Slashdot Mirror
Modernizing the Copyright Office
An anonymous reader writes: Joshua Simmons has written a new article discussing the growing consensus that it is time to modernize the Copyright Office. It reviews the developments that led to the last major revision of the Copyright Act; discusses Congress's focus since 1976 on narrower copyright bills, rather than a wholesale revision of U.S. copyright law, and the developments that have led to the review hearings; and considers the growing focus on Copyright Office modernization.
Roll it back to 60 years after the publication date, with no provision for the life of the author, which is somewhat less generous to authors than the original Copyright Act of 1976. As a practical matter (in order to pass Congress) there would have to be a transition period of about 10 years to give owners of works that are losing protection a last chance to make gobs of money from their properties.
At the risk of sounding like Bill Gates, 60 years ought to be enough for anybody. (Without the transition period mentioned above, all works created in the USA before 1955 would now be in the public domain; works created in 1955 would be entering public domain this year). This is admittedly conservative for music recordings, but not so conservative for works of literature (e.g. novels).
Computer software is a tricky case: what happens when IBM loses copyright protection on the original OS/360? What does that even mean, in practical terms? Would they have to release the source code?