Lawrence Lessing On Copyrights

If you’re regular reader here you know I’ve got a thing with copyright law. While I’m too busy to spend time debating it now, I did come across an article by Lawrence Lessing in the latest issue of Wired Magazine.

… It would be easy for governments to narrow term extension to those who want it by requiring copyright holders to pay a small fee. Even a very small fee would filter out the vast majority of works from automatic term extension. Most would enter the public domain immediately. Yet even this idea is ignored. Who can hear reason when billions are about to be wiped from the books?Governments should end this game by tinkering with copyright terms for future works only. But if they’re not strong enough to stick to this simple principle, they should at least limit their damage by restricting extensions to those works from which someone might actually benefit. That someone, no doubt, won’t be the public. But there’s no reason to extend terms when no one - not even record companies - could possibly benefit. Filter the forgotten from term extension …

Wired Magazine

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