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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.
Just roll it back to its original 17 years. I want my Steamboat Willie!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
They should take into account that copyright is assigned automatically under the Berne Convention and any registration functions the Copyright Office performs are redundant. Even in cases of legal dispute, the first person to have registered the copyright on a particular work might not have been the first person to actually create it, so it's of limited value there too.
Underfunded, antiquated infrastructure, politicized bureaucracy. Yea, that's something everyone can agree needs to be fixed. Wait, what part of the executive branch are we talking about?
This is just some PR flack's attempt to pretend there is grassroots support for the letting the TPP gut what few copyright protections the U.S. still has left that favor the independent inventor over corporate behemoths.
I think you might be confusing patents with copyrights there buddy, they're a very different animal.
And I mean the other side of the debate is that long term ownership of particular copyrighted works stops exactly nobody from creating their own copyrighted works. This comment for example, is owned by me, copyright is automatically assigned. There's even some boilerplate above stating exactly as much. My comment may have zero financial value but I can still claim the same remedies as Disney should someone infringe on it. How is that hurting the small artist?
The copyright office in the U.S. recently raised its prices for copyright registration enormously. If you submit 2 short articles, that is a now called a "compilation", and the price is raised from $35 to $55, even though the total may be only 2 or 3 pages.
Also, the U.S. Copyright Office takes months to respond, makes frequent mistakes, and has a web site that is in some ways poorly written.
Can you recommend a copyright office in another country?
That makes it a derivative work
No, and this is well established in copyright law. You can write a story with elves, orcs, goblins, trolls and so on and the Tokien estate can't come after you. Many have. In fact there's a whole movie sub-industry that is built on skirting as close to legal infringement as possible, and it's not going anywhere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Further the person who takes a photograph of a famous painting owns copyright on that photograph. The creator of an audiobook owns copyrights on that audiobook, although if made without permission the writer may have grounds to pursue for damages. http://www.mediamusicnow.co.uk...
Then there's the problem of orphan works. If in 10 years your there is suddenly a demand for reproductions of your post and Intrepid imaginaut can't be located, how does keeping it locked up benefit either you or the potential audience for your work?
Well no system is perfect. I support creative people who put their work into the public domain and condemn things like criminal sentencing for non-profit sharing, and especially attempts to extend the meaning of "derivative", but I'm not seeing any reduction in artistic endeavours over the last few decades. Quite the opposite.
Instead we're moving slowly but surely towards a regime of unending copyrights with no public domain.
Again though, does that hinder or inspire creativity?
Folks: the Copyright Office has no enforcement powers. All it is is a repository for registrations of claims of copyrights. Modernizing the copyright office is like modernizing the drivers license division of a state: it doesn't affect who is allowed to drive (assuming that it performs competently either way.) It is not the DL division that enforces the driving laws, it is the police and the courts. Same thing for the Copyright Office; a registration improves a plaintiff's claim, but that claim still has to be made in federal court.
The author of that article (Mr. Simmons) summarizes together a lot of past and suggested reforms. Why he does that I don't know, for restructuring and/or refinancing the Copyright Office won't change the law nor change anyone's rights.
Finally, those of you who promote shortening the copyright period of works in existence: get over it, it ain't a-gonna change. The takings clause of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution would require that everyone who had a shortened copyright would have to be compensated justly, and that would clog up the courts beyond imagination. Congress may be foolish sometimes, but it ain't that stupid! Now if you want to talk about shortening the term of copyrights that originate in the future, that's different...
Copyright needs to expire much earlier. Whoever creates content should have her or his creative investment protected, but that's it. Not their heirs and the heirs of their heirs or some company that exists only as a PO box in the Bermudas who holds copyrights for gazillion things and employs an army of sleazy lawyers. And while we are at it, have patents expire much earlier as well. It works for healthcare, after a few years of cashing in generics are allowed and drive down the price.