« fights among friends | Main | blogs at college »

very good news

June 24, 2003 9:03 PM - comments (11)

I have just arrived in DC, where I was planning on meeting with staffers on the Hill tomorrow to drum up support for the Public Domain Enhancement Act. We've got CD's of all 15k+ of the signatures on our Reclaim the Public Domain petition to hand out. It was going to be a fun day (as fun as any DC day gets) in DC.

But we've now learned that Congresswoman Lofgren (D-CA) and Congressman Doolittle (R-CA) have agreed to introduce the bill into Congress. We're having an event at 1pm tomorrow at the Capitol to announce this first step on a long road to Reclaiming the Public Domain.

Count this as great news, and spread the word: there are two great souls on Capitol Hill. I'll see if I can find some more.

Posted on June 24, 2003 9:03 PM | | technorati

Comments (11)

June 25, 2003 7:50 AM Buddha Buck:

Please let us know the bill number when it gets assigned.

June 25, 2003 9:31 AM Karl:

Great news, indeed. Good luck, Professor.

-kd

June 25, 2003 10:07 AM Sam:

Excellent! This is very good news, even if I did cringe a little when I saw John "Build The Auburn Porkbarrel^H^H^H Dam" Dolittle's name attached to it. I'll try to rise above. ;>

June 25, 2003 2:33 PM Trevor Hill:

Larry -- I'd like to ask two questions about this proposal:

1. Is it really practical to ask for such a fee? Wouldn't it create a huge amount of work for lawyers when copyright holders found out they had missed the payment?

2. Don't the fair use provisions in the current copyright law allow for limited archival copying? Why can't this be relied upon for archival of decaying works?

June 25, 2003 4:29 PM Lessig:

Trevor,

(1) It could, but it needn't. The requirements need not be complicated, and there could be equitable proceedings to forgive those who inadvertently fail to file.

(2) No, it is not. Many film restorers can only afford to restore the film if they can distribute what they restore. But that would remove the fair use defense, at least as that is understood so far.

June 25, 2003 7:13 PM John Hardin:

Woohoo! One small victory for sanity. I am going to write my congresscritters right away and urge them to support this.

What is the proper way to ask them to cosponsor the bill, so that they know which bill I am talking about?

Thanks.

June 26, 2003 5:55 AM Ravi Nanavati:

I think the most significant thing is the R co-sponsor. Given the current environment inside the beltway, a bipartisan initiative to reclaim the public domain is essential and since most of our friends so far have been on the other team that is an important step...

June 26, 2003 9:11 AM Coward:

In the bill as written, what prevents an author from paying
the $1 tax the day that they publish the work? If they
can do this, it invalidates the purpose of the law.

June 26, 2003 4:02 PM Tatoe:

I agree muchly with Mr.Nanavati. This should be a bipartisan act.
I do have one question:

What will stop a yearly increase of this $1 fee over the next twenty years, ultimately making it favor large money interests and discriminating against the poor?

(forgive me if this has been asked before.)

November 25, 2004 5:18 PM arik:

Good luck, Professor.
frompyp

Post a comment

By entering the words in the box, you are also helping to digitize texts that were written before the computer age. The words that you see were taken directly from old texts that are being scanned and stored by the Internet Archive. This CAPTCHA helps proofread the books. If the sample is too hard to read, click the recycle button to get another two. A space between each word is required. And thanks for the comment and help.