GENERAL The US Constitution empowers Congress to pass laws "to promote progress of science and [the] useful arts." Congress has chosen to accomplish this constitutional goal by granting authors a limited set of exclusive rights in their works. The founding fathers wanted, through copyright, to encourage the useful arts and thereby offer to the public the fruits of these artists. Copyright protects all original works of authorship, including such things as personal letters and corporate memoranda, from the moment they are first fixed in a tangible form. About 50,000 U.S. books go out-of-print each year. The lack of continuous availability of these works runs counter to the implicit balance sought by the founding fathers between the needs of the public and copyright holders. In the past copyright holders could reasonably maintain that economics prohibited keeping works in print, with practical, economic and ubiquitous on-line means, this is no longer a barrier. This being so, why should copyrights on "significant" works (e.g., written one's with length's greater than 20,000 words) which have been commercialized continue when the public cannot gain ready access to copy of same? This logic follows from the use-it-or-lose-it concept of trademarks. Changes are need to ensure the public that such "significant" commercialized copyright works are continuously available. Under this recommendation the works must remain available from the copyright holder or their licensee, specialty resellers (e.g., hard to find book locators) wouldn't count, but electronic publication would. If a copyright holder fails to keep a work continuously available, then after a brief interval (e.g., six months) the copyright would lapse. SOME DETAILS Reversion Often, the owner of copyright (the author) is different from the owner of the privilege to publish of a book or item. This privilege is assigned by a contract between an author and publisher, mediated by an agent and editor. Once signed, the author has little influence on the decision to keep a book in print (unless they are big-time authors, like Danielle Steele or Stephen King.) Furthermore, changes in editors, editorial direction, management, ownership, etc., can affect decisions on whether or not to support a book, keep it in print, etc., none of which the average author can influence. Usually, contracts between authors and publishers have rights reversions clauses, returning all rights to the author, once a book goes out-of-print. However, publishers have come up with a new term "out-of-stock-indefinitely" which fundamentally means "out-of-print" but doesn't trigger reversion of rights. Therefore, a part of the provision might ban author-publisher contract clauses with these reversion changes. This would be similar to music copyrights/contract law which limit a composers right to sign over more than a certain percentage of their interest in a work to the publisher. Revision An author may sometimes seek to remove a work from circulation, perhaps the work becomes embarrassing or dated and needs to be revised. So, another part of the provision might allow the author to irrevocably place the copyright for a work to be withdrawn in a state of "limbo" such that no one (including the author) could publish the work until the author's death (or the copyright's normal expiration date). Copyright for revised works would permit the author to replace one work with another by relinquishing the copyright for the former work (which cannot be republished until the copyright's normal expiration date.) -- Steve