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I am forwarding here what I think is a very interesting post from the weblog Copyfight. Copyfight is published by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. Read more at: http://www.copyfight.org/
The Public's Interest in Copyright Larry Lessig's post this morning asking for help in getting the Public Domain Enhancement Act http://eldred.cc/ before Congress brought to mind a pre-Eldred discussion we had here at Copyfight about the price that we all pay for copyright extended ad infinitum. Opposing the Eldred challenge, the ABA IP Section had argued that extending copyright provides an incentive to place culturally valuable creative works online, thus making them more "accessible" to future generations. This struck me as absurd. Sure, they'd be accessible. For a price. And paid to the same people the public has been paying for years. My point was that it's the general public--yes, that's us--who currently pays for copyright's unchecked expansion. Sometimes the payment is literal, as when we are asked to keep purchasing, at regular 20-year intervals, material that ordinarily would have fallen into the public domain. Sometimes the payment is not so literal, as when we are robbed of the cultural value of those would-have-been public domain works. Larry's Public Domain Enhancement Act is aimed at setting free copyrighted material from which no one is profiting financially, in order for all of us to profit culturally. Congress has acted--repeatedly--in the interests of copyright holders, in effect creating a perpetual "copyright tax" that we all pay. But Congress can also act in the public interest. I urge you to check out the Public Domain Enhancement Act (a.k.a. "The Eldred Act") http://eldred.cc/, and if you are so moved, sign the petition http://www.petitiononline.com/eldred/petition.html. If the petition is a success, Congress will have the opportunity at least to consider the interests of those on both sides of the traditional copyright bargain.
amalyah keshet
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head of image resources & copyright management the israel museum, jerusalem www.imj.org.il tel +972-2-670-8874 fax +972-2-670-8064 You are currently subscribed to mcn_mcn-l as: [email protected] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [email protected] |
