The Public Domain Enhancement Act and the Emerging Problem of Copyrights Vs. Free Culture

The public domain has been both a blessing and a curse for a lot of creative people around the world for decades. In the worst cases, some classic movies had their copyrights lapse after 20 or 30 years, ended up in public domain--and then subsequently turned up on local stations looking like the original negatives were dragged across a gravel road for fifty miles. One of the most famous cases of that happening to a beloved film is "It's a Wonderful Life" during the 1970's. Director Frank Capra inexplicably let the copyright on the film lapse in the early 70's (perhaps initially thinking that the film would just sit in a vault forever without being exploited)--but local stations hungry for family films acquired it right away and started showing both cut and uncut prints of the film annually around the holidays. By that time, of course, the film was in dire need of restoration, despite giving it a chance to find a new audience and eventually finding a new copyright holder in the 80's (Ted Turner, who ran it an unexaggerated billion times on his cable stations...then bought by NBC) to finally restore it to full glory. This is part of the mixed blessing/curse phenomena of public domain material and one part of the case made in U.S. Congress for the last four years to amend current copyright laws on creative works.

The only questionable tactic for a "Public Domain Enhancement Act" is a tax placed on copyright holders that's a whole new concept for those who've held copyrights for over fifty years or more...or maybe those who aren't aware they have something copyrighted. And then there's the increasing debate over what should be considered free in the creative world. The "Free Culture" movement is one segment of the population forwarding that idea recently.