Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
"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.
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
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.
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