Quote:
Originally Posted by Daithi
[B]
As far as I am concerned the solution to this problem is simple. Congress should have the U.S. Copyright Office create a website where the public can check the status of a work's copyright. Give copyright holders 5 years to register their works into the website, and if they fail to register the book it reverts to the public domain.
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The problem with that, is that copyright isn't limited to books, songs, movies and other commercial publications.
Students' essays are copyrighted. Doodles in school notebooks are copyrighted. Blog posts & forum comments are copyrighted--and unlike the other two, those are "published," distributed for public view. Requiring they be registered would (1) create mass confusion and strife as people who have the resources to post, but not the awareness of registration, got upset that their works would be "stolen" (nevermind that it's not theft if it's legal; they'd *feel* their works could be stolen), and (2) the ones who *are* comfortable w/copyright registration would do so--and the US Copyright Office is not able to keep up with current registrations, much less what they'd have to cope with if tens of thousands of bloggers attempted to register "DailyKos Diaries of SuperPolitico Dude, 2009," 2010, 2011, and a side registration of "SuperPolitico Dude's comments on other people's blogs," assembled in one place without context.
It's a potentially workable solution (requiring registration), but it'd be a nightmare of legislation.
I like Lessig's premise: everything is copyrighted for ~20 years; you have to register to keep it active after that. That lets you have discussions, publish timely works without needing to register them, and you've got a couple of decades to decide if they're commercially viable after that.
We'd need more substantial protections for unpublished works, or at least better-described ones. We'd also need a *definition* of "unpublished;" is a locked-to-only-me blog post published or not? If I share it with a dozen people, is it published? If it's locked to my entire readlist, over a hundred people & changing over time, is that published, or not because it's a restricted audience?