aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

The scope of the copyright crisis

A few weeks ago I finally got around to listening to The Comedy of the Commons, a September 23 speech by Lawrence Lessig for the SDForum Distinguished Speaker Series. There’s much to laud about the speech and I urge you to listen to it (available free through ITConversations.com), but worth highlighting is his description of the dramatic expansion of copyright in our time:

Traditionally copyright rewtrictions in the United States were extremely limited. The traditional rule was an opt-in rule meaning if you wanted to get the benefit of copyright protection you had to raise your hand and say I want it...by registering your work, by marking your work and then subsequently by renewing the copyright after an initial term so our estimates are that over 60% of published works during the 19th and 20th century never entered the copyright system at all…and of the work that did enter the copyright system between 85% and 95%, depending on the type of work, never had their copyright term renewed. So from 1909 to 1976 the term was 28 years plus 28 years, you had to renew it after 28 years and 85 to 95% never went through that renewal. So that means before 1978 the average copyright term, if you take that renewal into consideration, was never more than 32 years, and the expected copyright term…was never more than 16 years. So it’s a relatively short restriction across the full range of works…

This law has radically changed. Not in small ways, in radical ways. We, in 1976 passed a law which took effect in 1978 which totally inverted the tradition that had guided the United States for 186 years of the republic. Copyright now became automatic…and it extends to all works whether you register it or renew it. It became an opt-out regime rather than an opt-in regime…everything is copyrighted automatically and for a term which now is life of the author plus 70 years, or for corporate works 95 years, which means the copyright term has gone from an expected term of 16 years to an expected term of 95 years in 30 years. Or an average term of 32 years to an average term of 95 years in 30 years. It’s been a radical increase in the scope and duration of this copyright covering all works whether or not it is needed for the commercial incentives that drive copyright.

Via Copyfight.