From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]> Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2016 22:18:33 -0600 I can't help wondering who those publishers are that Joe says supported the Bono Term Extension Act. I was on the copyright committees of both the AAP and AAUP at the time, and they did not come out in support of it. Sandy Thatcher > 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