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Wednesday January 02, 2013 |
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Wallace McLean has posted his annual celebration
of public domain day, listing dozens of authors whose work entered into
the public domain in Canada on New Year's Day. Notable names this year
include Nobel Prize winners William Faulkner and Herman Hesse as well
as poet e.e. cummings. The list is particularly notable this year as
Canada is participating in the Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations,
which include U.S. proposals
to extend the term of copyright in Canada to life of the author plus 70
years (from the current life plus 50). If adopted, the change would
mean that no new works would enter the Canadian public domain for two
decades. Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Newsfeeder, Reddit, StumbleUpon, TwitterTagsShareWednesday January 02, 2013 |
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Tuesday January 24, 2012 |
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Gareth Hughes, a New Zealand Green Party MP, has posted
on the impact of extending the term of copyright in New Zealand from
life plus 50 years to life plus 70 years as demanded by the Trans
Pacific Partnership. Hughes calls attention to many leading NZ works
that would be locked out of the public domain for decades.
Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Newsfeeder, Reddit, StumbleUpon, TwitterTagsShareTuesday January 24, 2012 |
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Friday January 13, 2012 |
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The New Yorker examines
the entry of James Joyce's works into the public domain in Europe
(Joyce entered the public domain in Canada twenty years ago),
demonstrating why the issue is about far more than free access to books.
Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Newsfeeder, Reddit, StumbleUpon, TwitterTagsShareFriday January 13, 2012 |
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Tuesday January 10, 2012 |
Europe has been embroiled in a controversy over the copyright term of
sound recordings for the past few years. While the law provided
protection for a 50 year term, major record labels argued for an
extended term to generate more profits from older recordings. Proposals
to extend the term in the UK and Europe were widely panned as
independent studies found that benefiting a few record labels would
come at an enormous public cost (see here
or here).
For example, the UK Gowers Review of Intellectual Property concluded:
Economic evidence indicates that the
length of protection for copyright works already far exceeds the
incentives required to invest in new works. Boldrin and Levine estimate
that the optimal length of copyright is at most seven years. Posner and
Landes, eminent legal economists in the field, argue that the extra
incentives to create as a result of term extension are likely to be
very small beyond a term of 25 years. Furthermore, it is not clear that
extending term from 50 years to 70 or 95 years would remedy the unequal
treatment of performers and producers from composers, who benefit from
life plus 70 years protection. This is because it is not clear that
extension of term would benefit musicians and performers very much in
practice. The CIPIL report that the Review commissioned states that:
“most people seem to assume that any extended term would go to record
companies rather than performers: either because the record company
already owns the copyright or because the performer will, as a standard
term of a recording agreement, have purported to assign any extended
term that might be created to the copyright holder”.
Despite the evidence, the term of sound recordings was
extended in the UK last year. Canada has thus far been spared a lengthy
debate over the issue since a similar extension clearly holds little
benefit
to Canadians with the overwhelming majority of incremental revenues
going to U.S. record labels.
Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Newsfeeder, Reddit, StumbleUpon, TwitterTagsShareTuesday January 10, 2012 |
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