Re: Copyright/everincreasing times

> Hello. No I don't believe Disney ever gives anything in to public domain
> volunteerly. Afterall, they needed the latest copyright act so that
> the Disney characters will not go to public domain. They changed the
> past and that is what bugs me most. Many authors back at then could
> have choosen different license if they had known that new copyright laws
> changes the their work from public domain back to under copyright
> protection, for example.
> 
> The copyright law is also biased toward publishers (or something sucks):
> there are many out-of-print books, but their authors and descendants
> cannot do nothing if publisher chooses not to print the books.
> Would it be fair that a copyright law requires that at least 2000 copies
> are printed yearly? Otherwise, the books would go to public domain.
> That could be another tradeoff between public and publishers.
> (A request to pay $1 per 50 years may not have an effect at all as it
> is a pocket money. As a publisher I would pay it in any case even the
> works would not have any value for me.)

I think the $1 scheme is a good one so long as it is accompanied by a 
MANDATORY public domain. The $1 scheme would mean that works which are 
no longer printed or whose authors have died could return to the public 
domain quickly.

Your idea about the 2,000 copies a year is also a good one but that also 
needs to be backed up by a MANDATORY public domain. Your idea would mean 
that at least the work would continue to be available to the public in 
some meaningful form or it'd fall into the public domain in which case 
PG could post it for free :-)

> It is those forgotten public domain books and works for which
> we should ask publishers and authors to drop them to public domain.
> Then we would save their efforts in making the works usable again.
> 
> Where I could get a list of those books/works not yet in public domain?
> I'm afraid our libraries do not have many books published between
> 1930-1960 and I cannot check them from shelves.

Well, if you want to start something going, I have a library that has 
quite a reasonable selection of books from that era (and many older). If 
you could smooth-talk some publisher into relinquishing something into 
the public domain, i'd certainly like to help find it. In fact, i'm sure 
if you can persuade a publisher to do that, anyone on PG would GLADLY 
help you put those books online. I'd guess that amongst the PG 
volunteers, we'd have access to many very large libraries and you're 
almost certain to find a book in at least one of them.

Cheers,
Holden


---
Personalized unsubscribe instructions for [email protected]:
to unsubscribe send a blank email to [email protected]