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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.
maybe they plan to drive the price tag higher. who ever with the most money wins the law?
Today's status quo is not good for consumers. Copyright terms are far too long.
I'd personally like to see a differentiation between corporate copyrights (short) to personal copyrights (longer, but shorter than present).
Its a sad day when just keeping the current unfavorable copyright laws are considered a "win" by the voters.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Given the choices outlined in the news article (do nothing or set government royalty schedules) the current government is going to do nothing, favoring the free market approach. I think that anyone can see that coming.
I don't think that anyone is afraid of piracy so much that they will accept government royalty schedules.
No weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men.-Ronald Reagan
So, after Mickey Mouse and Sonny Bono have had their pokes, and the DMCA has been enacted... NOW they decide "no more changing the copyright legislation"?!
Isn't this a little LATE?!
Visit the Game Programming Wiki!
I would have to agree that it is a good first step. Let me say that we have a long way to go before we see change, our government isn't exactly fast moving when it comes to structual changes such as this. But if they start looking at it it would be good. In spite of the fact that they decided to recomend no change at least they didn't side with coporations which probably would make it harder for the small developer guy.
You can't truss the CBO.
They come out with numbers that cannot be relied upon.
Remember Ross Perot's pie charts 12 years ago?
They were based on CBO numbers and look how wrong they turned out to be.
They are also behind the myth that the social security trust fund will go bankrupt. A few years ago, they said it would go broke in 2039. Now they say 2047. Next year it will be 2055. It's all based on bogus assumptions of low productivity growth and the senior citizen demographic being completely unwiling/unable to work into what are traditionally called the retirement years.
If the CBO cannot be trusted to accurately calculate known mathematical functions of government programs, how can they even come close to estimating the benefits and drawbacks of abstract and dynamic legal protections in a rapidly changing world economic environment?
AND!
THIS IS THE GOVERNMENT WE'RE TALKIING ABOUT.
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
Found this interesting... the RIAA is the one doing all the suing, legal nastiness, etc... but here's a quote from TFA...
[i]The gross revenues of the core copyright industries totaled $441.4 billion in 2002 and were distributed as shown in Figure 1-1. Nearly a third of that total ($143.4 billion) came from the newspaper, periodical, and book publishing industries. [b]The music industry[/b], which generated $13.9 billion in gross revenues in 2002, [b]is the smallest segment[/b]. (See Box 1-1 for details on the interpretation of data on gross revenues.) [/i]
(emphasis mine)
The "Box 1-1" referred to is here: http://www.cbo.gov/docimages/573801.gif
That's not sad--what's sad is that there is a NEED to make such a movie. Its sad that people can't connect the dots on their own. Its sad how stupid many people are willing to be--even WANT to be. It is also sad that some people truly believe that government is a reflection of its citizens. If that was ever true, it certainly isn't now. For one thing, it assumes that citizens are basically the same and that each wield the same power, which is ludicrous.
If you read the article carefully, you'll notice how they stress that the fair use rights aren't really rights and should be decided by courts on case-by-case basis. There is a fairly illuminating analysis of legality of ripping CDs in there for instance. In general the CBO's positions is pretty radical, in my opinion, on the issue of how little is actually protected by the fair use principle (as well as their meandering around the frist sale principle). This goes along the lines of the fair use area of the copyright law being unregulated (as opposed to, say, given by a statute), and while some people think that this is good (say Lessig seems to be of that opinion), CBO, on the other hand, seems to think that this is a good basis to declare these unregulated uses as infringing.
I think the poster is a little more optimistic about this study than the content actually warrants.
norbert
The only honest politician is the ONE THAT STAYS BOUGHT. Didn't you ever hear that cliche before?
And the answer to your second question is- because there's nobody else to vote for, at least yet. Eventually there will be- I'm involved in the process of a new political party based on middle class morals and middle class finances- but our website won't be out until November (and our maximum donation limit is $10 per person, $500,000 total for our Presidential Campaign, just to show that we aren't bought and we know how to use money better than the major parties do).
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I never saw the film, however I honestly think it was a good idea, it hopefully awoken atleast a few people to the health risks of eating fast food.
Now yes, I'm vegetarian and haven't touched burgers and frys and the like in years and you may know better too, but does the general populus know? Obviously not looking at the increasing waist sizes of Americans. Go to sit-down restaurants, the portions have absolutely ballooned in size, most restaurants serve entrees with enough for 2-3 people, and that's just dinner alone, not counting appetizers and desert, I have no idea how people can eat that much.
To me, it would seem that after a while you would catch yourself, you'd wake up one day and wow, boy am I fat or your health starts to seriously degrade and you'd start thinking about all those Big Macs, but obviously not.
The obvious, obviously isn't obvious enough for many.
Im often guilty of being a bit offtopic, but I'm curious about slashdotters opinions on this.
;)
Let's say that I create a computer program to compose music.
Can I copyright the original music it creates? I mean, of course I can, right? - I just submit it as created by me.
I ask, because it seems to me, theoretically, that I could create every possible permutation of 4 to 8 bar melody (heck lets even go to 16 bar non-repeating). wouldn't that be neat? I could own the copyright to every possible piece of copyrightable music that could be created (well, maybe not EVERY piece, but a whole crapload).
i suppose my algorithm would need to have the musical notation for every song yet-copyrighted (so as to exclude those possible melodies from generation). But I wouldn't actually need to pay for the copyright on the musical notation for those songs which I am excluding, would I? I mean, it's not a crime to transcribe a song you hear on the radio - so long as you don't preform, distribute or record it. right?
Imagine a fed ex trailer pulling up to the copyright office with millions of pages of musical score.
I mean, I could claim me and 10,000 other slashdotters worked together to compose it
"only 24 hours in a day. only 12 notes a man can play. "
What's really going to blow your mind is...
Would he still have liked what he likes if the companies that produced what he likes weren't spending those millions on it?
Sadly, the Three Stooges are an excellent example about something that should enter the public domain, but never will because of moronic copyright extensions.
I had a part-time job at Eddie Bauer last Christmas season and worked with 5 or 6 high-schoolers. Whenever I cracked a Stooges joke or quoted one of their famous lines, they would look at me like I had six heads. They all had NO IDEA who the Three Stooges are. Why is that? If you are around my age (mid-30s) your memories of the Stooges are probably something similar to mine: watching them for an hour after school every day, and/or watching them with your father and siblings on Saturday mornings. We grew up with the Stooges. Today's kids don't have that. Why? And why haven't we seen a complete DVD box set of all the Stooges shorts? I suspect is has something to do with the current Stooges copyright owners (the heirs of some of the Stooges) trying to squeeze out every last cent they can.
Who owns the copyrights to the Stooges? Comedy III Productions. Who are they? They are the decendants of Joe De Rita (Curly Joe). Joe De Rita died in 1993. Under current copyright law, the Stooges will not enter the public until 2083.
In my opinion, Comedy III Productions has shot themslves in the foot. By not showing the Stooges on free/cable TV at regular times in the classic 3-shorts-per-hour format, they have failed to introduce the Stooges to at least one generation of fans, and perhaps more. If they don't create new fans, who is going to buy Stooges merchandise of pay them for Stooges broadcast rights?
Sorry for the rant...