Personally, I don't think the proposed act will do anything more than throw people off the trail of the real problem with copyright -- the term is simply too long to truly serve the public good. With this act Congress can say "See, we have been working to resolve the problems everybody accuses us of creating when we extended the copyright protection." But it doesn't shorten the copyright term length at all. And you can be damned sure that corporations such as Warner Brothers, Hal Leonard, Sony, Walt Disney, Bertelsmann and the other huge copyright holders won't have any problem paying those $1 amounts on time and thus the situation won't change one little bit from what it is today.
The only copyrights this act will eventually make public domain sooner are those owned by individuals where the people who may inherit the copyrights will have no clue about the minutiae of the law and so won't know they are supposed to pay those $1 amounts to extend their coverage to the full term of the law.
Another case of corporate America pulling the wool over the eyes of the public and using Congress to their own ends while appearing to serve the public interest.
Michael Good wrote:
Situations like the one David Bailey describes are part of the rationale for the Public Domain Enhancement Act (US HR 2601). Copyright owners would need to be a $1 fee to maintain their copyright after 50 years and then each 10 years thereafter until the end of the term, or the work goes into the public domain in the USA. Registering with the $1 fee would also provide the updated contact information for the copyright holder.
You can read more about it at:
http://www.publicknowledge.org/issues/pdea.html
Michael Good Recordare LLC www.recordare.com
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-- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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