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Lessig - Public Domain Dead in 35 Years
tcd004 writes "Lawrence Lessig, in an article on the Foreign Policy site, predicts that the public domain will die a slow death at the hands of anti-piracy efforts. From the article: 'The danger remains invisible to most, hidden by the zeal of a war on piracy. And that is how the public domain may die a quiet death, extinguished by self-righteous extremism, long before many even recognize it is gone.'"
Yeah, and the concept of open source copylefts won't help this matter. Open source software written nowadays won't be in the public domain for about a century.
I think Dr. Lessig overlooked copylefts as a viable alternative to public domain.
Few people on this site dispute that the ability to automatically have your work copyrighted by default helps Sam Slashdot by making it easier to cover his stuff. However, it also means that more and more areas end up having its entire body of work covered under copyright. With the practically indefinite term of copyright being bought^W lobbied for by Disney and others, it's no wonder that Lessig talks in this kind of language...
I think the only way to save the public domain is for serious reform - be it soapbox, ballot box, or revolution - to take place sooner rather than later.
As to my understanding, it is not possible to "release things" into the public domain. If an author publishes a statement that a given work is being made "public" or something to that effect, and you use that work, or distribute it, or copy it, or whatever, you might still be infringing. If the origional author decides to take you to court over it, we don't know what the outcome of the case would be. I don't think that there is a legal way to say "this work can be used/copied/distributed by anyone, anywhere". This, I believe, is why the "Creative Commons" was formed. I don't know how defensable this agreement is, and IANAL, but I think this is the best we have so far.
For something to enter the public domain today, it must've been created around the early part of last century.
Not true. Consider this, or this, or this.
If you're implying that works without a copyright symbol attached are in the public domain, you are mistaken.
No, I'm implying that works that are explictly placed into the public domain or are produced by an employee in the US government as part of her duties is in the public domain.
Agreed. Copyleft serves two major purposes, and one of them is not addressed by Public Domain.
The first, of course, is to make work available to the public.
The second is to protect the author from others using thier work against them (ie share and share alike).
But even with copyrights, if a work is not published, but is something internal (say, the code to Google servers), then 50, 75, 100 years can pass, and even though it may (may!) end up technically in the public domain, it's still a trade secret, and if it never gets published externally, it's not public domain.
Copyleft and CC address this issue by getting more works out, but Copyleft and CC only cover works that are specifically placed under those licenses, which are not the majority of works. Both are essentially workarounds for a system that is fundamentally broken and has lost its balance of profit vs public good.
"releasing material into the public domain" does not equal "sharing my Ray Charles Mp3s on Kazaa". Trying to release material into the public domain just won't work in fifty years, anyhow; with the continual extension of copyright and the accumulation of greater and greater amounts of material in the hands of big corporations. Eventually anyone who even wanted to make something public domain would be sued into oblivion for copy infringement, as it becomes harder and harder not to be derivitive of something that is in the vaults of the media which will stretch back over a century and a half.
Please-kindly-note that while YOU may release anything you write on Wikipedia into the public domain, Wikipedia itself IS NOT PUBLIC DOMAIN
Wikinews is, but some people are trying to change that. If you want to see Wikinews stay in the public domain, create an account and vote here.
Lawrence Lessig raises awareness, he is a good communicator. I wonder why he does not actually act.
There is the A2k treaty project, we will get a development agenda for WIPo soon. Is Lessig accredited to WIPO? No, sure he isn't. You can make a dent there. Lawrence Lessig does not expect it to last 35 years...
Public domain -- it might be an US-only problem. Of course the works of Kafka and others are public domain in my legal system.
The thing that really sucks is that for the overwhelming majority of protected IP, the profits are long since gone decades before it enters the public domain--if in fact it ever does which is a very much in question based on the "limited terms that are renewable forever are still limited terms" doctrine. What's so sad isn't that no one will be able to freely copy Mickey Mouse cartoons, it's everything else that never makes it to the public domain. I still think the best fix for copyright is an initial 20 years, renewable for small periods with increasing renewal fees--something like 1 year periods, $10 the first year and doubling every year after that. Making the people making money off locking up ideas actively do something and pay something to continue their monopoly.
Vote Quimby.
Yes, this is a serious problem. To avoid it, all human beings should be forcibly compelled to document every thought they ever have, and to publish them through a centralised public database that is open to all. Concepts like privacy and secrecy should be abolished, because the right of everyone to know everything about everyone and everything is much more important than respecting the right of an individual to think their own thoughts in their own head, and only to share those thoughts they wish to share.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
That's strange, I thought that when I didn't pay the maintenance fee on my last patent that it went into the public domain. I'd be glad to hear it's still in force.
Patents may have their problems, but at least the length of time and the requirement of maintenence fees to keep them in force are appropriate.
As an intellectual property owner, I worry when Congress goes overboard in an attempt to "protect intellectual property holders' rights". Yes, I like that what I create can benefit me. However, when other people use IP as a cudgel to abuse people, it makes me worry about the stability of the whole system. If you were an aristocrat in France in 1780, wouldn't you be a little concerned about the other aristocrats who beat and starve the peasants? They might just have a revolution.
There are literary works bracketed by the copyright extensions that I would love to have access to as the foundation for works extending their literary universes, but since they keep extending copyrights every few years when works come close to expiring and falling into the public domain I can't and no one else can either. Lot's of things have been placed in the public domain, but nothing will fall into the public domain until 2019 when works from 1923 will begin to become available.
The parent post wasn't complaining about the price - he was complaininng about trying to enforce the division of the markets into regions. If corporations are able to take advantage of globalization to get the best possible price (eg. by outsourcing), why aren't consumers? The end result would be, of course, to level prices worldwide - which might raise the price in some markets while lowering it in others. But, it seems like the only fair way to do things.
I'm not saying that companies shouldn't be allowed to set different prices in different places - but that other people should not be prohibited from buying in the cheaper market, shipping to a more expensive market, and selling the product at an intermediate price. For example, why shouldn't Americans be allowed to buy cheaper drugs in Canada? The drug companies may profit less; they would have to raise Canadian prices and lower American prices. But, why should the law be set up to benefit the pharmaceutical company at the expense of the consumer, any more than it should benefit the consumer at the expense of the company? Efficient markets generally require a level playing field.
Not true. Almost everything published between 1922 and 1964 is now public domain, because of the requirement for renewal. For example, a book published in 1960 had to have its copyright renewed 28 years later, in 1988, or else it fell into the public domain. The vast majority of published work did not have its copyright renewed. What got renewed was typically the relatively small fraction of published material that still had commercial value 28 years later.
I don't think too many people are all that thrilled about the chance to use works from that time period.
Boo hoo hoo, poor little you -- you can get your Beethoven for free, but not your Britney Spears. And of course nobody actually reads all those books on Project Gutenberg, do they?
Where do people get this attitude that the world owes them a living? If people don't like the way things are going, they can
If you're implying that works without a copyright symbol attached are in the public domain, you are mistaken. Copyrights in the U.S. are opt-out, not opt-in.
Copyrights are currently opt-out, but they used to be opt-in. Old stuff without a copyright notice is public domain. Also, even today, a copyright is essentially unenforceable unless you give a notice and file a registration. The notice is important because a valid defense against a copyright infringement suit is that the defendant didn't know the material was copyrighted. And unless you've filed a registration, you can only sue for actual damages, and those are almost always too small (especially for OSS) to get a lawyer interested in taking your case.
Find free books.
No, they wrote: "Good Morning to All" which has the same notes as Happy Birthday. Nobody know who wrote the words to "Happy Birthday". The sisters were given the rights to "Happy Birthday" 10 years after if first appeared because it was musically the same as "Good Morning to All".
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
That's what I first thought, but then I read some more. Guess what. It's basically correct.
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See also:
http://www22.brinkster.com/paradio/pages/pre1972.
http://www.legallanguage.com/lawarticles/Clarida0
It seems there are three points here:
1)before 1972, copyright laws were governed by state regulations, not
national regulations.
2)Merely because they are not covered by federal copyright laws
doesn't imply that they are still owned by someone. The owners may be
dead, or the original master unavailable. I don't understand the
implications here.
3)It's unclear to me whether you can use a later phonograph/CD of an
earlier recording to digitalize. For example, if I had a 1976
phonograph of a 1933 work, and then I decide to make an mp3 of it,
it's unclear to me when it will go into the public domain.
Interestingly, they have already resolved the reproduction issue in
the area of paintings and public domain in USA.
After doing web research, I wrote here
http://www.imaginaryplanet.net/weblogs/idiotprogr
Accurate photographs of visual artworks lack expressive content and
are automatically in the public domain once the painting's
copyright
has expired (which it has in the US if it was published before 1923).
All other copyright notices can safely be ignored.
I can't comment on precedent or how to implement this fairly, but it
seems to me that we need some sort of public domain reform that
removes protection of later digitally remastered copies when the term
on an earlier recording expires. As long as the later digitally
remastered copy is simply a faithful reproduction of the earlier work,
the later digitally remastered work does not imply some new copyright
protections.
As I said, this idea is currently unworkable and would be unfair to
companies which in the 1970s and 1980s produced and sold remastered
editions. However, at some point we need to ask ourselves why
Columbia Records deserves this windfall for simply reproducing an
artistic work. If Columbia Records, for example, owns the only
pristine copy of Jelly Roll Morton's 1926 jazz songs and releases a
remastered edition in 1985, it would be sad to think it won't go into
the public domain until 2080 (150 years after the song was first
recorded).
Please, somebody, point out some gap in my understanding or a
loophole. But otherwise it looks as if it's going to be really hard
for sound recordings to go into the public domain.
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
Not to mention the fact that when I spend $14.99 on an old Beatles or Hendrix album that might otherwise have entered the public domain by now, that's $14.99 I -don't- have to spend on newer music. That certainly doesn't help the downloading situation, now does it?
I like the idea of having copyrights start off at $1 for the first year and double each year there after. That way copyrights will naturally expire as soon as they aren't profitable enough to be worth maintaining and yet anyone would be able to afford to file their copyright. And I do think copyrights should have to be filed to be valid! Nonsense like having everything I write being automatically copyrighted is just stupid. They should have to be filed and filed again every year (with some reasonable grace period).
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.