On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 2:11 AM, Edison Carter <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:the.real.edison.carter@gmail.com">the.real.edison.carter@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div class="gmail_quote"><div><br>Varable length copyright is not something I will ever agree with. I do not care if it's based on media type, the nature of the content or it's perceived usefulness, copyright held by a person vs. copyright held by a corporation, or the licence used. I very strongly believe that all copyright should expire a uniform number of years after the creation of a work. This would make it so much easier to be sure that a work is no longer in copyright before being able to make use of it in a commercial way. Otherwise we have the problem of works still being locked away long beyond their copyright because even though the copyright has expired, nobody can be sure of it.<br>
</div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Thinking about this topic for quite a while, I realized that no solution will be 100% perfect, I do see the problem that if software is licensed as open source and the copyright expires that then someone could use the software under a closed source license for the next X years. But still the software would be available in the version that was available before the copyright expired. </div>
<div><br></div><div>Thus I came to the conclusion, that an uniform expiration date for all works should be introduced, the length should be subject to further discussions with experts in the industry to guarantee, that a creator would not loose more than 20% in average. </div>
<div><br></div><div>To illustrate:</div><div>We know that most books are sold in the 2 years after the publication, so if we would limit the copyright to 5 years a book author would not loose much money.</div><div>Software is normally considered old after 5 yrs so that there would be no problem neither, movies and music idem, so we should first and foremost try to find a consensus, if we want variable or fixed length copyright and after that we should discuss the exact terms with experts knowing how the industries work.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Sven</div></div>