Larry Lessig wants copyright owners to pay $1 to renew copyright after fifty years.
"The idea is a simple one: Fifty years after a work has been published, the copyright owner must pay a
$1 maintanence fee. If the copyright owner pays the fee, then the copyright continues. If the owner
fails to pay the fee, the work passes into the public domain. Based on historical precedent, we expect
98% of copyrighted works would pass into the public domain after just 50 years. They could keep
Mickey for as long as Congress lets them. But we would get a public domain........
Yet the lobbyists are fighting even this tiny compromise. The public domain is competition for them.
They will fight this competition. And so long as they have the lobbyists, and the rest of the world
remains silent, they will win.

We need to your help to resist this now. At this stage, all that we need is one congressperson to
introduce the proposal. Whether you call it the Copyright Term Deregulation Act, or the Public
Domain Enhancement Act, doesn’t matter. What matters is finding a sponsor, so we can begin to
show the world just how extreme this debate has become: They have already gotten a 20 year
extension of all copyrights just so 2% can benefit; and now they object to paying just $1 for that
benefit, so that no one else might compete with them."