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I know you're just sending form letter replies and thus your letter had NOTHING to do with mine, but I said nothing about copyright etc etc. But since you brought it up, now I will.
Copyright as currently constituted is a far stretch from the Constitutional phrasing. Allow me to quote:
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.
A LIMITED TIME
Congress has been lengthening and lengthening copyright. Part of copyright is to protect creators. Part of copyright is to insure that works enter the public domain and become part of the Great Corpus of Human Thought.
You, as my representative (as well as Hollywood's), need to work on this.
As someone who makes a living through copyrighted work myself, I'm not suggesting we screw the artist. I'm suggesting we don't screw the future.
Looking forward to getting the same form letter a third time,
I am,
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Various industries are posting "No Trespassing" signs on the gleaning fields of the public domain through legislative means. The funny thing: Many of these SOPA-tote'n interests are actually quite the freebooters themselves, trusting in the expensive and slow-grinding wheels of the courts and lobbyist-altered legislation to protect them from that same charge which they freely and with growing impunity level against others ...
ReplyDeleteMy family has been in the business of restoring lost and orphaned public domain works, making them once again available. We've witnessed the public domain's steady shrinkage and obfuscation. We've been the subject of a pre-2012-Congress, SOPA-style blackout where an entire web host was taken offline because, they said, a motion picture company was after us for selling orphaned products that the company saw had garnered followings and that they managed, through legislation, to lay claim to. Some of these products they don't even sell and don't seem to be interested in selling. This move blacked out hundreds of other website stores whose businesses had nothing to do with ours except that they were hosted by the same website manager. We've also had products removed in response to false claims because web hosts are now so sensitive to copyright infringement complaints that they'll act on them without question. They do this because if they take the products down on every complaint, they're protected from even charlatan threats of lawsuits. Opportunists big and small find bounty in such a fearful environment.
The once diverse and rich public domain is becoming an exploited and threatened environment. Strip-mining, over-grazing,and over-damming is rampant. Maybe some environmental advocacy group could sponsor a bill in its behalf?
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ReplyDeleteI had no idea this reclamation was even going on until I read earlier this month that Republic Pictures reclaimed "It's a Wonderful Life" --- what's that all about? This is ridiculous!