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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.
I don't think it is supporting that per say, as much as agreeing that congress has the constitutional right to set the copyright duration, something that has already been upheld in court. This is just a way of saying if the copyright owners don't care about the work anymore why let it disappear.
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
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
The idea is that paying the $very_low_fee would keep the copyright active for whatever limit Congress has set. The idea is NOT that you can keep pumping $very_low_fee in every 50 years to keep the copyright going perpetually. Although, the way Congress keeps expanding copyright, perpetual may be an accurate description.
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
Because a corporation can be an author and corporations can exist in perpetuity.
In copyright law, the author and the copyright holder are essentially the same thing.
My journal has hot
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
"This is completely at odds with current copyright law."
That's why you need a new law to change it.
"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."
Right now you don't have to register a copyrighted work so how does the Copyright Office settle disputes? Like everyone else - evidence.
Copyright would still be granted immediately and last for 50 years. After that, you must pay $1 a year to keep that copyrighted work out of the public domain. I would suggest they not care about who pays the $1 to uphold the copyright. Any author who wants to release his work in the the public domain can, whether someone pays the $1 or not. A third party interested in purchasing the rights to something may want to keep it out of the public domain, but I think this would be a rare exception considering they'd still have to buy it from the author if the work is copyrighted.
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
It would be enforceable where it was needed to be enforced.
The only time this law would matter is when a copyright holder is suing someone for using their copyrighted material. If the work was older than 50 years, and the author didn't pay the $1 in the 50th year, then they have no case because of this law. Right now the courts determine who has the copyright on works in these cases, so it can be done, and that wouldn't change.
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).
Therefore, such a petition shoul also be forwarded to the FTAA negotiations.
-><- no
Possibly. 100% inheritance taxes were debated by the Founding Fathers, who wanted to ensure that the aristocracy of Europe were never transplanted to the United States. There's enough merit to the idea to at least discuss it periodically, to see if current inheritance tax levels are still appropriate.
I would say that whether or not nontrivial inheritances are a good idea probably depends on circumstances.
Should it be?
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
Too late, it is already an international standard. Article 7 of the Berne Convention establishes that the author's lifetime + 50 years as the MINIMUM requirement for copyright protection. (http://www.wipo.org)
The Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act only tacked on another 20 years to this minimum standard. Some may feel that this is too much, but that is a matter to take up with Congress. Knowing that that the proability of getting the duration of copyrights in the US minimal, I would focus on a different approach to get lawmaker's attention. Instead of only appealing to the moral ground of protecting the public domain, or "commons", it would behoove us to also project the increased revenue that the Copyright Office could generate for the government. During a fiscally tight economy, raising the maintenance fees looks to be quite lucrative. The public interest is preserved and the government gets more money from the people who would actually benefit from renewing their copyrights after all that time.
The thing to remember is that copyright is applied at the time of its first publication. Registration with the Copyright Office (http://www.loc.gov/copyright) is not required, and at present, maintenace fees are not either.
What we need is a scientific study investigating the optimal length of copyright protections in the US, and formulate a tax schema that capitalizes on this.
And at the same time, why don't we try to require that the full code for software must be included with the copyright registration application. Think of the loss to the public domain when the copyright on old software expires and we can only find compiled object code and only a few copies in the Copyright Office. That's just not right. Besides, it might even help induce a higher standard of code production when it is known that, at some point, other people will be able to see all the spagetti code underneath.
Just my thoughts...
There already is endless copyright. Remember that the Disney corporation got the copyrights extended so that Mickey Mouse wouldn't enter public domain. As a consequence, nothing published by anyone who died after Walt Disney is in public domain (unless put their by the copyright owner).
Galium Arsenide is the material of the future, and always will be.
You've missed the point.. however much they pay, the 80-year (or whatever) maximum term of copyright imposed by Congress still stands (unless Congress is shortsighted enough to extend it to infinity, which would not entirely surprise me). The act is an effective way of setting a "lower bound" for the copyright term so that unexploited work passes in to the public domain. The upper bound remains unchanged.
The barrier to "project gutenburg" right now is that with the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (SBCTEA), NOTHING NEW is passing into the public domain for 20 YEARS.
If the SBCTEA weren't retroactive, Eldred, Lessig, et. al. wouldn't have had any grounds to bring Eldred v. Ashcroft to the Supreme Court.
Copyright is a social contract. When you publish something, you know how long the copyright term is going to be when you publish it (granted, this law changes it a bit.) You know when it's going to expire. That's the bargain you make.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs