Public Domain Enhancement Act petition 669
EricEldred writes "Please sign the petition and support the proposed Public Domain Enhancement Act. See eldred.cc for details. 'This statute would require
American copyright owners to pay a very low fee (for example, $1) fifty years after a copyrighted work was published. If the owner pays the fee, the
copyright will continue for whatever duration Congress sets. But if the copyright is not worth even $1 to the owner, then we believe the work should pass into the public domain.'" See the brief description of the Act if you aren't familiar with what Eldred and Lessig are proposing.
Re:Tacit approval (Score:5, Informative)
What's the point? (Score:3, Informative)
I fail to see the point of this legislation. Is it currently impossible to voluntarily move a copyrighted work into the public domain?
Re:I'm not sure how well that would work... (Score:1, Informative)
Just like mineral rights in some states (Score:5, Informative)
IANAL but I bought some land and found out that nugget along the way
Re:automate it (Score:3, Informative)
In copyright law, the author and the copyright holder are essentially the same thing.
You miss the point (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Infeasible (Score:5, Informative)
That's why you need a new law to change it.
"Copyright law, under the Berne Convention, grants copyright immedietly upon creation of the work. There is no regisration requirement. Requiring registration on the backend is nonsensical and the Copyright Office will be unable to validate existence of a valid copyright when granting the extension."
Right now you don't have to register a copyrighted work so how does the Copyright Office settle disputes? Like everyone else - evidence.
Copyright would still be granted immediately and last for 50 years. After that, you must pay $1 a year to keep that copyrighted work out of the public domain. I would suggest they not care about who pays the $1 to uphold the copyright. Any author who wants to release his work in the the public domain can, whether someone pays the $1 or not. A third party interested in purchasing the rights to something may want to keep it out of the public domain, but I think this would be a rare exception considering they'd still have to buy it from the author if the work is copyrighted.
Re:Infeasible (Score:4, Informative)
It would be enforceable where it was needed to be enforced.
The only time this law would matter is when a copyright holder is suing someone for using their copyrighted material. If the work was older than 50 years, and the author didn't pay the $1 in the 50th year, then they have no case because of this law. Right now the courts determine who has the copyright on works in these cases, so it can be done, and that wouldn't change.
RTFA (Score:2, Informative)
Remember them to change the FTAA also (Score:2, Informative)
Therefore, such a petition shoul also be forwarded to the FTAA negotiations.
Re:automate it (Score:3, Informative)
Possibly. 100% inheritance taxes were debated by the Founding Fathers, who wanted to ensure that the aristocracy of Europe were never transplanted to the United States. There's enough merit to the idea to at least discuss it periodically, to see if current inheritance tax levels are still appropriate.
I would say that whether or not nontrivial inheritances are a good idea probably depends on circumstances.
Should it be?
Quite Feasable (Score:5, Informative)
If you're willing to pay the fee, you can get more time, but the minimum term offered is not a violation of Berne.
Re:Tacit approval (Score:1, Informative)
The Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act only tacked on another 20 years to this minimum standard. Some may feel that this is too much, but that is a matter to take up with Congress. Knowing that that the proability of getting the duration of copyrights in the US minimal, I would focus on a different approach to get lawmaker's attention. Instead of only appealing to the moral ground of protecting the public domain, or "commons", it would behoove us to also project the increased revenue that the Copyright Office could generate for the government. During a fiscally tight economy, raising the maintenance fees looks to be quite lucrative. The public interest is preserved and the government gets more money from the people who would actually benefit from renewing their copyrights after all that time.
The thing to remember is that copyright is applied at the time of its first publication. Registration with the Copyright Office (http://www.loc.gov/copyright) is not required, and at present, maintenace fees are not either.
What we need is a scientific study investigating the optimal length of copyright protections in the US, and formulate a tax schema that capitalizes on this.
And at the same time, why don't we try to require that the full code for software must be included with the copyright registration application. Think of the loss to the public domain when the copyright on old software expires and we can only find compiled object code and only a few copies in the Copyright Office. That's just not right. Besides, it might even help induce a higher standard of code production when it is known that, at some point, other people will be able to see all the spagetti code underneath.
Just my thoughts...
Re:even worse... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:automate it (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Fifty years (Score:5, Informative)
If the SBCTEA weren't retroactive, Eldred, Lessig, et. al. wouldn't have had any grounds to bring Eldred v. Ashcroft to the Supreme Court.
Copyright is a social contract. When you publish something, you know how long the copyright term is going to be when you publish it (granted, this law changes it a bit.) You know when it's going to expire. That's the bargain you make.