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| It's the way copyright works that is a problem by Commander Tansin A. Darcos 02/21/2014, 3:43pm PST | ||||
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| A big part of the problem occurred when the U.S. went on the Berne Convention back in 1988, and copyright notices - and to a large extent registration - became optional. And the elimination of copyright renewals was another problem.
When you patent something you have to pay regular renewal fees, at 3, 7 and 11 years or your patent is cancelled. You used to have to renew copyrights at 28 years or they were automatically cancelled. A lot of works went into the public domain because the copyright holder never renewed it or sometimes didn't even register it. This is why - until the film's former copyright holder announced they would start enforcing the copyright on the underlying book and the music in the movie - that so many TV stations ran It's a Wonderful Life, because the film's copyright was not renewed and they could run it without needing a license or paying royalties. Now, it was tested that the copyright in a movie could revert back to someone else once the period that the book's creator could exercise the right to take back the copyright after a certain period (this happened with a court case involving the movie Rear Window), and there might be grounds to enforce the public performance royalty on music used in a film, but it's possible that if the movie itself goes into the public domain since when it was originally made it was with permission of the copyright holder, that the now public domain film is not subject to protection on the underlying elements such as the book, but the legal status isn't clear. Copyright is a statutory monopoly granted to encourage creation of intellectual works. It is supposed to be a bargain between the public and the creator; the creator gets a limited monopoly for a limited time in exchange for it eventually going into the public domain. Unfortunately, that "bargain" keeps getting expanded to give more and more protections and longer times, with fewer limits to creators, but the public gets nothing in exchange for this huge expansion of the creator's protections. Does anyone think expanding copyright from 75 years to 90 encourages more copyrighted works? And what about those who died? Does it encourage them to create more because their descendants get 20 years more when the protection length went from life of the last surviving creator + 50 years to life + 70 years? It's been suggested that copyright should be about ten years for fiction and fifteen for reference works. Most works go out of print by then anyway, and reference works might need a little more time to recoup costs and make a profit. But there is one thing that could be done. Because of the Berne Convention we can't impose it on foreign works but we can impose it on domestic ones, and that's to resume requiring renewal. Any work first published in the U.S. must have a renewal every 10 years, for which the fee is $1. Fail to renew and the copyright is cancelled. Solves the problem of "abandonware," because if it's not renewed, its copyright automatically expires. Right now, you can basically quote or republish something that was published in the U.S. if they never registered it and it's over 90 days old because they can't sue for damages that occur unless they registered the work before infringement or within 90 days of publication. And if the work has no resale value even if they do register it more than 90 days after publication then they can't get statutory damages and attorney's fees for infringement before registration, only actual damages. The reason copyright got expanded is one company and one man. That company is the Walt Disney Company and that man is Sonny Bono. Sonny, Cher's former husband and later mayor of Palm Springs, ran for Congress from California, the way comedian Al Franken became a senator from Minnesota. Sonny, at the request of the Walt Disney Company, which was about to lose copyright protection on Mickey Mouse because the movie "Steamboat Willie" would have gone into the public domain, got an extention to copyright called the "Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act," that increased the copyright term for works done for hire from 70 years after publication to 90 years. And works owned by one or more individuals got an additional 20 years from life of the last surviving creator+50 years to life+70. We need to watch, and demand vehemently, that there is to be no more increases in copyright length. Another thing that wasn't done was that states and communities didn't take advantage of the increased protection to demand copyright holders pay the additional value of copyrights as property tax, since they are essentially claiming that copyrights are valuable intellectual property, they should pay for that in property tax somewhere. So, since the protection on copyrights increased by 1/3, that additional copyright term should have been assessed additional property tax. If Disney or the movie studios in Los Angeles have copyrights that were extended, say they own a billion dollars worth of films, the additional tax on that would be $20 million every year based on Proposition 13's 2% property tax limit. I wonder if they're paying that additional $20 million or more in property tax on their intellectual property. Every copyrighted work published in the U.S. except those where the copyright owner allows licensing without payment such as GPL and such, would be subject to a floor value and if the tax isn't paid the tax collector where the work's owner resided seizes the copyright and puts it up for sale, if nobody claims it then it can be freely licensed for a low fee by the tax assessor or someone who wants can buy it for the unpaid taxes and release the copyright. This would solve the problem of abandonware since if you didn't pay the tax you lost the copyright same if you don't pay the property taxes on your home or building you lose the building and the assessor can resell it at auction. |
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