Public Domain Day 2017: Keeping memory alive – Everybody's Libraries

"Keeping memory alive, and making it known far and wide, is essential if we are going to solve the problems we have today, and avoid the kinds of mistakes and disasters we’ve had in the past.   The more easily we can duplicate and spread that memory, the more likely we are to keep it alive.  That’s why the Internet Archive is making a backup copy in Canada, just in case anything happens to its primary US copy.  That’s why people at Penn and elsewhere are trying to duplicate all the data the government has on climate and other issues before the administration changes, lest it become unavailable or harder to access in the future.  That’s why projects like Wikipedia go out of their way to allow their content to be copied and readily downloadable in bulk, so it can be read and shared in places where the Internet isn’t as reliable or as uncensored as it is in other places.

And that’s one reason why the public domain is so important, and why it’s so important that copyrighted works enter the public domain regularly, automatically, and in a timely fashion.  Copyrights are important to support the people who create works of art and knowledge, and to help ensure that they can introduce them to the world in the form and manner they intend.  But it’s also important that after 'limited times' (to quote the US Constitution) the works enter the public domain, so they can be copied, disseminated, reinterpreted and reworked, and remembered, without restriction.  The easier it is to copy and disseminate, the easier it is to remember."