> Doesn't the copyright thing have a length of time before becoming public
> domain like patents do? If that's the case it may be alright to use it in
> the way you want.
Yes, and Congress in their wisdom has recently extended it to 95 years.
On average, over the last fourty years they've done a year-per-year increase.
It appears that they intend to keep this up forever, despite the fact that
Article I Section 8 Clause 8 of the US Constitution only grants the Congress
the power "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" (emphasis added).
The intent of the system was that by granting a monopoly for a limited time,
it would encourage the creation of works which would eventually pass into
the public domain, for the benefit of all. But Congress is intent on making
sure that works never become public domain so long as there may be money to
be made from them.
Apparently we will never again expand the body of literature or music
that is public domain. Once the works are no longer making a profit, they
will go out of print, because only the publisher has the rights to them.
Unlike the works of Beethoven and Dickens, which may well be accessible
to the public for thousands of years, the works of today's great composers
and authors will likely disappear forever.
And then consider software. By the time software goes out of copyright,
even if binaries still exist, the source code probably won't. Maybe
people 95 years from now won't actually want to use today's software
for business purposes, but they won't even be able to look at it for
historical reasons.
One good thing about the patent system is that the inventor or assignee
has to make maintenance payments or the patent will lapse prematurely.
I strongly believe that the same thing should be done with copyrights.
Once it is no longer worthwhile for the owner to pay to keep the copyright
up to date, the work should enter the public domain.
I also believe that copyrights on unpublished works should be disallowed,
as they do not "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". These
sort of copyrights are used for software source code. In my opinion,
any work for which Copyright protection is desired (published or not) should
be required to be registered, and a copy (in entirety) be filed with the
Copyright office, such that it is available for public inspection, and that
upon expiration of the copyright it is guaranteed to be available to those
that want it. Currently copyright registration is optional, although
without registration there are fewer legal remedies for infringement.
This does not seem to "promote the Progress" in any obvious way.
Well, enough of my ranting. For more information on copyright term
extension, please see the web page:
http://www.public.asu.edu/~dkarjala/
Which discusses and has links to infomration on several current legal
battles related to copyright term.
Eric
Received on Sun Mar 05 2000 - 19:06:02 GMT