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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.
According to the page about the act (see old /. article... RTFA?), it can only be renewed every 5 years until the end of the copyright term. Therefore, when the term would normally have expired, it would expire. People just have to pay extra for it this way.
They aren't renewing the copyright, because Copyright in the US is Creator's life + 70 years, or in the case of Corporations 80 years, or something like that. This is merely a provision which allows a work to fall into the public domain after 50 years from the copyright date, unless the work is commercially viable, in which case, the copyright holder pays a small fee to keep the rights until the copyright term is completed.
Black and grey are both shades of white.
At really obvious Karma Whoring.
Link to the proposed bill is here.
(Not to be nasty or anything, but if you'd have clicked the link in the slashdot announcement you would have found this link immediately.)
Following the links from the posted article, I found the text of the law in PDF format. The THOMAS Congress web site does not yet have the bill online.
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.
Please RTFA.
From The Eric Eldred Act FAQ:
2. How would it work?
Fifty years after a copyrighted work was published, a copyright owner would have to pay a tiny tax. That tax could be as low as $1. If the copyright owner does not pay that tax for three years in a row, then the copyright would be forfeited to the public domain. If the tax is paid, then the form would require the listing of a copyright agent--a person charged with receiving requests about that copyright. The Copyright Office would then make the listing of taxes paid, and copyright agents, available free of charge on their website.
They're not expanding the term of copyright. They're shortening it, in most cases, and making you pay a small fee to hold it for more than 50 years, in all others.
--
http://nemilar.net - Not your grandmother's soup kitchen
Public Domain Enhancement Act
PDEA.
Does that make people who like this bill pdeaophiles?
They say in the FAQ that this doesn't violate the Berne Treaty, because it isn't formally a "formality" nor a "registration", but you have to file a registration document and pay a fee to the US Copyright Register, which appears at least to this (NAL), that it is a formality and a register and in violation of the Berne Treaty.
Black and grey are both shades of white.
Given that the record and film industry appears to have invested heavily in buying some congressmen, perhaps its time for the open source/public domain movements to do the same. All the good will in the world wont lead to actual passing of legislation when Time Warner/Sony/EMI/Bertlemann/Conglomokorp actually owns people on Capitol hill... we have a petition, but they have votes in Congress.
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?
Read Pynchon.
So now we know conclusively that Disney owns 2% of the copyrights between 55 and 75 years old.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
The idea is to end the regime of "perpetual copyright" by ensuring at least some works, which should by rights already be in the PD, get there. Right now, none do.
This is about 50 years in the past, not 50 years in the future.
=googol=
IP Law in two easy lessons
Theft by value: I take something that is yours.
Theft by reference: you think of something; I think of the same thing.
While I agree with you (wholeheartedly, I might add), the extensions aren't really to protect the original work - they're there to protect against derivations.
So this means you can't use Mickey Mouse because he's still under copyright. If Steam-Boat Willie falls into the public domain, then it's possible that you'll be able to make a derivative work using the character of Mickey Mouse and Disney can't stop you.
IANAL, but this seems to be the reasoning behind it.
It's not for the authors protection - he's dead by now, remember ? It's for the protection of the Big Business that owns his estate. And we know America loves Big Business !
It'll be "Copyright will last for 5 months. After that expires, the author must pay $50,000 to renew it, for another 150 years, or eternally, whichever's longer."
I know you were joking, but I want my Karma, so I'm going to reiterate your post in a serious tone.
Exactly... as was said in the previous /. post, this is so that large companies don't just hold onto copyrights that they have no intention of doing anything with (publishing) "just in case". This will help open up that vast back catalog of great, but non-comercially-viable music/books/etc. that many major companies have lying around,
[SIG] It's like putting a moose in the blender -- a recipe for disaster!
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.
An uncompromising conservative who has forged a reputation as a reliable ally and savvy lawmaker, he's got a wide net of influence that makes him considerably more powerful than he would seem at first. If anyone can get this thing on the agenda, it's him; his relationship with DeLay and Hastert will ensure that.
With the conservative flank well-protected, it's the Democrats -- who, let's tell a hawk from a handsaw here, have often been craven in their defense of entertainment campaign dollars -- that need to be courted.
"Freedom is kind of a hobby with me, and I have disposable income that I'll spend to find out how to get people more."
Copyright is currently Life of Creator + 70 years. This amends current copyright law, such that the copyright can fall into the public domain after 50 years have passed since first publication (or 2004 whichever is later). This greatly benefits us because it enriches public domain.
Therefore, your assertion that this law does nothing, is incorrect.
(I was going to say something about your (apparent)inability to read, but I decided against it because I'm a nice person.)
Black and grey are both shades of white.
The U.S. can't nullify a copyright before 50 years without violating the Berne Convention, which requires at least 50 years of copyright protection without registration.
The 50 years is necessary so as to not run afoul of the Berne Convention. This requires that copyrights miust last 50 years without any registration.
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.
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
I wouldn't shed any tears if the US decided to abandon the Berne Convention. It was a bad idea to begin with -- different countries tend to have different priorities with regards to copyright to begin with, and that's okay, and it's far too European a copyright system anyhow.
I think we were doing better under the 1909 Act, particularly when Congress took a look at the B.C. and rejected it.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
There are three important factors here:
- Disney doesn't really care if it passes.
They can easily afford the registration fee
and procedure to protect their copyrighted
works.
- Disney would look really stupid if it
opposed even this bill. At the time of the
Sonny Bono Act, Disney was "protecting its
investment" from lapsing into the public
domain, so the question was "how long should
copyright really be?" Today, the question
is "should copyright last over fifty years
with no obligation from the creator to even
register?"
- Disney can use the works that do lapse
into the public domain in its own products,
without having to pay royalties.
If Disney realizes the opportunity to create some good PR for itself (for little or no cost!), then maybe it'll have a chance.Berne Treaty limit is life of the author plus 50 years. This is a hack, using the world "tax" instead of registration. The 50 years from publication was decided on just to make it friendly. Of course, this is all just information I stole from the faq that an earlier comment linked to. :)
I know you were joking, but I want my Karma, so I'm going to reiterate your post in a serious tone.
...what will be put into the public domain that anybody actually wants?
There are many works which are not wanted by enough people to justify putting them back into print. However, if they were public domain, the few individuals who do want them would be able to print or otherwise distribute their own copies. The Gutenberg Project and others like it would benefit greatly from something like this.
TTFN
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.
I love the idea of this bill.
But there's a problem, as far as I see:
Doesn't this mean that someone can just pay their $5 immediately upon creating the work, thus registering for the ~50 year extension? That seems bad to me, since essentially every book publisher (etc.) will just pay that fee when they publish. I thought the idea was that works "abandoned" after 50 years would have nobody around to bother to "renew" them, and then they would pass into the public domain. Even with an ammendment to the law, would someone just be able to set up a service that would automatically send in the forms and payment for subscribers' works when it's due?
However, even if most people still pay the fee up front and get the full length of copyright, the database of such works will be extremely useful for things like project Gutenberg, where one of the hardest parts is simply finding out whether a work is still protected.
Then they're really fucked, because there were two Mickey Mouse cartoons made before "Steamboat Willie", and since those would be public domain, then there would be prior art issues. Or prior cel issues, as the case may be.
I am really sick and tired of people thinking that "Steamboat Willie" was Mickey's debut cartoon. No, it was his first sound cartoon (and it wasn't the first cartoon with sound either, in case you were wondering). You'd think that with all the people on /. bitching and moaning about the intricacies about what SCO might actually own and about what the real benchmarks are on the G5s, someone might do a little elementary research on something that is infinitely more important, like this.
If using Linux is about choice, how come people complain when I choose to use Windows?
If Steam-Boat Willie falls into the public domain, then it's possible that you'll be able to make a derivative work using the character of Mickey Mouse and Disney can't stop you.
Mickey is trademarked, so it doesn't matter what happens to Steamboat Willy. You still can't use Disney's trademarked character.
Anyway, the whole "cheap knockoff" argument is overrated. There are plenty of legitimate, authorized "cheap knockoffs" of all kinds of characters. Go buy a "Kids Meal" at McDonalds to see what I mean. And endless copyright prevents new and interesting ideas just as much as it prevents cheap knockoffs. (For examples, see Dan O'Neill and Berkeley Breathed.)
I know, I'm not actually disagreeing with anything you said. I just wanted to make the point.
Mickey is trademarked, so it doesn't matter what happens to Steamboat Willy. You still can't use Disney's trademarked character.
Not true. At my local Walgreens store, I find VHS copies of public-domain films starring Bugs Bunny. These films were first published before 1964, but Warner never got around to renewing their copyrights at the 28-year mark. (Copyright in all works first published in 1964-1977 was renewed automatically by a 1992 law.) The boxes of the tapes have the text "Bugs Bunny" and a drawing of a rabbit on the front and "Fresh Hare, Falling Hare, The Wabbit Who Came To Supper; this video contains public domain audiovisual works and is not sponsored or endorsed by the original authors of the works." No, I don't remember the citation of the relevant court case. Anybody else?
If Warner wants to compete, it can still compete on technical quality. The video I bought had a crappy transfer with blown highlights; Bugs often looked all-white instead of gray and white as he is supposed to appear.
Will I retire or break 10K?
If you want the EFF to buy off a congressman, send them a $20 check
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is a charity. Charities do not make political campaign contributions. Political action committees (PACs) are not charities and can and do give money to candidates. Does there exist a PAC in the United States that focuses on the same issues that EFF follows?
Will I retire or break 10K?
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
Unfortunately this will also provide justification for extending copyright life ad infinitum. I can hear Eldred now (or whatever newer model Disney buys to replace him when he wears out):
"Why do copyrights need to expire? See our wonderful mechanism for moving works into the public domain? Why, 90% of the works ever created move into the public domain after 50 years? Is it fair to punish the owners of the remaining 10% who have demonstrated consistent and careful interest in stewardship of their works?"
The bill does good things, but creates this "justification" for continuing in the tradition of copyright lifetime extension.
Searching for Truth, Justice, and the Guy Who Boosted My Wallet a Few Weeks Back....
No, the reason the bill doesn't run afoul of Berne has nothing to do with the tax/registration technicality. It doens't run afoul of Berne because it only applies to works produced in the United States. Berne only requires you to grant the works of foreign authors life+50, no registration requried. It places no restrictions on what copyright term you offer your own authors.
eliminate free public access to any works previously in the "Public" domain, and minimize the inclusion of any future works in that venue.
That's just the way bills in Congress works: the result of the bill is always exactly opposite of what the title of the bill implies.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!