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Lessig Legal Team Needs Your Copyright Stories
Joe Gratz writes "Lawrence Lessig and his legal team are asking for your help. Kahle v. Ashcroft is a lawsuit that challenges changes to U.S. copyright law that have created a large class of 'orphan works' -- creative works which are out of print and no longer commercially available, but which are still regulated by copyright. To win the lawsuit, we need more examples of people being burdened by these copyright-related barriers to the use of orphan works. Visit the Kahle Submission Site and tell us your story."
Something to bear in mind folks: the court will likely be much more impressed with "significant speech" issues that with games and the like. (I know that many consider games and entertainment to be quite significant - and I agree with them. But the court will be much more impressed with academic, religious, or political examples.) in that vein, here's what I contributed. Not much, but the best I've got. Beginning Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic Greek originally submitted by Patrick Narkinsky: This work is a frankly revolutionary New Testament Greek Grammar published in the 70's. It has been out of print for many years, but is still widely appreciated. I spent the past several years trying to locate a copy to buy at any reasonable price. (A copy on Ebay recently went for $222). The publisher is not interested in republishing it. However, very recently they have allowed that if someone else paid to transfer it to a modern computerized format (Unicode/MSWORD) they would consider making it available on their own terms. The value of this grammar is such that a number of people are working on it, but requiring us to convert the work to their format so that they'll distribute is a pretty onerous version. There are certainly many other Greek students who would be willing to contribute their stories on this work. Stifled uses Patrick Narkinsky: First, read it. Second, have it on hand as a reference. It contains revolutionary ideas on the categorization of BIblical Greek that are simply unavailable elsewhere.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
In the original draft it was "property" not "happiness".
I'm going out to chase a car now.
Stop the world; I need to get off.
The summary is a bit misleading. It seems to imply that (if the lawsuit succeeds) if a work goes out of print, it will become public domain. This is not the case. The only thing that this lawsuit is aiming to do is to declare the three major copyright acts passed since 1976 unconsitutional, and basically revert back to the copyright law that existed in the US from 1790 to 1976. Basically, you would need to register works with the copyright office, renew them every so often, and keep records of all works that you have copyrighted. The copyright term would also be shortened significantly.
For big companies, keeping up with copyrights would be no big deal (although many would have a fuss about the shortening of the term, like say, Disney). That's why this talk about implications in video games is so silly. First of all, the oldest playable videogames are only about 20 years old, which is well under the copyright term, even with the old laws. Second, most videogame companies are still around, or have been bought out by other companies, in which case the copyrights would be inhereted. The fact that these games can't be bought commercially anymore doesn't mean anything, the companies would still own the copyrights, and the games would not be public domain.
The other thing to note is that any changes to copyright law are NOT going to be applied retroactively. The courts aren't going to say "Well, you didn't have to file for a copyright or keep copyright records after 1976 in order to legally have a copyright, but you should have been able to see into the future and see that these laws are unconstitutional, and done it anyways." It's impossible to say how many of the works people are talking about would still be under copyright if the recent laws had never been passed. It's theoretically possible that every work someone submits a story about would be under copyright if the new copyright laws had never been passed, and that they didn't file for a copyright simply because the new laws made it so that they didn't need to. That's why the courts aren't just going to say "Every work published from 1976 to now is public domain!"
No, it isn't. The Girl Scouts of America were sued (or at least got cease and desist orders) a couple years ago for singing it around campfires. The copyright holders only backed off once they were getting blasted from every direction. This is also why if you go to a restaurant, just about no one sings happy birthday, they are always some cheesy other song.
It's there in the Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, paragraph 8: "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". So, if the laws do not promote the progress of science and useful arts, they are unconstitutional. Hmmm, did you note that "useful" thing about arts? Suppose someone argues that computer games are useless?...
On the off chance that YOU aren't just a troll, you can listen to Lessig discuss this and related issues in this May 6 radio interview: Lawrence Lessig on KQED Forum (Real Audio)
Towards the end of the writing of the declaration, happiness was inserted instead of the original thought of property, taken from Lockes works. It was still intended to assume property as one of the "happiness" things. Lockes writings are part of the "natural law" ideals that took hold in merre olde englande, and greatly influenced Jefferson, the primary draftsman of the Declaration. The natural laws ideals were intended primarily to protect generic "mankind" against the natural state of government-which always tends to tyranny sooner or later, and the usurpation of all "rights" into their favor. Locke himself didn't go that far,pretty wishy washy that man was, he was still more an autocrat, but some of his ideas were adopted.
Unlimited copyrights were never intended, but a reasonable time period copyright was extremely intended, as it is your property. Pursuing your happiness, part of which is to own your stuff, your property, is a "natural right" further delineated in the articles in the constitution. The Declaration of Independence is the original statement of natural rights,enough to get the ball rolling, after all these were learned men of letters and HAD to put something in writing, and the rejection of perpetual aristocratical "rights" was paramount, and they had only a few choices left, and individual soverignty won the day by a squeaker, lucky for us. The Constitution then went on to clarify and delineate these rights, and that document was designed to place explicit restrictons on government "rights", with the default being all natural rights went to the soverign individual,that he is born with them, they are not granted by any government or any piece of paper, and some to the states, with a very limited amount to the federal government, who's 'absolute' area of soverignty is within -notice I said "within" not just plain "in"- the district of columbia, the territories, and in the foreign embassies and a very few other places, such as federal armories, etc.
Interesting historical trivia, somewhat relative to the conversation to help understand the meanings and intentions of the document.
Last year, Lessig helped set up the case challenging the extension of copyrights in the US (cannot remember the case name for the life of me). He talked with experts on the Supreme Court, who advised him to concentrate on stories of people who were harmed by the law. Lessig instead set up a logical argument based on constitutional precedent, and his side lost the case. He's not making that mistake again.
Add to that virtually all of the works of Charles Sanders Peirce. They exist, but you can't go to the bookstore and buy them. It's a big royal pain in the ass.
Are you referring to *this* Zoolander? If so, I shall have to ask you to step outside!
- Derek, to tiny cellphone: "God?!"
- Dammit Derek, I'm a coal miner, not a professional film and television actor." (Jon Voigt)
- David Bowie cameo, proving that he transcends the nutty world of ultra hipdom even while being part of it.
- Christine Taylor
- David Duchovny as the former hand model
- Will Farrell
- "What is this, a center for *ants*?!"
You must be thinking of a different cinematic masterpiece.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Basicly, the copyright holder must either A.make the work available or B.if the work is unavailable to get copies of, they must pay some money to register the work periodicly (how often would depend on the type of work). Each time you register the work, the cost goes up a bit. That way, if someone wants to retain copyright to stuff, they can either make it available ot they can pay to keep the copyright.
That would mean that for stuff people are still selling/making money off, nothing changes. But for stuff thats not available, if the copyright holder re-registers it (and pays), they get to keep it.
For works where one cant find the copyright anymore or whatever, one of 3 things would happen;
1.the copyright holder would make the work available (thus allowing you to get a copy)
2.the copyright holder would re-register the copyright (thus allowing you to look it up in the database and find out who owns the copyright so you can try to get a copy from them)
or 3.the work would not be re-regisered (thus meaning it would fall out of copyright and you could copy it)
The staff in a resturant would be engaging in a commercial performance of the song. There is not an 'enforcer' in each resturant who prohibits the patrons from singing whatever song they want at their table.
This is the stuff Urban Legends are made out of.
resigned
You can at least download and use TP 5.5 for free from Borland now.
Instead, he's probably proposing some sort of notification system where, every other decade or so, an author has to fill out some short form to notify the Copyright Office that she doesn't want her work to be considered abandoned.
I think this would violate the Berne Copyright Convention of 1976 which I think states that all copyrighted works are required to be renewed automatically.
Not noteable, IMO a rubbish article.
And if McD's wants to register the copyright on its tray liners, it does too have to submit a copy. At least according to the Copyright Office.
And the brethren went away edified.
Adobe did this to a lot of font software, notably Ares. There was FontMonger (a font editor and converter), Chameleon (produced vaiations on a font), FontFiddler (kerning), FontMinder (organising). They apparently took some of the technology to use in their other products, then simply took them off the market. Most of these still work well, 12 years later, on current Windows, in spite of Adobe claiming they were unmaintainable. You can only find Warez versions now.
I'm pretty sure that the rights to the White Album would have been renewed, had it been required. Also, it is still in print. That's not at all what this is talking about. This suit is attempting to require the re-registration of works every so often so that when they go out of print and the owner no longer cares about them, someone else can distribute them. RTFA, or is that too much trouble for the guy who says "somebody forward this" instead of doing it yourself?
Many, many episodes of MST3K will never be broadcasted again because the licenses on the riffed movies have expired.
In the case of Sandy Frank films, this is out of spite at the MST3K treatment, and not because the films have any appreciable value in the marketplace any more!
For years, a directors cut of Ridley Scott's movie Legend was completed and ready for ditribution. However, it could not be sold due to the restored soundtrack composed by Jerry Goldsmith. Goldsmith, Scott, and the studio all claimed they didn't own the soundtrack. Since they didn't know who to pay, they couldn't release the movie. (The movie was released after a couple of years, I assume they figured out who to pay)
Copyrights and patents are not rights at all but privileges granted by the state in order to "promote the useful arts and sciences", i.e. to get more stuff into the public domain in the long run and to create an exchange of ideas so that even more can be synthesized.