Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
Moe: "See anything, boys?"
Curly: "I don't see nuttin'"
Larry: "You're supposed to open your eyes."
Curly: "But if I do, I might see something that upsets me!"
Larry: "What could upset you?"
Curly: "Computer mice! Nyuk nyuk nyuk!"
Moe: "You knucklehead *smek* we're supposed to be finding anything wrong!"
Larry: "There's nothing wrong with this (holds up fold-out pin-up girl, Miss CBO 2003)"
All: *wolfwhistle* "There's nothing at all wrong with that!"
Moe: "Then it's agreed, we find nothing wrong at all wrong with anything, let's leave our findings and get back to painting this room."
Larry: "Yeah, that committee that left us in charge should be back from their lunch with all those 'good friends' any time now."
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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
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 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".
The Attitude Adjuster, I hate me, you can too.
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