The Free Culture Movement: A Victory
As some of you may remember, in addition to Eldred v. Aschcroft, there are a number of other cases that we're pushing to set judicial limits on Congress's appetite for the public domain. Golan v. Ashcroft is one. Golan challenges Congress's "restoration" of copyrights to work that had passed into the public domain. The government moved to dismiss Golan on the basis of Eldred. Today the District Court (opinion) rejected the government's motion, and, while striking an Eldred-related claim, refused to dismiss the other 3 counts of the complaint.
Thanks to Wheeler, Trigg & Kennedy in Denver, and former Center associate, and now law professor, Ed Lee, the battle continues.
Meanwhile, stay tuned for great news re the Public Domain Enhancement Act (and see if you can find a couple more signatures to push the total over 20,000).
And stay tuned again Monday for other related news.
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Comments (18)
You know, chapter 11 of NAFTA allows for entities to file claims if a government action might possibly cause a loss.
You can't do it against your home country (so a US firm can't file against a US regulation), but you can against the other signatories.
Perhaps if someone in Canada were to create a business whose model involved making money off stuff as it entered the public domain, they could file a claim before the NAFTA panel.
At the very least, it would be a disincentive for further extensions.
Well, it made it over 20,000 signatures, and as of Feb 24, there are two new cosponsors for the bill. I wonder what the big news will be?
Does anyone take "signatures" on an electronic petition seriously? These entries seem entirely unverifiable to me. Have any of these petitions made a difference on any issue? If so, what was the issue and what difference did the petition make?
I'm all for the PD Enhancement Act and I speak out in favor of it. But I also know that manufacturing e-mail addresses, names, and even commentary (if need be) is trivially easy.
I continue to be disappointed that Rep. Kucinich's name is not on the list of cosponsors to HR2601 (the Public Domain Enhancement Act).
did anybody else find this lessig news post ironic?
"In ten days on March 23, Professor Lessig will speak at the 92nd Street Y in New York. His talk, “Free Culture: Creativitiy and Its Enemies,” will cost $25 per person."
i'd love to attend, but evidently i'm too poor to learn.
Responsing to Ryan Boehnng's comment:
I think that you confused tangible things
with intangible things. In order to have
intangible things, you need tangible things.
These tangible things cost money or resource.
The fee may cover the equipments, rental,
chairs, electricity, wages for people who
work there, and so on. Unless there is fund
to reduce or eliminate the fee, someone has
to pay for the tangible things.
In order for the news to be purely ironic,
it is that the book's copyright is owned
by Professor Lessig while he is talking
about free culture. But, that is not the
issue here.
Joseph Pietro Riolo
<riolo@voicenet.com>
Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions
in this comment in the public domain.
Are there plans to put any of Prof. Lessig's books into the public domain or at least relicense these books under less restrictive terms after some time? It would indeed be ironic if the legal scholar who works so hard to make sure the PD continues to grow at a regular rate chose to accept the full term of copyright for his own works.
Meanwhile, stay tuned for great news re the Public Domain Enhancement Act
I've been staying tuned for two whole days, and nothing!
J.B. Nicholson-Owens writes "Are there plans to put any of Prof. Lessig’s books into the public domain or at least relicense these books under less restrictive terms after some time?"
Apparently, you have not been following along with this. Professor Lessig already announced that the contents of his books were going to be released under the Founders' Copyright. See the press release from Creative Commons back on April 23, 2003.
Re: free culture.
Perhaps I don't understand how "free culture" is meant by Lessig, but there is no irony to my mind of strongly supporting IP, strongly supporting greater limitations to the current scope of IP, and strongly supporting the ide of a properly balanced IP regime as indispensable to a "free culture"--all things I have hitherto thought Lessig was about.
It's probably worth noting, in talking about a "Free Culture Movement", that there's a new Web site called freeculture.org, dedicated to supporting Free Culture. There's a prominent wiki for discussion and collaboration. Looks very cool!
As to the Founders' Copyright: have the books been dedicated under the Founders', or will they? Has the actual dedication taken place? Or does that press release count as such a dedication? I'm just wondering.
A lot of the stuff mentioned on that press release -- like the O'Reilly release of out-of-print books under the Attribution license -- hasn't come to pass yet. So it's kind of intriguing to find out what has moved forward.
Anyways, it'll be really interesting to read _Free_Culture_ in 2018 (or 2032? which is it?), when it goes into the public domain. Should be an interesting historical document by then!
Fuzzy: this is why repeating links to that press release is a good idea--it is not reasonable to expect that people will follow for one year the releasing of a book into the public domain in this manner. I follow these (and related) issues quite closely, but I must have missed this press release. Thanks for bringing my attention to it.
Professor Lessig: you should point to this press release or some summary of it in the future so more people will know what's going on. I think it's great that you did this, you deserve applause for putting your money where your mouth is. Please don't be shy about linking to this press release when it is relevant.
Evan Prodromou writes "A lot of the stuff mentioned on that press release — like the O’Reilly release of out-of-print books under the Attribution license — hasn’t come to pass yet."
Excuse me, but did you bother to check before making that statement? If so, I wonder how you missed the relevant pages on the O'Reilly website. Just go to the Open Books Project page and you will find the links to a number of their "Out-of-Print Books", along with titles ("English-Language Books") that are still in print but that were "open sourced" by their authors.
You are correct, this is not all their out of print books. You are correct that this is not all the books that have been " cleared" to be released according to the Creative Commons web page. But you are incorrect to say that the O'Reilly out-of-print books have not begun to be released.
Fuzzy: I didn't say "none of the things mentioned in that press release have come to pass." I just said "a lot haven't." I'll stand by that, for now.
I did see the Open Books Project, and I did see that there are a number of books that are out of print. About 5 of the 16 listed out-of-print books there are also listed on the Creative Commons site; as far as I can tell, they're all released under the GFDL or GPL, or no license is specified. None are linked from the Creative Commons site. None, as far as I can tell, are released under the Attribution license. But, hey: I could be wrong.
The main thing that worries me is that the "online registry" of works licensed under the Founders' Copyright doesn't seem to exist. At least, I can't find it, but I'm not the sharpest tack in the box, either. But besides the press release in the future tense, it doesn't seem like there's any other record of things being released under the Founders'.
To Evan, Your observation is correct. There is no
work that is put under the Founders' Copyright.
Why is that so? My guess is that people don't
want to lose the right of attribution after 14 or
28 years. Even Professor Lessig thought that
authors' rights should be separate from copy
rights and gave a hint that it is nothing wrong
for Congress to make authors' rights perpetual
(see his blog entry on June 4, 2003 at 8:28am).
The Founders' Copyright is a great idea but when
it is examined very closely and is compared with
other Creative Commons licenses, it is not one
of the favorites for people.
Joseph Pietro Riolo
<riolo@voicenet.com>
Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions
in this comment in the public domain.
Woohoo! Way to go Dr. Lessig!
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