Free Anne!

Let's hope that this month's news from Canada is a harbinger of a more sensible age to come.

A bill to extend copyright protection for the works of authors who died between 1930 and 1949 has been dropped by the government. The bill was apparently motivated by the heirs of Lucy Maud Montgomery, author of the Anne of Green Gables books, who died in 1949 and whose unpublished works entered the public domain in 2003. Like the Disney megacorporation in the U.S., the Montgomery estate is in possession of a very lucrative collection of works from the past, and wishes to protect and extend its monopoly profits perpetually through legislation rather than through continued, present-day creativity. Unfortunately for them, it sounds as if Canada is moving in the opposite direction to the U.S.'s slow-motion lurch into perpetual copyright monopoly:

"Under the 1997 amendments, copyrights of published works enter the public domain 50 years after the writer's death.

For unpublished works, the law limited the rights of the author's estate to 50 years after his or her death plus a six-year window for the estate to either publish or communicate an intention to do so. Before 1997, an estate had perpetual copyright for posthumous unpublished writings." -- Globe and Mail, April 1, 2004, p. R1

Hurrah to Canada for saying, "no more." Now let's import some of that common sense south of the border. (Thanks to Lawrence Lessig's blog for the link to this CBC news story, and to the Globe & Mail for providing more details.)