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Greg Bear, Others Cry Foul on Project Gutenberg Copyright Call
Nova Express writes "Recently a lot of science fiction stories from the 1950s and 60s (including work from still-living authors like Frederik Pohl and Jack Vance) have been showing up on Project Gutenberg as being in the public domain. However, according to science fiction writer Greg Bear and his wife Astrid Anderson Bear (daughter of Poul Anderson, some of whose works were among those put up), Project Gutenberg has made a mistake: 'After conducting legal research on the LEXIS database of legal cases, decisions, and precedents, we have demonstrated conclusively that PG was making incorrect determinations regarding public domain status in many, many works that originally appeared in magazine form ... In general, Project Gutenberg is doing a tremendous service by making available texts that have truly long since fallen out of copyright, but they are clearly overstepping their original mandate. They are not merely exploiting orphan works, but practicing a wholesale kidnapping of works that are under copyright protection.'"
>These works have been forgotten about a long time ago. They should have been in public domain since nobody is profiting from them anymore.
That's your opinion, but it's someone else's rights you are talking about. If I said your rights should be abridged (not only copyright, but any rights) how would you respond? I find your tagline most ironic, because it seems you want other people to pick and choose which of your rights should be defended.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Wholesale kidnapping?
Who, exactly, is "kidnapping" the stories in this case? The people who are putting them in a publicly accessible format so that everyone can look at them, or the people who are keeping them behind an iron wall of intellectual property?
I was under the impression that it was the people doing the imprisoning that were generally the kidnappers, not the people granting freedom. Silly me.
Is this all about semantics? I mean, Project G is very clear about this: If a copyright holder makes a claim, they take the material down. I would think putting this stuff out there, rather than letting it rot is hardly a disservice to the authors/publishers.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
They should be in the public domain.
Works that are not in active circulation will likely be forgotten and effectively lost to the world if they are not allowed to transition into the public domain in a timely fashion.
Copyright needs reformation.
I think your rights terminate when you do.
Wow, sounds almost as bad as piracy... If they really think PG is doing a "tremendous service" then what's the deal with the loaded language?
Particularly music is lost to the world. It is not as if one has an alternative and can go and buy the music or the novel. Try finding Jazz from the dawn of the twentieth century. If you are lucky enough to find it at all it is likely a crudely put up version that is almost useless. And I'm talking about scores not finished music.
Right now, copyright is 70 years past the author's death, but before the 70s there was renewal. If the work was published before 1964 and not renewed, it's PD. When exactly something becomes copyrighted can be a tricky concept, as publication has increasingly come to mean "made permanent."
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
This is an extremely unwise move for Project Gutenberg. While I am certainly opposed to the overly-long copyright terms we have today, and somewhat sympathetic to testing the boundaries of the often unclear copyright status of some works, PG is not the group to do it. They are nowhere near funded well enough to risk a legal confrontation with the major publishing houses or their star authors, and by taking that risk, they are endangering the good and unambiguously legal work they have been doing for so many years.
I don't know Greg Bear personally, but I am familiar with his position on copyrights generally, and he has always seemed to me to be one of the more reasonable authors in this area. Even if he's wrong on this point, Project Gutenberg should leave the grey areas for better-suited groups to explore. While it is deplorable that it is often prohibitively expensive to secure justice in the courts even when one is entirely in the right, that's the reality PG has to deal with if it wants to venture into this area, and it should not be done carelessly.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Why don't they host their servers in a country with more reasonable copyright laws? Specifically with regard to copyright duration. Australia and New Zealand have much more reasonable copyright durations than the US. IIRC 50 years instead of almost double that.
I dream of a nation where a man is not judged by his skin color but by an number assigned by a credit rating agency.
But, but, my great-grandchildren will be stolen from if copyright is less than life + 99 years!
SSC
Copyright extends to the life of the author +70 years (assuming there was proper renewal etc.). Even if the authors immediately dropped dead after writing these stories they haven't entered the public domain yet.
They are not merely exploiting orphan works, but practicing a wholesale kidnapping...
Wow. Hyperbole much?
Seriously, that little tirade is just shy of "won't someone think of the children"...
I have troubles taking any point seriously, regardless of how valid I think it may or may not be, when it's attached to gross, blatant hyperbole of this sort. Make your point in an intelligent manner and people will respond. Make it sound like the sky is falling and doom is eminent and you'll quickly be ignored.
"should" - either take it up with your representative (congress if you're in the US) or be aware that civil disobedience carries penalties.
At least some of these works are in fact in circulation, by the way. See the original article; there are stories that were first published in magazines and then in books.
60 years isn't actually very long as copyright laws go (sadly) - when I'm researching images or my Web site, http://www.fromoldbooks.org/, I frequently find images over 100 years old that are still in copyright. Sometimes even older.
As for "lost to the world," well, I agree, but note that there are "dark archives" (e.g. at the Library of Congress in the USA) where items are held until such time as copyright expires.
A difficulty with copyright law is that it's the publishers who make the money, and hence have the most representation at governmental levels. I'd guess that with wider representatoin, copyright terms could be simplified and shortened. However, in the US, you also have to remember the Disney Laws. Protectionism and corruption.
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free engravings/woodcuts
http://cand.pglaf.org/bear-response.txt
"The error occurred because we did not know that Brainwave was a
complete publication of the serial parts of The Escape. We did know
from the publication of The Escape in 1953 that it was the first part
of a serialization, but did not know that Brainwave, from 1954, was
the title of the complete serialization."
United States Copyright extends to the life of the author +70 years (assuming there was proper renewal etc.). Even if the authors immediately dropped dead after writing these stories they haven't entered the public domain yet.
There, fixed that for you.
It's only life+50 years for member countries operating under the Berne Convention, although some works-for-hire have 120 years from creation or 95 years from publication.
They should be in the public domain.
That's not your, nor PG's, call to make. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a huge fan of IP, and my opinion is that Golden Age SF is probably best preserved and distributed in the public domain, but it appears that these works do have legitimate owners who don't necessarily agree.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
Which is especially irrelevant when the freaking SUMMARY says "including work from still-living authors like Frederik Pohl and Jack Vance) have been showing up on Project Gutenberg"...
In my opinion, the span of copyright is far longer than what reason should permit. I don't say this as a consumer, I have produced three albums, all of which I released to the public domain. I feel copyright should maybe last 25 or so years, much less the originator's whole life, plus 70 years.
Hectice, baby, Mercator says hello to you
Correct. For works written before January 1, 1978, copyright extends for an initial term of 28 years and can be renewed for another 67 years. Copyrights that have not been renewed for all works published January 1, 1978 would be public domain. Furthermore, works published before January 1, 1978 had to registered for copyright protection status to be effective; this is not true for works written after January 1, 1978.
What is special about magazines is that many magazines did not register their copyrights for individual articles.
My blog
The theft of the public domain by companies and politicians is the true criminal act.
I hope Project Gutenberg adheres to the letter of the law but doesn't give an inch of generosity to grey areas.
Personally I don't see why the author's death should figure into it at all. A couple of decades from publication to public domain is plenty. If you don't want your thoughts and ideas to enter the public domain then keep them to yourself.
A decade or three of exclusivity is a reasonable incentive to create. Carving out chunks of language and idea space for your own exclusive ownership practically forever is not.
Our shared cultural heritage is far more important that someone's "right" to continue profiting from work they or their ancestors did half a century ago. And if no one is profiting but the works are simply being suppressed because they're out of print but "protected" anyway then that is a crime against humanity.
The rights of the dead should not infringe upon the rights of the living.
Actually, the Berne Convention states that all works except photographic and cinematographic shall be copyrighted for at least 50 years after the author's death, but parties are free to provide longer terms
So 50 years is the minimum; US law goes above and beyond that to 70 years to "protect the poor families" of the deceased artist
Except Project Gutenberg have retracted and admitted their mistake. But do go on, let's not bring facts into this.
Here's my proposal:
Movies, books, TV shows, video games, etc.: 10 years from first publication. No extensions, although a "new and improved version" rerelease is copyrighted separately. This puts plenty into the public domain: Star Trek up to Insurrection, the classic James Bond films, the first few Super Mario Bros. games, and so on. However, it also provides plenty of time to make a profit, and even when something enters the public domain, some people will still buy it (see The Lord of the Rings, the original printing of which is PD in the US due to an oversight)
Genuine inventions: Patent lasts 10 years. Extension can lengthen it by another decade if you are actively using the patent in a product. This cuts down on patent trolls, but otherwise keeps the system as-is.
Software/Method patents: Six months. This is mostly to make it easier to strike down the 20-year patents: it's less of a jump to say "this was patented in the wrong category, and as it has been X years since registration, the patent is no longer valid" than it is to say "this thing should never have been patentable".
Trademarks: Pretty much as now, although I'd make protection of parodies much more explicit
"Casual infringement": If you "steal" something from a P2P site, the most you can be liable for is the most common trade price of the thing, and the prosecution is responsible for court costs. This would make it pointless to sue people for downloading a few albums, but it would still be possible to sue massive-scale "pirates" or even people running torrent sites if they're advertising "pirated" material.
Its a privilege not a right. Copyright is a bad term. Ideas do not belong to the first being to hold them in their mind. Art does not belong to the artist. I'm not going to say some hippie crap like art belongs to everyone, rather I say it doesn't belong to anyone, it just is. You can't own blue, righteous indignation, the smell of napalm, or the force (sorry Lucas). We grant the privilege of profit for a period of time as a robust method of rewarding people for their efforts in proportion to how much people like the results of their mental labor. We made this law in the hope that it would encourage more such effort. The law was broken by PG, probably accidentally, but this is a legal issue, not a moral one, as no one is having their rights violated.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
No. Copyright is not a "right" in the sense that freedom of speech is a right, or the right of self-defense; it is an arbitrary creation of government.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Its surprising to see such backwards thinking from people that are normally regarded as futurists. If anything you would think they would recognize that perhaps releasing the older works into the public domain would actually increase interest in the authors who as they point are either still living or recently dead all but ensuring greatly increased royalties from later works. A vast majority of these older works have been all but forgotten. You would think that as a writer of speculative fiction Bear would be able to see the future dark void of lost art that the current copyright over-extensions are creating and would be at the forefront of working to prevent it. Even without that awareness you would think that typical heir greed would compel them to think about the potential windfall of sales from later works rather than the potential loss of future revenue from something like Chain Of Logic or Tomorrows Children which after 60+ likely does not result in enough revenue to buy a new hardback title.
all your solution will do is create a market for bumping off newly popular writers.
This is the stupidest argument I have ever seen, on any subject.
Let's be honest. Copyrights expire at death, with a minimum term (like 15 years) to support any children. Or how about death + years until any children are over 18.
Frankly, copyright should be original publish date. If it was published in a magazine, then later in book form. Should the copyright be furthered? The music industry has used so-called "re-mastering" to continuously keep works in copyright.
And we all know that when these 70 yr copyrights expire, a law will be passed to extend it to 100 yrs. And then after that - infinitely. But hey, no one will be alive that will remember anything but infinite copyrights.
DISGUSTING....
If the work has passed into the public domain, they need no permission at all. They may not have overstepped the law at all.
Works prior to 1978 got 28 years protection with an option to renew. Reading the quote in TFA:
However, even if ‘The Escape” had not been published as a novel, it would have remained under copyright protection until 1981 (28 years) and been eligible for copyright renewal. Authors of that era, and Anderson in particular, were very aware of the need to renew copyrights, and typically meticulously kept their copyright protections up to date.
Typically doesn't mean DID in this case. "Well, I believe he probably..." isn't much basis to declare PG guilty, now is it?
I have no doubt they sincerely believe the works are NOT in the public domain now. They may even be right. They may be wrong. It's hardly a cut and dried issue.
The best thing for the US would be to announce that all works from before 1940 should automatically return to public domain one year from now, unless rights holders come forward to claim copyright. If there's nobody living to make the claim, then let it into the public domain.
"..One hosts to look them up, one DNS to find them, and in the darkness BIND them."
1) The works aren't exactly making a ton of money or circulation.
2) They got paid when they sold the books for quite some time, why not give that money to their kids?
3) How many jobs keep paying you money after you've died? Why do authors deserve this special privilege?
Folks at Project Gutenberg are obviously aware of the potential for a lawsuit. They would like to have one, so that the decision on the copyright status of these works is made concrete.
Bruce Perens.
The rights of the dead should not infringe upon the rights of the living.
In the case of copyright, it is the rights of the dead's living dependents that meant to be are protected.
Don't let your opinions of Yoko Ono condemn the wives and children of artists everywhere.
Also if death meant instant public domain, I think there would be a lot more bodyguards in the entertainment industry than there already are. A copyright clause for natural vs. unnatural deaths would be rather tasteless don't you think?
That's your opinion, but it's someone else's rights you are talking about. If I said your rights should be abridged (not only copyright, but any rights) how would you respond?
To draw an equivalence between copyright and natural rights like freedom of expression, movement or association is to wholly misrepresent what copyright is.
Just because the words are spelled the same does not mean they have the same meaning.
Copyright is nothing more than a legal fiction - manufactured by the consent of society to refrain from exercising their natural right of freedom of expression.
Natural rights are not created by governments, we are born with them. Nobody is born with the right to restrict others from repeating what they said originally.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
You livies hate us deadies!
No, actually Greg Newby of Project Gutenberg sent Greg Bear a letter acknowledging that they had made a mistake and took the book down.
http://cand.pglaf.org/bear-response.txt
My apologies for my long delay in responding. As promised in
September, I discussed the situation with one of Project Gutenberg's
copyright lawyers. This particular lawyer had previously been very
helpful in preparing and then providing legal advice and feedback on
our procedures for determining non-renewal status.
Our lawyer advised that our non-renewal determination for The Escape
was in error. Therefore, on October 1, I removed The Escape from the
Project Gutenberg collections and catalog and announced its removal
to our mailing list.
On behalf of Project Gutenberg, I apologize for the error.
For Brainwave (the novel from TFA) the original copyright was filed on 5/19/1954 and the renewal was filed on 12/16/1982, which is after the 28 year window. They were 7 months late in renewing the copyright. That novel is public domain.
The rights of the dead should not infringe upon the rights of the living.
Wouldn't this enter on collision course with the idea of a will (before death) act? I mean, can you imagine what the death of a house owner would bring? (relatives stampeding to pick everything before anyone from outside would enter the home and start shouting "Finders keepers").
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Berne Convention is only applicable to works that fall under the 1976 Copyright Act. Anything from before falls under the 1909 Copyright Act. If you didn't renew, the work became public domain. It's a Wonderful Life was a forgotten flop until someone figured out that it had fallen into the public domain through non-renewal. The UHF channels picked it up and started showing it since they wouldn't need to pay anyone. Now it's a Christmas classic. Go figure.
Post anonymously - For when your opinion embarrasses even you!
Go back to Undercity, you!
These works have been forgotten about a long time ago. They should have been in public domain since nobody is profiting from them anymore.
From Amazon.com:
Poul Anderson
Author Page. 99 books.
Ray Bradbury
Author Page. 105 books.
Frederick Pohl
Author Page. 60 books.
Jack Vance
Author Page. 54 books.
Copyright gives the author - and his heirs - an exclusive and constitutionally protected right to control the distribution and use of his work. No where does it say that those rights are forfeit because his work isn't making any money.
Then they should pay property taxes on it until the end of time, just like the real estate taxes they pay on their land.
Assigning an appraisal value is more problematic than for real estate, but cheating to reduce taxes could be prevented by making the owner's declaration of value an automatic offer to sell at that price. If the owner wishes to avoid the taxes, he or she could assign a value of zero, in which case the "property" would revert to public domain.
Government lawmakers: take note of this fantastic opportunity to raise new tax revenue to reduce budget deficits!
In the case of copyright, it is the rights of the dead's living dependents that meant to be are protected.
How exactly do the rights of the dependents encourage the dead person to go on creating works?
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If copyright required a small annual fee to renew, we'd probably see many works coming into the public domain much sooner than author's life + 70 years. If a copyright isn't worth, say, $25 / year to maintain, then the work should be given over to the public. If an annual maintenance fee were required, I bet a nickel all these works Greg Bear is complaining about would have gone public sometime in the 1960's.
They should have been in public domain since nobody is profiting from them anymore.
There's lots of open source code protected by copyright, but not generating any profit. Should that all go into public domain and not have any copyright protection?
How dare you make a common sense argument against what is clearly a stupid policy?
#3 is +5 insightful imho.
In the case of copyright, it is the rights of the dead's living dependents that meant to be are protected.
How exactly do the rights of the dependents encourage the dead person to go on creating works?
Along with GP's point, it doesn't necessarily encourage the dead to go on creating works, but it definitely discourages the living from stopping prematurely due to an early, unnatural death because someone didn't want to pay for rights to their works.
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
Didn't know that major corporations could be considered a "poor family"
Privilege, you mean. This is a very important mental distinction. Copyright is a government-granted temporary privilege, not a natural right. It's not life, liberty, and all that jazz. Where it should concern American law, it exists for a very specific purpose:
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. -- Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution
With extension after extension, the "limited times" part is dead. Pretty much nothing ever falls into public domain anymore. Progress ceased to happen but to the wealthiest corporations; the People do not benefit. Copyright has become pure rent seeking, its sole purpose unfulfilled.
Therefore... fuck that shit. Stuff written half a century ago ought to be in public domain. If it wasn't for those insane extensions, it would be.
Circumcision is child abuse.
So if I write a book or a song or something I have to give it to you for free because it's *your* culture? Wow, I've seen some wacky stuff on copyright around here but this takes the cake.
They could always just, you know, get jobs, like those of the rest of us who weren't born into privilege have to do.
Just a thought.
1) The works aren't exactly making a ton of money or circulation.
How would you know? You don't, do you?
2) They got paid when they sold the books for quite some time, why not give that money to their kids?
Who says they haven't? Anyway, why is it up to you to decide what they do with their money?
3) How many jobs keep paying you money after you've died? Why do authors deserve this special privilege?
How about calling it an investment? These are big names who've made it as writers. Do you know how many people are struggling to make a living off writing? Do you know what kind of investment it takes to write a book, putting years of your life into it, and not knowing at all if it will pay off?
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
Yeah, a couple decades later it gets better.
For example, the 1929 original "When The Levee Breaks" (see http://www.archive.org/details/Kansas_Joe_Memphis_Minnie-When_Levee_Breaks) has some '78rpm hiss', but is still quite relatively listenable IMHO. Same goes for Robert Johnson's 1937/1938 recordings. That's all the sample data I have - not a big fan of early-20th-century music, just a Led Zeppelin fan checking out some of the influences.
3) How many jobs keep paying you money after you've died? Why do authors deserve this special privilege?
Increased risk.
I think authors work like musicians, in that either they accept a loan from the publisher to get them by (book deal) while they write the material with the expectation that sales of the work will pay back the loan, and provide some actual profit to the author (if it doesn't sell enough, the author is on the hook to repay the loan); or, they self-fund the creation of the work (through working another, more normal job) and then sell the book afterwards.
That second option is more like standard entrepreneurship: invest some of your own capital into making something, with the potential of receiving a big payoff if you do it well (but also the risk of losing that investment if you do it poorly). However for that payoff to be feasible, you need to be the only one selling the product. Laws of physics protect entrepreneurs who are producing physical goods, but if you're investing time in creating something that can be represented digitally, only copyright provides that protection to your investment of time.
The first option is probably more common, especially for well-known authors. The difference between me and an author is that my employer doesn't pay me a year's salary upfront, and then expect me to pay it back through earnings from working for them. If they did, then I'd be quite hesitant to work for that employer: what happens if I get sick or injured and can't keep working, therefore can't repay the money? That's basically the situation an artist who gets a publishing deal is in - so they're taking on more risk than people with normal salaried jobs.
So with the current system, royalties makes sense. It provides the opportunity to make much more money than a regular job, thereby giving an incentive to take the increased risk.
Maybe the solution is for publishers to pay their creatives a salary like everyone else; an author would then just work 9-5 writing stuff, and be paid a regular salary for as long as they're working for that company. I would think the publishers would have the power to do this and it'd be fairly attractive for at least some writers, so I guess they (the publishers) feel the current system suits them better. Possibly just that most people can only produce good material for a limited time or in limited circumstances, and you don't want to be stuck paying a salary to someone who's producing rubbish. Safer for the publisher to offload the risk to the authors.
Most folks decided a long time back that the work of their own hands should go to those of their own choosing
Whose hands made the copies we are talking about? Nobody wants to take the original manuscript - the work of the creator's hands - from the his widow & children.
Maybe a more clear way to put the issue at hand: An author has created and made public a piece of data which many find useful or enjoyable to copy. Does this oblige those who have made a copy of that data to support the author's widow, progeny, pets, etc long after the author himself has died? There is zero possibility that payments will encourage the dead man to produce more data.
Greg, 50 years is long enough.
Sincerely,
the rest of the humans
expandfairuse.org
Any justification for that Rudolf movie?
To have a copyright that you can give to your children, to a buyer, to an estate that will have 70 years of value after you're dead is (in the US) a right of the living. I'm conflicted on IP in general, and I do agree that 70 years is too long in any case, but in principle, it is the guarantee of the persistence of that right for some time after death that makes it valuable: otherwise, a ghoulish opportunism results, and it makes little sense to really use much of anything during the artist's lifetime. One merely need wait in most cases.
All rights are the arbitrary creation of people - organized into entities called states, with governments.
If I choose to kill you, the only thing that makes the idea of you having a "right" to live is the decision of a government to enforce it, and punish me. All political rights are a collective fiction.
Someone's rights? You're honestly trying to say that the imaginary control over a work an author created 50+ years ago is a right?
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
So 50 years is the minimum; US law goes above and beyond that to 70 years to protect the rich Disney family
Fixed that for you.
You can blame lobbyists for that, and espicially Disney. There are a few decades-old works that are of immense financial value - the Beatles works, much of Rock-and-Roll music, and the character or Micky Mouse. Whenever these perpetual streams of income near the public domain, their respective copyright holders lobby successfully for an extension, and are willing to spend however much money it takes. Disney mostly, because they own the oldest commercially-important copyrighted work. They build their brand around Micky - they can't afford to lose it.
If the claims of the bible are accurate, wouldn't this mean that it's still copyright God? Though the text does quite clearly imply rights to reproduction and distribution are granted to anyone.
And natural rights are just things which various governments have concluded really ought to be protected.
I think any book that you can put online should be free. This way we'd have an awesome Internet library so big it encompasses any piece of work that anyone has put online. Authors could still make money, but they'd have to be smart about it. Mainly the biggest boon from this is the cost of getting an education would be closer to 0. So when you do you're one Laptop per child, they could get every book ever known to man available to them. Also K-12 education would have their books for free. As education costs go down, the intelligence of society goes up! There might be a lull of book creation for a few years in protest, but when people start writing the books, they'll be much more educated and do a better job. There is a lot to it, but I am arguing that putting everything you can scan and put online to be free would result in a better educated society. We'd even be able to bring a 1rst world education into 3rd world countries.
Regardless if the laws change or not, I'm making it a personal goal of mine to educate people better and cheaper through software. I'm not doing it immediately though. First things first, get my feet on the ground with some video games. If I can get a money machine through video games, I can then do more humanitarian projects. Cuz the thing is,"Even if they don't change the IP law, no one says you can't rewrite a ton of books yourself, and give it out for free."
God spoke to me.
The Anderson/Bear folks posted this a couple of places, and it was picked up a few other places. Here is the text of the most recent substantial message I sent them on the topic: http://cand.pglaf.org/bear-response.txt . The group has not provided the author/title (or PG eBook number) of any title they think was wrongly determined to be non-renewed, other than those mentioned in the email. They seem to have some theories about what is eligible for renewal, or who can renew, but these are not contested by Project Gutenberg (in fact, our policy is to NOT to question whether renewals were fully compliant with the law, nor whether a person had the correct standing to renew).
The issue is whether a renewal was made. For The Escape, part 1 was republished with a different title, complete with part 2. Part 1 was not individually renewed, but the newly titled complete work was. We were unaware of the subsequent retitled republication, so did not find the renewal. For the purposes of copyright and renewal, a major outcome of the legal advice we received concerning The Escape is that serialized works are treated as single acts of authorship. Thus, renewal of a part may be considered to apply to the whole -- provided it happens within a reasonable timespan (we have been advised to use +/- four years).
The Project Gutenberg Copyright How-To has details on our procedures, although the Rule 6 how-to there (for non-renewals) is older than the version we used for the original Anderson/Escape non-renewal determination. We are working on a revision that will include additional research for serials, and a few other variations like republication with different titles. The how-to is here: www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Copyright_How-To
For those who aren't aware, Project Gutenberg is classified in the US as a 501(c)(3) charity, as a library. With over 35,000 published titles, and well over 50,000 unique instances of copyright research (thousands for our Rule 6), it's not surprising that we make occasional errors. To date (I've been doing this aspect of volunteer work for Project Gutenberg since around 1999), we've changed our stance on fewer than 1/2 dozen public domain determinations. Not perfect, but I believe we're doing a good job overall, and have some very solid procedures by copyright experts over the years.
I first initiated our Rule 6 nearly 10 years ago. This was because I saw that of all the books and serials published in the US from 1923-1963 (when renewal was required for copyright to still apply), 85--90% were never renewed. The US Library of Congress does annual reports on this. Statistically, that means there a million or so items from 1923-1964 whose copyright expired after a 28-year term. These items have been in the public domain in the US since 1992 or earlier (1964+28), and many are out of print. As a policy decision, Project Gutenberg decided it was worth the risk of occasionally missing a renewal, to be able to affirmatively identify the many items for which no renewal occurred. I still believe this decision was the right one.
For those who are paying attention to Project Gutenberg news today, there was a story in the Washington Post that, more or less, accused Amazon of abusing their customers by selling public domain Project Gutenberg works, with DRM added, for a fee. The article is here: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/2010/11/amazon_charges_kindle_users_fo.html . (I exchanged several emails with the author.) It's a weird coincidence that within the same 24 hour period there is another story that basically accuses Project Gutenberg of stealing.
Enough for now. I'm going back to reading Marusek's "Mind over Ship" (sequel to the excellent "Counting Heads"), one of the hundreds of printed books I purchase every year. Maybe before I shut down for the evening I'll post Doctorow's "Makers"
How exactly do the rights of the dependents encourage the dead person to go on creating works?
Because the creator, when alive, is motivated by the knowledge that her dependents will be provided for when she is dead. If you care about what's in your Will (and especially how big your estate is so that your Will matters to anyone), you probably would care about copyright extending beyond your death.
So you support a 100% Death Tax (a tax on one's estate), so that you can leave nothing to anyone when you die... it all goes to the State.
Would Gutenberg not be allowed produce the copy now, hold on to that digital copy until the copyright expires, and then publish it?
After all, it is distribution which RIAA/MIAA sue people for, not format shifting which I believe is considered a fair use. Of course since Gutenberg isn't an individual it may face different rules.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
Your logic that copyright should last long enough to inherit is ridiculous to me, 'cause Mister Anderson is not likely to rise from the grave an write more, so the value of his copyright "to encourage" him is somewhat limited.
Why should any single act of creativity or performance be rewarded with more than a reasonable wage for the effort exerted.
The fact is that normal people can leave behind what they have saved or produced, provided they _save_ some of it. But that's just for us proles apparently. Somehow we have decided that you do a month or even a year's worth of studio time to make a song, or spend a month to write a short story, or a couple of years to write a novel, and you deserve that time's effort to pay your children and grandchildren 50 years after your death?
Why then aren't the heirs of the stone masons who built the Empire State Building entitled to a share of each months rent for three generations? Their work is just as valid and lasting. Perhaps more-so since people are paying more and more each year to use it.
Now, as an author, I understand two things: (1) I want to be able to control how my words are used commercially and socially because nobody wants to see their "children" exploited or raped; and (2) if anybody is going to be making a profit off of my words I want that someone to be me.
In previous ages that meant cost to copy and copyright because copying was costly. Now I think there should be a deal where some short time after release (e.g. even 20 years, as it can take a long time to make that two years salary for that two years writing) literal and exact copies distributed for ZERO cost on a non-profit basis should be legal. All the transformative rights, such as the right to anthology, the right to rewrite, the right to "make a movie of it", the right to "remake" it, etc should be preserved.
As a caveat of course, DRM is impermissible (because DRM is impossible anyway and) because that would obstruct the legal exact copying mandated.
The goal here is two-fold. (1) REASONABLY reward creators for the value of their creative EFFORT and (2) PRESERVE the creative control, and so the creator's "good name" to allow for a creator to deny the "N.A.M.B.L.A. Theater's All-Furry production of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Bone".
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
No, he's right: 1928 (publication date) + 28 + 67 = 2023 (when Steamboat Willie will eventually be free, in theory).
The 67 years extension was allowed because Disney renewed that copyright when the law was changed, in 1976. You can bet they were first in line: they almost certainly paid for the law themselves.
(Besides, some people think SW is, in fact, already in PD for different reasons.)
-- Let's go Viridian.
Berne Convention is only applicable to works that fall under the 1976 Copyright Act. Anything from before falls under the 1909 Copyright Act. If you didn't renew, the work became public domain. It's a Wonderful Life was a forgotten flop until someone figured out that it had fallen into the public domain through non-renewal. The UHF channels picked it up and started showing it since they wouldn't need to pay anyone. Now it's a Christmas classic. Go figure.
Actually, no. While it was not properly renewed, it was still protected as a derivative work, amongst other reasons.
From Wiki:
However, a clerical error at NTA prevented the copyright from being renewed properly in 1974.[34] Despite the lapsed copyright, television stations that aired it still were required to pay royalties. Although the film's images had entered the public domain, the film's story was still protected by virtue of it being a derivative work of the published story "The Greatest Gift", whose copyright was properly renewed by Philip Van Doren Stern in 1971.[35][N 6] The film became a perennial holiday favorite in the 1980s, possibly due to its repeated showings each holiday season on hundreds of local television stations. It was mentioned during the deliberations on the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998.[36] In 1993, Republic Pictures, which was the successor to NTA, relied on the 1990 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Stewart v. Abend (which involved another Stewart film, Rear Window) to enforce its claim to the copyright. While the film's copyright had not been renewed, Republic still owned the original film elements, the music score, and the film rights to "The Greatest Gift"; thus the plaintiffs were able to argue its status as a derivative work of a work still under copyright
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I am under the impression that the public domain portion of copyrighted materials stopped growing in 1999 and will not resume growing until 2019 because of the copyright date on Mickey Mouse. In 1997-1998, Disney and associates spent $6.3 million on campaign donations and got the 20 year extension.
I'll bet they will start spending in 2017 and this time they'll spend 5x as much.
If this happens, I wish the congress would just grant Disney a 1,000 year copyright on cartoon characters and leave everything else alone so the public domain can resume growing.
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20020305_sprigman.html
Trademark law is much, much weaker than copyright law in terms of enforcement, and the "fair-use" provisions of trademark law are also considerably stronger. Essentially, as long as you don't claim to be the original author or artist or imply some kind of endorsement from the organization represented with the trademark by using that trademark, you are certainly free to use it in creative works.
Having Mickey Mouse drop by in a movie and blow a raspberry at you as a cameo might be tricky with copyright law in force, but if it is just a trademark the claim is much more dubious as a trademark infringement. MAD Magazine for years has been using trademarks as fair-use for parody purposes, and whenever a company sues them for trademark violation they usually win the case... and then make fun of the case in the magazine afterward.
More important, once Micky Mouse goes into public domain, you can play with the original footage and splice it into other movies or make derivative works based off of that original movie and Disney would be unable to have any say at all on how that is used or done. You can't claim such movie is a "Walt Disney movie" because it isn't, but you certainly could use stuff from Steamboat Willie if it ever got out of copyright. Supposedly that movie already is out of copyright due to a technical filing error on the part of Disney staff (Walt himself sort of screwed that one up apparently), but it would be a legal fight with Disney over that issue if you tried to claim that as your rationale for duplicating the film.
My suggestion is that there is a modest fixed term (on the scale of a human lifespan) from the time of publication, full stop. If people want to continue making money, then they should continue contributing to society.
If someone is so talented that their works will be celebrated for their entire life (and beyond), what is gained by eternally paying them for their first success, and thus giving them no further incentive to create more works?
What about OUR rights?
All these works draw heavily on the public domain. They build on existing ideas, use cultural references, feedback from readers on previous work. You could even count the English language as a public domain resource. No artistic creation is ever 100% original, it always relies on our culture and other works. Shouldn't our right to benefit from derive from our cultural property in our own lifetimes be considered? If someone samples a song they have to pay the musicians who created it. Where are our royalties?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
3) How many jobs keep paying you money after you've died? Why do authors deserve this special privilege?
They abided by the law of the land of the time, and there was no obvious moral conflict with abiding by those laws. We can certainly change the laws for people in the future, but if we want them to uphold those laws, we will have to make sure we honor past agreements.
This would be a good time to bring up the American Library Association's Digital Copyright Slider:
http://www.librarycopyright.net/digitalslider/
Makes it easy to determine the length of copyright in the US. Like, as another poster noted, no works from 100 years ago will be protected by copyright today.
When someone says "rights should not be abridged", they are generally talking about Bill of Rights (first 10 Amendments to the U.S. Constitution) rights. I know of very few people who consider copyright to be a fundamental human right. Copyright is a good thing (if the term is of a reasonable length) because it encourages people to make creative works available to the public. I beleive that it is in society's best interest for any work published before 1980 to be in the public domain.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Nope. Making a complete "backup" of a book doesn't fall under fair use. PG simply making a digital copy to put in the PG vault (for release in 20xx) would be a violation of copyright. Stupid but that is the reality of our utterly broken copyright system.
The only exemption for making a backup is computer software. Not books, not movies, not ebooks, not any other form of copyrighted material.
One can make a partial copy (for example photocopying pages from a reference manual) which technically is a violation of copyright but falls under fair use protection but fair use doesn't extend to complete copy except in the case of computer software.
What makes it even worse is that DMCA will in the future make even the creation of archiving tools a crime. Say in 80 years there is an interest for PG but for movies. Someone making software to break encryption on movies would have a legitimate use however DMCA doesn't provide any carve-out for legitimate use and thus the software would be prohibited and creators and distributors in violation of the law.
We have in the span of less than a century turned a wonderful idea; providing LIMITED protection to content creators to encourage such content into something that now only holds back innovation. Pathetic. In 2034 Mickey Mouse will go into public domain. In 2030 Disney will lobby (and if the past 3 times are any indication win) to extend copyrights to 120 years after death of author. Then in another 50 years they will do it again and again and again and again.
Essentially the pool of public domain works will never grow because companies will never allow their "property" to become public domain. Even marginal works have some value. Companies can simply buy up copyrights for negligible amounts hoping that some future work will be derived from it and sue for compensation. The copyright equivalent of patent trolls.
It only requires a couple of people to create a corporation. A corporation need not be a massive conglomerate. Copyright rights affect a massive number of people, including a massive number of individuals who would not have a job without copyright protection.
To be anti-copyright is to be anti-capitalism, or even anti-paycheck.
In the linked case, the short story wasn't renewed, but the longer compilation (with a different title) was. Since the compilation was copyrighted within 2 years of the short story, its renewal extended the copyright of the short story as well, so the first half isn't in the public domain, neither is the short story.
Copyright is complex, PG made an error, admitted it, and pulled the story.
There has to be a better compromise. I have no problem with Disney continuing to build their brand around Mickey. But a compromise that allows works to fall into the public domain is needed. Steamboat Willie should not be covered by copyright anymore!
For example, if we squashed copyright back down to 25 years, but permitted a "brand mark" to continue like a trade mark such that old works that fell into the public domain could be reused/resold/repackaged as is, as long as the brand mark did not appear to be modified or be "owned" by someone else. So, offering a screening of Steamboat Willie in a public theatre could be done without paying licensing to Disney, but creating my own Steamboat-Willie-themed amusement park would not. Nor would creating a brand-new Steamboat Willie sequel (at least, not with Mickey Mouse in it, or any likeness that could reasonably be interpreted as Mickey Mouse - putting a cat in its place would reasonably be interpreted as not Mickey Mouse).
A relevant example would be Stieg Larsson, who died shortly after delivering his three manuscripts to a publisher, and who has spent quite a bit of the last few years sitting on various bestseller lists (he was the second-best selling author in 2008, worldwide, having died in 2004).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
When the works in question were written, copyright terms were much shorter. They have since been extended several times, denying work that was promised at its time of publication to the public domain from making the transition. If you're concerned about honouring past agreements, maybe reverting all of those extensions would be a good start.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Why is that pirates always put statements in other's mouths and then argue the counterpoint to make their point. When you have to do that, its a really strong indicator you have no legitimate point to stand on.
What I implied was, there is nothing wrong with copyright extending beyond an author's death. And I certainly don't have a problem with it covering the length of one's life.
Let's say you write a book. The book goes to a publisher and is accepted. You die. The author and the family should receive nothing? There is absolutely nothing unreasonable about allowing a family to benefit from another family member's labors. Lord of the Rings is a great example.
It doesn't encourage the dead to continue once they're dead. It may encourage the living to create more works to leave the income to their progeny while they are still alive. Once you're wealthy to a certain point, earning for yourself is just overkill. Providing for three generations of family rather than two might make people feel a little better, though.
"1) The works aren't exactly making a ton of money or circulation."
Lots of authors are making money by selling long out of publication works as ebooks. The ease of making an Ebook and the low cost means that a lot of works that where not available are again. This in fringes on their rights to do that. Also some people don't like their own early works. They find it embarrassing so they want it out of circulation. That is their right.
"2) They got paid when they sold the books for quite some time, why not give that money to their kids?"
Who died and made you God? Really when you die why don't I just come and take all your stuff? I mean your kids don't need what you worked for? Or better when your parents die I will take all their stuff since you don't deserve it?
"3) How many jobs keep paying you money after you've died? Why do authors deserve this special privilege?"
Anybody that has formed a company and left stock to their kids.
Anybody that invested and left the investments to their kids.
Landlords.
The list can go on and on.
Being an author is different than most jobs. It is really a very high risk investment. You invest a lot of time and effort with little chance of even breaking even. Some authors get lucky and make a living from it and a very very few get super rick. Most are lucky to just get by. Those that make some money from that investment want their kids to benefit. While I agree that the current time copyright length is not a good thing the authors life + 50 years seems fair.
Think of it as a compromise. If the author had spent that year building a house instead of writing the book would you want to take that home away from his family? I mean it is the same argument. Why should someone's family continue to benefit from their work after their death? What is the difference between spending a year writing a book or a year spent building a home that they can rent for income?
But for the most part your statement is not commonsense, it is justification. You want free stuff. It is simple greed on your part. You want something without working for it.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
You've got it completely backwards.
A 100% estate tax would be extremely regressive against the less well-off, quite unfair, and certainly unequal.
In case A, I am wealthy. I have more money than I could spend in 100 lifetimes. My coat tails could extend for generations. Faced with a 100% estate tax, I simply give a large amount of my money to family and friends before I die.
Since I can afford the best lawyers and accountants, I likely end up with close to nothing left of my personal fortune when I die. In fact, I've given everything away and live in a house owned by my children when I die.
Death tax paid as percentage of my total net worth at its peak: roughly 0%.
Case B, I am poor. I have a job, but essentially live paycheck-to-paycheck. What little I have, I'd like to pass down to my children before I die.
But most of the net worth is tied up in my house. I am lucky to have a place to live, but I could never give my house away. The gift taxes would be more than I (or my children) could afford without selling the house first.
When I die, my house goes to the state to be auctioned.
Death tax paid as percentage of my total net worth at its peak: roughly 100%.
How is that fair and equal???????????
So, you would also propose that if someone steals from you, they should just have to return the items or pay the going rate for said items and not be fined or sent to jail, right?