Apropos of some of the conversations being had here about copyright issues surrounding recordings: next year will mark twenty years since the last Copyright Term Extension Act. As you all know, the copyright term situation is already comically bad, but there is no reason to believe Congress won't vote to make it even worse next year, particularly having the absolute gift that is this dysfunctional clownshow of a presidential administration to distract everyone - to say nothing of the rest of their own regressive agenda. (Not that this isn't a bipartisan policy...)
Given that, seems to me that organizing against this needs to be happening now. Typing 'Copyright Term Extension Act' into Google already yields an autocomplete of 'of 2018', and ludicrously enough, among the top hits for such is a legal article arguing for such an extension. The archivist community in particular, I think, understands the chilling effect this has on the preservation of cultural treasures (beyond, say, making a personal copy and then waiting for Godot, lest you be sued into oblivion by some rights troll). Defeating this bill would amount to preserving the status quo: already not great, but at least it would begin allowing some works - not music, given the even more opaque state copyright regime it lives under; not for another fifty years - but at least it would begin allowing some works published 1923 and on to pass into the public domain in the next few years, instead of delaying that eventuality yet another twenty years.
I'm not sure what chance we'd have...but we should at least try, right?
Eli Bildirici
(347) 837-8337
|