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What Could Have Been In the Public Domain Today, But Isn't
SgtChaireBourne writes "Many works published in 1955 would have entered the public domain this year. Duke University's Center for the Study of the Public Domain has an overview of the movies, books, songs and historical works that are kept out of the public domain by changes to copyright law since 1978. Instead of seeing these enter the public domain in 2012, we will have to wait until 2051 before being able to use these works without restriction."
So... is the Study of the Public Domain itself in the public domain (through Creative Commons licencing), or is it copyright too?
"She's furniture with a pulse"
The Sonny Bono copyright extension act, and the DMCA are brought to you be the same greedy evil fucks that are now serving up SOPA / Protect IP.
Looks like the same Capitalism that ended Communism in the 90's will end Democracy in 2012!
It's for your protection.
Think of the children.
Ugh!
* Carthago Delenda Est *
By 2051 the Multinational corporate conglomerates that hold the rights will have paid the politicians and courts to extended it to 3051 or perpetuity. That is if we make it through 2012 first!
Silence is a state of mime.
U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8: "The Congress shall have Power 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; "
I believe in the benefits of copyrights. Most of my Web pages are copyrighted. However, the current state of intellectual law is unacceptable. Extending copyright coverage to 90 years (Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998) violates the concept of "limited Times". The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) stifles innovation instead of promoting it. And the primary beneficiaries of these laws are not "Authors and Inventors" but corporate publishers, movie studios, and record companies who reap the bounty of others' creativity. If you agree that this situation is intolerable, tell your representatives and senators in Congress.
I copied the above paragraph from one of my own copyrighted Web pages (with a slight modification in the second sentence). I hereby grant to the public the right to quote that paragraph at will, in all contexts, and in all media.
Say if you want to keep your copyright after X years pay X fee. That way Mickey Mouse can say out of the PD as long as the fee is payed. But other stuff and abandonware can go free. Also make it pre work or at least some way to stop places buying up lot's of old corporate conglomerates and clamming copyright to lot's of old works with out proof and may it that they have to use / offer the work for sale. The down side of copyrights is dead works and a copyright extension fee / or tax will help fix that.
If after say 30-40 years from the date of copyright, the material is no longer available for purchase to the common man (Easy to do via digital distribution for movies/songs/etc atleast), the copyright is declared invalid?
Are people being jealous of fat useless leach members of "estates"? Let them have their dubious castles and kitschy art collections at the expense of fools who still pay for this old crap.
Nothing of value was lost?
What about all of the old celluloid films which are disintegrating but can't be copied to preserve them because their copyright ownership is cloudy?
The problem isn't people who are actively profiting from old works. The problem is old works that are locked up to the benefit of none and the detriment of all.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Many folks call copyright (rather than copyright violations) "theft", but I'd go farther. Being a form of censorship, it is a crime against humanity.
A mere war against lives is limited in scope. With free dissemination of ideas, oppressive regimes don't last long -- note how the first thing they try is blocking communication among protesters and jailing of authors/journalists/etc who dare to voice something that opposes the regime in question. War on culture has effects that last forever. Books burned don't come back.
Imagine a guy in, say, 400BC, who took a spray^H^H^H^H^Hbucket of paint and wrote something on a wall. Like everyone else born during the next 2300 years, his life is gone. Yet a part of him lives on. Culture has the potential to last forever.
Copyright, by massively hampering culture, is the very worst thing we have.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Many folks call copyright (rather than copyright violations) "theft", but I'd go farther. Being a form of censorship, it is a crime against humanity.
I absolutely agreed with you regarding copyright law today. There is no reason to restrict works for nearly a century. It is a horrible abuse of power. And I also agree that even a much more limited copyright length (like the 14 years originally granted by the first U.S. act in 1790, with a possible 14 year extension) might need to be significantly reformed to deal with the new technologies today.
However, that's not the reason copyright existed originally. Look into the history. I mean the really early history, long before the Statute of Anne in 1709.
If you look at printing in the late 1400s and early 1500s, when copyrights were first granted, there was a real problem. Publishers at that time were really trying to disseminate knowledge for the first time in a big way. Before that, copying of books required actually scribes to write every copy, which was of course very expensive and time-consuming.
But around this time, many Italian scholars were rediscovering ancient works and coming up with their own works based on those models (and extending them), something commonly referred to as the Renaissance. This diffusion of knowledge was made possible in a large part by the publication of books. Translators worked hard to release editions of these ancient sources of knowledge, and publishers wanted to invest in a printing run.
But why should the translator and the publisher spend so much time and money when a month later a rival press could just take the text and republish it? The first copyrights were granted in Italian cities to promote the diffusion of knowledge: they encouraged authors and printers to take the time and make an investment to produce quality books. Yes, believe it or not, we have plenty of records stating that this was the purpose: rulers and councils in many Italian cities actually funded and promoted the culture of learning that was happening in the early Renaissance. And the terms generally lasted anywhere from a couple years to 10 years, only enough time for a publisher to sell off the stock from a first print run.
That's why copyright came into existence, and it may very well have contributed to the preservation of lots of knowledge from a time when publication was still such an expensive endeavor that high quality publications needed to be encouraged.
Granted, many evil things happened over the years since then. Rulers tried to suppress writings by only authorizing publication from certain publishers who wouldn't publish treasonous or seditious materials, etc. Those "copyrights" are hardly the same idea. But finally in 1709 in England, the Statute of Anne established a 7-year term for authors rather than publishers, and the idea was still to allow a short time to recoup the time and costs invested by someone writing a high-quality book.
Copyright is no longer like this. It is a travesty today. But until recent years, when reproduction costs became essentially nil for many types of media, it did serve a useful purpose. And in the early days, it truly helped disseminate important knowledge that arguably led to major historical advances.
1) Change state corporation law giving for profit limited liability to companies that have full personhood. The argument the supreme court uses for defending corporate personhood is that the constitution supports "the the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” So you allow people the right of free association so long as they do not hide under the shield of limited liability. One weird bit of law in all states is that you can not usually sue the owners of a company. The company yes, the owners, no. If I buy shares in MegaEvilChemCorp and one of their factories blows up and kills half a city the worst that can happen to me is that MegaEvilChemCorp could go bankrupt and I'm out what I paid for the stock. Even though I am an owner of MegaEvilChemCorp no one can sue me or put me in jail for the damages MegaEvilChemCorp may do even if they blow up or poison half a state. The result of this is that no large company would be an unlimited liability company and they would not have personhood rights.
2) Pass meaningful finance reform. $200 limit per person. Open up the books fully of any entity lobbying or campaigning. No PACS, no bundling, no "issue ads," no corporate or union money. (A union and corporate money ban needs to be bound together or it favors one side or the other).
3) Allow corporations to do the right thing. In most states if you run a company and do anything other than maximize profits you can get sued by any share holder. There is a movement to create corporations that are allowed to take other consideration into account beyond just short term economic gain such as the environment and their community. See http://www.bcorporation.net/ for more information. Very few companies are likely to do this in the near term, but lets at least allow the experiment for those who are interested in doing the right thing.