Bookmobile promotes e-classics–and the public domain
Volunteers for the Internet Archive “have put about 9,000 public domain books on its site,” reports Alternet, “and now they’re driving around the United States in a high-tech bookmobile where people can link to the archive via satellite, download the book of their choice, print it out, and take it home to read. And yes, it’s all free. The Internet Archive bookmobile will make its first visit to an East Palo Alto school Sept. 30 and will stop at numerous other schools, libraries, and nursing homes during its cross-country trek.”
On October 8, the bookmobile will be in Washington, D.C., home of our well-bought Congress, the major threat to the public domain. That’s about when the Supreme Court will be hearing the arguments in the Eldred vs. Ashcroft case over copyright extension. Educators, librarians, Net activists and others are asking the justices to undo a law that extended copyright to an author’s life plus 70 years–in other words, 20 years longer than before the law. The result? Fewer public domain works available for the bookmobile to promote, or students and other Net users to read.
Thanks to the U.S. copyright lobby, American students can’t read such modern classics as The Great Gatsby (1925) for free even though the works are availailable in, say, Australia.
Copyright extensions–yes, plural, since Washington has inflicted a whole series on the country over the years–do not promote creativity. No one will sit down to write a classic simply because the copyright term has been pushed back. Instead extension laws actually harm creativity by reducing the exposure that future authors will have to the classics, or opportunities for young film-makers and others for dramatize such works. May the Archive bus help drive that point home to the Supreme Court.
(Found on InfoArchy.org via help from Luke Francl. Thanks, Luke!)
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