RSS Feeds: Copyright Laws are Kind of Like Gun Control Laws
One of the reasons I enjoy reading Techdirt is because Michael Masnick continuously points out how and when the movie and music industries abuse the reason for the existence of copyright laws in the first place. Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution states: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." The key words here are "limited times", emphasis mine.
The Copyright Act of 1976 changed the law so that a copyright would last for the life of the author plus 50 years (75 years when the author is a corporation). The Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 extended it by 20 years for individual authors and some ridiculous number for corporate authors. Both of these acts have had the single effect of keeping the majority of copyrighted works (within the last century) out of the public domain until the earliest of them can enter it in 2019. What part of all that is considered "limited times"?
The US copyright laws are now so convoluted that they confuse copyright lawyers and the very people responsible for getting these laws passed are accidentally breaking them on what seems to be a monthly basis. And they expect the average citizen to abide by laws they can't seem to adhere to themselves? It's a joke, right?
The "Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement"
This is an agreement about copyright enforcement, not anti-counterfeit measures and the talks are being held in secret meetings around the world. If the progenitors have their way, developing countries will have to adhere to and enforce the copyright laws.
ACTA really is a joke, although the progenitors probably think otherwise.
Laws Create Criminals
Laws that people can't adhere to turns them into unwitting criminals. It's ironic in this sense because people who choose to be criminals don't adhere to the laws anyway. In this way, copyright laws are kind of like gun control laws.
When you create laws that turn ordinary citizens into criminals, then only the real criminals benefit from the laws. Take the guns away from the law-abiding citizens and the criminals are the only ones who still have them.
According to US laws, the Philippines (where I live) and other developing countries are filled with criminals. This country's government officials don't have the manpower or the desire to enforce US copyright laws here and why should they? This isn't the US or a territory of the US.
Yes, there are stores that sell music and movies here and they don't make much money because they're selling them at American prices in a place with Filipino wages. It really is no wonder that rampant piracy exists here because this is what's affordable to the people, not the prices that US-based industries want to charge.
The Joke is on Them
Sure, the developing countries may sign onto ACTA and give it plenty of lip service but like the existing US copyright laws, they won't be able to enforce it. Technology continues to advance and with every new way of content distribution invented, it becomes harder and harder for industries in question to control and enforce these draconian laws.
Copyrights were intended to make sure authors could make a little money and recoup the cost of producing their works and nothing more. By limiting them, it required authors to continue to produce new works in order to sustain a living from it. The way the laws are written now, copyrights have turned into a means of making both authors and their descendants rich.
The public domain is designed to allow people to create new and derivative works on top of that which has already been created. By stifling the public domain, new things have to be created in order to keep from breaking laws and it's at least 10 times harder to create something new than it is to modify something that already exists. And people wonder why innovation has been slowing in the last thirty years to a fraction of the previous 30 years, despite the technological advances. Don't get me started on patents and the fictional "intellectual property" rights.
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I just finished reading a book, The Case for books, past present and future by Robert Darnton. He's the director of the Harvard Library. In his book, he talks about US copyright law, and how it was changed by Congress when Micky Mouse was about to fall into the public domain, extending copyrights by twenty years. Actually many of the same works that were going to fall into public domain and were extended by the copyright act of 1976. All based on Corporate greed. You can bet they will step in and extend the copyrights again once they are close to expiration…
Probably and that's what's sad about it. Think of the 20th century literary works tied up and unpublished because of these stupid laws – literary works where the author has already died and there is no estate.
It's a shame that the media doesn't understand that if they just worked on selling at a lower price point they could make as much money en masse. Look at itunes and the $1 download!
no kidding… I have Dish network, with a Digital Video Recorder. Dish reserves a portion of the hard drive for their use. They then keep about a dozen recent release movies on there for "Dish on demand". They want $5.00 per movie. I'll never pay them those kind of prices.. too bad for them. If they dropped the price to a buck or two, (The price of renting the same movie in town) I would be a frequent customer… they just don't get it…