Michael Geist, The Upcoming Copyright Clash, Literary Review of Canada, June 2005. An excellent overview of copyright reform in Canada. Excerpt: 'Canada is reportedly considering launching a consultation on whether to extend copyright term from the current international standard of the author's life plus 50 years to the author's life plus 70 years. This is despite the fact that there is no evidence the change would generate any further cultural products; instead, it would limit access to Canadian works and cut off the lifeblood of many creators. Some of Canada's best-known writers have stressed the importance of the public domain and the ability to build upon prior work....A robust public domain does more than just provide creators with source material for future work --it also has the potential to support Canada's commercial publishing interests....The public domain also plays a crucial role in historical research....Although the U.S. and European Union have extended their copyright terms by an additional 20 years, the vast majority of the world's population lives in countries that have not. They have all recognized that an extension is unsupportable from a policy perspective. It will not foster further creative activity, it is not required under international intellectual property law, and it effectively constitutes a massive transfer of wealth from the public to a select group of copyright holders such as Disney, which actively lobbied for the U.S. term extension to keep Mickey Mouse out of the public domain. Given the economic and cultural dangers of copyright term extension, even moving forward with a consultation constitutes an embarrassing case of putting the interests of a select few ahead of the public's.'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 5/25/2005 11:35:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
