There Is No Cat

Reclaiming the Public Domain

This is very encouraging. Lawrence Lessig received a respectable hearing from a number of Congresscritters in Washington today over his proposal to reclaim the public domain by requiring a nominal fee (currently $1) to extend copyright beyond 50 years. Even Mary Bono (R-Disney) listened to him and was willing to consider his argument. And Lessig’s proposal has found a sponsor, Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), who recently became (probably) the first Congresscritter to ever post to a blog, thereby demonstrating cluefullness above and beyond. Lofgren held a press conference today to announce that she was introducing the bill. I suppose it’ll take a few weeks before it has a number that other Congresscritters will understand.

I signed the petition; now I’m going to have to contact my Congresscritter and suggest that he co-sponsor Lofgren’s bill. He’s generally pretty clueful, even if he never answers my letters.

Posted at 11:50 PM