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Public Domain Act Introduced Into Congress
AnElder writes "In his blog yesterday Lawrence Lessig said '...Congresswoman Lofgren (D-CA) and Congressman Doolittle (R-CA) have agreed to introduce the Public Domain Enhancement Act into Congress.' Today the Eldred Act website features two press releases announcing the act's introduction, as well as its immediate support by '...the American Association of Law Libraries, the American Library Association, and the Association of Research Libraries...'" We ran a link to the petition supporting this Act a few weeks back.
Why must this be so... 75 years of profit of one exact thing is enough, let it go... if your book/art/whatever is still making money out of 75 years; you've made enough. You're famous. Just sit back and watch as it becomes public domain and even more famous.
Isn't 50 years kind of a long time to wait before even *considering* the copyright null? Sounds like a lot of work to shave off the last 20-30 years of a copyright.
The key to the ammendment is the word "commercially viable." The works that people want to get their hands on, of course, are the commercially viable ones. Most of the rest is white noise.
There are a few cases where party x knows how to make a work of party y commercially viable again. The problem is that party y will cry foul when party x performs his magic.
This is a good step forward.
how come the bad guys are smart enough to heavily influence politics with their money but the good guys aren't?
Because people keep giving the 'bad' guys money. Have you bought a CD/DVD, gone to see a movie, or bought a book? You've just given money to the 'bad' guys. If you want the EFF to buy off a congressman, send them a $20 check instead of buying a CD. I don't have the figures, but I feel pretty confident that the EFF didn't bring in as much as AOL/TW last year.
Hey, I know that and you know that, but do you actually think the people who make the laws in the US of A give a damn?
What exactly is your plan, to stand around and talk about our principles while the megacompanies gradually buy control of congress?
Obviously the best solutions would involve massive reforms of campaign finance and elimination of all connections between business interests and politicians/political parties... but this seems to be hell and as of now it is not freezing over, so I guess it'll be a while yet before that happens.
Read Pynchon.
However, all the good intentions in the world don't matter if the bill doesn't get up eventually. Does this bill have any chance of getting through the two houses of Congress?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
The reason that it doesn't infringe on the treaty is that you're not registering or paying for the copyright, its that you're registering and paying for the extension of the copyright. Essentially this makes copyright "50 years 6 months, extended by 10 years every 10 years thereafter, until whatever Bono's great great granddaughter sets as the maximum.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
WTF? "Insightful?" "Interesting?" Well, I think I'd mod this up too - to hold it up for ridicule.
.sig - "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"
Read your
Your post suggests trading $ for votes. "My vote won't count, but my $ will!"? Isn't that essentially giving up the most needed of democratic liberties? OK, so corporate America seems to run the show and seems to be able to buy votes - following through with your suggestion would only show that they've won and Congress is a place to buy profits. Unless you have a lot more $ than the opposition, your vote still doesn't matter. Fighting fire with fire sometimes leaves nothing but scorched earth.
Listen to Sen. John McCain when he speaks of the need to rid elections of "soft money" - that is the crux of the problem. It will take a lot of time and energy to have the coprorate shills either turfed from office or earn thier election donations, but it can be done without stooping to the level of bribery. Use your rights fercryingoutloud - Freedom of Speech jumps into my head.
Sheesh.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
These numbers are totally pulled out of my arse, and I'm sure that the CD sales figures are out by a couple of multiples of 10, but they're a fair demonstration of the kind of money we're fighting against - Remember, it's not just RIAA but also MPAA.
"God, root, what is difference?" - Pitr, userfriendly
Another problems is that public domain media will ultimatly compete with copyrighted media.
So by not renewing their copyrights they will be creating a competitor to their commercially viable products.
So for them it is then worth it to pay the buck or 5 bucks to renew it.
You have to remember it's not just if the copyright will make them money, but if the public domain stuff will cost them customers. Since ultimatly it would, they will of course always renew.
Right now I can't just download a old movie from the 30s from the net to watch when I'm bored so instead I go rent some recent release from the store for 3 bucks. If they let the copyright go on the 1930s movies suddenly there would be competitor to what they are selling. That's not in their interest. They will renew the copyright. When they start selling movies on the net do you think they want me watching All Quiet on the Western Front and Alexander Nevsky for free as public domain when instead I would be forced to rent some more recent schlock movie?
So in the end the total amount of media freed by this will be miniscule.
Ever notice how, when an IP law (smart or stupid) is introduced in Congress, it's nearly always by 1 Democrat and 1 Republican? It's not due to the wonderfully happy beautiful spirit of bipartisanship that's permeating the air of Washington. Naw I'm more cynical than that.
Here's why. The RIAA, MPAA, etc. make sure they toss around large amounts of money to both parties (as all good interest groups should do) to get the laws they want passed. As IP policy is not addressed by the platforms of either political party, those who are going to sell out and fuck america up the ass for lots of campaign money realize that it will not only look better if they introduce said law in bipartisan pairs, but it is much safer, too. A bill sponsored by 1 republican and 1 democrat is much less likely to be attacked by either party as a whole. In fact, such a bill will never be attacked by either party as a whole. If, say, the republicans were the ones passing all the "destroy their computers and send them to guantanimo" IP laws, the democrats would immediately campaign against it, and vice-versa. So since both parties know the other doesn't care, and since both parties have plenty of members willing to whore themselves out for money, those who introduce these bills know it's mutually beneficial for both parties to do so in pairs.
Of course the same thing does for good laws, such as the one that's the subject of this thread. If two Republicans introduced the Eldred Act, the Democrats would immediately accuse the Reps of supporting criminals.
Insightful. You bet your ass.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
But so many copyrights aren't actively maintained at all. After 50 years, most of the individuals with copyrights will be dead, for pete's sake. And the reason this idea stands even a 1% chance is because it will make no difference to e.g. disney.
You forgot about the riders attatched to raise their own salaries.
about 9000 books that were writen in the 1930s and have not been in print for about 40 years.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Yes, thank you for shooting this bill down. Now all that worthless stuff can just stay in Disney's vaults! This law is better than nothing-- at least it's a start.
And it does have value. In many cases, the people who might own copyrights are not even aware of them, or are not easily determined from reading the copyright statement from 75 years ago. There's more to this than just paying a dollar. You also have to make it obvious who owns the copyright. I'd suggest that right there makes this plan worthwhile. Plus, while the work might not be worth much to the copyright holder, it might be worth something to someone making a derivative work or an aggregation or a library. In any case, if the work is no longer worth anything to the copyright holder, why should we give up our freedoms regarding our natural right to share, copy, and derive from that work?
I do not have a signature
Sure, $20K isn't much, but xxAA don't just buy one pet polly they buy dozens of them. Suddenly you're talking six or seven figures to even equal their investment - And you will always need to have one more pet polly than they do to be sure of success. Suddenly it's down to a war of attrition and the side with the deepest pockets (Hint: It's not the non-profits) has an enormous advantage.
"God, root, what is difference?" - Pitr, userfriendly
I understand that basically this is a tool to help with current copyright issues. Maybe getting some currently copyrighted works into the public domain... but... If you're going to go through all the effort why not just do it right and think about the future of copyright also.
My economic stimulous plan is to push copyright to 14 years renewable one time for another 14 years for a fee. Berne Convention or not! Most companies should easily be able to make a profit off of their works/work for hire within a 14-28 year period. If not what in the hell are they doing in business - learn how to balance your books.
My thought is that if you have a fairly short expire date for those profits to be reduced then the companies will work harder to produce new works which means new sales to maintain profits. New works will be easier to churn out because there's plenty of newly released fodder from the expired copyrights.
Companies that can't innovate in that market don't deserve to be in business and shouldn't be able to legislate themselves into staying in business.
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
I'm surprised at the comments that suggest this bill doesn't matter because it can only hope to free up those copyrighted works with no commercial value. Here we have stories about the Intellivision operating system drawing hundreds of comments, articles all the time about classic console and arcade video games, news of public domain audiobooks, and talk about a huge amount of "content" that clearly has no commercial value but is still really interesting, fun, and/or enlightening.
Yes, some of the stuff I've mentioned does sometimes make an appearance in a commercial product like a 25-in-1 game controller or something, but there are still huge amounts of old computer games, books, films, music, and other media that are never going to make anyone a cent again. Some of these still would be nice to have around and have access to. Some of this stuff might be "sampled" or otherwise incorporated into new works of art, some might be used for historical or other academic research, and some of it might just be watched or read or listened to or played with by a small group of people who aren't much of a "market" but who still appreciate this work being available instead of lost in an corporate bureaucracy.
While you might have been making a joke, the concept of paying for copyright protection might not be a good idea. With a short enough durration and a high enough cost, established publishers can effectively block out new entrants. It would also castrate the GPL when developers have their code co-opted because they can't pay to maintain their copyright. Patent fees like this are how Wittle lost his patent on the jet engine, which was much more reasonable than our current schedule. Fees might look reasonable if you are sitting someplace with money. Most people can't afford them and they have a way of doing just what your joke implies.
Let's just roll back to a 14 year copyright protection. It's better to simply reduce the term so that anyone might publish an author's work within their lifetime. This maximizes the chances of useful works being published cheaply while they are relavant, while rewarding the author for publishing. 14 years was a good idea when publication was far more expensive and it's not a bad idea now. The GPL is still needed for 14 year copyrights because that's like 100 in software years. A hundred year copyright protected work might be widely published for the benifit of my great grandchildren and they probably won't want to read it.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Screw the Berne Treaty
If Bush can decide that he wants to pull out of treaties designed to keep the peace, I have no problem pulling out of treaties designed by corporations to keep the profits.
90% of everything is crap. Also, crap is relative.
You forgot about the 27th Amendment.
Supreme Court Justice Breyer found that only about 2% of copyrights between 55 and 75 years old retain commercial value. Between 55 and 75 years ago, nothing was copyrighted unless the author made a specific effort to register it with the Copyright Office. Nowadays, anything you create (write, sing, paint, etc. etc. etc.) is afforded copyright protection from the instant you fix it in a tangible medium (write it, record it, paint it, etc.). [1] The point is--between 55 and 75 years FROM NOW, it isn't going to be 2% of copyrights that will still have any value. It will be more like 0.00000002%. Every letter, every web page, every email, every little bit software you hacked together in an evening, every digital snapshot, every tape you make for your girlfriend . . . all copyrighted and locked away, unable to be used by anyone for 50 years after your death. Naturally there will be a lot of useless junk in there. But on the other hand, there will be our entire cultural heritage--the entire record we leave behind--all under copyright protection for no good reason.
With the current setup, the stronger copyright is, the stronger copyleft is. For example, if copyright terms are 90 years, it will be 90 years before Free software can copy Unix code, but it will also be 90 years before Unix can copy Free software and make it closed source.
Under the proposed act, if one assumes the Free content is less likely to have a revenue stream than the closed source content (an invalid assumption?) it is more likely that the Free content's copyrights will lapse while the closed-source content's copyrights are renewed.
Okay, software will probably be obsolete in 50 years, but the same applies to music, films, books and other forms of content which don't go obsolete as quickly.
End result: Closed source content has a chance to use Free content while Free content doesn't get a reciprocal benefit.
I'm not necessarily saying it is a bad thing. It might turn out that the boost Free content gets from all that new public domain material is bigger than the loss, but it's something to think about.
I don't see why the EFF and similar groups can't 'invest' in a few reelection campaigns. The business model is established by numerous corporations and special interest groups - all it would take are funds. In fact the same applies to all progressive social and political groups... how come the bad guys are smart enough to heavily influence politics with their money but the good guys aren't?
BECAUSE THEY CAN'T!!!
Non profit 503(c)3 "educational" organizations can't spend a single dollar on political campaigns. That's the tradeoff you get for knowing your contributions from them are tax-deductible.
The ONLY kind of organization that can raise money from the public
That's why EFF, Public Citizen, etc. can only wring their hands when shit like the DMCA passes. All they can do is beg and plead with Congresscritters for mercy. They get polite treatment. The people with the checks get results.
No, the major corporations don't always get their own way on the Hill. It is possible for people's organizations to get enough money from people in $5 and $10 and $20 and $100 contributions and disburse them in $1000 and $5000 and $10,000 checks, to hire full-time staff to analyze new laws so the members don't get blindsided, to hire lobbyists, to hire staff to open envelopes. And they can and do run political campaigns against people who persist in not getting the message.
The existence proofs are the NRA and the AARP. They are professionally run, they raise money, they represent their membership effectively.
What's the bottom line for us? A small group of people come up with a couple or 3 million dollars they don't expect to be tax deductible. Not to give to politicians, to hire top-bracket pros to build the fund-raising infrastructure to make it possible to raise money from us in $5 and $10 and $20 and $100 contributions to make meaningful contributions.
American high-tech types have the following choices:
- learn to bend over and take it with a smile and practice "Would you like fries with that?"
- Get it together and start doing the PAC stuff right fucking now.
- get ready to leave the US permanently for places outside the reach of Hollywood cartel-owned politicians.
- Hope the RIAA member labels go bankrupt before they do any more serious damage to the high-tech scene.
But without the startup money, this goes noplace. If nobody's willing to come forward with the price of freedom while it can still be paid in dollars, the only solutions to this problem are individual... figuring how to get out from under.Nobody's going to come forward with the startup money.
The people who can are under the delusion that the Hollywood cartel can be negotiated with, and after they come up with consumer devices that'll make Hollywood happy but that nobody will buy because they're DRM-broken to uselessness, Hollywood will make all their content available for pay-per-download for everybody that the Internet infrastructure can't support, and we'll all march off to a future of infinite profits.
I'm looking for . . . an individual solution.
Tech Public Policy stuff
It seems to me that this is more business as usual. The thing that I'm not understanding is what makes anyone think this is going to change anything.
A large company with thousands of copyrights will be able to automate this process and extend their copyrights into eternaty without even a second glance. The fee shouldn't be $1. It should be $10,000 to keep a work from the public.
This might not be much different, but if you have a work that valuble that the copyright needs to last 100 years, it should be worth 10,000 dollars to you, don't you think?
This signature has Super Cow Powers
This bill was designed as it is because it's hard to find a downside -- the rich content oligarchs should have no problem extending those copyrights that are still relevant and therefore shouldn't mind if the rest pass into the public domain.
The problem is that they will mind. Consider the nature of entertainment content like movies and music. In today's society, people expect to be entertained. Shouting "Boycott the RIAA!" is easy to do, but ultimately most of us want to listen to music, and it's all locked up by copyright. Only the RIAA has the keys. Illegal actions aside, there is no real alternative. Right now, the public domain is so emaciated from its nigh fifty years of starvation that it offers no competition.
Now imagine if the RIAA had to compete with a well-endowed public domain. It would be a much less friendly market for them; when people get frustrated with high CD prices, bad-faith legal maneuverings, onerous DRM, and music that is all the same, it's much easier to bypass the RIAA completely. This is a future they will not want to allow.
An ingenious analogy (credit to another slashdotter, name forgotten) is the bottled water industry. Water is not a very rare substance, yet we all need it to survive. So the BWIAA (bottled water industry association of America) has a market, but it's very elastic. Price-fixing isn't a viable option for them. But imagine, thinks the CEO, if everyone lived in a desert. Imagine if municipal reservoirs and indoor plumbing shut down -- if we (the BWIAA) were the only source of water. Then our market would become rigidly inelastic and we could charge anything we want! A hundred bucks for a 24oz Sports Pack and we'd all be rich!
The RIAA and MPAA, like the hypothetical BWIAA, aren't in the business of collecting water -- they're busy building deserts. In their ideal world, every droplet of entertainment comes in their bottles. The public domain is their enemy, and they will viciously oppose this bill.
It would be good if pure research were put into the "public domain", particularly when it is paid for by tax dollars.
There is an interesting NYT article today about a call for federally funded research to be more freely available, instead of in expensive and restrictive journals. It's about time- there are many expensive for-profit journals, whose worth is determined by reputations established primarily by the refereeing process. Referees are usually academics not paid by journals. Since the NSF or NIH is often paying for the researcher (who is doing the hardest work) and the universities are paying for the referees (who are doing the next hardest part of the work) and the labs and resources are usually paid for by universities (often the greatest expense) it is remarkable that the
journals have been getting away with making big piles of money for essentially being clearinghouses and middlemen. In mathematics, there has been some resistance, including some from bigshots, to these journal monopolies, but change towards cheaper/free/non-profit journals has been slow. I choose to submit my research to reaonable journals on this criteria, but that means that I will never submit my work to some of the most prestigious ones. In medicine, where journals often restrict researchers from even discussing their results with colleagues or media until the article appears, this could be a massive chage. Many scientific journals do not permit you to post your own research on your web page and hopefully this overdue movement towards free distribution gathers momentum.
It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.