Eldred Act
Happy birthday (June 3) to Larry Lessig. As a birthday present, he requests that you sign the Eric Eldred Act petition. I'm not sure the petition format is best for this, but it's what we've got, so you should do this.
What I regret is the constraints of the Berne Convention. As I said in my petition signature (I am signer 1054), copyright law had more useful tools available to it before the Berne Convention -- most especially registration and deposit. My father used to tell me that the Library of Congress had every work published in the United States, and that used to be approximately true -- when he was growing up.
In other areas where there's no Berne Convention to constrain the law, we have a filing requirement (patent and trademark), filing fees (patent and trademark and copyright, but you don't have to file copyrights), and renewal requirements and renewal fees (currently only trademark). That, in turn, helps make it clear to the public whether anyone cares about preserving some monopoly right -- and who it is who cares. If, for example, a trademark is completely disused, it will lapse. (I wish the law were more aggressive about encouraging trademarks to lapse -- but lapse they do.)
The Eric Eldred Act is the economically reasonable and useful thing which can be done quickly within Berne to have a dramatic effect and keep the public domain growing rapidly.
I have also suggested that copyrighted works being out of print at all should be seen as a problem by copyright law. For one thing, a copyright holder should not be able to use copyright to suppress a work and make it unavailable to the public; for another, if one publisher is unwilling to exploit a market, another publisher may well wish to do so.
Sumana is signer 8076, just two spots away from Jim Fruchterman.
- Links from other weblogs:
Sun Jun 15 07:23:19: Joe Porno from Joe Porno
Beyonce Knowels Acting Career Beyonce Knowels Acting Career
Sat Jun 21 19:14:00: Teens Oldmen from Teens Oldmen
Blondes Girls In Pantyhose Blondes Girls In Pantyhose
Tue Jun 24 10:21:20: Latina Ass And Free Pictures from Latina Ass And Free Pictures
Reno Gay Chat Reno Gay Chat
Thu Jul 17 11:26:14: Nude Art Young Models Topsite from Nude Art Young Models Topsite
Cute Hairstyles For Teens Cute Hairstyles For Teens
Tue Jul 22 03:58:33: End Of Penis Sore After Sex from End Of Penis Sore After Sex
Lara Flynn Boyle Nude Lara Flynn Boyle Nude Slovenian Sex Slovenian Sex Teen Sleep Patterns Teen Sleep Patterns...
