New Copyright Alliance Formed In D.C.

jombeewoof alerted us to a story that went past unnoticed last weekend. A new industry-backed 'Copyright Alliance' was formed in the city of Washington, DC. Tasked with the nebulous goal of 'promoting the value of copyright as an agent for creativity, jobs, and growth', the ultimate goal of the organization is to strengthen copyright laws overall. "Backed by organizations like the MPAA, NBC, News Corp., Disney, Time Warner, the Business Software Alliance, Microsoft, ASCAP, the NBA, and others, the Copyright Alliance has already secured initial support from several members of Congress ... The group is headed by Patrick Ross, a former senior fellow at the Progress & Freedom Foundation, a strongly free-market think tank. Ross has written about IP issues for years, and in a 2005 opinion piece claimed that he was 'looking for anyone who wants to join me in seeking that elusive middle ground.' His new gig may be a strange place to fight for that 'middle ground' in any meaningful sense, as the Alliance is dedicated to 'strengthening copyright law' using 'bilateral, regional, and multilateral agreements to protect creators' and advancing educational programs 'that teach the value of strong copyright.'"

Comments

Re:What exactly will they "teach"

[Kjella]

Fair use was made vague for a reason. That reason is that it's extremely difficult to pin down exactly what is fair use. You're not a copyright infringer if you tape a show and your wife watches it. But if you pull a "well, we're all 99,99% genetically related as humans so the world is my family..." it won't fly. What about your stepson? He's not a blood relative. Same goes with real friends and all your "friends" on the P2P network.

Backups... how many backups should be allowed? One? Three? Ulimited? That remote backup site that, convieniently, all your friends know the password for? Is it fair use to lend a copy away while you still have it on your media server? Would it be fair use to lend a friend get a copy instead of your original disc? Again, if this is a hundred friends where the one original is making the rounds and everywhere it touches there's copies being made, it's probably not.

In any case, the answer is really quite simple in the end: If it's protected by DRM you can't do shit, it's all a violation of the circumvention paragraph, and fair use is only a defense to infringement. Fair use might as well be stricken from the books as a legacy law only applicable to pre-DRM works. Don't like it? Tough.

Re:Too much control

[cpt kangarooski]

Why should content creators have to give [the distribution] right up in the digital age?

The right isn't inherent in them, it comes from the public. Why should the public continue to give it to them? I'm not averse to it, but we shouldn't give it to them unless it provides a greater net public benefit to give them that right, given the costs it incurs, than it would if we didn't.

Merely to support authors or the publishing industry isn't a good enough reason. How does supporting us benefit us more than it costs us? Are there no alternatives that would yield a greater net benefit? Remember that having more works created and published is beneficial, but that it is also beneficial for the public to have more freedom to do with works what they will.