Copyright Reform

Recently, a speech was given by Gigi Sohn, brilliantly outlining how to fix copyright. Copyright today is broken, with giant corporations having too much power. Because George Bernard Shaw has only been dead for 57 years, and not 70, his work is still copyrighted. If Shakespeare were still copyrighted, there would be no "Rozencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead". We need to be allowed to make derivative works of old stuff, even movies.

Can you imagine a world where anything older than 28 years was public domain? All movies, TV shows, from before 1979 would be free to be modified. Star Wars. I Love Lucy. All of it.

The end of the speech nails it:

For the past 35 years, the trend has been nearly unmitigated expansion of the scope and duration of copyright, resulting in a clear mismatch between the technology and the law. Over the past decade copyright reformers like Public Knowledge have stopped the pendulum from swinging even farther away from digital reality. Now it is time to move the pendulum towards the future and away from the past.

You can read the whole speech here.