Canadian Gov't Considers Plan To Block Public Domain 169
An anonymous reader writes "Canada celebrated New Year's Day this year by welcoming the likes of Ernest Hemingway and Carl Jung into the public domain just as European countries were celebrating the arrival of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, 20 years after both entered the Canadian public domain. The Canadian government is now considering a plan to enter trade negotiations that would extend the term of copyright by 20 years, meaning nothing new would enter the public domain in Canada until at least 2032. The government is holding a public consultation with the chance for Canadians to speak out to save the public domain."
Re:Sadly, this will pass (Score:3, Interesting)
With any luck, it will be like Canada's pot laws, which exist on paper just to prevent the USA from freaking out, but aren't actually enforced in Canada. Lawyers, judges and lawmakers don't know this, but cops do, and that's really all that matters.
Re:Sadly, this will pass (Score:4, Interesting)
Harper wants to enforce minimum sentences on all drug offenses, including jail time. Really.
Can't we just drop the pretenses... (Score:4, Interesting)
... and just print some money and hand it to these bozos to leave us alone? I mean we can't pretend anymore that there's any fairness at all. Copyright was some kind of a deal in which both parties contributed with something: "the people" agreed to let "the authors" have some kind of unnatural monopoly over how some specific information is distributed with the understanding that they'll get back after a while some more interesting information in return. Free for share and for recycling in any way we see fit.
Already life of the author plus 50 years or whatever is whatever relevant jurisdiction is ridiculously high and defeats the spirit of copyright. Heck, there's freakin' JULES VERNE still under copyright (and really hard to find if you are on the wrong continent).
Life + 70 years is just a spit in the face. It should be like patents, about 20 years, with the need for explicit extensions. And a DRM-free copy of the original should be provided in escrow to some state organization which should make sure at the date when the copyright expires the DRM-free copy is available for everyone. Or you chose your poison: copyright will not protect you if the copy you distribute has DRM. Either it's mine to do whatever I am legally allowed to do OR you don't come crying that you want to sue a printer in some campus for "distributing copyrighted work".
If I'm not mistaken Canada is also one of the countries where if you want to back-up your pictures (for example) to CD it's presumed that you infringe copyright and you have to pay some fee no matter what, isn't it? I think this goes back to my original argument that there's no rhyme or reason to the laws, just get what you can for whatever pretext.
But what is really sad ... (Score:2, Interesting)
Is that as a Canadian citizen I needed to learn about this on Slashdot, so much for public consultation!
Re:For me, this begs the question (Score:4, Interesting)
We have a perfectly good term for the anachronistic meaning of "begs the question", and that is "circular argument". The common usage of the phrase makes much more sense than the official usage, if only because the official usage requires a unique definition of "beg" which is basically never used outside of that context.