> From: aphid > Once work reaches a certain age (one that has oft been > extended), it falls into the public doman.
Hate to break it to you, but the 'public domain' as 'the place wherein which works belong to the public' is a mythical realm. A sort of 'Father Christmas' that was invented by IP maximalists to make the public believe that there was some kind of reward for having their liberty to share and build upon their own culture suspended for so many years, e.g. "If you behave yourself over the next century or so, you and your children can have this shiny art to play with without having to ask permission or pay for it - it will be all yours". Au contraire: 1) We have an author's natural, lifelong right to control the use of their work. 2) We have copyright that protects various aspects of that right and for a limited time - which may be transferred. So, there is no 'public domain'. All works belong to their authors. It's just that some of the author's rights over their work are no longer protected by law after a certain point. So, once its copyright expires, a work still belongs to its author (no longer the copyright assignee), and you should still ask their permission - it's just that the author can no longer claim copyright's protection if you do anything without their permission. There may of course be other legal remedies in those 'enlightened' jurisdictions that uphold authorial rights in addition to the partial and limited protection by copyright. It's also a myth that copyright is used as a quid pro quo, e.g. "We'll give you a monopoly for X years, if we get your work for free thereafter". It's actually "In order to persuade you to publish, we'll protect your authorial rights for at least X years - which we will extend if it appears your work remains valuable". All the above may appear to be warped, illogical and nonsensical, but remember, we're dealing with concepts over three centuries old, before the instantaneous diffusion of information seemed as natural to us today as a spherical earth did to our forefathers. > It would be insane to suggest we send Free Culture storm > troopers to ransack every house's family heirlooms for > pre-1923 photos, lithographs and daguerrotypes to > "liberate" into the sharing economy. Furthermore, it's > counterproductive to fantasize about a team of Free > Culture ninjas clad in pirate regalia sneaking into > Corbis' iron mine with scanners and liberating the Bettman > photographic archive, although it would make a great comic > book.. However, there is a lot of low hanging fruit that > could, and should, be protected from enclosure. I very much enjoy your insane and counterproductive scenarios. ;-) Nevertheless, I would still maintain the principle of "Don't steal it. Buy it and share it." Even so, I'd agree that organisations that collect/produce information on behalf of the public (government, universities, libraries, media archives) should surrender it to the public without charging the public a second time. However, any individual or organisation that through their own labours collects material of interest to the public, should not have it published against their will simply because it becomes of public interest or becomes a valuable cultural record. Preservation orders, and compulsory escrow archives, could be tolerable though. This obviously can only apply in those situations where the public figures out that someone has something of public interest. _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://freeculture.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
