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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.
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.
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!
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)?
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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...
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.
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
That's not a good solution.
It's possible now for companies to keep their content (books and CDs) available for purchase either online, or in small production run printings. "Use it or lose it" would mean that the copyright on those works would never expire (much like the current system).
Don't limit "distribution" to dead-tree or plastic disk versions collecting dust on store shelves.
But this also goes against the spirit of competition as it grants you a monopoly on said design/creation.
The whole point of there being a 50 year limit is to allow the creator time enough to collect profit and then pass the design/creation on to the public where anyone and everyone can use it freely.
In C++, friends can touch each others private parts.
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.
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.
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.
what about the small copyright owner who may not have the resources to provide said material? suppose I write a book and self publish it. years from now, i'm unable to self publish it again due to economic reasons nor am i able to find a large publisher to market it.
under the situation you propose, i could lose out to "someone else" such as a large publisher who could simply wait for the deadline. such a system would adversely affect copyright holders with limited means. larger holders could easily comply with a "use it or lose it" system and protect their property. everyone else is screwed.
the end result of such a proposal would be that large companies and wealthy individuals would be the only ones who could protect their intellectual property. don't we have enough of that already?
-- Fugacity: Confusing chemists since 1908
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
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.'
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.
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!
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
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.
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
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!!!" ?
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
Let's talk about a world without copyright laws first.
An author writes a novel. This novel is entirely her property, and if she locks it in a safe and never shows it to anyone, nobody can take it from her. On the other hand, she can't sue anybody for copying her story or characters, either.
If she chooses to publish the work, then she can run into some problems. Some people will pay her for a copy of the book, but some will surely just reprint the book for cheaper. This forms a disincentive for her to publish, because it really does feel a lot like being taken unfair advantage of.
Here, the State steps in. The author is given a monopoly, so that nobody may copy her work. In addition, she would be able to sue somebody who tried to write a very similar book afterwards. This now forms an incentive to publish.
However, other authors and the public as a whole now suffers. The names you could use for characters and other copyrightable elements of a story will decrease as each work is published. In the distant future, it's possible that any non-trivial work will violate some copyright. This is clearly not beneficial to society, which is why copyright is usually a time-limited monopoly, not a perpetual one.
Here's the important part: by publishing the work, the author implicitly agrees to the deal. If you don't want it to ever lapse into the public domain, don't publish it, or use some other form of enforceable protection (such as an NDA).
The notion that the public is owed the work comes from the author or artist having taken advantage of the benefits of copyright. We aren't owed anything unpublished, but any published work is "owed", and should by right be given to us for free in some years. That's the deal.
Do I hear 5 years? 20 years is one quarter of your life. Way to long.
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 . .