Grow Public Domain, Grow

I hope for most of you this is old news, but: Fresh from the Supreme Court's decision against his side in Eldred v. Ashcroft, Lawrence Lessig has introduced a new strategy for accomplishing the vital task of moving more creative works into the public domain. The Eric Eldred Act FAQ explains everything very clearly:

Fifty years after a copyrighted work was published, a copyright owner would have to pay a tiny tax. That tax could be as low as $1. If the copyright owner does not pay that tax for three years in a row, then the copyright would be forfeited to the public domain. If the tax is paid, then the form would require the listing of a copyright agent--a person charged with receiving requests about that copyright. The Copyright Office would then make the listing of taxes paid, and copyright agents, available free of charge on their website.

This is necessary because:

We estimate that of all the work copyrighted between 1923 and 1942 (the first twenty years affected by the Sonny Bono Act), only 2% has any continuing commercial value. If a work has no commercial value, then there would be little reason for the copyright owner to pay the tax. That work would therefore quickly pass into the public domain. If the proposal were adopted as outlined, then within three years, over 90% of the copyrighted between 1923 and 1952 would be in the public domain. This would be massive increase of material into the public domain, through a mechanism that would create a cheap and useable record of the material that remains under copyright.

As a teacher, my mind boggles at how great it would be if 98% of work copyrighted between 1923 and 1942 were in the public domain. It would also be good for the economy. Here's how: Right now, teachers can't afford the time or money it would take to track down permissions to use many copyrighted works, but many of those works are out of print so they can't ask their students to buy them either. The solution for many teachers is to simply steal these works instead by photocopying them and giving them to their students. If these works were in the public domain, they could be made available online for free, or someone like the Dover Press could create Dover Thrift Editions (or something similar) of them, and then teachers could have their students buy them, meaning the Eldred Act would create profit where there now is none. More important, it could make accessible thousands of texts (music, poetry, fiction, etc.) that are now out of print.

The Eldred Act is a great idea. Check the FAQ for information about how you can help get it passed.

Posted 08:59 AM | general politics

Shame Utility Vehicles

Thanks to VC for pointing me to his wife's essay, "California Confession: Driving on the Axles of Evil". It's a wonderfully written and candid discussion of how intelligent people rationalize buying these vehicles—boy do I understand that; I've always sort of wanted one but could never afford or really justify it. Anyway, the essay also raises an important point: Thousands of these vehicles are already on the road, so even though they're very dangerous (to their drivers and occupants, to other drivers, to the environment), it's not like we can just melt them all down into doorstops. Whatever problems attend SUVs, those problems will be with us for a long time, and they will probably get worse before they get better. (For example, as the vehicles age, they're likely to get even less efficient and create more pollution than ever.)

Meanwhile, Breaching the Web links to Greg Easterbrook's extensive review of Keith Bradsher's book, High and Mighty: SUVs—The World's Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got that Way. It details the federal regulatory machinations that encouraged the growth of the SUV market, as well as the many problems with SUVs—the way they're built, the way they're marketed, the way they're driven, etc. Near the end, Easterbrook asks a serious and disturbing question:

What does it say about the United States that there are now millions of people who want to drive an anti-social automobile? Huge numbers of Americans will pay thousands of dollars extra for vehicles that visually declare, "I have serious psychological problems." (Though maybe we are better off having this declared.) The antagonistic environment of the modern road is linked, of course, to the more general psychological predicament usually called stress. We are all stressed for time or money or achievement or sex, or at least we all view ourselves as being thus stressed; and the road is experienced as both an obstacle to the things that we are in such a hurry to fail to get and an arena for the cathartic release from this strain.

I'd argue that the "antagonist environment of the modern road" is linked to a lot more than just "stress." What about all those advertising campaigns that tell potential SUV drivers that the whole point of driving their vehicles is that they can intimidate and dominate everybody else?

Anyway, Easterbrook's review is great reading—especially if you're not planning to read Bradsher's book but you'd still like to understand why it's so provocative.

UPDATE: SUV Tax Break as Much as $75,000:

President Bush's economic stimulus plan could triple the size of a little-known tax loophole that could mean from $25,000 to $75,000 in tax writeoffs for small business owners — including doctors, lawyers and financial advisers — when buying an SUV for business purposes, the Detroit News reported.

Posted 08:20 AM | Comments (1) | general politics