Kahle vs Ashcroft: Copyright Battle Continues 390
Robotech_Master writes "People may remember librarian Brewster Kahle as the man behind Archive.org's Wayback Machine and the Internet Bookmobile. He was one of the big supporters of Eldred in the Eldred vs Ashcroft case. Well, he's at it again. A new lawsuit, Kahle vs Ashcroft, has been filed as of March 22nd. Lawrence Lessig comments on this case in his blog." Question number 3 of the FAQ explains that while the Eldred case challenged the length of copyright expansion, this case challenges the breadth.
Hasn't this already been settled? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hasn't this already been settled? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hasn't this already been settled? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because you can't find it easily doesn't mean that it should be free for the taking.
Re:Hasn't this already been settled? (Score:5, Informative)
"Abandonware" would be a copyrighted work that was not renewed.
Re:Hasn't this already been settled? (Score:3, Interesting)
Just to clarify: The Constitution provides Congress the authority to legislate copyright into existence:
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries
The form of copyright restrictions that you mention were authorized by Congress through various laws down through the last 200 or so years of history ... they are not present in the Constitution itself.
Re:Hasn't this already been settled? (Score:5, Interesting)
- If the author doesn't want the work released, he should have the right to keep it that way.
THE HELL HE DOES.That line of thinking has caused thousands of hours of vintage TV programming to be lost forever.
If you can't legally buy it, you should be able to freely trade it around.
Besides, since everything is supposed to end up in the public domain eventually, what better way to preserve something?
You forget that copyright is not meant to solely benefit the copyright holder, and noone else.
Amiga Unix is now being spread around the net thanks to someone who had a tape of it and had the forethought to back it up before it degrades. The source code was already lost long ago, so if this were lost, there would be no existence of Amiga Unix at all. And it's said that AMIX is one of the better implementations of it's time, I believe. With your line of reasoning, AMIX would be lost.
Abandonware could be set at, say, 15 or 20 years. More than plenty to let something sit around. And if it can be legally acquired (not used, brand new), then copyright protection is fine. But something like this literally allows someone to destroy a part of history, intentionally or otherwise. And that should be prevented above all, because what good is it if the future generations can't benefit from it?
Re:Hasn't this already been settled? (Score:2, Funny)
If you can't legally buy it, you should be able to freely trade it around.
That's right! Where is my free weed?
Re:Hasn't this already been settled? (Score:5, Interesting)
An example closer to home: 20 years ago I wrote the original CoSy software used by, among others, the BIX conferencing system. The original copyright was held by University of Guelph, they later sold (some?) rights to a company called SoftWords. When BIX eventually closed up shop, a number of Bixen wanted to keep up the community on their own CoSy system. SoftWords hadn't been selling the software in some years, but an appeal to both U of G and SoftWords got them to agree to release CoSy under the GPL.
Problem was, neither of them had a readily available copy of the source nor were they inclined to spend much effort digging for it.
Fortunately, I still had a copy (ancient but readable), and the project lives on on Sourceforge. (The "son of BIX" lives on as Noise Level Zero, nlzero.com).
But what if Softwords had gone out of business, the assets dissipated and nobody even knew who had the rights to the software anymore? (Hmm, sounds a bit like Unix in some ways). That's certainly abandonware, but under the current law it wouldn't be public domain for another 75 or so years.
Re:Hasn't this already been settled? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hasn't this already been settled? (Score:3, Insightful)
Honestly, how much money should you be allowed to rake in from something. If you can't profit from it in TWENTY YEARS, do you honestly think it is worth anything. How many publishers or movie distributors are going to see the latest novel/film
Re:Hasn't this already been settled? (Score:5, Insightful)
Answer honestly. Do you believe that this is true, that an original content creator has perpetual rights to control the use of his work?
If so, congratulations, you believe in the European model of copyright, where it is an inherent right of a person.
In the US, however, copyright is not an inherent right. Instead, public domain is the inherent right, and the constitution grants a limited monopoly on creative works ONLY so that the public domain is improved. Thus, in the US, once an author/creator/etc. chooses to write down and release a work, he or she has given up perpetual control of that work. The constitution demands that, after a limited monopoly, the public domain shall inherit the work.
Frankly, I agree with the constitution. Some things belong to humanity, not to the greed or whims of those in control. The sum body of human creativity is one of them.
Re:Hasn't this already been settled? (Score:2)
The author has every right to prevent his work from being released during the copyright period. However, you do have the right to make a copy for backup, shifting, etc.
But the author should not be prevented from maintaining a right to his own work during his lifetime. I'm not sure that I agree with the "so many years after his lifetime" part of our current law.
If I create a work for personal benefit, and then others benefit but I do not - then copyright has failed. I simply
Re:Hasn't this already been settled? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, the author is allowed to put their works away in a vault with a bomb on a timer that will go off at some point in the future.
While there are criminal and civil statutes surrounding copyright now, copyright has been more of a social contract than anything else. This social contract says basically "Sure, you can control the creative expression of the idea for
Re:Hasn't this already been settled? (Score:3, Insightful)
SydShamino has his finger on the pulse. He's pretty accurate. In fact, SydShamino, would it be OK to copy a sentence or two from your post for the Respect The Public Domain Web site? I'd probably put some of the text from your fourth paragraph onto the following page:
http://www.respectthepublicdomain.org/what.html [respectthe...domain.org]
I think your wording is more succinct and accurate than mine.
Re:Hasn't this already been settled? (Score:2)
The copyright holder often stops distributing the work before the copyright term is up. I don't have statistics, but it seems logical to assume that in the vast majority of these cases that happens because the work stops being profitable; therefore, in those cases, the fact that the work is being distributed by someone else is not hurting the copyright holder's profit at that point. The copyright term can be cut short here without curtailing (and indeed, enhancing) the principle behind finite copyright ter
Re:Hasn't this already been settled? (Score:3, Insightful)
Often Disney stops production of a video title and lets the market go without new copies for seven or so years then re-releases it. I think under the idea of abandonware, it has been abandoned for seven years.
Re:Hasn't this already been settled? (Score:2)
I realize that, which is why there would subsequently need to be a legal definition of abandonware (well, it would actually be a definition of !abandonware) as many people have pointed out. However, this type of legal decision would put the onus on Disney in this case to renew their copyright by making sure their stuff fits the !abandonware definition, whatever that requires on their part. That way, if a company really does abandon the product, it will automatically lapse into abandonware status and won't b
"If the author doesn't want the work released" (Score:2, Interesting)
I agree that difficulty of access does not make it permissible to use without authorization, but see little value in restricting access to works where the author doesn't care. Requiring th
Re:Hasn't this already been settled? (Score:2, Insightful)
With copyright terms "protecting" works for longer than their recorded medium can hold them, we are faced with a very real danger of our history, culture and knowledge disappearing.
If you want to live in the dark ages, find a cave somewhere. Me, I kinda like some things about the 21st century.
Ok, I'll Clarify (Score:2)
If an author wants to protect his work, he should. But only in the interest of him protecting his work and ability to profit from it reasonably. He should be able to extend it to a period if he chooses. But that would require registration. If an author wishes to protect it for a period (say, 20 years)
Re:Ok, I'll Clarify (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is, tracking down the authors (or, rather, their rights-holders) can be an impossible task for just one work. And what if all of the survivors of the author don't know which one of them has the rights? Or even if any of them have the rights?
What if even the records of who owns the rights have been lost? It's almost a self-referential problem...in the era before computers, not only works but the legal documents about the works were stored as paper. And paper can get misplaced, or eaten by insects, or destroyed in fires, floods, etc. What happens to a work that there is no way even to find out who owns it anymore?
Multiply that by the tens or hundreds of thousands of works out there that are lying fallow, and you begin to see that it's not just "a lot of work." It's an immense, totally impossible amount of work. It's akin to the Augean Stables of Greek myth.
Thus, just as Hercules creatively rerouted a river through those stables to clean them out, Kahle and the co-plaintiffs are hoping to make the problem of finding the rights-holders for abandoned works irrelevant.
They're not even talking about stuff that people are still publishing and making money off of. If they're doing that, then they know who the rights holders are, and the rights holders care enough about the stuff to keep it available. They're talking about the stuff that's lying fallow and not benefiting anybody.
To me, this seems like a pretty good compromise between the Mickey Mouse contingent and the Information Wants to Be Free contingent, if it goes through. Let Disney keep Mickey...let people who care about their works keep them. But let us have the stuff that nobody else wants anymore.
I'm sure that there will be some sort of well-reasoned and fair mechanism for determining what's been abandoned and what hasn't. I don't think it'll be arbitrary. I do think that it will do us a world of good to make sure this information does not get lost.
Re:Hasn't this already been settled? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are no longer making that idea available, then what exactly are the people gaining from your artificial monopoly? What are you gaining? Nothing. The reason for the monopoly is no longer valid.
If you don't want a work published, the solution is simple: Don't publish. If you have published it, but later decided you didn't want to... Well, it's too late, in any event.
Copyright is a bargain between the public and authors. When the public is not benefitting from the bargain, then it should be reevaluated. When neither side is benefitting, then the bargain should be abandoned.
Actually, it does (Score:5, Insightful)
Notice, however, that it is quite clear about the reasoning. It is to promote progress, in other words, to make sure the work is distributed. Also notice it is clear about the limited times, in that the author can only have control for a while, then it belogns to everyone.
So it's clear that it is unconstutional to use copright to try and maintain control forever and not share with anyone.
Re:Hasn't this already been settled? (Score:3, Insightful)
> I believe that a person should be able to profit from their own work. Even if that work is "intellectual property."
> Some people believe that such property is actually owned by everyone - not just the creator of that work. That means that others can profit from someone else's work.
It's easy to look correct when you only offer extreme options. The vast majority of us are between these two visions. We believe that yes, someone should be
Creative Commons (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Creative Commons (Score:3, Informative)
Creative Commons licenses can apply to a lot more than just music. They are currently used with writings, visual arts, photography, film/theatre, music, research, and more, and could potentially apply to anything that a copyright can.
Dear Mr. Ashcroft (Score:5, Funny)
Yours in Evil,
Dr. Freidrich E. DeSpayr, MD, Ph.D, Ev.D
Chairman and Chief Evil Officer, World Domination LLC
Re:Dear Mr. Ashcroft (Score:2, Offtopic)
Lord Seismodeus
Marketing Director, World Domination LLC
Re:Dear Mr. Ashcroft (Score:4, Informative)
He also has daily prayer sessions with his staff. Regardless of their faith.
There are also stories of him asking judges to annoint him with oil when he got into a new position... weird stuff. He's just an all around nut.
Re:Dear Mr. Ashcroft (Score:2)
Also I am sure the prayer session are voluntary if he has them and it is nice to see that he does not exclude others, would you rather there be a Chrisitan only prayer group?
Know way does he ask judges to annoint him with oil, there maybe stories of him doing this but then there are stories of Hillary Clinton channeling Ghandi on the White House roof and I don't believe those either...
Re:Dear Mr. Ashcroft (Score:2)
It's in his book. They used Crisco [disinfo.com].
Re:Dear Mr. Ashcroft (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Dear Mr. Ashcroft (Score:5, Insightful)
I would take fault with anyone who looks at a statue of justice and sees nakedness.
"So he should be forbidden from praying?"
On the job? Absolutely, unless he's doing it during his lunch break and in private.
Re:Dear Mr. Ashcroft (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure. Here ya go [bushpresident2004.com]. First paragraph under the heading "John Ashcroft the Attorney General."
Here's another [cnn.com]. And another [guardian.co.uk]. And another [kcstar.com]. Just look for "oil" on the page.
Pretty sweeping (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Pretty sweeping (Score:2)
Re:Pretty sweeping (Score:2)
Re:Pretty sweeping (Score:2)
What do you mean by "protection"? What does "win extra damages" mean? Do you have any links to back this up? This isn't very reassuring for me.
Re:Pretty sweeping (Score:3, Informative)
I think that all of the RIAA suits for file sharing are based on asking statutory, not actual, damages.
Re:Pretty sweeping (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Pretty sweeping (Score:2)
Re:Pretty sweeping (Score:2, Informative)
This isn't correct. According to item #2 of the FAQ [stanford.edu], if this lawsuit is succesful, mere "notice" would be insufficient, and instead we would be back to:
Re:Pretty sweeping (Score:3, Insightful)
Most open-source developers take their copyright for granted. One says that his/her code is GPL (or BSD or whatever) and *poof*, like magic, it is.
I don't know what is involved in registering for a copyright, but I'm sure it's harder than doing nothing.
These fears may be misplaced, but I'd like someone to address them.
Re:Pretty sweeping (Score:5, Interesting)
I was pleased to see:
Literary Works
Register your book, manuscript, online work, pamphlet, poetry, report, test, automated database, computer program, or other text.
then, on the next page as step 1 of Literary Works, "Computer programs and databases also are considered literary works." however following at link of examples i found
"Computer Programs
A "computer program" is a set of statements or instructions to be used directly or indirectly in a computer in order to bring about a certain result.
Copyright protection extends to all the copyrightable expression embodied in the computer program. Copyright protection is not available for ideas, program logic, algorithms, systems, methods, concepts, or layouts."
This lead me to a 4 page PDF File [copyright.gov]. It says what you need to submit and that it costs $30. It is a somewhat interesting read, but offers no explanation of what exactly is copyrightable if, as they previously said "Copyright protection is not available for ideas, program logic, algorithms, systems, methods, concepts, or layouts." That leaves me with nothing but comments, and *maybe* data structures. However data sctructures are nothing more than a layout of data in memory, or an idea encapsulating data layout.
I don't get it.
Re:Pretty sweeping (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, in the face of business process copyrights, that doesn't make much more sense.
Re:Pretty sweeping (Score:2)
This is all pretty interesting. I'm going to have to do some more fact finding, maybe find a lawyer, and go through the process to see what happens. US$30 isn't a whole lot to spend on a test run. Surely, it would probably cost a few hundred dollars for a consultation session with a lawyer though.
Re:Pretty sweeping (Score:4, Informative)
That is all it is saying about not being able to receive copyright protection for ideas and algorithms.
Re:Pretty sweeping (Score:3, Insightful)
I've created works that I have specifically registered with the copyright office. An example is the comic strip, below. I registered this work to protect myself from people reprinting the strip against my will for financial gain. For instance, I don't want to be browsing through a book in a bookstore and come across my strip printed there, and I want to have the ful
Re:Pretty sweeping (Score:2, Insightful)
In the case of your comic, twenty years from now you probably won't care
Re:Pretty sweeping (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Pretty sweeping (Score:3, Informative)
Thus, they are protected under the traditional system. He says "noticed" in the text.
"no copyright until you register" is completely different.
If someone choose to publish source code without putting a copyright notice of any sort in the code, then under the traditional system that code would immediately become public domain. If, however, they bothered with a "Copyright 2004 Syd Shamino. All rights reserved except those provided by the General Pub
Re:Pretty sweeping (Score:3, Insightful)
It also makes copyright an almost acceptable premise. To expect every idea to be "born copyrighted" is just a little too much. How greedy and lazy can one get? They want all this protection and don't want to put up ANY effort to apply for it. Talk about wanting a free lunch... If you want to have it and keep it, you should have to go out and get it and maintain it.
Comments are owned by the Poster. (Score:5, Insightful)
The abandonware issue is more substantial. A requirement that copyright be renewed for $1, or that it be deemed abandoned if nobody is available to offer the rights after a reasonable period of time, is more rational. Perhaps one of those evil "activist judges" will so find.
Re:Pretty sweeping (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Pretty sweeping (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, under the current rules, this text is copyrighted as soon as I hit the Submit button. However, I don't know whether I am the copyright holder. It's possible (and on
So I may be the copyright holder, or I may be a criminal engaged in copyright iinfringement. How can I know which I am? Right - I can't. There
Software is a special case (Score:3, Interesting)
When an author writes a book, it probably takes a significant amount of time, goes through an editorial process, and in the end is copyrighted as a completed work. There might be minor corrections later on, but the work is basically finished.
Software, on the other hand, evolves over time. The first version of something probably doesn't take that long to make, depending on the project. A
not radical at all (Score:3, Insightful)
With copyright, you get a government-guaranteed monopoly, backed and enforced by police and courts, paid for by tax payers, lasting decades. It seems entirely reasonable to ask you to at least affirmatively assert your copyright.
(Note that GPL stuff very definitely uses copyright as its base. Do you want to have to register every little release to have a valid GPL on it?)
Yes, of course--why wouldn't I
I'm torn on this issue... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not needing to register each work simply puts the burden on the "fair use" user. If they want to use my work, then I can grant them the rights to use it. But that doesn't mean that I give up copyrights.
If I am required to register my copyright, then I lose some of the ability to protect it.
As it stands, I am able to create a work and the copyright exists immediately. I can even register the copyright after an infringement takes place and win in a lawsuit.
Want to prove that you created the work on a certain date? Mail it to yourself and don't open it.
Re:I'm torn on this issue... (Score:2)
That's my feeling too. Those, who wish to put their work into public domain are welcome to do that -- Lessig's FAQ is somewhat misleading at that.
The case is about people, who don't care to indicate their intentions...
Re:I'm torn on this issue... (Score:2)
The "poor man's copyright" is a myth - it is not legally binding in a US Court of Law - info on how to legally copyright your work [copyright.gov].
Re:I'm torn on this issue... (Score:2)
The way in which copyright protection is secured is frequently misunderstood. No publication or registration or other action in the Copyright Office is required to secure copyright. (See following Note.) There are, however, certain definite advantages to registration. See "Copyright Registration."
Copyright is secured automatically when the work is created, and a work is "created" when it is fixed in a copy or phonorecord for the first time."
Mailing it to yourself is a way o
Re:I'm torn on this issue... (Score:2)
Re:I'm torn on this issue... (Score:2)
Re:I'm torn on this issue... (Score:3, Interesting)
Not needing to register each work simply puts the burden on the "fair use" user. If they want to use my work, then I can grant them the rights to use it. But that doesn't mean that I give up copyrights.
If I am required to register my copyright, then I lose some of the ability to protect it.
A few comments:
Hrm. (Score:3, Insightful)
"If they want to use my work, then I can grant them the rights to use it."
Only if they can find out that you are the copyright holder and if they can also find out how to contact you.
The problem that this is trying to address is the thousands of works that currently cannot legally be archived or utilized due to the near-prohibitive cost of trying to research who (if anyone) is the proper person to contact.
"If I am required to register my copyright, then I lose some
Re:I'm torn on this issue... (Score:3, Interesting)
You can bundle things and get the cost down to nothing.
Want to prove that you created the work on a certain date? Mail it to yourself and don't open it.
Courts will just laugh at that. After all, you can just send an unsealed envelope to yourself.
If you want to establish priority for an invention, you need to have it witnessed by someone who actually understands the invention. For copyright, it's not clear that that even helps, because...
If I am
Re:I'm torn on this issue... (Score:3, Interesting)
No, I want a way to discover that it's your work, and ask you if I can use it (possibly paying you a royalty). Under the current system, this information is usually impossible to find.
Case in point: I've sent letters to a number of music publishers saying that I have a tune in my mind, and I'd like to know if it's a tune that they own the copyright to. I ask them how I can discover if they own a particular tune.
So far, the answer from every one of them is that
I guess my age shows ..... (Score:4, Interesting)
People may remember librarian Brewster Kahle as the man behind Archive.org's Wayback Machine and the Internet Bookmobile.
I remember Brewster from when he developed WAIS ......
Re:I guess my age shows ..... (Score:5, Funny)
I remember Brewster from when he "inherited" thirty million dollars and had to spend it all in one month to get his real inheritance of 300 million dollars.
This could be bad IMO (Score:4, Interesting)
Berne convention (Score:5, Interesting)
Since authors are, largely, unlikely to care about the rights of people who want to derive from their works, couldn't a reinstatement of copyright registration for works within the United States theoretically drive authors to nominally publish their works in other nations (in order to get automatic protection as per the current U.S. system), and thus drive creativity out of the U.S.?
I don't know if this would occur in practice, and I'm not saying it's a good reason to maintain a flawed system, but it seems like something to think about if/when we design new copyright policy.
Re:Berne convention (Score:4, Interesting)
Ahhh, you missed the wording in the FAQ. The Berne convention says nothing about works from other member nations. It prohibits imposing formalities on works from authors from other member nations.
Changing where you publish from doesn't change your nationality, unless you stay to apply for citizenship, and then through direct action before the U.S. judicial system, revoke your own U.S. citizenship (If you don't formally revoke your citizenship in front of the U.S. judicial system, you will retain dual citizenship, even if that's in contradiction with the laws of your new country).
Finally, I think you overestimate the loss of author control this would bring about. Authors lived under a system of registration for literally hundreds of years before it just recently changed.
Re:Berne convention (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, that's not entirely true. While you are correct is saying that being naturalized by a foreign nation does no
Abandonware (Score:5, Interesting)
Would this case, if ruled in Kahle's favor, make abandonware legal?
People have been distributing old, abandoned software (mostly from the 1980s) on web sites for years, knowing that it is illegal but under the likely correct assumption that they are doing the publisher no harm whatsoever. I have never heard of any true abandonware resulting in legal action, but currently a company that holds the copyright for a program can go after someone distributing it online for free. It makes no difference if they still sell it, support it or even remember it exists.
Of course, there would have to be some kind of definition for what constitutes abandonware, but that would be the case with all other works as well so I'm confident they'll figure that part out. I hope Kahle wins this one, personally.
Re:Abandonware (Score:2)
This is why renewal should be mandatory. If you don't renew your IP every 5 years for instance, it should be considered abandoned and go to public domain, and no take backs.
Re:Abandonware (Score:4, Interesting)
I was absolutely dumbstruck that they would spend the time and money to search out and C&D me on such an inconsequential item, an 8 year old compiler. Even more ludicrous is that this compiler was released as open source not too long ago. It is possible that people whose code was not included in the open source release might not like it to be distributed without permission, but they claimed to be acting on behalf of Sybase. The people who open sourced Watcom in the first place!
I removed the file after an fruitless email exchange and several calls from my ISP. It's just not worth the bother to fight the copyright cops, no matter how illogical their actions are.
One small problem with logic here. (Score:3, Interesting)
> a freedom, it should be noted, that was granted by an author's voluntary decision not to register his work.
One can as easily reason that first of all, in the old situation, many people would not obtain a copyright simply due to lack of knowledge, means for registration etc.
In the new system an author can still take the voluntary decision to keep a work free by explicitly putting it in the public domain.
The FAQ argues that this makes life more difficult for people trying to preserve things in the digital domain, but that is soemthign that I believe can be addressed by fair use. The FAQ also claims that the new system does nothing to protect authors, but that is not true, it makes that authors can do waht they are best at, creating works.
The term of copyright, the unfair limitation of user rights, and fair use are the issues, not automatic copyright.
I don't see a problem here. (Score:3, Interesting)
The only solution I see is that if the author WANTS to grant rights to any or all, he must prove ownership beforehand. Otherwise, it's more of a hinderance than a help.
The upside is that owners of works who have not explicity copyrighted their material still have rights.
Then again, it may just be bunk.
The Million Permission Project (Score:2, Insightful)
In the event that they cannot convince Ashcroft, they could also start another project which would automate and simplify the process of obtaining this permission.
If anything, making it easier to access this type of information would be beneficial for both the authors and those in search of using th
Another Possible Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
This suit seeks to have the laws that implement the Berne Convention struck down as unconstitutional. However, my highly inexpert reading of the Constitution reveals that the Constitution and all treaties entered into by the US are the supreme law of the land. The Berne Convention is just such an international treaty. Thus, it would seem that the supremacy clause trumps any argument Lessig et al may bring before the court, since the terms of the Berne Convention enjoy equal footing with the Constitution.
Now, if the US enters into a treaty that is in direct opposition to the Constitution, which document wins? I have no idea if this issue in Constitutional law has ever been addressed.
Schwab
Re:Another Possible Problem (Score:3, Funny)
It would serve as a legally binding way of proving the country's congress is a band of drooling morons, as, in most civilized countries, such treaties signed by the executive must be approved by congress. (like, for example, Free Trade Agreements)
Re:Another Possible Problem (Score:3, Informative)
The Berne Convention is the most significant international treaty governing copyright, and it includes a provision prohibiting member states from imposing copyright formalities on the works of authors from other member states.
One way would be to re-impose formalities for all works of U.S. authors -- these are most works published in the U.S., and Berne doesn't prohibit signatory nations from imposing formalities on their own authors.
Re:Another Possible Problem (Score:5, Informative)
For example, you could have a treaty that directly imposed a tax on Americans, but since the Constitution requires that the House propose taxes, and treaties only involve the President and the Senate, that treaty is not going to have any force.
Unconstitional? (Score:5, Insightful)
"To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"
Notice how no execeptions are made for abandonware, shareware, vaporware, freeware or any other type. So now the question to ask seems to be what constitutes limited? My limited copyright time doesnt seem to equal Mickey Mouse's.
Jason
Argue About Stuff [arguecity.com]
Trying to overturn Berne? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not to mention, the Berne Convention [wikipedia.org] is a world-wide treaty (and well-liked by megacorps) that may as well be carved in an adamantium tablet. No way they'd be willing to disadvantage US content owners while foreign copyrights are being extended just as freely.
Re:Trying to overturn Berne? (Score:3, Informative)
No, no. The Fifth Circuit ruled for Veeck, and the Supreme Court let that stand. Veeck put a "copyrighted" building code on the Internet, and the Fifth Circuit ruled this was legal, whether the author of the code liked it or not.
Please MOD DOWN my previous post (Score:3, Informative)
I spent HOURS googling about Veeck a couple weeks ago, and somehow picked bad keywords every time. All of the search results referred to the original case, the three-judge appeal, and/or the certiorari, but never the full court ruling [google.com]. Damn page rot.
Thank you for the correction. It's a fucking wonderful ray of sunshine.
The Court doesn't like repeat challenges (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe they are right and the court is wrong on Eldred, but until a Democratic president can get in for another 8 years and Kennedy and Scalia get the boot, they won't win.
Re:The Court doesn't like repeat challenges (Score:3, Interesting)
but until a Democratic president can get in for another 8 years
Let's not forget that the last "Democratic" president sold us down the river by signing the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) and CTEA (Copyright Term Extension Act) into law. His name is Bill Clinton.
I consider the CTEA the more egregious of the two, as it is a complete handout to a few corporate interests with nothing given back to the public in return. But this seems to be congress' standard operating procedure (SOP) these days.
The
This would affect Open Source as well (Score:3, Insightful)
I can just see the legal tangle such a change would cause for Linux, et al. I also question how well such a change would work with the Berne Convention, since we're not talking about a novel here, written in one country, but a product written by hundreds of contributors from around the planet, both US and elsewhere. IANAL, but this looks like it would be a real mess, with no one winning but the lawyers.
Just curious (Score:5, Interesting)
Can anyone but the owner of a copyright sue you for copyright infringement? The reason I ask is because I'm thinking about this concept of saving abandoned art. If no one is left alive who provably owns a work, then who is going to sue you if you copy it? If nobody can be found who has legal standing, even if copying would be illegal, wouldn't it be not much of a legal risk to go ahead and copy the work?
What about a compromise? (Score:5, Interesting)
Hell, though this system you could even set different fees for different lengths of copyright (up to a max # of years). You have a piece of software? Set it's copyright for 25 years and save yourself 1/2 the fee. If it is still profitable at the end of the term, you can extend the copyright to the remainder of the term for the remainder of the fee. Granted, the fee may have gone up by then. You have a comicbook character that might be profitable the whole time? Copyright the whole time and pay the full fee.
But if the author does not think the work is worth taking the time to do a few hours of research over a period of 5 or 10 years, the work becomes public domain. And don't tell me that 10 hours of research, plus 1 hour to fill out forms for each piece of work is excessive. This is spread over a few years after all. How many people are going to create nothing but profitable works?
Just my 2 cents.
Synopsis of the issue (Score:3, Interesting)
Copyright is now automatic and mandatory. You, as the creator of a work, cannot voluntarily put it into the public domain. All that you can do is to license it with the most open and explicit license that you can think of. See Slashdot's Terms and Conditions [osdn.com] for an example of a licensing scheme that you've agreed to, whether you know it or not. Saying "this work is in the public domain" is not sufficient, as "public domain" has no meaning in law except for works for which copyright has expired.
If you think this isn't an issue, consider what happens if you unrestrictively license a body of work, and then step in front of a bus. The copyrights pass to your estate, and for the sake of argument, we'll say that's an Evil Nephew. Now, how sure are you that your license is "irrevocable and in perpetuity"? Are you absolutely sure that it's water-tight? Can the Evil Nephew revoke the license? Can he prevent people who currently have copies from making futher copies and passing them on?
It gets even worse where the intent and licensing is unclear. If a work doesn't bear a copyright claim, a clear license, or other identifying information, how do you even know whether you're allowed to copy it? The creator, or his Evil Nephew, could turn up any day and sue you for reproducing their work. It's safer not to duplicate and distribute at all, and that is very much not what copyright law was intended to do. It was intended to encourage dissemination of work. Implicit mandatory copyrights creates a culture that strangles the public domain.
The core of Kahle vs Ashcroft is that copyrights should be something that you actively choose to claim. If you don't, for example, care what happens to your Slashdot postings, just don't put "(C) 2003 $YOUR_NAME" on them. It's pretty much as simple as that.
Re:Summary: burden authors to make his life easier (Score:5, Funny)
A lot of those authors are easy to track down. The problem is in getting 70+ year old corpses to sign legal forms.
Any law that requires raising the dead for the public good is bad law.
Re:Summary: burden authors to make his life easier (Score:5, Insightful)
That's precisely what "unconditional copyright" does. The author is expecting the gov't to automatically protect his work without any effort on the author's part. If the author wants protection, he should have to go out and "buy" it like anything else. Too many people looking for a fast buck on everything they utter. "Endless copyrights"..."automatic copyrights"... What next? Do you want the gov't to go through the trouble of thinking up the idea for you also?
Yet again: Where in the world is Joseph Gradecki? (Score:5, Informative)
My best example:
I have all of the back issues of PCVR magazine (a magazine put out from 1992-1994 relating to homebrew VR using the PC). I would like to republish and give away CDs or downloads of the articles, but to do so I either need to get each author's permission (then likely reset/retype/reformat the article), or contact the publisher. Both of these options have turned out to be dead ends:
First off, getting permission from each of the authors is nearly impossible: most authors didn't list contact information, the few that did either list compuserve or old AOL addresses, neither of which work anymore. The few that do list real email addresses, those addresses likely don't work either (its been 10+ years after all). To make matters worse, some of the articles were written by the publisher/editor himself!
To understand, the publisher/editor of the magazine started it literally in his home (likely in the kitchen or garage!) - the first few issues are photocopied and stapled. It was a real shoestring publication - more of a 'zine for VR than anything else. A great lot of the information presented in its pages has been lost to the community at large, which is a shame because it seems like every article about 3D this or that here on Slashdot, there are posts asking about how to buy or build an HMD for this FPS or whatnot, or other esoteric 3D hardware - and I would love to be able to point these people to the methods and devices already utilised, so that people don't need to reinvent the wheel (and hitting the same stumbling blocks that were already overcome). This is the information that I want to save.
However, I have been unable to contact the publisher: Joseph D. Gradecki. I won't go into any detail as to what I have done to try to locate him in the past (I have already posted that kind of information in long past articles). Let it suffice to say that he seems to have dropped off the face of the planet, or at least the internet. None of his last know address or phone number information checks out. His last publishers (he wrote a couple of more recent books in the late 90's) have no idea where he is (or if they do, they are not giving me any help, which is possible or likely). I don't have the money to hire a PI or anything.
This is one case where having up-to-date information about where the publisher or author was would help. Furthermore, if there was a small burden to keep the copyright up (like a small fee to be paid, as suggested), I have no doubt that most or all of the authors of these articles would have let them lapse into public-domain long ago...
Good news... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Summary: burden authors to make his life easier (Score:3, Insightful)
2. The plaintiff is specifically concerned with books that are no longer published but are still protected by copyright. Books tha
Orphan works (Score:4, Interesting)
Perhaps what we need is some sort of system that if a work has not been used commercially for x period of time, it should be deemed to have no commercial viability and be released to the public domain.
Re:What about retro appeal (Score:2)
Well, actually that's not exactly a great example, but it's something of interest to the topic at hand...