DoD Public Domain Archive To Be Privatized, Locked Up For 10 Years 183
Jah-Wren Ryel writes "Looks like the copyright cartel have raided the public domain yet again — the US DoD has signed an exclusive contract with T3 Media to digitize their media archive in exchange for T3 having complete licensing control for 10 years. Considering that all output from the US government is, by law, ineligible for copyright, this deal seems borderline illegal at best. To make matters worse, it appears that there is no provision to make the digitized content freely accessible after the 10 years are up — which means we risk having all that content disappear into T3."
Google Books would be better. (Score:2, Interesting)
Google obviously has the technical capability and facilities to handle the job.
Did they have the opportunity to bid the job? Did they submit a bid?
Did the bid evaluation process consider public benefit?
I think we would have been better off had they gotten the job.
Re:Legality vs Enforceability (Score:3, Interesting)
That's your (very incorrect) perception of corporations. Your image of a corporation is Exxon, American Airlines, and Target. But it's counter to the reality that millions of other businesses in the US alone are corporations, and the majority of them are not only not involved in politics, but they're quite small. They're made up of one or more people, and without very strong reason that would reverberate through every other group, they get the same rights and responsibilities as any other group of people including free speech (including political speech), the right to petition the government, and the right to due process.
Your complaint about the origin of corporations is not only factually incorrect (businesses have incorporated for more than 1500 years with varying or even no protection for the founders), but ignores that it prevents small business owners from being personally crushed by the failure of a business, sometimes by factors out of their control. The family sandwich shop, the small machine shop, the furniture maker... Many of these are corporations. Almost everyone that isn't doing business under their own name is incorporated in some fashion. Without that protection, many people would never try to start a business.