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Copyright Law Mashup Moving Through Congress
The Importance of writes "The INDUCE Act may be dead (for now), but that doesn't mean that Congress won't pass any copyright laws this year. Right now, HR 4077, the "Piracy Deterrence in Education" bill pulls together a number of different initiatives to not only get the government involved in civil copyright enforcement, but change fundamental definitions in copyright, and make certain types of home video viewing illegal. The Senate version (brought to you by Sen. Hatch and Leahy) adds even more copyright law changes. According to Public Knowledge, 'The recording industry and Hollywood are making headway! Threatening bills are positioned to move possibly today or tomorrow (yes, even Saturday!) in the Senate and we need your help, now. Not only do they want to rewrite copyright law (again) to lower the standard required for criminal enforcement of copyright infringement; but now they're changing how you watch TV or DVDs in your own home! The bills (H.R. 4077 and H.R. 2391) also are written to make the way you use iTunes and WiFi a crime. '"
I just read the Corante article, with particular attention to the home viewing part. Since this seems to be about copyright in general, the question of printed material comes to mind. Will it be illegal to read a book and skip over the boring parts, like I might with a movie? What about reading a textbook out of order from the authors original intent? This could present a problem with school reading assignments.
I have a hard time imagining that things could become that preposterous with printed material, but media is media, right?
I'd like to think I'm just being silly.
Credo sim. - I think I am.
I am a software industry veteran, and I consider myself an activist for copyright reform. And I can't even keep track of these bills, get up to speed on the issues and be on top of things fast enough before they roll out another one. This is attrition tactics by the media industry - they know that eventually, they'll slip one through right before a big holiday weekend when nobody's paying attention, or when some news story in their favor came out the week before. If they just keep getting their shills to propose these bills, like feces thrown at a wall, eventually something will stick.
I want to find candidates to vote for and promote who have reasonable IP policies that promote a balance between a business' right to make money on its investment and the interest of the commons and the citizenry, but it's pretty hard to find these candidates. I know a lot of us here give money to the EFF, but where is this money going? Besides Rep. Boucher of VA, what friends do we have on Capitol Hill, and how do we make more?
Maybe we need to be approaching people earlier on in their political careers, and running broader grass roots campaigns to bring public attention to copyright issues with issues of broad interest like the attempts to kill your right to tape shows in your own house, or the death of our heritage of freely available songs and characters in the form of a cultural commons, which have fueled the imaginations of artists throughout this century, only to be killed by the businesses built on those artists' work.
I accept that copyright law is never going to be of as immediate concern as health insurance, skyrocketing medical costs, nuclear proliferation, rising unemployment and thousands of people dying in war. But we need to make people realize that this is an issue of interest to all of us and that while we are worrying about those immediate problems facing us, certain industries are cynically trying to slip through legislation against the public interest in the hopes that we are too distracted to take action against them.
It's so obvious to outsiders that republicans are lyars (sic), and we're like, "why can't Americans see the truth?".
It's obvious to many of us on the inside also. You have to remind yourself that like it or not, America was founded by Puritans for Puritans. The fact that others came and flourished was almost an after thought. We do have separation of church and state, but it's pretty much laughed at since day one. Seriously, we have "under God" in our pledge (though introduced in the 1950's) and have had "in God we trust" on all of our currency since long before I was born.
However, the Republicans still appeal to these people. The religious folks say, "I'm glad he took out those damn Arabs... I'm glad he's against Roe v. Wade... I'm glad he believes in supporting 'faith baised' organizations." Thus, they are able to completely ignore all other facts. Keep in mind, many of these people are the same folks who believe that the Earth was created in under 7 days.
Maybe you can give us some help here. How exactly do you keep the politicians honest and concerned with public welfare in this place where you 'watch the US from a distance'?
/. poster comes to mind in this respect. Something like: Being a patriot is supporting your country always and your government sometimes. The current U.S. government is almost saying you're a traitor if you're critical of the government.
This isn't a flamebait. It just a question; what do people do in the place you are to keep the political process working and balanced?
I'm writing to you from the Netherlands. Hi.
The best way to answer your question is to point out the differences between our countries:
- We don't allow anyone to give money to our politicians. In the US there are ways for someone to give money to politicians. This is the "legally bribed" part I mentioned earlier. Giving someone money is a good way to make them do your bidding so the most important part of your answer is already in your question.
- We have a culture of being very critical of everything in the Netherlands. We always have an opinion on everything and we need to know the ins and outs of a certain subject before we're satisfied that we've been told the truth. Handy for keeping our government honest, not so good in emergency situations (is that siren really indicating an emergency, i'm not so sure, investigation time).
- We have complete seperation of church and state, and as another poster noted, the US doesn't. When you think about it, religion isn't very democratic. The bible is full of kings and there's the ultimate king who's always right and who's word is always law. It's also a bit totalitarian (god is always watching and sees everything you do). Another reason religion has no place in government is because reality is always changing, the bible has only been updated once and that was a long time ago.
- Ofcourse we have corrupt politicians or people who want to be. The best way for them to keep their illegal income is to hide the fact that they're on the take. Like I said, we're critical in the Netherlands and it shows in the way we treat politicians. When you think about it, they're just human beings like you and me. Most of the time they're not even smarter than us, just more educated or better connected. In my country they have a certain level of fame, ofcourse, but mostly we have the attitude of: "do your job of managing the country, if you don't do it well or you lie about it, we fire you and you can find another job". In contrast, what I can see from the U.S. mindset, everyone's like: "OMG OMG, it's the president of the United States, a demi-god right here among us, WOW, I just saw the emperor of earth on TV". As far as I know, not enough people have been fired for lying or not doing their job (Irak, September 11). U.S. politicians are still lying and getting away with it. A sig from another
- The average education level of the population here is higher than the average level in the U.S. This, together with the religion thing, the non-firing of lyars and the uncritical thinking of the population. It leads to the bamboozling/spinning of the voters. If voters can be made to believe in this political disneyworld where everything is fine and the president is always right, then why would they need to be honest? They can just spin some more and everyone will still vote for them. As I said in my original post, most Dutch just can't believe so many people are voting for Republicans, I guess we're not in their "reality distortion field".
- Corporations have less influence on politics in the Netherlands, corporations are very organized and better connected than citizens. They can make a bigger lobbying fist than us.
My advice, Stop trying to fix symptoms like the Induce Act, you're spending precious political energy on the wrong thing. Use obvious wrongs like the induce act as examples of why the core issues should be tackled.
The core issues, in my opinion
- -- Truth addict for life.
Wish I had mod points. All the more impressive considering the rather snarky comment it was replying to.
A few random observations:
- I don't think the "treatment of fame" issue is unique to politicians in the US; it seems to apply to business and media celebrities as well. I suspect it's a side-effect of the "Land of Opportunity" myth that's so pervasive in the US; if success is achieved (only) through talent and hard work, anybody with wealth/influence must automatically deserve it. (And, conversely, anybody without wealth or influence is either stupid or lazy and hence not worth bothering about.)
- I *do* worry that the problems seen in the US are at least partly a result of the concentration of power there relative to the size of the economy. Assuming for the sake of argument that all politicians everywhere are equally corrupt, a dollar spent bribing a US Congressman to pass a pro-corporate law will have a far greater payoff than the same dollar spent bribing a Dutch representative, so it stands to reason that corporations would invest a lot more time and money on manipulating the US. I'm generally in favour of European integration, but this issue does bother me. The EC's combined economy is bigger than the USA's; if policymaking becomes similarly concentrated, we can expect to see similar levels of lobbying. Look at the recent pressure on software patents, for example.
- I think you could have made more of the freedom of the press. The Reporters Without Borders 2003 report makes for interesting reading. The Netherlands are joint first for press freedom; the USA is at 31.
Incidentally, I live in the United Kingdom. Politically and socially we're somewhere in between the US and the Netherlands, but from here the Dutch extreme looks vastly more appealing.