Issues > Copyright Reform

One of the inevitable polls that appear each campaign season is the list of issues that are most important to voters. Some issues, like crime or the economy, are perennial favorites. Others are more transitory, topping the polls in one campaign season, and then dropping off the public's radar by the next.

It's safe to say that 'Copyright Reform' has never appeared on any of these lists. Ever. As campaign issues go, it falls below, say, reinstituting the gold standard.

So why is copyright reform one of the steadfast pillars of my campaign? Because it is an issue that has never interested voters at election time. The copyright aspects of intellectual property have an immeasurable impact on America's economy and cultural landscape, but because the voting public has never evidenced any interest in the subject, America's copyright laws have come to be molded and manipulated exclusively by lobbyists.

America's first copyright law protected an author's work for up to 28 years. As recently as 1976, a copyrighted work was protected up to a maximum of 56 years. These periods of protection ensured just compensation for a work's author, but also provided for a robust public domain for the American artist and creator.

However, thanks to copyright extensions passed by Congress in 1976 and 1998, a corporately owned copyright now lasts for 95 years, and an individual's copyright lasts for the remainder of his life plus an additional 70 years. When Congress passed its 1998 extension, they did so by a voice vote, thus denying the American public of even a record of which members of Congress endorsed that change.

Because of these extensions, virtually no works have fallen into the public domain since 1923, and no other works are due to enter the public domain until 2019. The length of protection afforded by our current copyright law violates the original purpose of the Constitution's copyright provision. The public domain has suffered greatly, with large corporate interests (such as Disney, which lobbied heavily for the last extension) being the primary beneficiary. Only a tiny minority of copyrighted works are still valuable 50+ years after their creation, making the rest into "orphan works" that, because of the threat of litigation and financial penalties, remain legally restricted but impossible to use.

Similarly, while U.S. law protects the "fair use" of copyrighted works, such as for educational or parody purposes, the vagueness of the law and the threat of expensive litigation from corporate interests often results in even fair uses being squelched. Consider, for instance, the plight of the documentarian.

For too long our copyright laws have been written with only one side's interests in mind. And they get away with this because it has never a campaign issue; because it's not on the public's radar; because they know that Congress can even get away with taking voice votes without attracting attention. If no one stands up against them, it is all but inevitable that a decade from now yet another extension will be passed, further desiccating the public domain. This is an inequity that must be addressed. America's copyright laws need to be reformed with the value of fair use and the public domain in mind.

So although I am under no illusion that this is a pressing issue to voters in this election, it is nonetheless an issue that demands an advocate in Congress. With that advocate, and without a public that is informed on the issue, fair use and the public domain in the U.S. will continue to suffer, and America's cultural landscape will continue to be harmed in a thousand tiny ways every day. We need change, but before that can ever happen, we need someone who is at least willing to talk about the issue. And I am the only candidate who will.