Quick answer to Eli

Have been having a spirited discussion over on Confessions of a Mad Librarian with Eli Edwards, one of the more interesting people that I met at ALA Midwinter.

So, in answer to her latest question (and to drag some of the traffic onto my blog via trackback): Absolutely, I support Lessig and Eldred (and Creative Commons). These sorts of alternatives not only increase the public awareness of the overall absurdity of current copyright law, but give those who are already aware means of bypassing the lockdown completely. This blog (and all of my academic work here at UNC that is web-based) has been given an appropriate use license, and I go to great lengths to convince others that it is the right thing to do.

Now, that being said: I am well aware that Creative Commons and other licensing schemes of their ilk (GNU, OGL) rely on the power of the US Copyright law to function. This is an irony of which I am not ignorant. I think that the fairest implementation of a limit on copyright terms may be Lessig’s suggestion of trivial economic subscription, by asking copyright holders that are interested in maintaining their copyright to pay $1 a year to hold it.