Copywrong

The New York Times notices that there are some problems with the copyright laws (LRR):

In 1790, copyright protection lasted for 14 years and could be renewed just once before the work entered the public domain. Between 1831 and 1909, the maximum term was increased from 28 to 56 years. Today, copyright protection for individuals lasts for 70 years after the death of the author; for corporations, it's 95 years after publication. Over the past three decades, the flow of material entering the public domain has slowed to a trickle: in 1973, according to Lessig, more than 85 percent of copyright owners chose not to renew their copyrights, allowing their ideas to become common coin; since the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act lengthened present and past copyrights for an additional 20 years, little material will enter the public domain any time soon.

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One of the central ideas of the Copy Left is that the Internet has been a catalyst for re-engaging with the culture -- for interacting with the things we read and watch and listen to, as opposed to just sitting back and absorbing them. This vision of how culture works stands in contrast to what the Copy Left calls the ''broadcast model'' -- the arrangement in which a small group of content producers disseminate their creations (television, movies, music) through controlled routes (cable, theaters, radio-TV stations) to passive consumers.

There's quite a bit more, and a lot of questionable ideas, but I'm happy to see that someone besides Steven sees the absurdity of eternal copyrights.

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