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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.
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
Don't forget the works of silliness too. There's quite a few pulp novels from 50 years ago that are crumbling or lost, because they were literally printed on cheap paper. These "works of non-brilliance" are still important in their own way.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Most copywritten material ISN'T worth $1. Corporations can't afford to pay $1 for everything.
This is exactly the point. If a corporation can't make a single buck over the next five years on a copyrighted work, then they SHOULD let the copyright lapse and let the work pass into public domain. However, if the copyrighted work is still generating revenue, or they have plans to republish it, then they CAN afford the token fee of $1.
Brilliant!
- A single song
- The original album the song was on
- The compilation album with 20 such songs on it
- The Boxed set containing all of the Artist's work in his/her lifetime
I can see the record industry trying to argue that the $1 for the boxed set should cover everything above. Of course, this could spark a move for print publishers to return to offering compilation sets from authors.US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
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.
One view is that copyright is a natural property right. Another view is that copyright is a creation of the state for a public purpose.
The latter is the one written into the US Constitution. If you think the former is a better basis for American law, fine; get cracking on obtaining the agreement of 2/3 of each house of Congress and 3/4 of the states.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
That is why the fee should start earlyer (14 years was the old magic number, why not use it again) and increase exponensially...
If it starts at $100 for year 15, and doubles for every 5th every year after... the fee would be over $800 000 after 80 years.
Automatic renew process for *all* published works should run any company out of bussiness whit that system.
- Ost
---- Sig. gone.
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).
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.
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.
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
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 $50M movie.
Daniel
GPL is based on copyright. This law would mean that GPL code would begin to go into public domain in 50 years, unless somebody like FSF ponies up the bux. And given the plethora of incremental deltas (which, taken alone, will probably be considered "fair use" to apply), renewing copyrights separately on all the versions could get very expen$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
From the editorial:
Give serendipity a chance.
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