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Alternative 2009 Copyright Expirations
jrincayc writes "It's nearly the end of 2009. If the 1790 copyright maximum term of 28 years was still in effect, everything that had been published by 1981 would be now be in the public domain — like the original Ultima and God Emperor of Dune — and would be available for remixing and mashing up. If the 1909 copyright maximum term of 56 years (if renewed) were still in force, everything published by 1953 would now be in the public domain, freeing The City and the Stars and Forbidden Planet. If the 1976 copyright act term of 75* years (* it's complicated) still applied, everything published by 1934 would now be in the public domain, including Murder on the Orient Express. But thanks to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, nothing in the US will go free until 2018, when 1923 works expire." Assuming Congress doesn't step in with a Copyright Extension Act of 2017. What are the odds?
Give them 7 years, after 7 years, they have to renew the copyright every year for $50-100. If they fail to renew it it becomes public domain. Prohibit the outsourcing of this process, require the actual copyright holder to submit a signed statement each year with the renewal, change the forms yearly to prevent them from stockpiling 100 years of renewals. This process should have a search-able registry of all active copyrights and who to contact about licensing rights. This would allow economically supported works to continue in copyright as long as it is economically supported, but it would also allow orphan works to enter the public domain much faster. It's called balance, and would be a revenue generator for the Government.
Also they could require the work to actually be available for purchase during the previous year, or else you can not renew it. This would stop the Disney-ish practice of copyright holders removing their their copyrighted works from the market to generate a artificial demand later on for their product.
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Melancholy Elephants by Spider Robinson. This is the best-written argument I've seen against non-expiring copyrights (and, by extension, copyrights of inanely long duration).
A simple way around this is to allow Disney to keep Mickey, you do this by creating a new class of limited rights for National Icons. This would be similar to copyright but would not expire. These would require a specific act of Congress for a copyrightable work to be awarded this status but would not expire as long as the company in question is still actively using and marketing the iconic item in question.
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
I think this graph in the wiki links sums the problem up nicely.
These copyright extensions are simply ridiculous.
The problem actually appears to have started in 1831. Why was nothing done then, since the US Congress dosn't (in theory) have the power to create ipso post facto laws?
The EFF and other consumer rights and public domain supports are pushing to ban perpetual copyright extensions which is what will happen as each extension approaches its lifespan. The judges read limited as infinity minus 1 second. They think like a computer or robot. Total lack of commonsense. But as we know, our government does not give a shit about what we, want, believe or think. Their ears are listening to the lobbyists and corporations with deep pockets that hand them a bill with a check attached to it under the table. It's bribery. Pure and simple The purpose of copyright was to promote creativity meaning that when a singer writes a song and copyrights it, they will profit from it, but when it expires, if that singer want to continue getting profits, he must continue to use his creativity. Personally, I believe copyright of movies, music and literature should be 30 years or when the original copyright holder dies. Software should be 10 years. i.e. Micheal Jackson did not create the Beetles music, yet he owned the rights to them. They were never his and never should have been. "Elvis sure makes a lot of money for a dead guy" And nor should the creators heirs and their heirs and there heirs live off the works of someone over a century ago. Along with that, of all copyrights ever filed, these extension acts are only working for the less than 10% which are still commercially exploitable. Thus all those other fall into the abyss of time. In order to preserve great works of the past, the laws must be broken
It's pretty obvious really. The whole point of copyright was to enable the creator to benefit commercially from their artwork for a limited period so that they would have an income and be able to continue producing works that enrich/entertain society. As distribution has become quicker and quicker, the time needed for an artist to commercially exploit their work has decreased and therefore the time period for which copyright applies ought to be shorter, not longer, than in the past.
What has happened instead is that time periods have been extended, more and more money has been made, which has concentrated the means of distribution into fewer hands, with the net effect of decreasing the amount of art (music, literature etc.) that is widely available. This is now starting to change with digital distribution, although it's quite clear that DRM is not about preventing the pirating of works (because it doesn't stop commercial pirates) but is about maintaining a barrier to entry into the market.
... is not to keep commercial rights on these known books that we will still be able to buy by 2020. It is the millions of books that did not achieve enough popularity to still be easy to find. Not edited anymore but forbidden to save for posterity. Really, copyright is nothing to respect anymore.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
I think I'd rather pay some tax to support retired artists and musicians than to turn the RIAA and MPAA into private vigilante groups.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Jack Valenti during his MPAA reign actually proposed working around the "limited" line by making it "forever minus one day".
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
In the United States, laws, as well as the accused, are on trial in a courtroom. If the people find a law to be unjust, the jury can strike it down with nullification.
Can be done, I know, however I heard in other /. comments that this is really rare. I'd like to see some examples where this was done. The consequences can be "interesting" I'd say.
If a judge deems a law contrary to higher law, such as state/federal constitutions, the judge is able to throw the law out.
That is not specific to common law - and that is indeed how this discussion started: the testing of a law (copyright term) against the constitution. All countries with constitution or something like can subject laws to such tests. In case of the EU, national laws can be tested against EU laws (though I have no idea what would happen if an EU law goes against a member country's constitution). This is similar to the US with states and central government, albeit that there is a central constitution, while in the EU most if not all member states have their own constitution, and there is also that document called EU constitution nowadays. How much that is really a constitution in the traditional sense I don't know. It's a complex mess at best. At that point the US is way ahead of the EU but then the EU is younger and came into existence differently.
Or present-day Zimbabwe. You're right: uncontrolled, ad-hoc, and chaotic confiscation produces economic mayhem. Granted, in all these cases, the economic populism was also coupled with a thoroughly rotten political system (take, say, Peronism) which confuses the analysis somewhat.
But that's not to say that all wealth redistribution will cause catastrophe. In the 1950s and 60s, we had high top-end income taxes here that worked very well; Europe still does, and they're better off for them, having some of the lowest gini coefficients and the highest standards of living in the world.
In order to make wealth redistribution work:
(By the way: instead of causing hyperinflation, raising our top-end tax rates would substantially reduce our budget deficit, strengthening the dollar.)