From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2016 19:10:39 -0500

I agree about the Bono extension. No one in any media business invests
against a timeline of 50 years or more (I have not kept track of how
long the periods are,but they are more than is needed to comfort an
investor). The practical effect of such long extensions is that they
may serve to support what media people call "franchise properties."
So, for example, you might continue to invest in more and more Harry
Potter spin-offs over the years and decades if the copyright term for
the first Potter property is as long as it is now. In academic
publishing you can imagine a standard reference work being updated
just enough to keep it going, working under the protection of the
original copyright. Personally, I support an idea, attributed to
Lawrence Lessig, that required a copyright holder to pay a fee each
year, which would then smoke out all the orphan works (whose unknown
owners would fail to pay the fee).

I also believe that the copyright industries, and publishing in
particular, has made a strategic error in fighting for long copyright
terms. All this does is motivate many people--many, many people in the
academic library world--to fight for expanded fair use provisions as a
way to get around the long copyright terms. I would think that from a
business point of view, publishers would be better off with shorter
terms and limited fair use than what we have now, long terms and
extensive fair use.

But I am writing this on Election Day and must say that the next
president probably has bigger things to think about than when "The
Grapes of Wrath" falls into the public domain. And, according to CNN,
Donald Trump has just won Indiana and Kentucky.

Joe Esposito

On Tue, Nov 8, 2016 at 5:34 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: Winston Tabb <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2016 04:09:22 +0000
>
> The choice was for "limited times," a concept that has been completely
> eroded via the Bono extension
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2016 18:29:45 -0600
>
> Well, actually, the US chose an approach that uses economic incentives
> to achieve the public good of promoting the arts and sciences, so it
> is not a question of "balance" between the two: one is a means to the
> other.
>
> Sandy Thatcher
>
>
> > From: Winston Tabb <[log in to unmask]>
> > Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2016 03:55:59 +0000
> >
> > Is copyright about commerce, or the public good, or a balance between
> > the two?  Which agency is most likely to support the Constitutional
> > imperative that copyright is intended "To promote the Progress of
> > Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and
> > Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and
> > Discoveries"?