Dean Baker on intellectual property policy is always worth reading. My guess is that his proposals would go too far, but this is a discussion where the boundaries of the possible need to be made much, much, much wider.
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Copyrights
11 Oct 2007 11:30 am
Comments (7)
Intellectual property is dead to me.
Dean Baker on intellectual property policy is always worth reading. My guess is that his proposals would go too far...
Gee, ya think?
By the way, I love Dean Baker's typically fatuous phrasing in the piece you quote. The "entertainment industry," he asserts, "had a Russian computer scientist arrested." Wow, so the "entertainment industry" is not just evil, it even controls the police!
The conviction of that Minnesota woman (by unanimous jury decision, note) ought to serve as a wake-up call to the "information wants to be free" crowd that they need to seriously rethink their position.
The conviction of that Minnesota woman (by unanimous jury decision, note) ought to serve as a wake-up call to the "information wants to be free" crowd that they need to seriously rethink their position.
Yes, sort of like the conviction of Jose Padilla ought to serve as a wake-up call to the "Americans want to be free" crowd that they need to seriously rethink their position.
No, not sort of like that at all. But sort of like the conviction of a shoplifter.
I'm sure plenty of people were prosecuted under the Volstead Act in 1931, and ticketed for violating the 55 MPH national speed limit in 1994. None of this did anything to restore moral legitimacy to these laws in the minds of the public.
Most Americans simply don't buy the recording industry's self-serving arguments. The existing copyright laws are a product of special interests, and everyone knows it. They may be able to get them enforced, but they can't convince people (especially younger Americans) that they are morally right. Whenever a law reaches this point, it is not long for the world.
The vast majority of Americans would be much better off if copyrights were restricted to 5 or 10 years.
Mixner - still unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy.
"Wake-up call"? I got a news flash for you - the "wake-up call" is for the record labels - they're over.
They started their industry by taking songs from performers without compensation and industrializing them. Only after they made a ton of money did they make deals with artists to get a fresh supply of material.
Now they're bitching because technology is (slowly) removing the need for them. Tough noogies.
Comments closed October 25, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
Frankly, it seems absolutely obvious to me that all the music/movie people are just waging an absolutely hopeless battle against free stuff on the Internet, or perhaps a reasably-sensible short-term-profit-maximizing rear-guard action.
Anyway, I've never heard anyone claim that human civilizations rise and fall based on the cheapness of popular entertainment.
On the other hand, the very rapidly growing Open Source movement in software is of tremendous long-term significance, given its apparently vast evolutionary-speed edge over proprietary software.
Depending upon whether the crazy neocons manage to blow up the world, I think there's a pretty fair chance that future generations may regard Richard Stallman was one of the most important figures of the 20th century...
Posted by RKU | October 11, 2007 12:07 PM