important to the public than the release of their work into the public domain. That would be ultimately more meaningful than some silly administrative fee that wouldn't have any impact on copyright-protected works that the majority of the public would be interested in. It would also restore the balance (because at the expiration of the time limit, the benefit to the public becomes the primary interest), and presumably result in very few works actually staying out of the public domain.
The key problem is imbalance, and this trivial fee notion does nothing to restore it.
No Laughing Allowed!
The vast majority of estate taxes are paid on unrealized capital gains which have never been taxed. It's not double taxation, it's first time taxation.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
and a wookie!
There's no way you can keep people from paying in advance, if not directly then though some representative such as a third party who will take the fees in advance and pay them when they come due. All this will do is raise the initial fees a few dollars as it will become standard practice to simply pay for huge amounts of time in advance. Consequently this will not address the problem trying to be solved at all, and in fact will exacerbate it.
If you want to solve the public domain problem, solve the public domain problem (by setting the appropriate ceiling on copyright duration, for example). This is a band-aid that will fall off before the cut heals.
Here's a better idea, make it more frequent, and logarithmic.
:)
After 10 years, pay $10
After 20 years, pay $100
After 30 years, pay $1,000
After 40 years, pay $10,000
After 50 years, pay $100,000
After 60 years, pay $1,000,000
Thus eventually, a work becomes no longer economically feasable to maintain, yet the artist still retins a fair amount of control. If Disney is willing to pay a billion dollar tax to maintain their Mickey Mouse monopoly after 70 years, power to them. I say billion, 'cuz there's a lot of derivative works they'd have to pay taxes on as well.
bance.net
50 years is too long, and $1 is too trivial to make a difference. I don't understand the purpose of this, nor support the 50 year term.
These aren't exactly separate issues. If copyright was only 20 years (from creation, like say, patents), I don't think you'd have such an issue with 80 year old abandoned copyrights. It's obvious that this is just a first step/compromise, because the battle for limiting copyright lengths has been effectively lost. I laud the idea, and I suppose I will sign the petition, but don't go around saying it's a separate issue. It isn't.
I am an intellectual property owner. Would anyone care to explain why I can spend six years working my butt off on a technological creation, and I get rights to it for 20 years, paying fees every few years, but Andrew Lloyd Weber can hold the rights to "Cats" until the end of time?
I can't really see how this is supposed to accomplish anything at all.
Possibly a publicity thing from Lessig and Eldrig? Getting attention to arcane and over potent copyright laws from the guys in charge is a good thing.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
I guess they've managed to convince everybody that a copyright owner has the right to his copyright indefinetly. Tack one more attempt onto the "Mickey Mouse for Disney" preservation act. It's this sort of fundamental shift in perception that is the hardest to fight. Just reading the main post gives people that idea.
A book on something like "Programming PIC's" or "The Intel 80x86 Architecture" will be useless in 50 years when we're all (hopefully) using quantum computers. I think that 50 years is far too long and I agree with the folks who bring up the point about automated the whole process. What we need are shorter times and higher fees.
I think this should be stressed a little bit more. Otherwise, you could have someone paying the copyright fee + $1 (or however much) up-front for the extension.
The extension should be payable only many years down the road, closer to the extension deadline. Otherwise, it loses a great deal of its value.
Why should I, as an owner of a copyrighted work, have to pay the government anything for the ownership of my property? This is an intellectual property tax--which sounds nice when the fee is only $1 every 50 years. But what happens when it becomes $2, then $10, etc.? And why does the government need this money?
Sorry, but I prefer chopping copyright length back down to a reasonable 20- or 30-year period. There's no good reason to give the government yet another means to wrest money out of my wallet.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
I know someone already said this already, but why not make it $100 or $1000? I think the privelege of having copyright control over your product should cost you an exponential increase in the amount of money every year after 20 years. Perhaps start at $1, then $2, then $4 and $8.. by the time a copyrighted work reaches 70 years of age the owner would be paying over $560,000,000,000,000 to keep it out of the hands of the public domain.
The overall concept sounds good: it's not to take away or limit business that want to keep their copyrights, but to give works over to public domain when they're no longer wanted anymore. But really, why charge a fee at all, when you could just have the copyright holder turn in some sort of signed legal document saying "yes, I still want the copyright on this document"? I mean, $1 adds up, but there's really no reason you should have to pay and be fined for wanting to keep the copyright.
JAWSchlech "The secret to success is knowing who to blame for your mistakes." - Despair.com
What we need is FEWER laws!!! NOT MORE! Don't you SEE? This would be death to the small indie copyright holder! Right now, any of us have the same rights as the big companies. If you did this, eventually the fee would be increased to kill the small guy.
DO NOT SIGN THIS!
For the education, training, and support, they received. You use your creative skills to create the work that you copyright. So, society is *owed* the product of your efforts to form an element of the society for the next several generations.
If you don't want this, then don't publish the work. In fact, save yourself some effort and do not create. Society will get along without you.
...or, most likely, it will be shuffled off to committee and ignored.
Does something need to be published in a physical form, like a book or CD? Or does putting it on a web site count?
What if I put a copyrighted work (say a written work, in an HTML file) on a password-protected web server using HTTPS, and the password is known only to me? Then I certainly haven't published it. Now suppose there's no password, but only I know the URL and I haven't linked to it. Is it published yet? What if someone goes to http://www.mydomain.com/mystuff/menu.html, which is on search engines and linked from other sites, truncates it to http://www.mydomain.com/mystuff/, and gets a directory listing including my copyrighted work? What if there's no directory listing, but I tell the URL of the web site to one of my friends? What if the friend tells a bunch of other people and links to it; has he caused it to be "published"? What if I'm the only one who knows the URL and then I graffiti it on the wall of a public restroom (say a unisex one)? The general public can now access it if they want to, right? Suppose someone cracks my web server, finds the secret URL of my copyrighted work, and posts it on Slashdot where it can be seen by all; is it published yet?
Similar dilemmas occur with physical media, as well. What if I make a backup copy of my unreleased copyrighted work on CD, and then the CD is stolen? What if I leave a few such CD's in a public park where anyone could get them? What if I try to sell people my CD's but no one buys any?
And what if I make a great movie, but the only way anyone can see it is by coming to my house and paying admission. (Assume for the sake of simplicity that this doesn't violate zoning ordinances.) Is that publishing? What if I only let friends see it for free, but they decide to donate money?
Not everything is "published" by a huge company that issues a press release and starts advertising it everywhere. As someone who's been in a few of the above situations (let's not get into which ones), I think they need to be considered.
I intend to sign the petition anyway, because no copyrights will be lost before 50 years are up, which is too long anyway. (I believe an ideal copyright term would be somewhere from 15 to 20 years.) Still, I can see some ugly legal fights going on in the future if cases like the above aren't considered.
Moreover, commercial entities in other countries (where saner - or even insanely limited - copyright laws exist) could then take those documents and make them available 24/7 in a convenient, indexed format that others could then use for research, teaching, or even pleasure. Anyone would be free to open up their own librarius to the world via p2p communities, usenet groups, and even low cost webhosting services in countries like Russia, Taiwan and Poland. This would force other nations (like ours) to compete by either changing their stupid laws (and thereby allowing US based businesses to compete with these foreign entities) or by shifting the mindshare away from intellectually oppressive regimes and toward nations that better support a creative and free exchange of information.
Signing one of these things is WORSE than doing nothing.
It gives you the feeling that you have accomplished something, making it less likely that you will do anythign about the problem. If you REALLY think this is a good idea, write a letter to your congressman, it will do a HUNDRED times more than signing this kind of online petition crap.
But the idea itself is a bad idea. We need congress to put Reasonable limits on the greedy sscumbags that keep raising the copyright limit, not to simply try to pick off the cheap idiots.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I would support this as a first step, but even better would require not just the payment, which could be automated, but also require that the work be republished in some publically available form.
This would mean that the work would either contunue to be available (and thus the content preserved) by the copyright holder, or that it would pass into public domain and be available to anyone interested enough to preserve it by republishing it.
(BTW, publically available != free, it just means you can't print one copy and put it in your vault to keep it away from others)
McFly777
- - -
"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
1) if this were passed, it would become a rhetorical hurdle for more meaningful copyright reform. petition congress to stop extending copyright terms, and they'll point to this dinky law. for a few bucks, anyone (or their misanthropic heirs) can keep their content out of the public domain. out of the textbooks. out of history books that challenge their view.
2) the works this would allow to lapse into public domain are works about which we do not care. it's not uncommon for works of considerable merit to lie undiscovered until after their creators have died; but it's very rare indeed for a gem of a work to lie undiscovered 50 years after its author has passed away. the "limited" restriction on copyright exists to ensure we have rights *not* to all the 7th-grade essays ever written, but to works that are valuable, works that shaped our culture. this bill would make it far less likely that we'd have access to these works. it would make it far more difficult for historians and scholars to do their work.
in short, this sounds like a terrible idea.
Speaking as someone who has put literally thousands of hours into building a deuteron collider, why should you get life+50 years, and I get 20 years? Inventors lose their rights after a limited time, and rightly so. Inventors have to pay fees to keep their patents from being considered 'abandoned'. What makes your 1000's of hours of work worthy of more time than mine? Aren't a few decades enough time for you to, in slashdot-ese, "4. Profit!!!" ?
If you REALLY care about this, and you're a U.S. citizen, don't just sign an online petition - write (or at least call) your Congresscritters. The websites for the House of Representatives and Senate will both help you immediately find who your representatives are and how to contact them.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
It just struck me, I've seen something like this before. It was turned into an HBO "Real Stories" documentary.
A drunk driver killed a girl. In addition to all his other punishments, he was to hand write and mail/deliver check for $1 each week to the parents of the girl he killed.
This was to continue for a set amount of years.
The amount of money was inconsiquential, but it did force the drunk driver to think each week about the life he had taken and the consequences of his actions. Even for just the time that it took to write and mail a check.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
Yes, if they still want to claim copyright after 50 years!
Also make the time period "reasonable" instead of 50 years. Might as well charge a yearly fee for perpetual copyrights.
On second thought, I'd prefer free and limited duration copyright. Let's reduce the duration without creating things that can be used against the public. You and I don't owe publishers a thing, so there's no need to bargain with them.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Not even domain names are free from attention lapses...
Why not? If you're going to pay now, or pay later, the government would be more than happy to have you pay now. If you know that something is going to be valuable for the next 50 + x years, then pay for those x years + registration fees. If you don't know if it's going to be valuable, then sit on it. you should still be able to register it within 50 years. (of course, that 50 years shouldn't start then, it should go back retroactive to first publication, like current copyright law is).
Note: x will probably be 40 to match current copyright terms for corporations.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
Change the copyright lengths to be based on how long it takes for an average copyrighted work to earn 90% of the money it will ever earn.
Books: 2 years
Software: 2 years
Movies: 1 year
Anything released in digital format: 1 year
etc...
and charge 10% of gross profits during that time to allow the copyright to be doubled after the first term is up. Of course the years are just rough numbers (they might even be twice what I estimated here), but it's simple and effective.
For the good of humanity, we have to stop this intellectual property madness!
My point was exactly that this is not a separate issue, as the parent post had said. You might note that your objections to the petition are the same kind of objections anyone would have to what is essentially a compromise/I-can't-win-the-fight-that-matters-but- maybe-I-can-get-this-passed kind of bill. I.e. "if we pass this, then they'll say we got what we wanted, and we won't get what we really want". I don't know what the best way to win a legislative battle is, but I thought it would be good to at least show some support for those people who are fighting to keep copyrights to a reasonable time limit. I think there are some problems with the plan (please read the post regarding photography - an excellent point), but Eldred and Lessig are at least trying to help solve a problem, which is more than I do politically.
My suggestion is to have a self-assessed
fee to keep the work in copyright, but
make the work 'public-domainable' at the
self-assessed value.
For example, after an initial copyright
period, say the 50 years required by the
Berne convention, the copyright holder
has to pay a fee of 1% of the value of the
work for each 10 year extension. The
copyright holder gets to determine the
value of the work themselves. But anyone
can come along and pay the determined
value to make the work public domain.
In the case of works with no residual
value to the holder, or the holder is
dead & lost, etc. the copyright will
expire in 50 years, since no one will
do the paperwork for the assessment.
In the case of low to moderate value
works, a copyright holder can keep
it in force for a nominal fee, or get
bought out at full value which he
himself determined.
In the case of high value works, like
major motion pictures, the holders will
get to pay a significant fee to keep it
in force - i.e. $500k per renewal for
a $50M movie.
Daniel
The author (or whoever buys the copyright) has copyright to the blueprints of the work. The copyright gives them exclusive rights to make physical or electronic (or arbitrary future tech) copies of the work. Similarly, the architect has copyright to the blueprints of the house, and once the copyright expires, anyone can make copies.
Copyright isn't ownership of ideas. It's the exclusive right to make copies. Each individual copy becomes property, like the house.
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
It seems to me, this 'copyright tax'would destroy public domain.
I sent them an email regrding my concerns, it follows:
To whom it may concern,
I have some question about your proposed 'Copyright tax'
first,
"So why wait 50 years? Why not impose the requirement after 7 years? Or 10 years?
Obviously, we believe that would be better. But let's start with something that seems reasonable to all. It will make shorter terms seem more reasonable later on."
If this should happen, I find it doubtful that it would be able to be changed. It would seem to me it is better to start off asking for 7 years, then settle for a lengthier time frame.
Second,
Don't corporations own copyrights as well? It would become part of the 'day to day' activities of running a corporations to automatically see if any copyrights need updating, then update them, regardless if they are making money or not. this would effectively keep works out of the public domain forever. even if the corporation should fail, another one will buy it's assets.
I think it is a noble attempt, but counter productive. Perhaps 7 years, with a renewal fee every 7 years by the originator of the copyright, not the owner or licensor. Also make it so corporation can not be a copyright originator.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's not that the public are not owed the works or are owed the works --
-- to make it absolutely clear, you don't owe the public anything. You want to keep your work private, you can. Period.
However, it is not natural [more specifically, not natural law] to tell a person that he cannot do his utmost to better himself, including copying others.
Copying others, amongst animals, is known as "training", or sometimes "learning". Amongst people, it is known as "learning". It is a basic survival technique. Now, the government actually puts itself at risk by violating natural law, but for whatever reason, America's founding fathers decided to have a copyright law. But they do not owe it to you, the artist, to limit others' productivity.
You are claiming what is not yours.
The original book is yours. Binding other people's labor is not.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
This would totally shambone GPLed software creators. Just thought I'd point that out.
All unfair meta-mods are now being meta-meta-modded as retarded.
Also remember that a work must be explicitly placed in the public domain. See the Creative Commons if you'd like to allow others to use your works.
Please read this for a little more information: 10 Big Myths About Copyright Explained
I would go even further. Copyright was originally conceived as a *temporary* exclusivity at the end of which you were *required* to release your work into the public domain. This way, you had a limited time in which you could make money out of it; but the public eventually got to see it anyway. *Any* extension to the exclusivity period goes against this second aim. No person is an island; *all* the fruits of *all* human endeavour ultimately belong to *all* of humanity.
I also believe there should be a requirement that a copy of the material, with no copy-prevention measures, be held in escrow for the duration of the copyright period. This would go some way towards ensuring that the public get the chance to access the material upon the expiry of copyright.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
GPL is based on copyright. This law would mean that GPL code would begin to go into public domain in 50 years, unless somebody like FSF ponies up the bux. And given the plethora of incremental deltas (which, taken alone, will probably be considered "fair use" to apply), renewing copyrights separately on all the versions could get very expen$ive.
(You'll recall that the reason GPL code is not just PD is to keep people from locking up the fixes and improvements.)
Now it could be argued that in something as fast moving as software, something 50 years old is dead. But how old is Unix already, eh? (Not to mention "Hello, world!".) This industry is maturing. Like classical music, things written already, or being written now, are likely to have lasting value and be around a long time.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Allowing prepayment would undermine the goal of the proposal.
The point of the law is not to impose a financial burden on copyright holders by making it significantly expensive to extend the duration. It's to create an bookkeeping burden, so that the corporation will have to keep a record of it's copyrights for at least as long as it expects the law to protect them.
The idea is to liberate works that have been forgotten by their authors. Allowing prepayment would transfer the bookkeeping task from the corporations to the government, which is precisely what we want to avoid (the total cost of remembering to renew in 50 years will be much greater than the nominal fee)
Well as for us that do _not_ live inside the USA (or are in an alliance with them), how would this actually affect our copyright system, as with this decision it doesn't seem to be very international?
E.g. if an european country was to use it's freedom of choice not to accept such a policy if it was passed via the European Council (as for EU member countries), woulden't that cause some major problems as it would most likely not either be forced to follow such an rule?
Just woundering.
What,
Would be a lot better is a social contract/license sort of like the GPL for copyright (um, er, copyleft?).
Publish the work under SPL (Social Public License) and it becomes fair game after # years.
Caution: Contents under pressure
here
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
From the editorial:
Give serendipity a chance.
Forgive if I'm reading you wrong, but you project an air of "we'll deign to allow you 'ownership' of 'your' work, which rightly belongs to our mighty collective".
Do not for a moment denigrate the people who create art, or imagine that they are not entitled to compensation for it. The copyright sketched out in the Constitution is an uneasy compromise between conflicting interests, based on the technologies, lifespans, & business practises of the time.
(Side note: in olden days it was damn hard to plagiarise someone's work
You basically just regurgitated the language of the constitution...you need to explain WHY it is important that copyright be viewed as a grant from the public to the artist. Seems pretty backwards to me in a capitalist society.
but I am open to hear otherwise.
It should be exactly the same as patents, but I'll compromise and allow the 1 dollar opt back in, but only up to 50 years.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
The purpose of this act seems to be to put anything not currently used for financial gain to be placed into the public domain. So why not extend this to actually say that?
How about a law that says, in order to have trademark, patent, or copyright, the item [or a derivitive of that item] in question must be offered for sale, or in the case of trademark, used as a mark of trade. [obvious exceptions for non-profit orgs]
The law says that you have copyright on your history paper, but if you're not going to gain money from it, why should you? Certainly you would have written it anyway in that case.
Discuss below, I'll admit my ignorance if you'll admit that you're a queer.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I like the idea of copyright owners having to pay something for renewal after some time, but... Do acts like this give legitimacy to long copyright spans? 50 years seems way too long to start with, and the implication is that there could be more or less infinite repeats. I think that something like 15 years before additional payments with one or two renewals would be much better.
Now if this act works with what ever copyright terms are already set then this isn't necessaraly a problem, but I wonder if it will just encourage the current trend towards infinite terms.
The proposal is anti-constitutional because the whole point of the "limited times" language in the Constitution's copyright clause is to get the work out into the public domain while it's still worth something. If only worthless works (or works worth only $1 to the copyright holder) are supposed to enter the public domain, then there never would have been any controversy, and the battles over the Statute of Anne (the Eldred vs. Ashcroft of 18th century England, fought vigorously by the Stationers' Guild which was the publishing cartel of the time) would never have been fought.
Of course the SCOTUS decision in Eldred is even more anti-constitutional, but I'd rather that Lessig and Eldred seek a direct remedy, in the form of legislation or future court action. Eldred lost in the SCOTUS by a 7-2 margin, the same margin that upheld the WW1 anti-sedition law in a different free speech case, Abrams vs. US (1919) (we remember Abrams today mostly because of the "clear and present danger" test from Oliver Wendell Holmes' dissent). That law made it a felony to publish anything that criticized the U.S. Government. It wasn't until 1969, 50 years later, in the anti-Vietnam-war protest case Brandenburg vs. Ohio, that the anti-sedition law was overturned. Public awareness and opposition to government control had by then improved to the point that the SC had to disavow its previous mistake. The same thing can potentially happen in copyright reform and that's a goal to work toward.
The other argument againt the "PD Enhancement act" is that it's ineffectual. It's intended to free abandoned works, those whose copyright holders can't be located or can't be bothered. But at current long-term interest rates (6.25%) the value today of a $1.00 payment to be made 50 years in the future is less than 5 cents. That suggests that the same types of agencies that now act as clearinghouses for music licensing (jukebox royalties and so forth) are likely to just add another service to their offerings: pay us the $1.00 today with the catalog info for your literary copyright, and we'll send it in with your renewal paperwork 50 years from now, even if you're dead and gone. So the agency gets 95 cents profit on that present-day dollar, the work still never enters the public domain, and the Public Domain Enhancement Act merely accomplishes yet more transfer of wealth to the IP cartel. Certainly every big commercial publisher, the entities who pushed through the Sonny Bono term extension (Mickey Mouse protection act) in the first place, would never let any copyright lapse. Only noncommercial or ephemeral works, or maybe the occasional small press publication, would ever enter the public domain, again enlarging the disparity between the authors who actually create literary works and the media conglomerates which merchandise them.
Lessig and Eldred have put a lot of work and thought into the cause of the public domain and deserve our admiration; however, in my opinion, this is not one of their better-considered ideas.
Disclaimer: IMHO, IANAL, etc.
This actually makes what Disney and the RIAA want to turn into legitimate endeavors. If this can pass the whole thing about forever copyrights looks to be approved by all sides. Copyrights were instituted by congress "for the public" the real endeavor needs and has to be copyrights that actually expire, period end of story so they can fall into the public domain and be useful to THE PUBLIC. Copyrights are considered a necessary evil nothing more (except by those who want lots of money off them, and they keep enough people lied to and believing that other can make money this way too but it is 1% that gets 99% of the money-if you are reading this you are most likely in the 99% that dont benefit if copyrights dont expire)
Want to do something constructive???? Copyrights need to expire after 5-10 years-The PUBLIC rights are given away by our dear congress to corporations, but this is immoral with the way they are signing my rights and my childrens rights away for ever incresing periods of time, keep it up and I am morally obliged to fight back (whether it be through petitions, protest or something else but dont expect me to support some b.s. that plays into Disney's hands at the cost of $1 and all our rights
This is a serious poblem with the plan. There's a lot of stuff out there to be scooped up; it would be a substantial drain on the already burdened legal system to have thousands of people waving a buck around and claiming they own [insert valuable old work].
I'll admit that was rather funny.
However, I'm talking about releasing something into the public domain that already has a proven record of selling, and giving a tax break on the estimated future value of that work by an approved independent government agency.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
How about this idea.
CopyRight Holders register and must update their record Annualy or else if someone files an inability to contact Holder, the goverment shall attempt contact and if that fails the Goverment shall administer as it sees fit untill CopyRight Expired or proper Holder shall reestablist contact at which point they may claim fees collected and establish on going administration.
Automatic Copyright should be limited to ONLY 2 years unless a piece of work is registered. If a piece of work is Registered then atleast every 5 years the the items registration must be updated with current Holder(s) information as well as information about who/how to licence usage/purchace of the item, and Optionally rate information. In the event that a registry is not updated and it's current 5 year period expires, a notice should be sent to the current Holder(s) and they shall have 5 years to update the record before the record shall be marked Public Domain.
In the event that none of the Holders wish to make the item available for distribution they may decide to have the item marked Public Domain, or if they can convince a court that the item should not enter the Public Domain then a court can rule that it should not enter the public domain until the limit of all CopyRights expire (burdon of proof on Holder). This issue can be revisited if Someone can show just cause why an item should enter the public domain and not be allowed disappear (burdon of proof on Holder).
Should CopyRight Holders wish to continue to make a work of art available for license/sale then that record should only expire at the End of all CopyRight protections.
Fees)
Some inital fee to register Holder (once per holder)
Some small fee for each collection of work ( may contain multiple items which can be licensed independently but share a common list of Holders and timeline -- Since Automatic CopyRight lasts two years, small authors can file articles together as a collection and photographers can also file collections of work)
Updates should be free.
Actions which require Goverment action should have listed fees
The GPL is based on the fact of Copyright effects software.
If the authors dont pay 1 dollar, it goes into public domain, and most programmers want their stuff GPL access only...
Not soo easy of an issue, is it?
Right now, about $102.50, USD.
Visit eBay and submit your bid for the Constitution of the United States of America, before the crowning achievement of the Enlightenment era, modern democracy, disappears.......forever......
As an artist, I hold hundreds of copyrights, though they are not all registered. I certainly don't have the money or time to make sure they're all accounted for, but I'd be damn pissed if Disney made a movie made from one of my drawings while I was still alive to see it.
...even if its digital 'paperwork', why not slap on a fee for every 14 years? If, after 14 years, your copyright is still worth something to you, even if only sentimental values, you wouldn't be willing to pay on the scale of a dollar a year, its not worth wasting copyright archive (and legal protection) resources.
If the people have to pay the costs associated with reviewing, they should at least be entitled to that which isn't worth that cost.
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
And, to beat the reply posts:
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
log_10(n) the penalty finally grows over $6 after a million years.
If any of them becomes huge in their field I'm sure they'd be willing to cough up a buck a year to maintain the control of their work. If not I dearly hope there is at least on crazy bastard out there willing to rejoice in the freedom to finally scan (OCR won't suck quite as much by then) the book, article, or poem in question into his computer workalike and pass it on to a few other crazy bastards who care. If not, things will DIE.
If you can exploit it, go you. If not do not let the work of your mind die with you.
Hey!!! the parentheses are good for something
I don't feel that anyone has a right beyond recognition. By that I mean if a person contributed substantially they deserve to have their name listed as a contributor but even that shouldn't be mandatory.
I don't believe we should have a patent office, or pay royalties, or disallow copying of other peoples work. The sooner we get rid of patents the happier we will all be.
You are correct that the Bern Convention requires that copyright be afforded without formalities. This renewel requirement at 50 years would be a formality. The treaty also requires that other countries need only confer copyright protection for works made in this country for the same term as the US provides under the treaty (i.e. without formalities).
Thus, if it can be argued that this formality at 50 years does not violate the treaty terms outright, it would result in every other country denying copyright to US made works after 50 years. The extension was put in place in order to conform US copyright term to international terms so that US works would not be disadvantaged in the rest of the world.
In short, Mickey Mouse would fall into the public domain in France even though it was renewed in the US. This is not gonna happen.
your gravity fails and negativity don't pull you through
As usual the yanks are off in their own little dream world.
If you think I'm going to fork out US$1 to the yanks for every little thing I publish anywhere in the world just so some yank prick can make money off me after 50 years, you can think again.
Copyright is an internationally agreed right.
Hmmmmph!
"I am an intellectual property owner. Would anyone care to explain why I can spend six years working my butt off on a technological creation, and I get rights to it for 20 years, paying fees every few years, but Andrew Lloyd Weber can hold the rights to "Cats" until the end of time?"
There is a significant difference between the type of intellectual property in creative works such as books and music, when compared to technological works protected by patents. With books and artistic works, there is an infinitisemal chance that someone else would have ever created the same or substantially similar work. But with patented inventions, if one particular inventor didn't create it, some years later somebody else would. Certainly the light bulb would have been invented by now if Edison didn't do it. However, if Michael Jackson didn't do Thriller and Shakespeare didn't do Hamlet, nobody else would have done them. Others would have written similar themes or general subject matter, but not the same actual content.
By giving patents a protection period as long as copyrights, they would be unfairly preventing too many others from creating what they could have done without any knowledge gained from the original inventor. But copyrights don't prevent others from creating what they would have created independently.
Still, I don't think it does any good to make copyrights last longer than 20 years.
---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
...but I have not been keeping up the payments on my Senator, and he got reposessed.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
(I didn't give the exact number for privacy reasons; "Thing 1" is not the name my parents gave me.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Do I hear 5 years? 20 years is one quarter of your life. Way to long.
The ??AA have been doing automated fund submission for copyright extension for years.
They call them political donations.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
this is the same site that hosts petitions to make yu gi oh the motion picture, no one takes petitiononline petitions seriously.
And if you archive it beforehand, you are technically violating one IP law or another.
Copyright law, 17 USC 108, allows nonprofit libraries to make archival copies of some copyrighted works.
Will I retire or break 10K?
But copyrights don't prevent others from creating what they would have created independently.
Tell that to (the estate of) George Harrison. He wrote "My Sweet Lord", not knowing that it was a copy of "He's So Fine". Harrison lost Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music to the tune of nearly $1.6 million.
The standard for copying under American copyright law is access (the defendant had access to the plaintiff's work even once) plus similarity (the defendant's work is substantially similar to the plaintiff's work). In musical works, substantial similarity can be arrived at by coincidence (about one in 47,000, but compare this to the number of existing musical works), and according to Bright Tunes, a plaintiff can apparently get the court to assume access if the song has been played on commercial radio.
So what steps can a songwriter take when writing a song to avoid accidentally copying a published song?
Will I retire or break 10K?
While I agree, the first step is getting a foot in the door and liberating 90% of the pie. Then we can work on the remaining 10%.
Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks: temporary loans from the Public Domain, not real property ("intellectual" or otherwise)
All you'd need is a "penalty of perjury" statement on the form, along with legislation stating that, if no contrary claims are provided, usurpation goes. Don't even need punitive fees, the lawyers of the actual "owners" will provide enough of a chilling effect against fraudulent claims. As long as a database is publicly available, it should become a self-correcting system.
Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks: temporary loans from the Public Domain, not real property ("intellectual" or otherwise)
This proposal sucks. This is no teeth. We want the restoration of the Constitution! Let all copyrights expire after 30 years or the death of the author! Restore the public domain!
Perhaps the more important issue is who pays the fee. If an artist copyrights a material, then agrees to license the material to a corporation to reproduce it and pay royalties to the artist, then this is all well and good. If the artist dies or wants the work to be made public, then the artist would simply cease to pay the $1 to copyright their work; however, the corporation -- in the best interests of itself -- would continue to pay the fee and would not have to pay royalties (unless the artist had family).
Thus, the company would not lose the copyrighted work, and the work may never become public domain.
Your's is an extreme view with almost no chance of getting support among voters or in Congress. I'm not saying your view is wrong, but you have to recognize that it's extreme.
Think of this proposal as a compromise. It will be attractive to some legislators because it generates revenue. If enough people voice support for it, it may get beyond whatshisname Boucher and the handful of fairuse advocates on the Hill. It could make it out of committee as an amendment without too much fuss--but only if there are supporters in Congress. Fritz Disney will oppose it, but the Dems won't all fall behind him if they know some of the consituents feel strongly about this, and the proposal seems reasonable to them. Oh, and the money. They'll have to weigh the votes garnered from compaign contributions from the IP industry vs. losing votes because of raising taxes or cutting services in order to balance the budget (HA!).
This is politics. CETA passed so easily because there was not an organized opposition representing the public interest. Start to organize and the equation changes. The stakes are raised. Realistically there will be a point where the bribes paid by the moguls can't possibly have a justifiable ROI. Because lawmakers are going to be like, I *know* that if I vote with you moguls I will alienate x% of my constituents, so what's in it for me? And that's when reasonable reforms can be passed into law.
If you want any change at all, sign this petition. It won't stop you from demanding more radical change or expressing your views to your elected representatives.
It's not just an opinion poll, it's a legislative proposal designed to make real reforms. The petition gives populists cluebies something to work with. Ideally when you write your congressperson you can point to a specific piece of legislation. That is far more effective than just expressing your opinion an issue that in all likelihood has not even registered as blip on your congresscritter's radar.
You can search for bills here.
I think allowing a corp to have legal status as an author is a huge mistake. Corporations are a legal method for encouraging investment, nothing more...
Who's the "author" of a movie? The screenwriter? The director?
Lots of works are done in aggregate. Who's the author of Windows NT? You might say Dave Cutler, but that ignores the contributes of hundreds of other Borg drones^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hpeople. Who's the author of the Linux kernel? If you say 'Linus Torvalds', you'll piss off a whole bunch of people such as Alan Cox and hundreds (thousands?) of other people who have contributed code.
My journal has hot
$1 after 10 years of use
...
$2 after 11 years of use
$4 after 12 years of use
... enough in 14 years to make the original irrelevant, I *want* the original to enter the public domain. The idea behind the GPL is to encourage people share their improvements. If nobody in fact does that, the code might just as well be PD.
Now for the next X years the parents are continually reminded of the daughter they lost. .
If I were the parents, I would've asked that he send the 1$ to MADD or some other appropriate charity . . . I wouldn't want the reminder, and at least then the money would go to some appropriate cause . .
For those of you who think that the Reclaim the PUblic Domain petition isn't strong enough, there's another one that Larry lists on his blog: Reclaim Copyright Law.
SO all of you bitching that the Eldred Act isn't strong enough -- I defy you to sign this other one!
"The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it." -- Ayn Rand
I have the (mis?)fortune of working with legislators on certain issues on a regular basis. If you want them to do something, they way you accomplish it (in most likely to succeed to least likely) is:
1) Make an appointment
2) Just show up
3) Send a letter
4) Send a fax
5) Make a phone call
6) Send an email
On an aggregate level, a petition with REAL signatures, including each signees name and address, can be effective, *IF* those people live within the jurisdiction of the person whose vote you are trying to influence.
If you're at that stage of the process, attending hearings can be effective as well.
Online petitions are crap. Emails are close to it. Legistlators correctly assume that the likelihood a certain issue will sway your vote is directly proportional to the trouble you're willing to go through to express your opinion on the issue - thus why online petitions are ignored (in addition to the fact that they're totally unverifiable - any group could fake one easily).
paintball
Doesn't matter if violating the DMCA by defeating copy-protection devices is necessary for the work in question to be archived.
Please read 17 USC 1201(d).
Will I retire or break 10K?
I understood the joke. I also understand a few real downsides to perpetual copyright. Demanding an infinte fee for a perpetual copyright would not balance the system out or promote the useful arts. Demanding a fee simply makes the govenment a pimp to the corrupt business of keeping the public from using information. The author was not serious about the fee, and he poked beautiful fun at the whole thing but not everyone understands what we just exchanged. Thanks for helping me make it clear.
Clarity is hard to find in the tide of astro turf Slashdot is suffering from.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
No way. Unless you intend to kill GPL or free software in general.
The little guy simply can't afford to register every 10 line program just to protect his interests. You can already do collections, infact a collection of PD material, can be copyrighted as a "whole" -- little known but true, so one could 'copy the PD material individually from it -- once its PD it is public domain, but not the whole.
Also, it is why magazine can be wholly composed of articles that they don't own, and still have a copyright.
Anyway 2 years is way to little... maybe if it was patents.....
The only problem I have with long duration copyrights is when new-owners have no interest in distribution of the work, making it effectively censored with no legal means for the consumer to aquire them.
For example, the only musical I ever liked was "Scrooge", video is no-longer distributed,
despite my efforts, there is no legal way for me to obtain it, so I don't have it... with all the mergers I believe this will happen more and more... Don't buy that old thing you liked, buy this new , wholly derivate piece of crap instead..... Just so everyone knows the version I'm talking about has Albert Finney as Scrooge and Alec Guiness as Marley...
Its the only musical I like, because it's the only one where I can believe anyone would feel like actually bursting into song..... Anyhow doesn't matter if I'd pay 50or60$ for it, they don't distribute it, so there's no way to buy it.
A little over a century ago there was an American economist whose ideas were widely admired at the time: Henry George. I do not have the time now to fairly set forth his ideas or to fully relate them to license fees for patents. But I would simply say that George viewed all the earth's land, the rights to the airwaves, to patents, etc., to be the common property of mankind. Under his system, the government would charge rent to the users of these things, use some of the proceeds for its own operations and remit the balance to the people. Thus, there would be nobody without an income and little or no poverty. It was a well-thought-out proposal that somehow has been lost. Our civilization somehow decided to take a different path. Quite possibly this was because it was inimicable to the capitalist powers that be. This proposal concerning payments for patents does not go far enough. To learn more about Henry George I recommend a visit to http://www.progress.org/geonomy/ . Peter Hollings
Also, I thought copyright was a register-less thing, since some law was passed at some point in the last 200 years anyway. So, most works aren't fully defined until they are enforced. An example would be this posting. I have copyright on it, but I don't have any legalese saying so and how at the bottom of it. This proposal forces people to define their works in order to register them at the 50 year mark. For instance, I could when I reach my 50th birthday register everything I ever did just by saying so? See how I'm confused here? Copyright is ephemeral. Am I wrong? I think some copyrights are defined, like when you put notices on books and such. But how does this law effect the huge amount of other stuff that has an inherent but undeclared copyright.
Back to my first point, how does this proposal work retroactively? In order to get some benefit, it needs to be retroactive. We can't (well, I don't want to, and I'm only 29) wait 50 years to show people how strengthening the public domain has sparked more creation.
We can't make it instantaneously retroactive, however. People need a chance to register their old works. So do we give the copyright holders of >50 year old works 10 years to register? Is ten too long. I certainly think so. I think 5 is too long. Is one year right? What do the authors of the proposal think?
I need these clarifications before I can spam my address book with this petition. I want to be able to totally explain and defend this proposal.
KLAATU, BORADA, NIh*ahem*
Just to be clear... you DID read the second paragraph of my post, right?
Iâ(TM)d like to introduce one of hottest topic among Japanese bloggers.
A Syntem integrating company âoeGAIAXâ is applying to registrate the word âoeBLOGâ as their own trademark in Japan⦠so funnyâ¦
GAIAX
http://www.gaiax.com/
Iâ(TM)m plannning to begin another little âoeReclaim the Public Domainâ petition in Japan.