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Fair Use Worth More Than Copyright To Economy
Dotnaught writes "The Computer and Communications Industry Association — a trade group representing Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, among others — has issued a report (PDF) that finds fair use exceptions add more than $4.5 trillion in revenue to the U.S. economy and add more value to the U.S. economy than copyright industries contribute. "Recent studies indicate that the value added to the U.S. economy by copyright industries amounts to $1.3 trillion.", said CCIA President and CEO Ed Black. The value added to the U.S. economy by the fair use amounts to $2.2 trillion."
Fair use generates some money to a lot of people.
Copyright generates a lot of money to some people.
So the real question is what does our society value? Many people getting a slice of the the pie, or a few people getting all the pie?
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
My guess is "fair use exception" revenue generation is largely a result of websites using other people's content to generate ad revenue. Without fair use exceptions, 80% of the Internet "content" would disappear. When our economy gets past websites and Internet "companies" relying on a business model of profiting from the aggregation of other people's original efforts, I'm betting revenue generated from "fair use exceptions" will drop accordingly.
An economy can only sustain itself so long from re-packaging other people's work before it runs out of gas. Rewarding original creation is what is needed more.
Runesabre
Enspira Online
This isn't really a comment on your thesis here, but you got me thinking ... is there a CC license that basically says, "NO, you cannot distribute my work ... you may only distribute derivative works?" In other words, sure, sync my music with your video, put it up on YouTube... make a remix of it... but if folks just want an MP3 of it, they need to download it from me. Might be kinda interesting.
Breakfast served all day!
Not that I know of. It would indeed create a new kind of business model... which is "advertise my work by using it any way you want in your derivative works, but to download the original you gotta pay me". Although there is a danger with this idea: that a derivative is better than the original. :D
If these soft-products, art, music, video are as valuable as the owners say they are, then why aren't they paying the approriate property taxes on them. I think if RIAA members were been taxed on true value of their product then a lot of this crap would be released to public domain in order to minimize tax expense. This BS with life time rights, when others just as creative are confined 12-15 year patient laws, has got to go. Heck you can't even own a home unless you pay property taxes. Its like renting house from the government. So why are artist exempted ??? I'll bet Micheal Jackson didn't pay shit for property taxes on Beetle music ownership, yet he made millions selling licenses.
Making a backup copy of a DVD that *I own* is very much Fair Use.
Being able to use the music that *I bought* on whatever playback device I choose is also very much Fair Use.
We'll share the technical and scientific literature and leave all the Britteny Spears garbage as the exclusive domain of the RIAA.
Have gnu, will travel.
The situation gets even worse than what you are suggesting here.
/. example here, you have millions of postings from the nearly 1 million registered users (plus the anonymous cowards). It would be very difficult to be able to track down to actual individuals more than a very small percentage of those registered users.... and that is just to get their actual names. To be able to independently contact them asking for copyright permission to use their comments would be much harder yet. And postings by anonymous cowards are still considered under copyright even though absolutely nobody can be traced to those postings directly.
In the past, you could clearly identify not only who or what was copyrighted, but you could also get a reasonable expectation of being able to get some identifying information about the copyright registrant to be able to track down the original author or publisher to be able to see "permission" to reproduce the content. Such information was made available in a public forum (the Library of Congress) in a central "database"... even if it was only in a stack of boxes in some government warehouse.
To use the
I've tried (unsuccessfully I might add) to take Wikipedia and other Wikimedia project content and attempt to formally register the material with the Library of Congress as registered copyrighted content. To do so requires those contributing the written content to formally declare some basic information, most notably their nationality (what country they are eligible to get a passport from) and where they are currently living (not necessarily the same thing). Part of this is due to the fact that your nationality actually determines what laws can be applied to content which you write. You are also required to disclose a date of first publication, if it is a work for hire, and if somebody involved with the content has died.
What I discovered is that nearly unanimously the attitude among nearly all participants was that the formal copyright registration was not only unnecessary, but even providing these basic personal details (aka your actual name if you want to claim copyright) is considered a "privacy violation". And keep in mind all I was seeking was a voluntary disclosure of this information where those involved would be very much informed as to why the information was collected, and "anonymous" contributions were still allowed. Even being able to provide a mechanism to disclose this information was met with incredible hostility, and is only now being done on an ad hoc basis.... with repeated policy discussions to completely eliminate these pages where this kind of information has been disclosed.
Basically, under current copyright law, it is nearly impossible to determine what is or is not actually copyrighted, or even to whom it has been copyrighted. This is particularly difficult in "open source" projects like Linux or Wikipedia.