Fun_People Archive
7 Apr
Congress to Vote to Freeze Public Domain

Date: Fri,  7 Apr 95 20:15:00 PDT
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: Congress to Vote to Freeze Public Domain

[Ho-hum ... More bad news from Congress.  Nice weather we're having...  -psl]

Forwarded-by: Gregg Porter <gporter@u.washington.edu>
 [Pro is to con what progress is to Congress.  -Gregg-]

From: Fredric W. Dabney <fdabney@NMSU.EDU>

Here's another bit of bull the congress in its (it says in the fine
print) wisdom is working on.

For those who haven't heard about it in the middle of trying to not let
our own bacon get fried- there is a bill that would extend copyright
protection in such a manner that no work published during this century
will fall into the public domain.

I've oversimplified it a bit, but that's the gist of it.  The main
beneficiaries would be not authors but publishers.  I don't know if it
applies to all copyrights or just print, but either way it's not a good
idea.  The excuse is that it will bring the US into line with the
European members of the Geneva copyright conventions, but in fact it
would go far past them.

---Fred Dabney, KRWG-FM, Las Cruces, NM

Forwarded-by: Mary Jensen <cnicopy%sunflowr.usd.edu%uga.cc.uga.edu@nmsu.edu>
From: Christopher Pesce <chrisp@corbis.com>

For those who may be interested in testifying for or against, I have
heard that Tom Mooney, the House Majority Counsel, is arranging
testimony on the Hill concerning the proposed extension of the
copyright term in the U.S.

Christopher Pesce
chrisp@corbis.com

© 1995 Peter Langston