Slashdot Mirror
New RIAA/MPAA "Customary Historic Use" Plan
Random_Transit writes "Ars Technica is reporting that the EFF has dug up plans by the RIAA/MPAA to stifle the consumer electronics market by replacing it's "fair use" policy with something called "Customary Historic Use". This new policy would effectively keep anyone from inventing any new type of media device without the RIAA/MPAA's say-so."
Slashdot news cycle:
1. Get whiff of bill potentially adding to draconian copyright protections.
2. Post leaked draft of bill.
3. Bill is introduced. Panic.
4. Bill never sees the light of day due to massive infeasibility and congressional immobility. No coverage.
5. Repeat from the top.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
There is a great difference between producing art in the hopes that you may receive a financial benefit from it, and producing art *because* you receive a financial benefit from it. There certainly can be a value to commercial art, but it rarely, if ever, produces real progress. As far as Bach and his ilk are concerned, perhaps you think a return to the patronage system, whereby only a very select, elite subset of society would have the ability to enjoy original works of art is preferable to the current reality? Of course, in Bach's case (and I should mention that I almost find your Wikipedia link offensive--I was playing Two-Part Inventions when I was 10 years old), the average serf could always go to church to hear him play, but the fact remains that even the religiously inspired works were financed by the great might of the Church, hardly the most egalitarian of institutions.
In any case, the experiences of artists who lived hundreds of years ago in feudal Europe are only marginally relevant to the experiences of artists today facing the technological challenges presented by digital reproduction.