Dumb Free Stuff

2 free things:

1. Palm AOL IM
For your phone. It seems that AOL will charge you $19.99 for a copy of AOL IM to run on the Palm OS, however, AOL UK is dumb/smart enough to provide it for free. I read it on this post, you can download the .prc here.

2. Free AudioBooks
The NYPL (ny public library) offers free downloads of many books via Adobe eReader format. This is a GREAT. It dumbfounds me though. An obvious good step, but what type of leaps and bounds had to happen in order to facilitate this? There are a number of people that would be willing to help this effort with public domain materials if the U.S. didn't keep extending the copyright every time Disney was about to go public.

The problem I'm referring to is that there are a number of good materials that should have been released into public domain a few years ago (80 year lifespan expired.) But Disney and Sunny Bono had copyright extended another 20 years. So while they did save Mickey, they blocked access to thousands of materials that serve no benefit to publishers/content holders. Think of all the early 1900's American literature that could have went public. Lessig proposed a solution to this problem. Charge a $1 fee every 50 years or so to renew copyrights. This way, only content with commercial value will be re-registered. All the other content can then enter the public domain. Don't lock all content up just to save Mickey. The content owners (publishers/recording industry, ...) didn't like this idea because it creates COMPETITION. Institutions like the RIAA are afraid of competing with the public domain. They are scared of the thought of customers having a choice between $15 CD's and content that is $0. I understand that fear, however, there are plenty of business models out there when they can still make some dough. For instance, I'm listening to Jet right now on languages for a $3/month subscription (just like cable TV.)