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.

Comments

automate it

[bluelip]

Corporations will automate the process so they will never 'forget' to pay the buck.

Re:automate it

[diablochicken]

And that's fine if they do -- if it's worth it to a company to automate the process, more power to them. That's not what this is for.

This is to allow the works of artists and writers who have gone missing to become public domain, so that their books and such don't just sit around collecting dust (and potentially disappearing from the face of the earth). This would allow people to save obscure works by republishing them even if they can't contact the original author to get permission.

This will become more and more important as the term for copyright gets extended indefinitely by congress, and we lose more and more works of brilliance to the dustbin of history.

Re:automate it

[WPIDalamar]

I would assume there would have to be a provision that stated WHEN the $1 could be paid.

Perhaps something like "From the 48th to the 50th anniversary of the first creation of the work".

Tacit approval

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

I'm not sure how well that would work...

[Mysticalfruit]

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.

Still not a solution ....

[AlabamaMike]

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.

A novel approach

[TopShelf]

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.

Infeasible

[howardjp]

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)?

probably not effective

[DarkSkiesAhead]

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.

Re:probably not effective

[vudujava]

Speaking as one who has literally put thousands of hours into writing a book, I have to ask where you get off telling me that there should be a hard cap on the limit of my copyright. Don't I have the right to profit for the rest of my life from my work? What about my children? What about my grandchildren?

I don't care how long Disney holds on to the mouse. Just because you place no value on your work doesn't mean that the rest of us don't place value on ours.

Re:probably not effective

[NortWind]

where you get off telling me that there should be a hard cap on the limit of my copyright?

The fact that you can enjoy any copyright privileges at all is a gift from the nation to you. This is exclusive right is given to you in consideration for your agreement to place that work into the public domain at a later date.

If you wish to truly protect your work, the answer is easy: never show it to anyone.

Re:probably not effective

[Turing Machine]

I have to ask where you get off telling me that there should be a hard cap on the limit of my copyright

Constitution of the United States, Article I, Section 8:

The Congress shall have power to... to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

That's who gets off telling you.

You're missing the point

[cleveland61]

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?

Re:You're missing the point

[ReconRich]

The public are not OWED the works at all.

Hold on now ! Copyright is a temporary monopoly granted an author/artist etc. as opposed to it belonging to the public to begin with. Its us (collectively) granting the favor here, not the other way around. What's proposed here is simply another kind of copyright limitation, of the the kind that already exist. Given that, in the US, copyrights can only be granted for "limited times", the public ARE owed the works (eventually), this law just redefines eventually.

-- Rich

That's not the point tho...

[unicorn]

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.

perhaps the fee should double every few years

[tuffy]

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.

Re:With the amount of material they generate?

[Carbonite]

Corporations can't afford to pay $1 for everything.

Sure they can.

Any corporation that has 100 copyrights can certainly afford $100.

Any corporation that has 1,000 copyrights can certainly afford $1,000.

Any corporation that has 1,000,000 copyrights can certainly afford $1,000,000.

I can't see any value at which a corporation couldn't afford $1 per copyright. Perhaps if it was $10,000/copyright or renewal was required every year (after the first 20 or so). In my opinion the only solution is to reduce the copyright length significantly.

This could be tricky.

[AnriL]

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.

Hey look, a worthless online petition.

[raehl]

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.

even worse...

[djtack]

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...

You've missed the point

[AuraSeer]

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.

Book banning for $1

[tbase]

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.