John Lanchester wrote a long piece for the UK Guardian suggesting that Copyright be in effect until “50 years after an author’s death” at which time it is available to anyone “for a small royalty.”
While the piece is interesting, this argument does not even touch on the idea of corporate personhood. Walt Disney, the imagineer, may be dead, but the company still lives.
I’m actually much more aggressive with my suggestion. Copyright should be installed for renewable periods of 12 years. If you fail to make your product available at reasonable price to people who desire it, then you lose the copyright. It seems absolutely silly to know that so many publishing houses and heirs own rights to works we can never see, which they themselves did not produce.
[tags: books, google, copyright, thepugetnews]
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