Heritage

A huge part of our heritage is turning to dust as we speak, this due to the the extension on Copyright terms. this dust is made of the once grate films of the past, made on nitrous-base. just turning to dust.

edit at the end.....

Copyright: the double edged sword.
I am listening to "Free Culture" a book by Lawrence Lessig and I get infuriated with how the media companies and the MPAA could not support the "The Eldred Act" but instead demand that it would hurt copyright holders.
there argument went something like this: "We con not let other peoples movies get in to the public domain, cus we will not have control over the public domain. It is better that the cultural heritage in these moveis turn to dust!" -- Jack Valenti of the MPAA
This is not relay what he said, but it was the essence of it.

Well I relay hove nothing to say about this, I encourage you to read the book, available here and here( Audio Book) and here.

So the double edged sword:
I am a copy right holder, when I make a note to my dad, that is copyrighted, when I write here, it is copyrighted, it is my work, I own it. But, is it rely necessary that you are not allowed to reprint this, in any way shape or form until 50 years after my death?
No, it is not.
If I were to make a book ( whish I hope that I will one day do) I will put on the first page: "In event of my death this work will become Public Domain" and/or "This work will become public domain after 25 years of its initial publication.
Why?
Cus, all the revenue that I will probably make will be a) during my life time b) with in 25 years of its first print.
How do I know this?
Easy: I have books in my shelf that is no longer in print, and I have no Idea how to contact the copyright holder if I wanted to make an digital version of it and make public so that this grate works would "stay alive" so to say. I have to wait till the copyright owner dies, then wait 50 years more.
He would not make a dime of its digital copy, granted, but he does not make a dime of it now. So I think that something like a shorter copyright term (say 25 years) would be ideal, and then have the right to extend it for a fee of something like 1€ to extend it an other 25 years and then again, but no more then 75 years.

But then we have software. I wonder what the FSF and the GNU project has to say about this? I mean is the project as a howl one work, or is every file its own work? if you do the sums you will soon see that it all adds up if you were to extend the licence term of some of the projects, so they do not pass in to the public domain. And if the were to become public domain the GPL would be nullified on old revisions. this making them fair game for leeches.

You can see where I am going with this.

When I write or draw stuff that I put up on the net, I always put it under CC-BY-SA (not including this blog ATM), this due to I want my work to not become orphaned in case of my death, but put in it archives, and be part of a time line of human history, my "thoughts echo on in future minds" so to say.

I relay thought that I had something to say here, but my knowledge in the subject is limited, so I will end this post here.


Edit:
Found this on the intratubez: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhTUzNKpfio it is a video by from TEDxNYED with Lawrence Lessig.
Even though I hate Conservatives and Libertarians, he makes a good point.
(I am the lefty lefty, free market loving, free culture promoting guy)...