“We need a new digital copyright law that would draw a line between modest sharing of a few songs or video clips and the real piracy of mass distribution. We need a new law that would define fair use for the digital era and lay out clearly the rights of consumers who pay for digital content, as well as the rights and responsibilities of Internet companies.” – Wall Street Journal columnist Walter S. Mossberg—quoted under fair use.
AMAZON
A sad tale of Amazon monetization: eReaderIQ and the affiliate program
Courtesy of the Kboards, a worrying item about struggling e-book sites and their ability to monetize engagement with Amazon - or not - has...
Step One for any rational copyright law is to require record-keeping. Let’s start with a clear indication of who owns what, and who cares if we use it. And if we do that right we may not even need a Step Two.
Jon Jermey said, “Step One for any rational copyright law is to require record-keeping.” Yes, there is a major problem now with “orphan works”. Copyright reform advocate Lawrence Lessig has suggested one idea to improve records in an op-ed in the New York Times. If you control a copyright then you are required to “register your copyright after 50 years and pay $1; if you don’t the work passes into the public domain.”
The Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) examined the problem of orphan works. An SFWA statement notes that “tracking down the author of a short story first published in the 1940s or 1950s to obtain permission to republish that story in an anthology can be inordinately difficult.” Ideas for improving record keeping and allowing publication when rights holders are unlocatable appear here.
Some time ago I read a legal opinion that if other attempts to find a copyright holder had failed then you could put an advertisement in the London Times — if that failed then it was cast-iron proof you had an orphaned work. Deliciously quaint as this may be, at least it gives copyright seekers some kind of last resort. But I doubt that it would hold up in court these days.
Jon.
> If you control a copyright then you are required to “register your copyright
> after 50 years and pay $1; if you don’t the work passes into the public
> domain.”
Hah! How about cutting it down to 2-3 years? Or at most 5 years, and then every second year after that. If you really think you’ll get some great benefit from denying others their natural right to copy then you should be more than willing to pay a dollar every two years.
I’m glad to see that modest sharing and rights for users is gaining a little ground. As David has supported me in saying before:
Rights and some sharing is the foundation of my approach for achieving a balanced copyright regime in a digital world.
Have you all seen the recent call by Ofcom (Uk regulatory authority) for new “share aware” rights for consumers of Public Service Contenet (PSC) of the future?