Lessig Mobilizes Copyright Reform
from the will-it-work? dept
While I saw Larry Lessig's original petition to change copyright law on Monday when he launched it, I haven't signed it yet, and I'm still debating if it's worth it. However, ZDNet is now running an interview with Lessig about why he decided to do this, and where he plans to go with it. Lessig basically admits that he's not sure what to do with it - this was mostly an experiment to see what would happen. My main issue is that this petition doesn't have an informed debate behind it. I'd be more interested in signing it, if I got the full story (including reasons why some people don't like it). As it stands, it's become something of an "in-crowd" thing to sign - without really understanding the consequences. It sounds good on the face, and I probably do agree with the plan, but I don't feel comfortable signing something without hearing the full debate on the issue. Furthermore, I still wonder how much attention any politician will pay to a bunch of geeks online signing a petition. Politicians have shown a willingness to ignore the "online community" before.
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Crisis of Culture
Now, something like a photo-op "declaration of copy independence" presented on Capitol Hill, signed by Lessig, Eldred, O'Reilly, some like-minded authors and singers, that might speak to the leadership in a meaningful way. Enact skit plays from the Brothers Grimm and other fables, upon which the Disney Empire owes its very lucrative existence. Visually demonstrate Jefferson's "light my taper from yours" theory of sharing ideas, candle to candle, long into the evening. Drive home the timelessness of the argument and the timeliness of combating this crisis of culture.
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No Subject Given
If you would like to see a debate on the issue, just read the Eldred v. Ashcroft rulings. There are multiple dissenting opinions written by the justices which show how they see the issue in terms of the Constitution.
This is not an issue where you can complain about a lack of information - yes the public and most politicians are uninformed and yes it's not something you see openly debated or talked about enough, but there's loads of excellent information out there.
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Re: No Subject Given
As far as whether they would need to contact the copyright holders for renewal no way. If you want to continue to receive the benefit of monopoly on your IP, you need to recognize when it will be up for renewal and take the steps to get it renewed. Considering trademark holders are required to actively defend their trademark in order to continue to receive protection, adding this to copyright is not at all excessive. In fact, to be perfectly honest, I still love the idea of a renewal fee that requires active renewal and a renewal fee that doubles every time--say at 5 years, it's a dollar, 10 years $2 and so on. So if my math is right, by year 95 that's $262,144 and just over $500,0000 at 100 years. The reason I think this makes sense is that the cost to the public domain due of a work plus any derivitive works is cumulative. It ends up being so heavily backloaded that early years are very cheap - 25 years of protection for $31, 50 years for a grand. By being so cheap early and scaling up, emphasis is placed on the creation of ideas which should actually "promote the useful arts & science" which was the original intent of the Constitution. Not to mention, if you're still renewing well after 50 years, it means you're still making enough off of it to cover it so you should pay up. And most importantly it would mean that abandon works that our out of print and disappearing quickly will be turned over to the public domain.
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