Saturday, September 13, 2008

"The natural place of creative expression is in the public domain"

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's "Who Owns Ideas" is available at

http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/features/who-owns-ideas/index.html

The MP3 is narrated by Paul Kennedy, and includes interviews with James Boyle, science-fiction author Eric Flint, (author of 1632, Mother of Demons, and other works,) Cory Doctorow, and Michael Geist. The article devotes considerable time to discussing U.S. copyright law. Why the interest in U.S. law from Canadians? A bill has been proposed in the Canadian Parilament, bill C-61, which would introduce provisions into Canadian law similar to some provisions of the DMCA. And Canada has so far resisted extending the duration of Canadian copyright from life+50 to life+70. But the content industry will surely want to change that.