Support the Public Domain Enhancement Act

An online petition is being circulated to encourage the U.S. Congress to support the Public Domain Enhancement Act, a proposed law that would require copyright owners to pay a nominal fee such as $1 50 years after a work is published to keep it under copyright for the rest of its term.

Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig is encouraging webloggers to publicize this petition:

Over 1,000 people have signed our petition in just a couple hours! One-hundred times this and we will have something powerful to show. Thanks to all who have helped -- and especially those who have translated this argument into terms more people can understand. The net builds power the way Google ranks content -- one link tied to another.

I'm number 3,103. This effort is likely to encounter strong resistance from the lobbyists of big media corporations, which is ironic, because it would give them a larger public domain from which to create new derivative works and a database of copyright owner addresses for other works they could license.

2003/06/03 · 0 COMMENTS · Link