I’ve found these interesting copyright articles from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The first one, new legislation, The Music Modernization Act, limits the term length of old music copyrights so that many very old recorded music is now entering the public domain. Yes, it has its flaws, but it is indeed a step in the right direction. One particularly interesting point about it is its provisions for orphan works to cede into the public domain. This will serve as an important test ground for legal precedent for solving the orphan works problem in other areas of copyrighted works.
20200123/https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/new-music-modernization-act-has-major-fix-older-recordings-will-belong-public
This second article, this is a really nice reflection on the economic value of copyrighted works versus public domain works. Many of our most important information works, data, facts, laws, etc., have never existed within the purview of copyright and have always been considered by their creators to be in the public domain. Only recently are “third parties” to the original creators trying to claim copyright on their products and disputing the claim that it cannot be covered under copyright. Arguably, the economic value of public domain works has always been much greater than that of copyrighted works, and copyrighted works should be viewed as an exception, not the norm.
20200123/https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/01/public-domain-rule-copyright-exception