The Pallente memo - read and wonder

The memo is here:  
https://musictechpolicy.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/hayden-memo.pdf

These were my comments to the source of my information:

That memo tells me she trod on quite a few toes. She has been given 
tasks that could take years, and in effect, isolated from all serious 
contacts with both staff and Congress. While scantily dressed as an 
important role, it is something she could have delegated to junior staff 
- which they clearly intend to restrict; there is nothing I see that 
demands her status for the work itself.

The requirement for a weekly written report is an insult, neither more 
nor less. And, I reckon, is intended as a trap for unguarded moments 
when frustration at the role sets in. Expect her dismissal sometime next 
year.

Meanwhile the suggestion of considerable out of copyright material in 
post 1923 works is pure Google, and by now the differences are well 
ordered in several places offering PD stuff, such as archive,org, 
Gutenberg, Hathi Trust and so on, thus needing little further 
definition. Most of it is US government anyway, is it not? The idea 
there is a system for determining the PD material in that range is more 
or less taken from the Google attempt is in 2008 to push its Book 
Agreement. If you read it you will know just how terrible that is, even 
after amendments.

The 1968 date is a reversion - or will be edged  to that - to the US 
copyright limit of 48 years, and looks like one of the most regressive 
steps yet taken to defeat the principles of Berne. The gamble, then as 
now, is that most works pre1968 [and even later] , have no active watch 
on them by rights owners or holders. It looks like anothe attempt to 
maximise "opt out" contempt.

Most serious from my perspective is that the Congress Library holds 
hundreds of thousands of works with copyrights from other countries, 
where Berne has been in effect for well  over a century. especially in 
the UK, which reached the Berne level protections much earlier. The risk 
of "theft" of copyrights is high in this scenario.

Joseph


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Posted by: Joseph Harris <joe9438-/[email protected]>
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