Talk:Public Domain Enhancement Act

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Can someone please clarify all of this in a manner that is not legal jargon? So, if I still wanted to use a work from Shakespeare, I'd be okay, but if someone who paid a 1$ tax to keep a copyrighted work copyrighted, I would have to ask them permission?

Yes, you could still use a work from Shakespeare, because that has gone out of copyright. No one could pay $1 to get a work back in copyright. Instead, this is to allow works that are still in copyright to get out of copyright if no one cares enough to pay the one dollar. Yes, you have to ask permission for works that are still in copyright unless what you are doing falls under fair use. Hope that helps. Jrincayc 12:35, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Copyright Act of 1909

I believe that what this article says about the 1909 Act is not what the Act says. The 1909 Act called for a 28-year term renewable once for a total duration 56 years, not an initial term of 50 years renewable for another 45. I think that something like this was discussed by Congress at the time, at least the 50-year original term; Mark Twain was one of the people who testified for this as someone who had been a victim of the failure to do much to prosecute violators of the previous law and as someone who had made his main living as a creator. But this is not what passed in 1909. Rlquall 19:49, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

After checking both bills from the 108th and 109th Congress, I have found major errors in this article. Instead of paying 1 USD per work once, I have found that after 50 years since the first publication, this Act also requires copyright renewal registration every 10 years, so getting 95-year copyright for works for hire will require 5 renewal registrations, not just once.--Jusjih 19:34, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Petition for this bill

Please sign this petition if you want to reclaim the puclic domain more easily. Even though "City, State" and "Zipcode" look American-centric, you need not enter them especially if outside the USA.--Jusjih 12:28, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Additionally, this is no spam. Excessive copyright restrictions as of now prevent us from improving Wikipedia well, so I am applying WP:IAR here until this Act is passed into a law. As an admin at 8 Wiki sites (Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and Wikisource in English and Chinese, multilingual Wikisource, and Wikimedia Commons), I would like to share my feeling why I respect copyright, but sometimes it can be a major pain. At Wikisource and Commons, there are so many old texts and images without clear copyright status and the copyright holders cannot be easily located, so they have to be deleted while claiming fair use is impractical at these sites. The last resort will be claiming fair use here, but it is not so free. For example, there is a very intense debate at English Wikisource about orphan works. Likewise, commons:COM:DEL also has very intense debates that cannot be easily closed. Therefore, supporting the Public Domain Enhancement Act will benefit us.--Jusjih 19:34, 4 December 2006 (UTC)