Public Domain Enhancement Act reintroduced [LWN.net]

Public Domain Enhancement Act reintroduced

Posted May 24, 2005 19:01 UTC (Tue) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link]

I disagree with your assessment of the Mark Twain piece you link. Mark Twain write explicitly that he do not ask for 'unlimited copyright' (toward the end).

He dissent to the copyright extincting before the death of the author. This is not the same as 'perpetual' and does not address copyright hold by compagnies, which do not die and has different need.

Furthermore, M. Twain argument is essentially based on the fact that the profit is moved from the author to the publisher. In our information world, this is not a concern, since publishing is no more a priviledge.

In fact, there are several hints that M. Twain would reach a different conclusion in our time and age.

Public Domain Enhancement Act reintroduced

Posted May 24, 2005 19:28 UTC (Tue) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link]

He didn't ask for perpetual copyright in this particular hearing -- the bill he was testifying for was an extension of the "Limited Times". But perpetual was his ideal term.

When I appeared before that committee of the House of Lords the chairman asked me what limit I would propose. I said, "Perpetuity."

Twain is a rare counterexample to the generalization that middlepeople are for copyright extensions, and authors and audiences tend to agree on moderate terms.

Public Domain Enhancement Act reintroduced

Posted May 24, 2005 21:52 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

And he explained why.

What is the excuse? It is that the author who produced that book has had the profit of it long enough, and therefore the Government takes a profit which does not belong to it and generously gives it to the 88,000,000 of people. But it doesn't do anything of the kind. It merely takes the author's property, takes his children's bread, and gives the publisher double profit. He goes on publishing the book and as many of his confederates as choose to go into the conspiracy do so, and they rear families in affluence.

Today when copyright is lifted work is quite literally given to 88'000'000 people (and more). At least as far as digital copies are concerned. Since digital copy is perfect copy so you can not reap double profits - nobody will buy from you.

Public Domain Enhancement Act reintroduced

Posted May 25, 2005 7:28 UTC (Wed) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]

The European standard was "life plus 50 years". Unfortunately, the Germans then changed 50 to 70 because so many people died young in the world wars.

I would have thought saying "50 years or author's 100th birthday, whichever is longer" was a pretty good compromise. As for corporate works, maybe 50 or 75 years - WITH A RIDER! Basically the rider would say "if it's out of print, private copying is legal". You would have to show that (a) you made a reasonable attempt to obtain a legal copy, and (b) if a more recent edition is available commercially, you have to show that it was unacceptable for some reason.

Quite how you'd deal with price gouging, I'm not sure, but it shouldn't be hard to say that "charging more than the (inflation adjusted) original price is considered to be making the work non-available".

The other thing I'd like, is that the copyright claim should give a clear indication of how long copyright lasts! I'm finding this particularly with music, where I'm copying stuff dated in the 50s and 40s. Is it out of copyright or not? Without any knowledge about the composers and arrangers, it's very hard to tell...

Cheers,
Wol

Public Domain Enhancement Act reintroduced

Posted May 25, 2005 13:55 UTC (Wed) by sphealey (guest, #1028) [Link]

> What is the excuse? It is that the author who produced that book
> has had the profit of it long enough, and therefore the Government
> takes a profit which does not belong to it and generously gives it
> to the 88,000,000 of people.

Of course, it was the government in the Hobbesian sense that prevented the general public from just taking the work in the first place, as was done for the first 10,000 years of human history, by creating the concept of copyright, granting it, and then enforcing it against the citizenry for the agreed-upon term. Society's return on investment for that forebearance is that the author not complain when the work enters the public domain at the end of the term - otherwise, it would have entered the public domain the first time he published it.

sPh

Public Domain Enhancement Act reintroduced

Posted May 25, 2005 23:13 UTC (Wed) by XERC (guest, #14626) [Link]

I agree. But, there is a question, WHAT IS A
GOVERNMENT?

Governmet, that should be us, the cociety, and,
at least in eastern europe, it tends to be us, the
simple society. You know, each nation has the
government that it deserves, so, if the government
screws up, we've got nobody else to complain but
ourselves: why weren't we active enough to piecefully
enforce and cultivate(by lobbying, by
providing technical means that help to
enchance democracy, etc.) the kind of laws and understandings
that we like.

Public Domain Enhancement Act reintroduced

Posted May 25, 2005 23:24 UTC (Wed) by XERC (guest, #14626) [Link]

UUps, I forgot to mention. That's waht we're
exactly doing: some of us are developing new
forum related software, cooperating with
E-government project people, to
enchance and X(I don't know the term in english, but
it means: "to take in to use and to be used to using
it".) public discussion about politics and to turn
the debate between general public and the government
a daily and natural piece of our decideing process.

I'm sorry for the spelling mistakes. Currently I don't
have a spell checker available, as I use Knoppix 3.6
(and the Kate spell checker didn't work).

Public Domain Enhancement Act reintroduced

Posted May 24, 2005 22:34 UTC (Tue) by papik (guest, #15175) [Link]

It's an interesting article.

But I think that he is worring too much about his daughters. He says that someone that discover a coalmine can leave it to his descendant.
I say that a craftman that builds something exceptionally beatiful, can only sell his creation once, and his childs get something only if he managed well his earnings. Why are writers child different? What have they done to have such a special honor?

He blame on governement that copyrights are too short, although copyrights exist only because of governement (and not any governement). He thinks that copyrights and patents (ideas) are exactly like physical property. That is something I can not understand.
Well I can understand, but that will create an "intellectual feudalism", whith some lucky heirs who had smart parents. This heirs don't have to be smart, work hard etc like everyone else, they cannot lose in any way their privileges, they don't have to manage well their land, wealth or coalmine and worry about competition. There is the governement doing that for them.

He says that only an handful of books are still worth something after 42 years and I agree. But the other, who are the majority and are not valuable anymore, are nonetheway crippling any amelioretion anyone could do. You don't have to stand on the shoulder of giants to do something valuable, many times you stand on shorter people.

(I hope I explained my ideas in a comprehensible way)

Papik