A Momentary Taste of Being

Houellebecq and Creative Commons This will be an interesting battle testing the legal validity of a creative commons license.

The Google copyright heist? Excuse me.  They negotiated with the copyright holders and worked out a deal.  This is a heist how?  And as to working out remuneration--the present copyright laws are so thoroughly draconian and so thorough antithetical to at least on of the purposes of a properly drafted copyright law (promoting the arts) but I shouldn't be surprised to see piracy become the norm.  When the law has gone out of its mind, no one will abide with it.  It's high time that we threw Mickey Mouse to the sharks and instituted good and reasonable copyright laws.  Laws that allow expiration at 20 years or the author's lifetime, whichever is longer.

The Copyright Principles Project: Directions for Reform While we understand some reasons why copyright terms have become so long and recognize that some CPP members believe longer terms to bejustified, most CPP members believe that the duration of copyright nowadays is longer than is needed to achieve the normative goals of a good copyright regime, and indeed, that the overlong duration of copyright is impeding some important goals of the copyright regime. The switch to a life-plus-years model and the twenty-year extension have contributed, for example, to a growing societal problem; namely, those wishing to license older works often cannot locate the rights holders even after a reasonably diligent search (often referred to as the “orphan works” problem). This problem inhibits appropriate reuses of older works that may be important to preserve as part of our cultural heritage.  We were not able to reach consensus on shortening the copyright term or restoring the “initial term o...

Hitler reacts to the takedown of Hitler parodies.  (Warning, strong language in subtitles--perhaps even in German, who knows?)  Watch it while you still can!