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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.
...now how about looking at software patents?
uh, duh? Our government is pretty pathetic if it needs a study to tell it to be fair and balanced.
In the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and is widely considered as a bad move.
That's not entirely accurate. The preface to the study states that the GAO, by definition, does not make any policy recommendations. Thus, the lack of recommendations in the study does not mean that the data contained in it won't be used by one side or the other to push for change.
Gotta read those source documents before submitting!
If they had pointed out that copyright terms have been extended to the point where they are ridiculous and that maybe that trend needs to be reversed.
-All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
www.ra
So what?
This means nothing, they change nothing and make no concrete recommendations. The merely recommended a "set of principles" with the goal of "avoiding being tied too closely to past practices"
Speaking of real change check out: On Drawing Lines in Copyright Law
about copyright, RIAA and the cirsumstances leading to 321 Studio's "Death of a 1000 Paper Cuts"
Can we get a CBO recommendation on patents too? Patents were supposed to give people an incentive to invent. Instead, they are a disincentive. Anyone who actually creates something worthwhile risks being sued for infringement of frivolous patents.
- Raise the application fee so that the patent office can do a decent job. - Shorten the length of the software / business process patents (better yet, ban them).ation fee so that the patent office can do a decent job.
- Shorten the length of the software / business process patents (better yet, ban them).
--- http://davidnehme.blogspot.com
They're not idiots- they're just well paid and honest politicians. And we all know what passes for honesty in a politician...
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
There needs to be change. The laws need to be re-evaluated, as they have resulted in eternal copyrights that aim to preserve control over information. This report, however, supports the status quo, which has many issues.
Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
But I'd recommend rolling back some of the goofy stuff (especially 1201) before I'd call for maintaining the status quo. The status quo is already unbalanced by relatively recent thoughtless meddling.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
It's refreshing to see a governmental agency coming out with a study on copyright issues that appears to take consumers' concerns into consideration."
It would be more refreshing to be acknowledged by the government as a citizen and not an entity that merely spends money.
They coked you.
In the late 20th century, mankind considered getting rid of copyright, in favor of the "information age." The powers that be, introduce New Copyright (DMCA). Everyone hates it. So a little while later, they can introduce Copyright Classic and totally rake it in, thanks to the nostalgic backlash. Instead of advocating copyright reform or abolishion, you're advocating a return to the old ways. Got you.
So the report says do nothing. Ignore the fact that the public domain is slowly drying up as Corporate America constantly lengthens copyrights. Ignore the fact that we have college students getting sued by giant mega-corporations for swapping a song with some friends. Ignore the issues of concern and don't make any major decisions, right?
So in a nutshell, this report is sort of like the 9/11 Commission's report: "Nothing seriously wrong here, let's just talk about it to placate the public and then the public will go back to debating which Superbowl commercial is better..."
What the study does do is put into reasonably plain english (Or legal jargon that can be translated into reasonably plain english), the likely cause / effect consequences of various legal changes.
If we do X, then Y is likely to happen, which in turn results in Z.
Now all we need to do is come up with some sort of copyright scheme that manages to do all of the following:
1) Provides the best possible benefit for consumers.
2) Provides the most reasonable compensation for copyright holders.
3) Causes the least possible harm to copyright holder, consumers, and technology creators.
The problem with attempts to acheive the above goals, as I see it, is that 'best possible benefit for consumers' and 'least possible harm' is not guaranteed to be something that can be boiled down to a dollar value. Also, ultimately, the reasonable amount of compensation for IP is ultimately determined by the consumers who consume or not consume copyrighted works.
So while this is far from providing any answers, it does help us arrive at the correct questions.
END COMMUNICATION
What, you think Congress was done passing copyright-related legislation? If this recommendation prevents the Hollings bill, the INDUCE Act, Congressional endorsement of the broadcast flag, or any of the other proposals on the table now/recently, it will still be useful. I'd love to see the DMCA and the CTEA (the Sonny Bono act) repealed, but stopping future copyright madness is still better than nothing.
I agree that "stopping madness" is a Good Thing, but we shouldn't be content to "stop madness". We shouldn't settle for anything less than reform of the system, and renegotiation of the social contract.
The Attitude Adjuster, I hate me, you can too.
I'm sure the copyright holders would "undertake more projects".
Hell, if anything, overly-long copyrights would *discourage* creators from creating.
Imagine - you write a one-hit wonder, and know that you will have a steady income from it for the rest of your life.
Imagine - you write a one-hit wonder, and know that you will have a steady income from it for ten years, but nothing after that.
Which scenario is more likely to make you create more music?
They noticed that copyright holders have already gotten "something for nothing" from the consumers with the expansion of copyright terms.
From the standpoint of equity, the effects of revising copyright law in favor of consumers of creative material would be to transfer control from copyright owners to consumers. However, for some incumbent copyright holders, losses suffered from diminished control over their creative works may already have been compensated, at least in part, by recent legislation that extended the duration of copyright protection.
--AC
as copyright has become now that the legal landscape has so brutally been overturned to the detriment of consumers, "The study basically recommends not changing the copyright legislation in favor of any particular stakeholder."
To put it in other words, "now that the power has been shifted solely to one side, just keep it that way forever."
Fair and equitable, reasonable and well-balanced, huh?
Certainly from a pigopolist's point of view, but I'm not so sure about how this status quo is supposed to benefit the rest of "us the people."
This totally fails to take into account transaction costs of the legal system and other copyright protections. You can create a legal system that always rules infavor of maximized efficiency--the goal of this paper--but only if you ignore the costs of that system. In reality, the costs of legal representation outweigh the both the value and cost of the vast majority of creative work transactions. If I write a book, and someone sues me for taking ideas from their book, the value of both our books is probably dwarfed by the salaries of the lawyers required to defend our claims. All this talk of "perfect price discrimination" is in economic fantasy land--a world of perfect information and costless legal systems. Indeed, one might wonder if the government economists have a vested interest in ignoring the costs of legal compliance.
The problem with this reasoning is that almost all copyrighted goods get the vast majority of their sales within a relatively short time.
No, that is exactly his point. How much profit is there in maintaining a 70 year old work locked under copyright? There just is no justifcation for it. The creation of copyrighted works is funded by profits in the first few years. If it's produced enough profitable within a few years to justify/finance its original creation then it's not likely to ever do so.
The original copyright term was 14 years, with a single opportunity for the author to renew for a single 14 year extention if he was still alive. The vast majority of all works were returned to the public domain after a mere 14 years, with 28 years being the exception. If we had not repeatedly extended copyright terms, today's public domain / copyright cut off would be 1976, with many works from 1990 being available.
While there would certainly be a renewed interested in pre-1976 newly public domain works, the vastly more important impact would be the creation of NEW works deriving from that huge and vastly more useful public domain. Virtually every Diseny movie has been based on the public domain.
Just imagine the influx of new works based on pre-1976 books, movies, lyrics, music, software, everything. Just to toss off one example, people would be free to create new books, movies, and TV shows based on the original Star Trek.
Shortening the term on copyright would result in an expansion of NEW creative works.
The previous life plus 50 copyright term was already so excessive and so thoroughly exterminated the public domain that the latest extention to life plus 70 was pretty much irrelevant. They may as well extend it to life plus ten thousand years and a day.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
So even if you shortened copyright from 100 to 50 years, it would not add much value to consumers.
Not to consumers directly. But Artists would benefit. Characters like Superman and Sam Spade would become free, so that new authors can reinterpret the stories they grew up on.
the value of shortening copyright terms would be minimal.
That's actually a big part of the argument in favor of shortened terms! Because the creators hardly ever earn much profit past 7-15 years, they won't be losing much to shorten copyrights to 30 years or so.
No artist, author, or corporation employing them is considering profits 30 years later when deciding what to work on. It's rare for them to even plan 10 years out. Therefore longer copyright terms are unconstitutional, as they do not provide an incentive to progress.