One instance where government gets it right is the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. By that, I mean government lawyers. Yes, I just endorsed government and lawyers in the same sentence - but when Science 2.0 and Scientific Blogging both took off, I was advised by counsel to trademark them and, since it didn't seem too complicated and I like to see how government works, mostly so I can make fun of it, I did it myself rather than pay an attorney to do it.
I mean, the instructions are right there. It can't be that complex. Well, it is that complex, and it can be darn frustrating, but they put the name of the attorney who overlooks the application on the correspondence so, finally, I called the...US...government. And I was stunned at how comprehensive, considerate and helpful the attorney at USPTO was. Seriously.
In minutes, she explained in the non-legalese they have to use in correspondence what was not correct and/or missing and how to resolve it. Two phone calls - done - and I was then able to keep money-grubbing shills from exploiting the brands we worked so hard to build. I wanted to send her a coffee cup or something to thank her for the effort but that is not allowed so when I got a survey from the government asking how the experience was, I did all I could to gush and list her by name.
The other area where government works - and by works, I mean I do not think capitalism could come up with a better solution and we would be worse off for it - is the Library of Congress. (1)
Here's why: "Less than 4% of historically important recordings made before 1925 are available from the rights holders," historian Tim Brown told Will Friedwald at the Wall Street Journal. Now, I am not habitually listening to any recordings made before 1925, nor am I a music publisher, so I am not circling the wagons around a pet cause the way progressive shills in science academia have circled the wagons around the NSF even though they know money is wasted and should not be - instead, the Library of Congress has instead come up with a great idea and I am happy and want to promote it.
The great idea is some historically important old music that otherwise cannot be found. Because these are copyrighted works still, the Library of Congress is obviously not pirating the music, but they don't want it to be lost to historians, so they have created a Jukebox where they (and you) can stream the music and hear it.
They put up 10,300 tracks originally released by the Victor Talking Machine Co. between 1900 and 1925 and, in the first two days, a million people logged on to check it out. A million!
Check it out yourself - The National Jukebox
And why not have a million people visit? This is the birth of jazz, the blues and the Broadway musical. It's people we have all heard of, like Enrico Caruso, Al Jolson and Bessie Smith, that we were not hearing unless you had ancient records and a turntable.
Enrico Caruso. Credit: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress
The hard part, even for the government, was negotiating the rights, said Gene DeAnna, head of the recorded-sound collection. Yes, even the government could not figure out why and how 85-year-old recordings were not in the public domain, but they are not.
A public hearing at the Copyright Office is being held today, which is another reason I write on the matter. The answer to the copyright question for the later recordings is the The Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) of 1998, which extended copyrights by 20 years. Copyright used to be the life of the author plus 50 years, or 75 years for a work of corporate one, but now it is plus 70 years for authors and for corporations 120 years. It is called by some the Mickey Mouse Protection Act because Mickey Mouse would be in the public domain by now otherwise and you can bet Walt Disney lawyers were big fans.
So the musical works from 1923 on would still be protected but not the ones before - even the government could not figure out its own rules.
They did work out agreements with Sony, Universal and some others and also engaged private collectors who had rare things even the Library of Congress did not have, which is a win-win for everyone. Here's hoping they can do it for science studies sooner rather than later. But engagement with the public leads me into the Note 1 I would have to write anyway...
First: nice work, government!
Note:
(1) Yes, this second reason is also more personal. In my possession is a 'wax' record made by the USO for soldiers in World War II. These were obviously cheap and fragile and in many cases were only played a few times before they were worn out. I decided a few years ago my mother might like to hear this recording, made by her father before he went to Japan for occupation duty - he was quite literally sitting in Nagasaki in the rubble and radiation after the atomic bomb - so, unwilling to try it with any commercial stylus I might own, I asked for help in various Internet newsgroups (people still use those) and was able to reach one of the history junkies in the recording division at the Library of Congress.
He graciously offered to give it a try using their much more sensitive equipment and I shipped it off to him. A few weeks later I received the record and a recording, along with an elaborate description of the process that made me feel a little smarter, but the subtleties are lost on non-experts. Needless to say, for the first time since my mother was 4 years old, she got to hear her father's voice talking to her from 1945. That is a win in my book.
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