There Is No Cat - Reclaiming the Public Domain

Groovy '60s Sounds from the Land of Smile!

Wednesday, June 25, 2003

Reclaiming the Public Domain

This is very encouraging. Lawrence Lessig received a respectable hearing from a number of Congresscritters in Washington today over his proposal to reclaim the public domain by requiring a nominal fee (currently $1) to extend copyright beyond 50 years. Even Mary Bono (R-Disney) listened to him and was willing to consider his argument. And Lessig's proposal has found a sponsor, Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), who recently became (probably) the first Congresscritter to ever post to a blog, thereby demonstrating cluefullness above and beyond. Lofgren held a press conference today to announce that she was introducing the bill. I suppose it'll take a few weeks before it has a number that other Congresscritters will understand.

I signed the petition; now I'm going to have to contact my Congresscritter and suggest that he co-sponsor Lofgren's bill. He's generally pretty clueful, even if he never answers my letters.

Posted at 11:50 PM

Comments

Note: I’m tired of clearing the spam from my comments, so comments are no longer accepted.

That's funny, I always get a polite thank you letter from Rush Holt that is actually somewhat on topic. I guess he just likes me better.

Posted by lilbro at 2:56 PM, June 26, 2003 [Link]

Signed it. I love the (R-Disney) designation.

Posted by Mike at 3:06 PM, June 26, 2003 [Link]

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What do you mean there is no cat?

"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."

- Albert Einstein, explaining radio