Public Domain Enhancement Act reintroduced

Public Domain Enhancement Act reintroduced

Posted May 25, 2005 7:28 UTC (Wed) by Wol (guest, #4433)
In reply to: Public Domain Enhancement Act reintroduced by khim
Parent article: Public Domain Enhancement Act reintroduced

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

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