Wired news has an article on a new copyright bill that the Senate is trying to pass:
WASHINGTON — Several lobbying camps from different industries and ideologies are joining forces to fight an overhaul of copyright law, which they say would radically shift in favor of Hollywood and the record companies and which Congress might try to push through during a lame-duck session that begins this week.The Senate might vote on the Intellectual Property Protection Act, a comprehensive bill that opponents charge could make many users of peer-to-peer networks, digital-music players and other products criminally liable for copyright infringement. The bill would also undo centuries of “fair use” — the principle that gives Americans the right to use small samples of the works of others without having to ask permission or pay.
As I said in other rants: the point of copyrights is to provide the author security on his/her work to assure proper profits, and to then, after a period of time, release the work under the “public domain” so that everyone may profit from the work. This assures that both the author and public profit. Fair use on the other hand, assures creative freedom by denying royalties on samples of an author’s work. This is necessary as it prevents overprofiting from coporations. For example, a documentary film maker who shoots a scene in a bar with a TV would not have to pay the $500,000 “Educational” liscence to Fox if the Simpsons so happened to be playing in the background at that time. It allows for the use of sampling in music (which oddly enough creates more profits for the businesses in return as well… Beastie Boys for example…)
Under the new law, it would also make any information distribution system illegal if the person who developped it doesn’t monitor for copyright infringements. If this had been the case ten years ago, I begin to think that the internet as we have it today would not exist at all. The geniouses who brought it to the mainstream would have been locked up in jail. That’s a surefire way to promote innovation in this country: Jail people who invent stuff. Oh and welcome big brother: forcibly controlling content. That’s all it is. The case for financial losses due to piracy died out long ago.
The law also makes it illegal to skip adds. That’s right folks: you have to use your VCR the way they tell you to, even if its for personal use! I completely understand that recording a movie on tape and then charging people to see it would be illegal. But unlike that circumstance of outright and true piracy (which I find to be unexcusable), private use implies no true tangible losses (nor to be honest: any theoretical ones either… would you not go buy Cheerios just because you skipped the Cheerios ad?)
The future lies with information. Just look at most of the high-end industries today in North America and Europe. Information is all about distribution. The RIAA will do everything in its power to stop any innovation in this regard because it might (emphasis on “might”) inflict a 0.3% loss in sales. They don’t care about the artists: they give them virtually no money on each CD sold (the same CDs that they were found guilty of artificially boosting prices). This isn’t about piracy and the hurt artists. This is about the corporations that thrive through the exploitation of artists, and how they can sustain a certain level of greedy profits.
I am Canadian. But I am very much involved with this american legal battleground as it is the front today in which all the injustices are occuring, and the front in which we can act to stop it.