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Expanding Fair Use To Reform Copyright Law
Hugh Pickens writes "Gigi Sohn, President of Public Knowledge, presented a six-step program for reforming outdated US copyright laws in a speech at the New Media conference at Boston University. Sohn expressed no patience with the 'disconnect between the law and the technology' of media production and distribution. He puts Fair Use at the top of the list for changes that will help return balance to copyright laws that have limited innovation, scholarship, creativity, and free speech. In addition to the four-part legal test for fair use currently on the books, Sohn recommends that Congress add incidental, transformative, and non-commercial personal uses to the list of fair uses enumerated in copyright law, and in addition expressly provide that making a digital copy for the purpose of indexing searches is not an infringement. Beyond Fair Use reform, Sohn advocates punishing copyright holders who 'knowingly or recklessly' send out false takedown notices, protecting the manufacturer of a technology from liability for the infringing activity of others if the technology has substantial non-infringing uses, promoting fair and accessible licensing of copyrighted works, limiting damages for the use of orphan works, and requiring copyright holders to provide notice of any limitations on users' ability to make fair or lawful uses of their products."
and how much did Public Knowledge give in campaign contributions this year? How much do they plan on 'donating' in 2008?
'Cause I'm thinking the industries that give millions might not be in favor of any legislation that would do any of this stuff.
And I'm thinking that the millions of dollars are gonna talk louder.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. This is exactly what people want, and what they will never get.
-I only code in BASIC.-
The problem with organizations like this, that are trying to tame copyright laws, is that they don't have any money, which is the only language politicians speak. I don't know if we should blame the politicians, or blame the media for forcing politicians to raise enormous sums. I would still blame the politicians, because I think given the choice between federally-mandated/funded campaigns, and raising millions of dollars, they would still rather raise millions of dollars (plenty of wiggle room for personal profit) and so aren't passing the necessary campaign finance reform laws that could easily level the playing field for the average Mr. Smith.
"There was an earlier /. article where a fellow showed that economically the nation is better served by shorter copyrights."
Interesting... my understanding is that the US is in favor of long copyrights because our IP is one of the only things we have left in this information age -- as Neal Stephenson put it: music, movies, software and high speed pizza delivery. I would like to see a dissenting viewpoint; does somebody have a link to that earlier article?
"The fact that Yoko Ono can be a near-billionaire for John's shaking his head and playing music should reveal how far gone copyright has become. Under the old-old standard (14 years plus 14 years), the Beatles' music would have all been public domain already."
This actually serves as an excellent example of how many people believe that strong copyright equals economic power. Yoko's sitting on all that cash and she's a U.S. resident. More to the point, she spends that money in the US and pays taxes on it. You're right that if we rolled back copyright to the 18th century standards, we'd all get to have all the free Beatles music that we want. The invisible hand being what it is, the economic benefactors would be whomever could provide it to us the most cheaply. The Beatles catalog would be available on CDs imported by Chinese corporations, and downloadable from countries where bandwidth is cheap. That whimpering sound you heard might not be Yoko softly crying in anguish, but the slow death of the USA's information-driven economy.
Having a strong economy isn't the end-all, be-all, and perhaps the unwashed masses don't really care about big-picture things like this -- so perhaps cheaper Beatles music is better for society as a whole in the short term. But, here's the thing: cheap Beatles music would not affect my life one bit. I can already buy the Beatles catalog in its entirety for a small fraction of my paycheck. It's not like it's air or water. But clean air and clean water are important to me, and I rely on the government's help for those. If a rollback to a 28-year copyright system resulted in a 1% reduction in the GNP next year because our entertainment money started going toward Russian download sites and Chinese CD pressing plants, we might not notice the effects right away, but those points add up. We might all be boiling the frog slowly while we enjoy our cheap Beatles music.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
You may enact restrictive laws but it hurts you more in the long run then it hurts china/Russia/India.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
This is what most people don't understand, the price will drop, but it will never reach zero cost for new goods due to the fact that there IS a cost associated with production that must be recouped.
In terms of economic theory, this has not been proven or even insightfully debated.
Per my own economic theory, which has roots in the Austrian school but we differ in many areas, I truly believe that even new goods have no intrinsic cost unless such cost is applied or assumed by the creator of the goods (or services). Not all creators of goods or services place an inherent cost to creation. I don't. I spend close to 20 hours a week inventing, writing, recording or whatnot, and I place absolutely NO cost on that time. My view on time preference is that my content is pure entertainment value, so the actual cost to me to write, or create, is actually negative -- I gain a profit (entertainment value) from the act of creating.
If we take this perspective (for myself), the cost of goods is negative, let us say I can assign it a value of $-10. The entertainment I've gained has an equity of $-10 because I would have to spend $10 to get the same entertainment elsewhere ($10 cost - $10 in entertainment received gives a time preference net value of $0), so for me I have ($0 cost - $10 in entertainment or a time preference net value of $0). Since I already set aside a certain amount of hours each week (consciously and subconsciously), I don't attribute those hours to my normal time preference value which has a net value of +$100 per hour. Some Austrians might factor in the entertainment "Zero Hours" into an average of the positive net time preference hours, but I don't.
Now, with a negative cost of goods, and and a near infinite supply of those goods once created, the price actually falls to a negative based on the flawed supply and demand curves. This is why I am a fan of supply and demand theory, but have written extensively on the failures when one does not consider a zero sum net time preference value or even a negative cost association. Sure, you can say that web hosting has a cost, but I use NearlyFreeSpeech, so I pay around $0.01 per megabyte transfered, and if a typical blog post or RSS feed is 3K, I can have 333 readers for $0.01, so there is SOME intrinsic cost, but it is part of my entertainment value. In fact, I receive LESS entertainment value just writing an article in Notepad than I do in Wordpress, so even the hosting charge is not considered a positive cost to me.
Do most people think this deep about creating free content? Surely not, but most people aren't aware of time preference or supply and demand curves. "Mmm, writing on MySpace blog good." Why do they do it? Because there is an inherent profit to entertaining yourself because of the zero cost, other than time preference losses.
Why do I do it? Because not only do I lose nothing (other than time I set aside to lose), AND gain entertainment, I also gain something MOST bloggers, musicians, producers and artists don't perceive as a gain: I get a HUGE response to what I create. Beyond the minimal income that advertising gives me, I get hundreds of e-mails a week with amazing insights, criticisms, comments, and debate points that I can work into my real life (work). This gives me an edge and an enhanced time preference profit because now I have MORE information to sell to my clientele.
-mcgrew The problem that you'll run in to is the following: 90 years is techinically still a "Limited Time" as would be, hypothetically, 472 years, 19 days, 12 hours, 14 minutes, and 53 seconds, or 1000 years.
What I see happening is, effectively, and end-run around the "Limited Time" set forth in the constitution. As long as there is a set time frame, the test of "Limited time" is met, however, currently there is the unspoken assumption that said limited time will be expanded as the end of it gets closer, effectively making it unlimited.
this has a few major bonuses:
ergo, media wins, politicians win, we lose
I will not give in to the terrorists. I will not become fearful.