Petition for a copyright reform part I: Making copyright manageble.

Since the appearence of the Internet, copyright law has challenged not only the way we consume creative content (I shall not comment on p2p) but also the way content is created.

Today content creation is accesible to the general public and distribution can be done independent of the traditional channels. Further content creation has become a collaborative effort in many cases. This is a great opportunity for cultural develoment and democracy.

But, copyright law desperately needs to be updated to accomodate the current reality of content creation. As a bare minimum the following issues should be addressed:

1. Copyright expiry should be a fixed time after publication.
2. Copyright expiry should be the same for all types of creative production.
3. A Copyright notice must be included with a creative work for copyright to apply, otherwise it should become public domain.
4. Content must be registered in publicly accessible databases which must allow for requesting permission of use.

The point is to make copyright manageable for ordinary people. The first two points allow easily to determine when copyright expires from the work itself without further knowledge.

The third point ensures that information required to determine the owner of the copyright is available, if an artist can't care to state her claim, how can she assume to get fully compensated?

And finally, the fourth point makes it easy for people to lookup and apply for license to use a copyrighed work. Basically, the existing registries should be made publicly accessible and searchable.

If these conditions are introduced into copyright law, ordinary people will at least be able to pay adequate fees to the copyright holders when creating and distributing their work.