Companies Too Quick To Copyright

from the indeed dept

LawMeme is pointing to a wonderful article from the Legal Times talking about how the real abuse of copyrights is from corporations who just put a blanket copyright on everything (warning: PDF file), even if they are publishing things in the public domain. He talks about how it's absolutely unclear these days what's public domain and what's copyrighted. Since it's so confusing, publishers are even refusing to allow writers to publish fair use excerpts of items, for fear of being sued. The writer of the article, Jason Mazzone of Brooklyn Law School, suggests that we change copyright law to make it punishable if someone claims false copyright. His argument is that if you're going to use a copyright, you should specifically designate what's copyrighted. By just putting a blanket copyright on an entire book or website, we're simply locking down content that is legally free.

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