Lessig - Public Domain Dead in 35 Years 469
tcd004 writes "Lawrence Lessig, in an article on the Foreign Policy site, predicts that the public domain will die a slow death at the hands of anti-piracy efforts. From the article: 'The danger remains invisible to most, hidden by the zeal of a war on piracy. And that is how the public domain may die a quiet death, extinguished by self-righteous extremism, long before many even recognize it is gone.'"
I don't think so. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Going to die? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think Dr. Lessig overlooked copylefts as a viable alternative to public domain.
Double edged sword of copyright? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the only way to save the public domain is for serious reform - be it soapbox, ballot box, or revolution - to take place sooner rather than later.
Re:Fight back! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Going to die? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Going to die? (Score:3, Interesting)
For something to enter the public domain today, it must've been created around the early part of last century.
Not true. Consider this [wikinews.org], or this [infoanarchy.org], or this [voanews.com].
If you're implying that works without a copyright symbol attached are in the public domain, you are mistaken.
No, I'm implying that works that are explictly placed into the public domain or are produced by an employee in the US government as part of her duties is in the public domain.
Re:Going to die? (Score:4, Interesting)
The first, of course, is to make work available to the public.
The second is to protect the author from others using thier work against them (ie share and share alike).
But even with copyrights, if a work is not published, but is something internal (say, the code to Google servers), then 50, 75, 100 years can pass, and even though it may (may!) end up technically in the public domain, it's still a trade secret, and if it never gets published externally, it's not public domain.
Copyleft and CC address this issue by getting more works out, but Copyleft and CC only cover works that are specifically placed under those licenses, which are not the majority of works. Both are essentially workarounds for a system that is fundamentally broken and has lost its balance of profit vs public good.
Re:I don't think so. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Fight back! (Score:3, Interesting)
Please-kindly-note that while YOU may release anything you write on Wikipedia into the public domain, Wikipedia itself IS NOT PUBLIC DOMAIN
Wikinews is, but some people are trying to change that. If you want to see Wikinews stay in the public domain, create an account and vote here [wikimedia.org].
A2K (Score:3, Interesting)
There is the A2k treaty project, we will get a development agenda for WIPo soon. Is Lessig accredited to WIPO? No, sure he isn't. You can make a dent there. Lawrence Lessig does not expect it to last 35 years...
Public domain -- it might be an US-only problem. Of course the works of Kafka and others are public domain in my legal system.
Re:Culture of Greed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:People forget (Score:1, Interesting)
So every single thought should be public domain? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, this is a serious problem. To avoid it, all human beings should be forcibly compelled to document every thought they ever have, and to publish them through a centralised public database that is open to all. Concepts like privacy and secrecy should be abolished, because the right of everyone to know everything about everyone and everything is much more important than respecting the right of an individual to think their own thoughts in their own head, and only to share those thoughts they wish to share.
Um, what about patents? (Score:5, Interesting)
Patents may have their problems, but at least the length of time and the requirement of maintenence fees to keep them in force are appropriate.
As an intellectual property owner, I worry when Congress goes overboard in an attempt to "protect intellectual property holders' rights". Yes, I like that what I create can benefit me. However, when other people use IP as a cudgel to abuse people, it makes me worry about the stability of the whole system. If you were an aristocrat in France in 1780, wouldn't you be a little concerned about the other aristocrats who beat and starve the peasants? They might just have a revolution.
Communism must die. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Going to die? (Score:2, Interesting)
market segmentation (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not saying that companies shouldn't be allowed to set different prices in different places - but that other people should not be prohibited from buying in the cheaper market, shipping to a more expensive market, and selling the product at an intermediate price. For example, why shouldn't Americans be allowed to buy cheaper drugs in Canada? The drug companies may profit less; they would have to raise Canadian prices and lower American prices. But, why should the law be set up to benefit the pharmaceutical company at the expense of the consumer, any more than it should benefit the consumer at the expense of the company? Efficient markets generally require a level playing field.
Re:Going to die? (Score:3, Interesting)
Not true. Almost everything published between 1922 and 1964 is now public domain, because of the requirement for renewal. For example, a book published in 1960 had to have its copyright renewed 28 years later, in 1988, or else it fell into the public domain. The vast majority of published work did not have its copyright renewed. What got renewed was typically the relatively small fraction of published material that still had commercial value 28 years later.
I don't think too many people are all that thrilled about the chance to use works from that time period.
Boo hoo hoo, poor little you -- you can get your Beethoven for free, but not your Britney Spears. And of course nobody actually reads all those books on Project Gutenberg, do they?
Where do people get this attitude that the world owes them a living? If people don't like the way things are going, they can
If you're implying that works without a copyright symbol attached are in the public domain, you are mistaken. Copyrights in the U.S. are opt-out, not opt-in.
Copyrights are currently opt-out, but they used to be opt-in. Old stuff without a copyright notice is public domain. Also, even today, a copyright is essentially unenforceable unless you give a notice and file a registration. The notice is important because a valid defense against a copyright infringement suit is that the defendant didn't know the material was copyrighted. And unless you've filed a registration, you can only sue for actual damages, and those are almost always too small (especially for OSS) to get a lawyer interested in taking your case.
Re:I foresee a crisis at Disney (Score:3, Interesting)
No, they wrote: "Good Morning to All" which has the same notes as Happy Birthday. Nobody know who wrote the words to "Happy Birthday". The sisters were given the rights to "Happy Birthday" 10 years after if first appeared because it was musically the same as "Good Morning to All".
Copyright irrelevant in 35 years (Score:2, Interesting)
The piracy fight is much more important than the fight for public domain. Considering the current situation, the ability to copy works freely is much more important than the right to do it. It is important that we support the pirates (including commercial pirates who profit from distribution of copyrighted works) and ensure that we have the Right to Read [gnu.org] intact, if only de facto.
In 35 years capitalism will be dead and intellectual property will be dead. It's lunacy to seriously consider the death of public domain (but it can still be a valuable attention-grabbing device). I can't see how proprietary software will withstand the assault of FLOSS or how publishers and studios will ignore the reality of instant anonymous piracy.
Just think! It's 35 years! 35 years ago first BBSs were starting, we used floppies to carry 120 kilobytes (if that) of data around, Internet was something no one heard of...
Do you think it's possible that we won't have dramatic changes in our digital communications systems? Do you think it's possible that we won't have ways to safely, anonymously and instantly access all human knowledge (liberated by pirates if necessary)? If yes, then you must be living in some other world than I do...
P.S. I enjoy learning immensely. Thanks to the Internet and the piracy I can watch any film I want, watch most good educational programs I want, listen to audio lectures on many topics, read any classic books, read many recent books, read encyclopedias and articles from most major publications. All for free. I still pay for some media - it's easier to get pirated games on DVD and there are still many books that aren't available online, but that's insignificant and its importance will only diminish over time.
Re:No recordings go into public domain until 2067! (Score:3, Interesting)
See also:
http://www22.brinkster.com/paradio/pages/pre1972.
http://www.legallanguage.com/lawarticles/Clarida0
It seems there are three points here:
1)before 1972, copyright laws were governed by state regulations, not
national regulations.
2)Merely because they are not covered by federal copyright laws
doesn't imply that they are still owned by someone. The owners may be
dead, or the original master unavailable. I don't understand the
implications here.
3)It's unclear to me whether you can use a later phonograph/CD of an
earlier recording to digitalize. For example, if I had a 1976
phonograph of a 1933 work, and then I decide to make an mp3 of it,
it's unclear to me when it will go into the public domain.
Interestingly, they have already resolved the reproduction issue in
the area of paintings and public domain in USA.
After doing web research, I wrote here
http://www.imaginaryplanet.net/weblogs/idiotprogr
Accurate photographs of visual artworks lack expressive content and
are automatically in the public domain once the painting's
copyright
has expired (which it has in the US if it was published before 1923).
All other copyright notices can safely be ignored.
I can't comment on precedent or how to implement this fairly, but it
seems to me that we need some sort of public domain reform that
removes protection of later digitally remastered copies when the term
on an earlier recording expires. As long as the later digitally
remastered copy is simply a faithful reproduction of the earlier work,
the later digitally remastered work does not imply some new copyright
protections.
As I said, this idea is currently unworkable and would be unfair to
companies which in the 1970s and 1980s produced and sold remastered
editions. However, at some point we need to ask ourselves why
Columbia Records deserves this windfall for simply reproducing an
artistic work. If Columbia Records, for example, owns the only
pristine copy of Jelly Roll Morton's 1926 jazz songs and releases a
remastered edition in 1985, it would be sad to think it won't go into
the public domain until 2080 (150 years after the song was first
recorded).
Please, somebody, point out some gap in my understanding or a
loophole. But otherwise it looks as if it's going to be really hard
for sound recordings to go into the public domain.
Re:Going to die? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Going to die? (Score:5, Interesting)