On Mon, May 21, 2012 at 1:42 PM, David Gerard <dger...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 21 May 2012 20:30, Samuel Klein <meta...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> 14 years is a fine place to start. Are there any existing campaigns >> pushing for it? S. > > > Now that I'm looking, I can't find any campaigns as such! > > I thought the Pirate Parties asked for 14 years, but I'm wrong: the > Swedish party says five years,[1] the Uppsala Declaration[2] suggests > local Pirate Parties can agree on a demanded term themselves. > > Creative Commons offers the Founders' Copyright, 14 years: > https://creativecommons.org/%20projects/founderscopyright > > O'Reilly is offering works under 14 yearsa all rights reserved, thence > CC-by: http://oreilly.com/pub/pr/1042 > > > [1] http://www.piratpartiet.se/international/english > [2] http://www.piratpartiet.se/nyheter/european_pirate_platform_2009 > > - d. > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
The term of copyrights isn't even the only problem, though it probably is the biggest one. Another issue is the switchover from requested to automatic copyright. This means that even for works for which the author doesn't care at all about the copyright, you'd still have to either seek them out and ask permission, or take the chance. For orphaned works, that's a major problem, since the user of an orphan work may find someone coming out of the blue to sue him someday. For orphaned works whose authorship is unknown, that's an even more significant issue-if you don't know who wrote it, you don't even know when the "+70" starts, and so such works may remain unusable in copyright limbo for far longer than they are actually in copyright. If we're going to advocate for sane copyright law, I'd propose the following: -Copyright must be for a reasonable term. 14 years would be the outside maximum. It was pretty onerous to write, publish, and distribute a work in the Founders' day compared to ours, so I'd say we should probably have a shorter term, maybe 3+3 or 5+5. That would give us a rich public domain with a lot of content that's still relevant to the present day, while still allowing authors a reasonable exclusivity period. The vast majority of works by 10 years have either made money or never will, and we should write the law for normal cases, not edge cases. -To get the initial term of copyright, the author should be explicitly required to put a clear copyright notice on the work (or, when infeasible, otherwise clearly indicate that the content is copyrighted and when the copyright began). Saying "If you want it, you have to ask for it" is not exactly an onerous requirement. -To get the extended protection period, a nominal per-work fee should be charged. This would force large organizations, especially, to carefully consider whether it's worth keeping a given work in copyright for the extension period, or whether they'd rather have it fall into the public domain early. -Copyrights must be registered with the Library of Congress (or similar national organization) within 90 days of first publication of the copyrighted work. This process should be made as easily as possible (probably online), but even as such, would discourage people and organizations from indiscriminately slapping copyright on everything, since they then have to register and keep track of it. -No orphan works. If the author (or author's agent) cannot be contacted at any of the contacts listed with the LoC or national equivalent within 60 days of someone requesting permission trying to, the copyright is forfeited and the work goes immediately and irrevocably into the public domain. -Clarify that when a work is copyrighted, its move into the public domain is -fixed-, and that no future legislation can change the PD date of existing works. -Currently copyrighted work will gain protection for the maximum possible term under the new law (6 or 10 years) from passage date of the law, or the remainder of the existing copyright, whichever is -shorter-. Work that would have fallen into the public domain but for the passage of extension laws falls immediately to the public domain. -- Freedom is the right to say that 2+2=4. From this all else follows. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l