RE: Eric Eldrid Act

["Downes, Stephen" <Stephen.Downes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hiya,

> From: "Neal Pomea" <npomea@xxxxxxxx>
> In response to the stunning decision in Eldred v. Ashcroft, we have come
> up with an idea that we would like discussed here.
> 
> It is for a tiny tax on works in the 50th year of copyright. If the tax
> is not paid, the work would enter the public domain.  Thus works with no
> commercial value would enter the public domain much as they would
> earlier when the term expired.  Works with commercial value would be
> paid for and would enjoy the current copyright term.  The tax could go
> to support the registration process.

While I appreciate and support the intent of this proposal, I do not believe
it will achieve the desired effect.

As a standard practice, publishers obtain the copyright to written, musical
and other works when they sign a contract with a creator. Hence, except in a
very few cases, it would be the publisher, not the creator, who would be
responsible for paying an annual copyright fee.

A fee of $50 is a nominal charge to a publisher, even for out of print
works. The usual procedure would be to simply tally the number of items in
the publisher's library and pay that amount time $50. It could actually cost
the publisher more money in staff time to sort out the works to be retained
from the works to be let go.

The fee, as proposed, imposes no requirement that the work on which
copyright has been retained be published or made available in any way. The
$50 could be vviewed, in some cases, as insurance to prevent competition
from free but unprofitable works. For example, a publisher may have no
desire to publish a previous edition of a textbook, but would willingly pay
the $50 to prevent its becoming competition for the current edition.

It is therefore likely that the imposition of a $50 copyright tax would have
any appreciable impact on the number of works being released into the public
domain.

Further, the existence of such a tax would legitimize a publishers' claim,
allowing them to add a new argument to support their intent to keep even old
and out-of-date works from the public domain, on the ground that they paid
for the privilege over-and-above having been granted that right in
legislation.

Accordingly, it is likely that such a tax, far from improving the situation,
would actually make the situation worse.

For this reason I would argue that efforts should be undertaken to convince
the legislature to support reasonable and fair copyright legislation, with
much more sharply redduced terms, and with a guarantee of fair use and
freedom of expression regarding the work during those terms.

As incentive, I would offer the observation that even if the publishing
industry can convince legislators to impose strict copyright regimes, the
general public will not support these will regimes, and will eventually
ignore any copyright restrictions, however reasonable. This is what the
music industry is already experiencing, and this experience should serve as
a strong predictor for the content industry as a whole. 

Therefore, in order to retain value in their investment, content publishers
should accept licensing and copyright regulations, along with fair pricing
and proper distribution mechanisms, that are more in line with public
expectations.

-- Stephen 

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Stephen Downes ~ Senior Researcher ~ National Research Council
Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada

http://www.downes.ca   stephen@xxxxxxxxx   
stephen.downes@xxxxxx   http://www.iit.nrc.ca/e-learning.html

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