(2003-07-27) Public Domain Enhancement

Lawrence Lessig has an interesting new proposed Game Rule for Intellectual Property: the Eric Eldred Act or Public DomainEnhancementAct, which would satisfy Big Media by protecting their still-money-generating assets, while not automatically keeping everything else out of the Public Domain. 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. But would it still keep someone from publishing a take-off on Gone With The Wind?

Related, a fascinating story about the effects of Copy Right on the League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie. Then there's the film's generic invisible man. Though H G Well's lunatic scientist, Hawley Griffin, was available to Moore for the Comic Book, Universal made "The Invisible Man" in the 1930s and still owns film rights. So this is an invisible man named Rodney Skinner, and his awkward origin story, explained early in the movie, brings the momentum crashing to a halt.