U.S. Copyright Lobby Out of Touch

Ontheright writes "The BBC is featuring a story on how the U.S. copyright lobby is increasingly out of touch with the rest of the world. The article focuses on a recent report designed to highlight the inadequacies of IP protection around the world by arguing for a global expansion of the DMCA and elimination of copyright exceptions. Michael Geist penned the article, which specifically calls out the United States for expecting the world at large to adopt its non-standard standards for copyright law."

Comments

Wasn't it the other way around?

[R2.0]

Let's all keep in mind that the US had been changing it's copyright law to match European law for a while - for instance, the insane lengths of time and the "Life +x years" are European "innovations". Of course, the US content providers just used this as cover for their own agenda, but the rest of the world is hardly a shining beacon of copyright justice.

So now it's the US pushing a stupid agenda instead of Europe? Sounds more like the European copyright snowball they launched at the top of the hill is now an an avalanche they can't control. I'm not happy the US is in the thick of it, but it's inevitablity was insured long ago.

Re:Wasn't it the other way around?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true.

The Europeans tried to enforce copyright law on the US during the 1800s, when the US was the biggest pirate in the world - stealing all other countries IP blatently. Many US companies started up this way.

Then as the US companies got richer they wanted protection from the Europeans, and created their own copy of the European's attempts to stop the US profiting from Europe.

Re:They aren't out of touch, they're out of time..

[Anonymous Coward]

I created the XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX of blogs and forums in order to prove that you could generate an income for your talents without the need for copyright.

Yes, we know. And you shamelessly pimp yourself at every opportunity you get. And it's tiring. Very very tiring.

Re:They aren't out of touch, they're out of time..

[SillyNickName4me]

In the past, pre-copyright, there was no intellectual property

In the past publication was a privilege granted by a monarch, and strictly controlled by guilds. The actual authors of whatever works had no say in this whatsoever (other then not creating their works)

Believe it or not, but copyright was actually a liberation of sorts. This is also where the misguided belief comes from that copyright promotes creation of works of art. It definitely does when compared to the guilds system, but that is pretty meaningless when comparing it to a situation where any works can be freely used and reused.

For the rest, I definitely agree that copyright as it is is completely broken, and is not even remotely serving its stated purpose. Rather, it is only there to help the big distributors keep as much control as possible.

Copyright does not guarantee any kind of income to those who actually create works of art, and it derives them of many of their sources of inspiration (at least legally)

Orchestras do not depend on copyright

[gnu-user]

No more orchestras, all those musicians want paying. Oh my....

Copyright has almost NO place in classical music.

The music itself is not copyrighted.

Copyright produces almost NO revenue stream.

Classical music lives on performance subscriptions and donations. It has far more in common with your garage band then commercial music.

Re:They aren't out of touch, they're out of time..

[BalanceOfJudgement]

While 70 years seems like a long time it isn't really all that unfair.

Based on what?

The purpose of copyright is to provide a temporary monopoly on distribution of the art so that its creator can benefit from the work enough to encourage them to create further works. Copyright is NOT intended to create a source of lifetime income for the creator.

This is particularly true because the entire purpose of encouraging the creation of artistic works is so that the public itself has more art from which to benefit. The true value of art is its value to the culture that created it, because it allows us to see ourselves and reflect on our own existence. Cultures NEED art because essentially, it tells us who we are. Jefferson himself (who, by the way, wrote the Copyright clause of the US Constitution), as a child of the Enlightenment, recognized that all artistic work is inherently public domain - which is precisely why copyright monopolies should be granted for as little time as possible. We can't FORCE people to create artistic works to benefit the culture, so we ENCOURAGE them to do so with copyrights. Simple as that.

From that perspective, there is NO justification for maintaining a "death + 70 years" monopoly (not just 70 years, by the way). Those kinds of copyrights only accomplish one thing: depriving the culture that created the art of its due. We have yet to see what disastrous consequences this is going to have on expression.