Congressional Budget Office Studies Copyrights

gorbachev writes "C|Net is reporting that The Congressional Budget Office has published a study on digital copyright issues. The study basically recommends not changing the copyright legislation in favor of any particular stakeholder, including consumers or lobbyists. It's refreshing to see a governmental agency coming out with a study on copyright issues that appears to take consumers' concerns into consideration." Granted, this is merely the CBO, not Congress itself, but it is one of Congress' first places to turn to for information.

Comments

Re:Not quite accurate ...

[cicadia]

To be entirely accurate, the preface doesn't say anything about the GAO. It's the Congressional Budget Office releasing this, not the General Accounting Office.

Also, regardless of what they claim about making official policy recommendations, they certainly do make recommendations:

(from the source document)

Revisions to copyright law should be made without regard to the vested interests of particular business and consumer groups. Instead, they should be assessed with regard to their consequences for efficiency in markets for creative works and other products.

An inability to make official policy recommendations shouldn't be taken to imply that they can't express any opinion at all.

More of the same... nothing changes...

[adjuster]

I haven't read the entire paper-- but I did skip right to Section 4, to see the "conclusions", and read that in some detail. I love this bit (below), from section 4, describing the "Effects on Equity" in revising copyright law in favor of the copyright holder:

In the near term, copyright owners would benefit at the expense of consumers. However, if the additional revenues to copyright owners enabled creators to undertake more projects, consumers could also benefit from the greater availability of creative works in the long term.

Yes-- I'm sure the copyright holders would "undertake more projects". Oh-- and, certainly, those works are going to available in the "long term"-- or at least until they're not so profitable as to be sold anymore, at which time they'll be allowed to "fall out of print", will become unavailable to anyone, and will be "protected" for another 100 years (at which time the media they're stored on, and the compression and encryption algorithms used to encode and encrypt them will probably be vastly outdated and outmodded).

The public grants copyright as a social contract to the creators of content. It is a CONTRACT, and it "goes both ways"-- or rather, it did, in the United States, under the original terms of copyright set forth in the Constitution. The amalgamation of shit we have today bears little to no resemblence to the "founder's copyright", and is skewed heavily in favor of the copyright holders.

Copyright is granted BY THE PEOPLE. If we don't like the current copyright system-- if we want to "trade music files", or download movies "P2P"-- if the public really belives that's the right thing, we need to CHANGE THE FUCKING LAW.

Personally, I believe it's time for the contract to be renegotiated. Public outcry is a good start. Tell your friends, tell your coworkers. Talk to them about the DMCA and the abuses we've all seen. Talk to them about the efforts, past and present, to outlaw digital versions of technologies that are "protected uses" of analog technologies. Talk about "broadcast flags", and "fair use".