Category Archives: eldred.cc

We are approaching 10,000 on our petition. That is our goal for this week — so please use the excuse of the weekend to pester your friends. There are more announcements next week, but please do what you can to help now. Continue reading →

for the Reclaim the Public Domain petition. Continue reading →

We have gathered over 6,000 signatures on our petition in a single day. That is extraordinary progress.

Yet there are many who are frustrated that this doesn’t go far enough. Many on Slashdot, for example, demand that we “hold out” for something much more radical. That this would be a “compromise” and that we should never “compromise.”

We should never compromise. But we must take first steps. We are where we are because most people don’t believe in the public domain. Most people don’t even understand it. We live in a time when the public domain is more than 75 years old. Yet for most of our history, the public domain was no more than 30 years old. If ordinary people could see the creativity that would be inspired if the 1960s were in the public domain, they would understand again the importance of limiting the regulation that copyright law has become.

They will only understand it if we build it. They will only get it when they see the creativity it would inspire, and the knowledge it will spread. We need to show them why the public domain is important, by building it again.

The Public Domain Enhancement Act would do this. And when not 5,000, but 50,000 people join together to say that it should be our first step, Congress will take it up. Then the burden will be on the otherside to explain why this obvious change should not occur.

But if you think our petition is too tame � if you think it accepts too much of current law, and would be read to endorse the status quo � then sign this alternative. It makes clear that the current system is broken; it demands radical reforms. But as any reform we achieve can apply to future copyrights only, we still have to deal with the current law, and the control it imposes. It therefore also endorses this first step.

Let’s see which view of copyright law better reflects this democracy. Let’s see just how radical the democracy has become. But on either view, we should take first steps now. We should build support around obvious reforms. And we should force them to resist what seems sensible to everyone else.

The only thing that we should not do is sit back and do nothing, “holding out” for “radical reform” that will never come on its own.

If you want “radical reform,” than produce 500,000 signatures on this Reclaim Copyright Law petition. If you want a first step of reform, then help us get 50,000 signatures to Reclaim the Public Domain.

But either way, do something. Now. Continue reading →

Our count has doubled in the last hour. We’re now up to over 2,000 signing our petition.

Update: over 3,500. Aaron’s got a great graph of the growth. Continue reading →

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. Continue reading →

So if you get a chance to read the Supreme Court’s opinion in Dastar, keep in mind this brilliant observation by Duke Law Professor James Boyle:

So we now know that while the word “origin” in an IP statute must be carefully defined in order to prevent rights-creep that would undermine the careful limitiations struck in a statutory scheme, the words “promote,” “progress,” “limited” and even “author” can be defined any way Congress wanted to even if that upsets the careful balance struck in a constitutional clause, because they are only words in the Constitution, and thus much less fundamental.
Got it.

Continue reading →

Re: the agreement to extend copyright terms:

But when you read this criticism of them, remember, it applies doubly to us. Continue reading →

Timothy Phillips, one of the most active people pushing to reclaim the public domain, writes in a comment to my post yesterday,

“�Monitor the issue ?� Why doesn�t the representative introduce the bill, if it has not already been introduced ?”

Why Timothy? Because as one person who had spoken to someone on the hill wrote me, “no congressperson yet sees ANY possible benefit to them from introducing this bill, and they all see SIGNIFICANT political costs. This is like taking on the NRA, but these people have more than one movie star on their side.” Continue reading →

Derek Slater has put together an excellent letter that you can use to ping your Congresscritter. A much improved version of the 4 page “two pager” that I posted. Use it and ping your congressperson here. Continue reading →

Here’s a better link to locate Congress-critters who you can write to about the Eldred Act. And here’s a description of the proposal and its purposes. Continue reading →