How Much We’re Missing From The Public Domain
17th September 2010
The owners of Mickey Mouse have a lot to answer for, as do the Congressmen that they bought.
This one is from a few months back, but I think it’s an interesting topic that deserves some discussion. Rufus Pollock decided to look at how many books would be in the public domain today if we’d either kept copyright law at its original 14 years (plus the possibility of a 14 year renewal) or if we had copyright set at 15 years flat (a number that a recent research project suggested was the optimal length for copyright (pdf). Not surprisingly, he found that a hell of a lot more works would be in the public domain.
Rather than 19% of all books being in the public domain — as the situation is today — we’d have 52% of books being in the public domain under the 14+14 scenario and 75% of works being in the public domain under the 15 yr copyright scenario. As he notes, that latter number is comparable to the percentage of works in the public domain in 1795, in the early days of copyright law in the US. This is important to note, because if you actually understand the history of copyright law, you would know that it’s true purpose was to expand the public domain, and thus it seems worthy to look at how it may be doing the exact opposite of that. In the past century, copyright law in the US has only expanded — with the single exception of recognizing that federal documents (mostly) don’t deserve copyright. Nothing new has entered the public domain through copyright expiring in quite some time, and nothing new will do so for many years as well (and don’t be surprised if we get another attempt at copyright extension soon…).
Truly, we have the best government that money can buy.