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xxiv are aimed at protecting the public domain and ensuring that it can continue to function in a meaningful way. While these recommendations are applicable across the spectrum of copyright, they are of particular relevance to education, cultural heritage and scientific research.

General Recommendations

1. The term of copyright protection should be reduced. The excessive length of copyright protection combined with an absence of formalities is highly detrimental to the accessibility of our shared knowledge and culture. Moreover, it increases the occurrence of orphan works, works that are neither under the control of their authors nor part of the public domain, and in either case cannot be used. Thus, for new works the duration of copyright protection should be reduced to a more reasonable term.

2. Any change to the scope of copyright protection (including any new definition of protectable subject-matter or expansion of exclusive rights) needs to take into account the effects on the public domain. Any change of the scope of copyright protection must not be applied retroactively to works already subject to protection. Copyright is a time-limited exception to the public domain status of our shared culture and knowledge. In the twentieth century its scope has been significantly extended, to accommodate the interests of a small class of rights holders at the expense of the general public. As a result, most of our shared culture and knowledge is locked away behind copyright and technical restrictions. We must ensure that this situation will not be worsened at a minimum, and be affirmatively improved in the future.

3. When material is deemed to fall in the structural public domain in its country of origin, the material should be recognized as part of the structural public domain in all other countries of the world. Where material in one country is not eligible for copyright protection because it falls under a specific copyright exclusion, either because it does not meet the criterion of originality or because the duration of its protection has lapsed, it should not be possible for anyone (including the author) to invoke copyright protection on the same material in another country so as to withdraw this material from the structural public domain.

4. Any false or misleading attempt to misappropriate public domain material must be legally punished. In order to preserve the integrity of the public domain and protect users of public domain material from inaccurate and deceitful representations, any false or misleading attempts to claim exclusivity over public domain material must be declared unlawful.