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House Judiciary Chairman Plans Comprehensive Review of US Copyright Law
SEWilco writes in with news that U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte plans on conducting "...a comprehensive review of US copyright law over the coming months.""In a speech given in celebration of World Intellectual Property Day at the Library of Congress today, Goodlatte mentioned a few examples of the sorts of problems that he hopes to address in such a review: 'The Internet has enabled copyright owners to make available their works to consumers around the world, but has also enabled others to do so without any compensation for copyright owners. Efforts to digitize our history so that all have access to it face questions about copyright ownership by those who are hard, if not impossible, to locate. There are concerns about statutory license and damage mechanisms. Federal judges are forced to make decisions using laws that are difficult to apply today. Even the Copyright Office itself faces challenges in meeting the growing needs of its customers - the American public.'"
I think that there need to be a few things which should be added to copyright law:
1. If you aren't making it commercially available it reverts to public domain.
(for a most 2x more than the average for the same mediatype. ie: $100,000 per copy shouldn't be considered making available. So a movie cannot be sold for more than $50 and still be considered available)
2. All copyrights must be registered, and rights must be defined by law and cannot be subdivided. The copyrights must be identifed as sold/transferred to a specific person. If the registry isn't updated within 5 years of the death of the person in the registry, it reverts to the public domain.
(To avoid issues where Bob Author died, and his estate was divided equally among 10 children who then sold portions of odd bits of rights to different corporations in 10 different countries which were then subdivided 100 different ways again.)
3. Property tax must be paid on IP.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
You're on to the idea, but not quite there.
1) Shorten the term. It should be about 5 years. The first term is automatic and free. Subsequent terms require copyright-holder registration.
2) Require payment for the extension based on revenue generated in the current term. A copyright tax, essentially. And the amount of revenue should be worldwide gross, not local, not net, and certainly not open to loopholes and interpretation like other tax codes. The rate applied to it should be a flat percentage.
3) Do not limit extensions.
4) If you miss the extension deadline by even a day, it's public domain. No exceptions.
5) Public domain is permanent and irrevocable. No exceptions.
6) All transfers must be registered. A one-time filing fee may be charged. This does NOT reset the clock on the current term. Transfers during the first term are free, except for the filing fee.
7) Copyrights cannot be registered to non-entities (e.g. companies that went out of business) or foreign entities (e.g. foreign copyright havens) and retain copyright protection. This means that to retain a copyright in the US, a foreign entity must set up a local shell corporation to hold copyrights for them. Unregistered copyrights go to the public domain after the first term.
That gives everyone what they want. Disney can keep Mickey locked up for a million years, as long as they don't run out of money. Abandonware is public domain within a term length. No more abandonware that doesn't have an identifiable owner. And no more congressional shenanigans due to treaty pressure pulling stuff into an undefined foreign copyright term after it's been in the public domain.