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By D. W. O’Dell
I was going to leave my series on copyright law after my last article, but then I realized I probably hadn’t made the impact of recent changes in copyright law entirely clear to most people. So a handful of immensely powerful, eternal corporations control copyrights forever, and are able to shut down legitimate fair use by the mere threat of a lawsuit. Whoop-de-freakin’-do, as I believe Adam Sandler once said. So let’s make it clear what’s at stake.
All works produced after 1923 are protected by copyright law until well into this century (2047 to be exact), and once that is close to expiring it will no doubt be extended into the 22nd century. No one needs to register anywhere to possess a copyright, so no record exists of who owns what copyrights. This is one way intellectual property is unlike real property--you can go to a county office and look up who owns the parcel at 1429 Oak Street, but there is no central database to look up who owns the rights to the song “Happy Birthday.”
Let’s say a deceased relative of yours was a cameraman at a silent movie studio post 1923, and in going through his estate you find a box in the attic with several cans of film. The film is unlabeled and in bad shape, but it could be restored fairly easily for a few hundred bucks. Your first impulse would be to try and restore the film, which could be of artistic or even historic value (and monetary value as well).
But making a “copy” of the film would violate the copyright of whoever owned the rights to the film. You can’t find out who that is to ask permission. If you go ahead and restore the film anyway, you might discover that an unknown comedian, at some studio, performed routines that were later attributed to Chaplin--clear evidence that the Little Tramp was a plagiarist. But if you announce your discovery, you risk a lawsuit and arrest on felony charges. Even worse, if you try and recoup the money you spent to restore the film, that would be piracy and subject you to even more onerous criminal proceedings. Better let that film rot in its box.
In any given year, 90% of the published material produced goes out of print because it is not commercially viable. Thanks to the internet, the means now exist to make all this lovely material available, at little cost, to anyone who might want access to it. But the public domain is threatened with extinction. In order to protect valuable properties like Mickey Mouse, Disney wants ALL intellectual property protections to run forever, even when the author has no reason to care.
Lawrence Lessig, who is the Stanford Law Professor sounding the alarm bell on copyright law, has drafted a compromise piece of legislation that would allow anyone owning a copyright to renew it after 50 years for $1; any unregistered copyrights would enter public domain, while registered ones would receive another 50 years of protection.
The Motion Picture Association of America’s response was to oppose the legislation on the grounds that (among other things) the cost to register would be too onerous. The Walt Disney Corporation shouldn’t be required to fork over $1 to extend Mickey Mouse’s copyright because they can’t afford it! Do the Disney shareholders know about this?
As Lessig neatly summarized the situation, “Their aim is not simply to protect what is theirs. Their aim is to assure that all there is is what is theirs.” Free Culture, p. 255 (emphasis in original). Lessig’s book has suggestion on how the general public need to react in order to, someday, be able to get legislators to see past the campaign donations and protect what still remains of the “public domain.”
It is depressing reading, but I would recommend Lessig’s work to anyone concerned about copyright law, intellectual property, and the public domain. Or anyone who cares about music, art, literature, and free expression (that includes just about everyone outside of Congress).
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