Copyright term

The copyright term is too long everywhere in the world. Short of finding a country interested in reforming its national laws, we should have a platform describing what a sensible alternative is, so that we can push law-makers towards a better default; and so that we can build and use our own shorter-term licenses. (CC and similar groups should have short-term licenses that they maintain, but the lack of a coherent alternative to the default term has kept this from happening.)

From a recent thread on the OKFN mailing list:


 * SJ: Despite the growth of free culture and free licensing, we haven't set an agenda for fixing (c) and the underlying notion of copyright duration. Publishers and intermediaries, even among their blockbusters get the supermajority of profit and revenue from the first decades of a works' release.


 * RP: I actually had some very good data on this due to earlier research ... Some related thoughts + a simple slide-based presentation ofmy calculation of optimal copyright term can be found in:
 * how long should (c) last
 * optimal (c) term 2009