Copyright dream
p2p news view / p2pnet: An article by Andy Peters for the Fulton County Daily Report includes this:
That the copyright remains with the King family is problematic, Garrow said. Scholarly researchers have had difficulty obtaining permission from the King estate to quote from the papers.
Further, although Morehouse will store the King papers, Garrow predicted the King family still will require scholars to obtain authorization and compensation to quote King’s words.
“The behavior of the King estate over the last 10 years has created a climate of fear and intimidation among people interested in quoting King’s words,” Garrow said. “The language [that was distributed by Sotheby's before the aborted auction] makes it explicitly clear that no quotations can be published without permission.”
This is a reminder of the need to clarify and reducing the term of copyright.
The commercial value of creativity can be collected far more quickly than was possible in the past, and the ability of society to build upon the past is far more enhanced.
I’m told the vast majority of works under copyright are currently “out of print” in an age when such a concept should no longer exist.
But I have a dream, too: that copyright worldwide will return to something as simple as a five-year term, renewable by the creators or their heirs (not previous copyright holders) a maximum of four times (20 years), requiring full registration, starting from the date of recording (for photographs, video, sound), from the date of first publication for published works, or from the death of the creator for unpublished works.
[Note: Currently the works of Martin Luther King Jr will enter the Canadian public domain in 2018, a full 20 years before the United States.]
Russell McOrmond – p2pnet contributing editor
[McOrmond is an independent author (software and non-software) who uses modern business models and licensing (Free/Libre and Open Source Software, Creative Commons). He's also the CLUE policy coordinator.]
July 1st, 2006 at 5:00 pm
This is a reminder that some abuse existing copyright to their own benefit. Maybe we should be focusing on the how to fix that since changing the time limits isn’t going to stop abuse of the system.
July 1st, 2006 at 5:45 pm
Nice work, Russel, but let me comment.
“But I have a dream, too: that copyright worldwide will return to something as simple as a five-year term, renewable by the creators or their heirs (not previous copyright holders) a maximum of four times (20 years), requiring full registration, starting from the date of recording (for photographs, video, sound), from the date of first publication for published works, or from the death of the creator for unpublished works.”
I wrote this on another post:
Copyright has one purpose: Create an incentive for creators, and this is THE MORE IMPORTANT PART, so that the public has access to more works made by the creators.
If the purpose were not to include THE MORE IMPORTANT PART, “so that the public has access to more works made by the creators” then the purpose would make no sense at all.
Assuming the stated purpose of copyright (protection) is true, then we must apply statistics to determine how THE MORE IMPORTANT PART is maximized.
Let’s take the five year copyright period suggested by Russel. Thatwould be just right if THE MORE IMPORTANT PART (MIP) is maximized at years, as shown in the chart below, where x’s represent the amout of works of creators that are enjoyed by the public.
x
M x x
I x x x
P x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x x x x
x x x x x x x x x x
years 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Copyright Duration
(hope the chart comes out right)
I do not have the data to determine how many years of copyright protection will optimize THE MORE IMPORTANT PART. I do have a hunch that it is not the absurd number of years of present copyright duration that publishers have obtained through their lobby efforts. I also have a hunch that different cultures may need a different copyright duration. Some cultures may not even have a use for copyrights, and these should decode for themselves what thet need to do.
Considering the huge cost of copyrights and copyright enforcement to the economy and the great damage that the current copyright duration does to culture, education, history and science, perhaps someone will do the right statistical study to determine the proper duration of copyright protection to maximize THE MORE IMPORTANT PART of copyright. Just a suggestion.
Rafael Venegas
http://www,gvenegas.com
July 1st, 2006 at 8:30 pm
If copywright laws had not been turned into the black sludge it is, just think what the common pool would look like, a large part of the problems we have now would never have happened. The major players would be contibuting to the common good of this country, instead the current laws makes parasites out of copyright holders, no DRM on the commons, reset copywright to default like the founders fathers had it. I believe the time frame was described as limited. In short: 1710 act established the principles of authors’ ownership of copyright and a fixed term of protection of copyrighted works (fourteen years, and renewable for fourteen more if the author was alive upon expiration). The statute prevented a monopoly on the part of the booksellers and created a “public domain” for literature by limiting terms of copyright and by ensuring that once a work was purchased the copyright owner no longer had control over its use. or publisher. )
These people had the forsite to see what was coming, our goverment set there and let this happen, I think the focus of all the sites should includ the revision of copywright law to resemble the original document