Let’s Make It Easier to Expand the Public Domain

[Commentary] An open secret among free culture fans is that it can be surprisingly hard to dedicate something to the public domain. Here's a simple idea for copyright reform: Why not fix that?

In the days when to get a copyright, you actually needed to fill out some paperwork, it was very easy to put something into the public domain. You didn't even have to do anything: public domain was the default. If you wanted something to be in the public domain, you just didn't file for a copyright. Now, however, works are copyrighted as soon as they are written down or recorded. There's no opt out. It would be easy to fix this. One way would be for Congress to eliminate termination for "public domain" licenses, and perhaps also for some kinds of public, royalty-free licenses like the Creative Commons licenses or the GPL. This path, rather than a full-on statutory acknowledgement of copyright abandonment, would allow authors to continue dual licensing while making a public domain license identical to the public domain in all other respects. It thus provides the benefits of a dedication to the public domain without taking away all of the benefits termination is supposed to provide (in the classic case, protecting artists who sign exploitative contracts with companies because they have so little bargaining power).