FTC Wants To Straighten Out IP Law

coondoggie writes with this excerpt from NetworkWorld: "What do you get when you mix the government, the court system, company lawyers and Joe Consumer? A serious mess that would send most people screaming into the night. But the Federal Trade Commission is no such entity. It wants to straighten Intellectual Property (IP) out and today said it will hold a series of hearings — the first in Washington, DC on Dec. 5 — it will use to examine IP law and the myriad issues surrounding it. Interested bigwigs from the tech industry, including Cisco, Yahoo and the Computer & Communications Industry Association are expected to testify along with professors, lawyers and other industry players. The patent system has experienced significant change and more changes are under consideration, the FTC said." The FTC held some different, but related hearings this week which addressed topics such as copyright law and DRM interoperability. Transcripts, podcasts, and summaries of the talks are available on the FTC-hosted "Protecting Consumers in the Next Tech-ade" site.

Comments

Re:Reminds me of one of the great lies...

[Mashiki]

Why should I have to pay a music tax on blank CDs that I'm only ever going to be using to distribute Linux?

You shouldn't. However a great number of people in countries with a levy system against recordable media, HDD's and such have already decided that if they're being treated as a criminal they may as well be a criminal; and use the system to their advantage. Myself I'm against the mass-criminalization of society by something plenty of people do, nothing is gained except point out how broken or out of touch the law or government is.

20 years ago, no one really cared if you were out passing your mix tapes around. Now hell or high water it's the end of the world if you download an mp3.