Quote:
Originally Posted by ZodWallop
I'd be happy with copyright lasting some set number of years, say a decade, which can be renewed every ten years for some nominal fee. That would allow film companies to keep their desired eternal copyright while allowing orphan works to fall in to the public domain.
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Agreed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ZodWallop
- Censorship is a loaded word
- The Tolkien estate would disagree that very long copyright has nothing to do with profits. I honestly don't understand where you are coming from with that as an argument.
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Using the term censorship was a bit hyperbolic hence I qualified it in parenthesis with
making books less readily available. You made a good argument with the Tolkien estate regarding wanting to keep the books copyrighted to protect the legacy. However, keeping the vast majority of books from 1923-1950 away from free public consumption doesn't make sense. In fact under a previous copyright law which got overturned books from
1962 out of copyright would've been available this year. By the time the books are available chances are a vast percentage will have been lost. A possible middle ground would be to allow these older books currently in copyright to be scanned and kept in a secure location until released from copyright law.