This is something that really needs to be done. It's the only way that we'll be able to protect our rights without them being changed later. This is just something I've come up with so any additions are welcome. And while we might not be able to get Congress to do this, if we could get two-thirds of the states to agree on it, then it could become a part of the Constitution. Or we could submit it to those Congresspeople that support fair usage rights. Anyway, this is my proposed amendment:

Amendment --

Section 1. Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of this Constitution shall hereafter serve as the only copyright law in the United States.

Section 2. Copyright on individual or group works of intellectual property shall expire and enter the public domain after a period of fourteen years, unless said works are renewed, in writing, by the individual or group. In this regard, only the original copyright holder, and not a family member, estate executor or corporation, shall be allowed to renew the copyright.

Section 3. No work that has passed into the public domain shall become the property of any individual or corporation based on use of said work, regardless of use.

Section 4. In regards to fair usage of a work, no individual or group may be sued for making personal copies of the work for archival purposes, or to share with acquaintances so long as said sharing is with no more than fifteen acquaintances for each copyrighted work.

Section 5. No individual shall ever be sued by a copyright holder for creating a derivative of a copyrighted work, provided the original copyright holder is credited with creating the original work.

Section 6. Congress shall have the power to enforce this amendment with appropriate legislation.

from the libelous ball of crap i just saw posted to the fbi site we will be lucky if we each get private cells for the crime of having our own property.

You'd have to word it to make it idiot proof, so specific and restraining to only pertain to the ideas blatantly suggested that it would take far longer then what it took you to write that.

Ah, well, it's just a rough draft. Have to see what Code thinks of it.

NiceGuy...I just posted your article and haven't had a chance to look at it...working on getting more news posted...will be checking it out....looks interesting, but agree with fjones987 in that it needs to be a bit more technically worded to avoid loophole exploitation...

~Code

With Constitutional Law fresh on my brain, I'd say to make it more general, not more specific. I would suggest:

No person shall held to pay any fine or penalty, civil or otherwise, for any violation of copyright, beyond the amount of actual damages proven to have been suffered by the holder of the copyright by the actions of that violator.

NiceGuy, you are obviously a nice guy!
Just cause it is not yet in "proper legalese" yet does not mean that it has no merit (far from it!)

Let the lawyers hammer out the exact wording, let the fund raisers do the funding, you keep comming up with the meat to the ideas. This is a society we live in after all and that means you can't do the entire job yourself and have to let each do thier part.

(Get to work all you wordsmiths!)

BTW
I would like a 7 + 7 myself, but I could live with 14 + 14 if that was what it took to get something along these lines thru.

RESPECT!

Shmoo, of Electric Gypsy
Support Local and Indpenendent Music!

Such language would eliminate these ridiculous $150,000 threats (and event he supposed $750 minimum damages) and restore sanity to the system - after all, how much actual damages can a record label PROVE from the uploading of a song? They would have to prove, at the outset, that everyone who downloaded the song would otherwise have purchased it, and even then, songs are now selling on the internet for 99 cents a pop...

You and I and we here know it bluerhythmjo. The industry is only HELPED by file-sharing (and much to our sorrow!) But as we also know, it is NOT about the fictional "lost sales," it is about CONTROL over what the folks are sharing.

Shmoo

I'm 100% in agreement with that.

Well, I've updated this vastly to cover just about everything that can be copyrighted, and provisions for them to enter the public domain. I have decided to use 1953 as a cutoff point, since some of the original copyright holders are still alive. I've also added trade organizations to the list of people not allowed to renew a copyright and added a section dealing with selling a copyright. I've gone with a fourteen year copyright since that was the original copyright term in this country and it allows a person to make as much as they can in that fourteen years. Then, the decision to renew becomes theirs. But it has to be initiated in writing. This helps us avoid laws being passed that do it automatically.

I've also added a clause forbidding the amendment from being altered or abolished in any way, whether by future amendment or any treaties the US may enter into.

I'm guessing the way to post these revisions would be to resubmit the story so I shall do that now and let everyone comment on what I've come up with.

As I just seen in YahooNews article "Movie industry wins DVD copying suit"

A photo caption reads
"A bulldozer crushes 20,000 pirated CDs and DVDs seized by police, in the Spanish Basque city of Bilbao, February 19, 2004. The illegal copies were confiscated from itinerant street sellers that travel to fiestas and other large outdoor events. Global music sales fell for the fourth year in succession in 2003, with an estimated one in three discs sold a pirate copy".

Did you catch that, 1 in 3 music CDs "sold" is a pirate copy! How in the world are they trying to blame P2P networks for 5-10% sales loss when true pirate sales are estimated at 33%. Did they ever think that the interest in music gained from P2P might be the only thing that has kept their sales from falling to that 33% mark. .

I'll nitpick the fine point first, which is that you can't have an amendment with a clause saying that it can't be amended - that would be so flatly contradictory to the principles of the Constitution that it would never survive a challenge in the form of an amendment to repeal. I wouldn't worry about that anyway - the only amendment to have ever been repealed was Prohibition.
I do like the 14 year expiration, and limitation on renewal. Rather than listing all the parties who are prohibited from renewing the copyright (which, if my understanding is correct, includes everybody but the creator of the copyrighted material), I would suggest that you simply state that the right to renew should be limited to "the natural person who created of the copyrighted material." This bit of legalese will eliminate the possibility of any unnatural party (i.e. a corporation, trade association, city council, state gov't, etc.) from renewing a copyright.

* strike the "of" in the portion in quotation marks - sloppy drafting on my part!

I would like to see copyright law on par with patent law - 20 years is all you get!