Deposit and renewal
("Resolution and Independence", "Existence and Uniqueness" -- someone should write a poem called "Deposit and Renewal".)
Aaron sent me some comments about Amy's concerns about how renewal and deposit requirements would affect free software, especially free software under a copyleft license. Aaron argued that the deposit is easy if an electronic deposit by e-mail is permitted (much, I suppose, the way BXA, now known as BIS, permits electronic notification by e-mail of crypto exports -- a scheme Bernstein continues to challenge). I think that's correct. In fact, it's a shame that there is not even a voluntary electronic deposit mechanism, since so many works which will some day be lost are being written today in digital form; I guess simply publishing on the web is a good first approximation.
But Amy's main concern was about renewal, not deposit. Rewewal requires an action at regular intervals in the future with respect to every copyrighted work, and, to be really effective at dissuading people from renewing copyrights with no commercial value (or with de minimis commercial value), has to require a nominal fee.
That could be a problem when there are many released versions. Proprietary software typically has only a few releases, but free software sometimes has a new snapshot release every day -- or, with anonymous CVS, published copyrightable subject matter in the form of patches many times every hour.
