more on Copyright Reform Needs a Balanced Approach

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Trei, Peter" <ptrei () rsasecurity com>
Date: June 15, 2004 5:02:16 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: RE: [IP] more on Copyright Reform Needs a Balanced Approach

For IP, if you wish.

David Lesher <wb8foz () nrk com> wrote:
> Regarding the "can't find the license holder" dilemma on old
> material....
>
> The "Call before you dig" folks [frequently called Utility
> Protection Services or one-call centers] collect all the queries
> for a given region, and distribute them to the stakeholders:
[...]

One approach I've advocated is to allow the first 20 years of the
copyright to run as it does currently, but then require a yearly
renewal. Failing to renew would send the item into the public
domain.

One wrinkle would be to place a modest fee on the renewals -
say 50 cents/year on a cartoon strip, to $100/year on a book. This
would mean that IP items which were no longer profitable would
enter the PD as soon as the creator lost interest in them.
(the appropriate fee is clearly a debatable issue, but I'd suggest
it scales with the cost of creating the work, up to a point. The
idea is to put a mild pressure on creators to let go of unprofitable
IP). It also makes it easier to locate the holders of older
copyrights.

With this scheme, the Disney folks (to give one example) could
keep Mickey Mouse protected as long as they want, without
holding the rest of Western Civilization's common heritage
from the 20th century hostage.

Peter Trei





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