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Fair Use is Not a Constitutional Right
jmichaelg writes: "Ed Stroligo at overclockers.com has written an article on the fair-use provision of the 1976 copyright law. He goes into some depth on the difference between a constitutional right vs. a legal right as well as covers the Betamax, Napster and Rio cases. It's a well thought out article and definitely worth the read."
Digital copying is an extention of free speech.
Imagine someone saying you cannot repeat something, sure the government says stuff like this, but imagine them saying you cannot repeat something you legally purchased.
Say you legally purchase a book, imagine someone saying you cannot read it outloud.
Right now the law has to make a decision. When we buy information, do we in term OWN that information, and if we own it, we should get fair use, meaning the ability to do whatever we want with the information we own.;
Or, when we buy information, are we treating it as food, we consume it and then must burn the documents,.
Face it, information cannot be and never will be consumable, it will always be free flowing, and just like the constitution protects speech offline, it should protect it online.
We should have rights.
Imagine 2020, when reading a book outloud is illegal, playing a song on a stereo in public is illegal, watching tv with your family is illegal. imagine not being able to tell someone what a book you read is about, imagine not being able to talk about the movie you just saw, to write it down and to review it.
When you treat information as you treat a precious and very limited resource like say oil, instead of as it naturally is, free flowing and inexhaustable like water, well you have unfair laws.
Now i admit, i'm on the side that information should bee free, and not free as in price but free as in freedom, sure someone should still buy the books, someone should still buy the cds or pay for access to this information, but once you access it you should bee free to do whatever you want with it, even share it unless its designed in such a way that you cant.
If the record companies and music industry people cant design something people cant share, they have no right to harrass peopel for sharing it, its like creating the copying machine, and then sueing everyone who buys books and uses your copying machine.
Face it, when people can copy they will, industries should stop fighting the nature of information and technology, and adapt.
Theres 2 options, fight the technology and create truely draconian laws which will just waste about 30 years of innovation and information until our children have some sorta revolution,
Or we can stop it now. I say we should slowly adapt with the technology instead of fighting it, we should create a new constitution which applies to digital information, technology, and base this off of the original constitution
free speech in the digital world, is open source, napster, and this means COMPLETE control over OUR 1s and 0s, yes OUR 1s and 0s.
If we can turn your physical object into 1s and 0s, its ours.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Background: I have spent 4 years in academia, programming *nix- (not Linux) -based systems.
I have spent 1 year at home, running Linux as my main desktop OS.
Today, I switched to Windows XP.
It's faster (proof: every task I use this machine for is faster on XP than Linux).
It's prettier (do you need to ask? Only some Mac interfaces are as pretty as this; nothing's prettier).
It's easier to use (well, duh, that being MS's main selling point).
It's just as stable (this based on my experience at work; it was funny running XP at work without a hitch all day then coming home to try to rescue my Linux install from whatever it had done to itself in the day, then going to Slashdot to see people saying "but Linux is stabler!")
It's just as secure (this box locked down in half the time it took to secure the Linux install; happily repelling port scans in exactly the same way).
How did I ever live without this OS?
Open Source is dead. Every person who switches to proper software (like me) will never come back.
Point out how making a digital copy of something is either speech or press, and you get a cookie from my law professor.
La de fricking da.