Congress gets a taste of its own medicine: the Blackberry (Crackberry) mobile email client, used by everyone in Congress, was found to be in violation of a dumb patent; now Congress is begging for them to be kept alive.
Lessig settles for less: since the Supreme Court wouldn’t protect the public domain, he’s asking Congress too. He’s proposed the Eric Eldred Act, requiring copyright holders to send their name, address, and $50 to the government every 50 years from the date of publication. The idea is that most copyrights will expire, since no one cares that much to renew them, but none of the perpetual-copyright lobbyists will oppose the bill, since they certainly have $50 to spare on renewal. Sounds like a good step in the right direction to me.
And they said you couldn’t compete with free: We were at Borders today, killing time, and they had Cory’s book prominently on display, so we bought a copy. (They also had Lessig’s book under “E-Commerce”.) The cover is beautiful, the typography…eh, not so much (drop shadows‽ someone needs to read Bringhurst). This XHTML version is much nicer.