Should Publicly Funded Content Be in the Public Domain?
I see one of the most-quoted posts today on Twitter is All publicly funded content should be in the public domain from popular blog Boing Boing, written by Jesse Brown, host of TV Ontario’s Search Engine podcast. Since he pulls CBC, Telefilm, the Canadian Television Fund and The Canada Council for the Arts into his argument, I thought we (as good Canadians) should have a look at the position he posits. It is:
I think that any publicly funded content should (within, say, 5 years of its creation) be released to the public domain.
Thoughts? (Un-Canadians welcome. Let’s open an international discussion about this.)
I will throw out some facts about U.S. copyright law. There is no copyright protection in works produced by U.S. government employees — hence they are in the public domain upon creation.
That being said, the U.S. government may own copyright in works in certain circumstances. For instance, they can get an assignment of copyright from a work created by a non-civil servant, and often do own copyright in commissioned studies, etc.
Note that this does cause some confusion in that fact that in order to freely use U.S. government works, you cannot assume (as many do) that the work is copyright free, as the government may have acquired the rights and therefore own them.
So in other words (since he is talking about Canada), if these agencies were in the U.S., the situation that Brown describes would not stand?
so, if I get a government grant or loan to create music or art, start up a business, or do research, this argument is saying that after 5 years, the public should be allowed free access to my work?