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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."
While you're at it, write your congressperson and ask them what year you will be able to perform "Happy Birthday" in public without paying royalties or getting sued.
You have the right to pursue happiness. Achieving happiness is not guaranteed.
This is the Constitution.This is the Constitution under the Bush administration. Any questions?
One effect of this idiotic law is the wholesale destruction of nearly all of the popular books from the first half of the 20th century. The very best stuff and well-known titles are still being published and read (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, Raymond Chandler) but past a hundred or so titles, the books are just disappearing.
When the paper wears out or the book stops being checked out, libraries take the title off the shelf. Large cites will sometimes save a copy in the stacks, but usually the books get pulped or burned. In a technologically advanced civilized society, each title that is worth being published in the first place would be scanned and OCR'ed before being completely wiped out. But this is illegal under the Mickey-Mouse-protection-to-infinity US copyright law. So they just get pulped and burned.
I read a book by Florence King about how white people got to be so weird (a sort of laid-back but sharp quasi-anthropological study of Caucasians in North America) "WASP, where is thy sting?". In this book, she cites many of the books that were influencial on her and her parents thoughts and attitudes when she was growing up in the 1940's. It is impossible to find any of them now even though they were read and enjoyed by tens of millions of people and had a great deal of influence on how the depression generation came to view the world.
Now the rock'n'roll generation (the baby boomers) and the MTV generation and Kazaa generations would just say 'Fuck this stupid law' and then OCR and circulate their favorite books and videos anyway. But the WWII generation won't, they'll trust that the proper authorities are taking care of the preservation of their culture. But that is not happening and their entire culture except for about 100 titles is just evaporating.
Hundreds of years from now, people will marvel at the American empire and technological accomplishments from the end of World War II. They will wonder at what these people were like; what they believed; how they interacted with each other; what drove them. But they will never know because all the popular literature from this period is being destroyed and not copied as its media wears out.
It's all happening because of this insane US copyright law. And nobody seems to be aware that it's happening.
Sure, there's a copy of every book published in the US in the Library of Congress. Maybe. One copy. Somewhere in the vast warehouse stacks. But with the current ability to fit tens of thousands of titles on a single 89 cent DVD-R there's no excuse for allowing all of the popular books from the early and mid-20th century to disappear. Future generations will not think well of us for allowing this to just happen. Just because nitwit assholes like Michael Eisner have hundreds of millions of dollars doesn't give them the right to destroy the entire culture of generations.
Wow! A sensible comment! I've recently run into several photographers while doing on-site PC service and support, and got into debates with 2 of them about this sort of thing. As far as I'm concerned, no matter which photography company claims exclusive "rights" to a photo of a person, that person or their immediate family and relatives should have rights that superceed all others.
This seems to become a sticky issue with most commercial photographers, especially when it comes to wedding photos. But as far as I'm concerned, they need to change their whole business model. Instead of the structure they claim to use (where the money isn't made off taking the initial photos, but only on the prints and reprints ordered later) - I say, just charge up front for your time to take the photos! Quit trying to use copyright law as leverage to collect money later on the reprints.
Surely, copyright law was never envisioned to be used in such a manner, preventing people from reproducing images of their OWN FACES (or their loved one's faces), just because those images were originally captured using someone else's camera and film.
I've always viewed photography as a service one performs. Anyone can buy a camera and take pictures. It's not rocket science. But photographers get hired mainly for the convenience, plus the understanding that they happen to be "better than the average person" at getting good photos. It seems most commercial photographers, however, are more caught up in the idea of reproducing and reselling prints from their stash of archived images. That's not what the whole profession should really be about!
Well said.
I would like to add that this also does a disservice to the memory of the creators of the works. Copyright seems to be working to insure the anihilation of their memory.
An extreme comparison, but imagine taking the graveyards of your ancestors, destroying the headstones, and putting up some parking lots. I don't particularly care about gravestones and ancestors, but that seems somehow very wrong.