I looked into what the definitions are in California for "professionals". After consulting with a couple of lawers, I found out that it is poorly defined, but appears to cover "anything that you got a 4 year degree to do" and can be reasonably stretched to cover anyone with a degree who is making more than $24K a year.
Salaried employment is usually an excuse to use and abuse your employees.
Perhaps, since the issue is works being lost, we should push for a change to copyright that requires the copyright holder to maintain the work and keep it (reasonably) available. If they don't want to or can't continue to maintain it, it becomes public property. That way, they get their money, and the public gets it's heritage protected.
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Keeping in mind that I don't think this is a bad idea either-- We already fingerprint drivers, don't we?
I looked into what the definitions are in California for "professionals". After consulting with a couple of lawers, I found out that it is poorly defined, but appears to cover "anything that you got a 4 year degree to do" and can be reasonably stretched to cover anyone with a degree who is making more than $24K a year.
Salaried employment is usually an excuse to use and abuse your employees.
Perhaps, since the issue is works being lost, we should push for a change to copyright that requires the copyright holder to maintain the work and keep it (reasonably) available. If they don't want to or can't continue to maintain it, it becomes public property. That way, they get their money, and the public gets it's heritage protected.