India Objects To Google Book Settlement

angry tapir writes "About 15 Indian authors and publishers, and two Indian organizations, have submitted their objections to Google's plan to scan and sell books online. Google's proposed settlement of a US lawsuit turns copyright law on its head, according to Siddharth Arya, legal counsel for the Indian Reprographic Rights Organisation, which licenses reproduction rights to books and other publications."

Comments

Re:Communism!

[cpt kangarooski]

The solution of course, is registration and renewal.

To get a copyright, an author must opt-in by registering with the various national copyright offices in the countries in which he seeks protection. If he fails to do this within a modest period of time (say, 1 year after the first publication of the work, anywhere in the world, where publication is taken very broadly, or 5 years after creation of the work if unpublished), the work falls into the public domain. For copyrighted works, the copyright term is very short (say, 1 year from registration), but can be extended for another term if the copyright holder renews the copyright before the current term expires; if he fails to do this, the work falls into the public domain. And the number of renewals is limited depending on the class of work (e.g. software might have a maximum copyright length of 5 years, while a movie might have a maximum length of 20 years), letting the work fall into the public domain when it can no longer be renewed and the last term expires.

The forms for registration and renewal would always require the applicant to provide up-to-date contact information. This would be further strengthened by strengthening and enlarging the notice formality, using unique IDs for works, similar to how patents are handled and patented goods are marked. Not only would third parties have a good idea who held the copyright at any given time, but they'd also have a good idea of which copyrights were involved to aid in finding the right records to begin with.

This is by no means difficult for authors. In the US, registration and renewal, by various means, were standard features of our copyright system for nearly two centuries, and we managed okay. The paperwork is roughly about as difficult as a change of address form filed with the Post Office, and in any case, authors encounter plenty of forms in their daily lives just like the rest of us, whether it's taxes, registering to vote, getting a driver's license, filling out an intake form at the doctor's office, etc. They're not children, and don't need to be coddled. There might be fees, but they should be kept to a minimum, merely to avoid having people abuse the system, rather than to raise revenue, or make the system self-supporting, or to tax authors. I'd be perfectly happy with a token $1 fee per registration or renewal.