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Modernizing the Copyright Office

Posted by samzenpus on from the to-the-future dept.

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.

6 of 49 comments (clear)

  1. Pfft! by fustakrakich · · Score: 2

    Just roll it back to its original 17 years. I want my Steamboat Willie!

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    1. Re:Pfft! by Anon-Admin · · Score: 4, Informative

      Roll it to 17 years, with no renewal.
      Toss the automatic copyright and go back to requiring registration to get the copyright.
      Require all software applying for copyright protection include all source code!
      When copyright runs out on software, it is the source code and the compiled work that gets released to the Public Domain.
      Take anything over 25 years old and make it public domain.
      Require any court cases dealing with violation of copyright to have the plaintiff pay all legal fees should the case be found for the diffident.

    2. Re:Pfft! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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?

    3. Re:Pfft! by fustakrakich · · Score: 2

      Require any court cases dealing with violation of copyright to have the plaintiff pay all legal fees should the case be found for the diffident.

      Whoops! That no. The little guys would get screwed by that in a hurry. Deep pockets would win that every time.

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  2. Re:time for Trans-Pacific Partnership changes by Intrepid+imaginaut · · Score: 2

    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?

  3. Re:time for Trans-Pacific Partnership changes by Intrepid+imaginaut · · Score: 2

    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?