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2018 Is the Last Year of America's Public Domain Drought (vice.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Happy Public Domain Day, every-some of you! In New Zealand and Canada, published works by artists who died in 1967 -- Rene Magritte, Dorothy Parker, John Coltrane, and many others -- have entered the public domain; Kiwis and Canadians can now freely distribute, perform, and remix a wealth of painting, writing, and music. In Europe, work published by artists who died in 1947 are now public domain. In the United States, well, we get nothing for the 20th year in a row, with one more to go. Our public domain drought is nearly old enough to drink. American copyrights now stretch for 95 years. Since 1998, we've been frozen with a public domain that only applies to works from before 1923 (and government works). Jennifer Jenkins is a clinical professor of law at Duke Law School, which hosts the Center for the Study of the Public Domain. In an email she explained what changed and why nothing has entered American public domain for two decades. "Until 1978, the maximum copyright term was 56 years from the date of publication -- an initial term of 28 years, renewable for another 28 years," she wrote. "In 1998, Congress added 20 years to the copyright term, extending it to the author's lifetime plus 70 years, or 95 years after publication for corporate 'works made for hire.'"
And some wonder why there's so many who don't respect copyright.
The original deal was reneged upon and the public got nothing in return on each extension.
Came here to say this, though disagree with the hefty fee for renewal. The fee should not be high, the renewal should exist so that authors must express active interest in extending the copyright term for it to be extended, allowing authors not sufficiently concerned with doing so to drop their work into the public domain after 10 years by default. 20 years maximum, full stop. It's already 20 years for patents, I don't see any reason for copyrights to be different.
The original deal was reneged upon and the public got nothing in return on each extension.
Not exactly "nothing". The 1978 extension codified the fair use factors from case law into statute. The 1998 extension gave the owners of restaurants the right to play the radio or unmute the TV.
> Creators ought to be able to control their creations
No creator creates things entirely by themselves. Writers draw on the public domain for the language they use, and many of the plot themes for fiction. They have past inventors to thank for their tools, whether it be pencil and paper or laptops and text editors. It is only fair that if they draw from the goods society hands them to work with, they eventually give back to society so the next generation can build on their work.
Worse. Stuff that had *already entered the public domain* was RETROACTIVELY CLAWED BACK!
And suddenly, legislation will appear that will extend the Public Domain timeout period by another 20 or 50 years.
Watch and see if this doesn't happen before the end of the year.
There's a way to both extend copyright on some works and still let most things enter the public domain. If these copyrights are so valuable, why on earth is the US government extending them for free? That's insane. Here's a system that would let the very few people willing to extend their copyrights do so and yet make money for the government and let most stuff enter the public domain.
1) Current copyright law (so-called Bono Act) is retained.
2) Copyrights are not automatically extended beyond the Bono act terms. Owners must apply for an extension before the expiration. If they miss the application for any reason at all - too bad, so sad. The work goes into the public domain. This will eliminate the 2nd biggest problem with the Bono Act (the biggest problem is doing renewals for free) - not making people be responsible for their copyrights when a very small number of major failures (ie. It's A Wonderful Life) led to much crying and wailing by Hollywood.
3) Those who apply for an extension get one for 10 years. We could make it 5 if you like. The cost - $1 million per work. If you don't apply and pay the money, it goes into the public domain.
4) Every subsequent renewal costs 10 times what the previous one did. The 2nd renewal will cost $10 million. The 3rd will cost $100 million. The 4th will cost $1 billion. And so on. At some point even Disney will have to say "Enough is enough" on extending copyrights on things from the 1920s.
But I think he missed something important. I agree with Marx that laziness is not the problem, but I think he missed another important problem with his economics. The problem is that to implement Communism, you must demand that all individuals submit to a central authority and subsume themselves into a system. Some critics go so far as to say that such a system is inherently violent and repressive because it cannot tolerate individuals deviating from their assigned role in the system. Either way, the problem, as I see it, is that people are individuals and they don't just want to work and create, but they want to work and create in a way that expresses their individuality. To be forced to assimilate into a system in which they have no individuality is completely out of line with man's nature.
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