Michael S. Hart wrote:
Please forward as you feel appropriate.
OK, so I am un-Canadian. So they don't have to read it. I sent them this. They won't do it of course, but I think some countries should consider the principle (among others of course). ============================ To: Copyright Consultations Your initiative in consulting Canadians on copyright matters does Canada credit, especially during a period of world-wide confusion and bad-faith violation and manipulation of copyrights. I am an author of largely semitechnical material and a heavy user of published material in general and I hope that you will consider some of the following points during the consultations. There is no question of any one correspondent covering the entire field of course. At the end of this document I address your questions as they were presented on your web page. Please note that I have nothing to say that specifically addresses anything but reading matter and illustrations, whether in electronic, printed or written form. Music, films and the like are outside my line of intimate involvement. To begin with we should understand that the entire matter is one of resolution of conflicts of interest. Realising this does not make the question simple, but trying to resolve it without clearly understanding that point would be simply futile, and only the lawyers would profit. At any point the question should be: "Whose interests would be furthered by such a measure?" If the answer is; "None in particular," then the measure should be considered no further. With due admiration for Mencken's "...there is always an easy solution to every human problem - neat, plausible, and wrong," I insist that the fewer and simpler the rules and regulations, the better. Let us consider some of the interests in possible conflict, in no definitive sequence. 1. The author or authors 2. The authors' estates, dependents, and heirs 3. Purchasers of copyrights 4. The publishers 5. The Canadian public who purchase the material 6. The Canadian public who use the material 7. The Canadian public image domestically and internationally 8. The International public who purchase the material 9. The International public who use the material 10. Posterity You will be well aware that there are emergent complications, both in good faith and very often in very bad faith, but as far as practical I am trying to stick to simple, commonsense lines of thought. 1. It is largely common cause that it is good that authors can publish and that they may exercise reasonable copyright. I do not consider complications such as authorship under contract or employment. 2. It similarly is good that an author that serves the public's desires suitably should be able to do so at sufficient profit to make it worth his own while and for adequate benefit to his dependents. 3. In spite of certain parties' idealistic objections, there is no practical basis apart from normal taxation, for limiting an author's legitimate profit from his work. If he or his publishers become billionaires from a book, then so be it. 4. It is in the public interest that an author's work be made available and that an author's productivity be nurtured for as long as public interests underwrite the published works through purchase or sponsorship or whatever arrangement suits the relevant parties. 5. There is no cogent basis for nominating any particular time limit to the copyright. 75 years after a work or 50 years after the author's death or the like are simply thumb-sucks at figures that suited particular parties, or were as long as they thought they could get away with. For most books they are too long by far, for a few they are probably too short. 6. It is a matter of the mildest concern one way or the other how long a book stays in copyright as long as it is sufficiently widely available in sufficient numbers and at reasonable cost if there is public demand. Publishing one copy a year in central Greenland at a price of a million dollars each as a bad-faith legalistic means of preventing public access would not meet the case. 7. Conversely, there are thousands of books that seem unlikely to get back into commercial print again, but are unsung classics. I could mention quite a few off my own shelves, such as "A Sailor's Life" by de Hartog, the autobiographical works of Alexander King, "Nature is your Guide" by Gatty, "Short History of the Art of Distillation" by Forbes, and a number of others that I do not wish to check for being in print at present. Some are textbooks of great value or primary documentation of events of great interest, but without commercial appeal. Such books often are doomed because no commercial publisher in his right mind would touch them, but by the time that they are out of copyright even the libraries and second-hand shops will have pulped their copies. They are of no benefit to any of the categories of interests that I listed above. Consider "Mr Belloc Objects" by Wells; it went out of print immediately after being published in 1926 and I am not even sure of its status today. However, it is one of the greatest gems of polemics in the history of science, and if certain specially interested parties had not scanned it in, it might have been lost by now. His "Science of Life" might well follow. At the same time, as long as works in that twilight zone are technically in copyright, projects such as Gutenberg will not touch them. 8. Any regulation that could be dispensed with without injustice, or could be substituted by a simpler or more self-regulatory convention is an imposition on both state and public and should be expunged or avoided. 9. The following scheme should accommodate or alleviate most of the foregoing considerations. 1. Copyright restrictions should apply according to some such scheme as those currently applicable. The exact terms and periods are not of major concern to this discussion. 2. As long as the product remains in print and reasonably available to the public through normal commercial channels etc and no other cogent objection can be raised, there need be little material change to the arrangements. 3. However, at any time after publication, any interested party could apply to some central national authority for non-exclusive copyright. He would have to give appropriate reasons why this should be granted. Such reasons would be of two basic types, firstly negative: lack of reasonable objections from interested parties. Examples of reasonable objections might include: the author might object to his publication being re-issued because of regret that he ever had published it. That would be valid. Conversely, the author might have no objection, but the publisher might wish to quash the book for competitive or personal reasons. That would not be valid. I cannot give a ranked list of negative considerations that the authority might consider, but it might be such things as that the author and family were deceased, that the book was out of print and that the former publishers had expressed lack of interest in re-commencing publication etc. Positive reasons might the public interest. A niche group might think the book of crucial value, but it might not at the present time be available. The appellant's own commercial interests would obviously not figure as strong arguments, and the author or his assignees would have claim for reasonable royalties. 4. If the arguments for allocating non-exclusive copyright were seen as adequate, then the original copyright holders would be notified if possible, and given a reasonable period to respond (perhaps half a year?) and if they did not respond, the copyright would not be ceded, but would be extended to the appellant, possibly with certain restrictions fitting the case. 5. The copyright, if granted to an appellant, would be non-exclusive; anyone else could concurrently ask for similar or different rights on the same or different grounds, and they might or might not succeed. 6. Any such copyright would remain contingent on no valid objection emerging subsequent to its being granted during the normal period of copyright. There would explicitly be no assurance that the appellant either could rely on no one else being granted a similar copyright. Also, the copyright might be withdrawn (without penalty, but also without compensation) if the original copyright holder subsequently produced adequate reasons for regaining exclusive copyright. The questions presented in the invitation to respond were as follows: 1. How do Canada’s copyright laws affect you? How should existing laws be modernized? As long as Canada is a signatory to international copyright conventions, including those that constrain the general use of material out of print, but still within copyright, everyone, including myself, suffers pointless loss of access to valuable material. (Of course, an even larger volume of total rubbish gets lost as well, but none of my suggestions aggravate its retention!) 2. Based on Canadian values and interests, how should copyright changes be made in order to withstand the test of time This is a little vague on two counts. Canadian values in context might at a guess include dignity, practicality, and fairness to all parties. The foregoing proposal seems to me to cover those. I should hope that the values would not assume slavishly unthinking adherence to traditional ways of doing things or to the NIH syndrome. As for Canadian interests, the scheme should entail no penalty whatever on any author or good-faith publisher, but should enable any party in Canada to avail themselves of resources that currently are being wasted pointlessly. Test of time? That is always hard to say antecedent to the test, but any scheme that puts the incentive to act constructively in the hands of the interested party, and permits correction in the event of error or justified objection, should not readily attract long-term resentment or annulment. 3. What sorts of copyright changes do you believe would best foster innovation and creativity in Canada? As detailed above. It would leave creative individuals (authors etc) with absolutely no reduction of their rights and incentives (they need never pay a lawyer to say "no" on their behalf, or (re)commence publication and circulation within a reasonable time, or whatever similar action might prove appropriate), but it also would enable users among the public to avail themselves of valuable works that otherwise would go to waste. If anything, they might profit from extra royalties. Possibly one also might wish to give attention to questions of unreasonable extensions of copyright in the hands of non-creators. Consider the case of the alleged behaviour of the copyright holders of "Gone With The Wind" in the US. 4. What sorts of copyright changes do you believe would best foster competition and investment in Canada? Something along the lines of the foregoing suggestion, calculated as it is, not only to increase access to desirable works by rescuing them from stagnation and unfair competition, but also increasing their returns for the author by increasing the scope for keeping them in print, might well attract foreign authors to print their works in Canada instead of in more hidebound countries that do less to promote publication. 5. What kinds of changes would best position Canada as a leader in the global, digital economy? I assume this refers to the current context only? After all, I am no economist! Canada is already a major leader in such fields. It is important to maintain flexibility, rather than to confuse rigidity with high standards. The most important thing is to ensure that laws accommodate the need to reward good faith and punish bad faith. A hypothetical illustration in the current international situation might be that whereas there need be no ceiling to the bonus that an executive of an enterprise could accept in the event of his delivering as contracted, it would have to be balanced by an ppropriately matching penalty in the event of non-delivery. A company, or even a third party should be able to invoke something of the type. Another principle should be very rapid turnover in court cases. There should be no limit to the value of damages that could be handled in what are currently the "small claims courts" or ombudsmen. Instead the assumption should be that their verdicts are correct, rapid, informal, and paid for by the state. Anyone who thinks that he has been hard done by in such a verdict should be informed of the basis of the decision before he appeals. If he then appeals, it gets passed on together with the details of the decision and objections to a supervisory and re-evaluatory committee that must report back within say 24 hours. If anyone still is dissatisfied he has recourse to the more ponderous mechanisms of the courts. The appellant then pays for everything, lawyers on both sides etc. Only if he then wins does he get his investment back. In general, keep things constructive, keep them brief, and concentrate on visible good faith and visible good sense. But that wasn't the sort of question I was expecting. Did I misunderstand the intent? Thank you for your attention. Feel welcome to contact me if in this hurried and incoherent note I left anything that seemed interesting but obscure. Jon Richfield ======================= Comments, up to and including horrified shrieks or bored yawns, as anyone prefers. Jon