Slashdot Mirror
EU Strikes Down French "3 Strikes" Copyright Infringement Law
Erris writes "Opendotdotdot has good news about laws in the EU: 'EU culture ministers yesterday (20 November) rejected French proposals to curb online piracy through compulsory measures against free downloading ... [and instead pushed] for "a fair balance between the various fundamental rights" while fighting online piracy, first listing "the right to personal data protection," then "the freedom of information" and only lastly "the protection of intellectual property." [This] indicates that the culture ministers and their advisers are beginning to understand the dynamics of the Net, that throttling its use through crude instruments like the "three strikes and you're out" is exactly the wrong thing to do.'"
Why? Repeat offender laws are remarkably effective in normal crime control; what makes this different?
StoneCypher is Full of BS
I wish Australia was part of the EU. Perhaps this firewall business would disappear.
.
On one hand, a patently stupid law has been struck down. On the other hand, a multi country has superseded the laws of a single, albeit member, country. I am no fan of these type of organizations.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
* Seek culture, but not at the expense of liberty
* Seek liberty, but not at the expense of truth
* Seek truth, but not at the expense of privacy
* Seek privacy, but not at the expense of life
* Seek life, and enjoy free culture.
Any business model that depends on preventing what people can do easily in the privacy of their own home is (1) impossible to maintain and (2) detrimental to freedom as it requires an oppressive legal infrastructure and a brutal enforcement mentality.
does this mean that fair and balanced is good now?
Those of us who think they know everything annoy those of us who do.
Now we can throw them in prison instead of just cutting off their Internet. I don't get it; how is forcing stronger measures good news?
Can we get some of this "common-sense" in New Zealand please?
"Anti-piracy" 3-strikes was railroaded into our copyright law (section s92a) after select committee hearings and due process. Then the Minister had the gall to complain that all the moaners should have got involved in the process.
gadgetophile.com
I mean come on, it should be struck down on the basis that France doesn't even play Baseball so a "3 strikes" rule is just the American Imperialism that they are always railing against.
Now a "7 Course Meal and you are out" sounds a much more French rule to have.
On the copyright side of course its quite odd that France, which has a set of music that only the French want to listen to (Manau excepted) is worried about piracy, hell if more people listen to some of their artists they should be glad.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
suddenoutbreakofcommonsense seems appropriate, though when a skydiver is hurtling toward the ground, and waits a long time to open their chute, the observers on the ground do not say "wow, a sudden outbreak of common sense." Typically what is uttered is more along the lines of "holy shit, that was fucking close"
But you be the judge
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
The French government wanted to implement a law.
The EU government rejected that.
Result: The French government is unable to pass the law.
What's the justification? 'Right to information'? Everyone knows that's bullshit in disguise - because anything can be justified, and anything repressed, by interpretation of general clauses of rights.
I read the blog post and I find the title a litle inaccurate: the EU level clearly rejected the three strike principle to be extended as a EU directive but it is unclear if the decision will force France to back down on its national law.
It may need a directive to specify that this kind of approach is forbidden. Then, it may need a formal complain from the EU commission or a French citizen size the European Court of Justice to have the law revoked or modified.
The parent post also mentionned prison here. But the law was specifically designed to avoid sending people to prison for what is a minor offence.
Personnaly, I don't find the principle of three strikes and you are disconnected so problematic as it looks like road regulationsBUT there are some serious issues with the current implementations:
Ok, I guess my karma will suffer from the opinion above but please, could someone explain we what would be a balanced approach that would enforce right of creators and freedoms of Internet users?
What are your proposal slashcrowd?
Adelphia did this when users get DMCA'ed three times.
If my gouvernment could surrender to the European Union for this subject, I wouldn't complain :/
1. The larger unit invites the smaller unit into membership and collaboration under open and generous terms. Often this is laced with substantial short-term benefits and payouts. Payouts for wine farmers with no conditions attached spring to mind.
2. The larger unit and smaller unit as a result of this develop cooperative lines of action. A number of people within the smaller unit will have their livelihoods directly dependent on those cooperative lines. Cultures develop around preserving them and recognising the results of them.
3. The larger unit will over time have created a large number of cooperative dependencies. If the (resemblance of) the smaller unit wishes to break any of these, the ultimatum given is that it would mean the breaking of all of them, and reversing them to the detriment the smaller unit instead. The core of the smaller unit, ex those who have developed into cooperative positions with the larger whole, finds their power to make decisions have vanished.
Leadership problems together with uncertainty over the goodness of the alternative status quo combined with the badness of the certain pains that would be gotten if severing ties means that popular support is either in favour of keeping ties or unfocused and easily dismissed.
People in Europe should get used to seeing their governments become irrelevancies.
Perhaps they rejected it simply because Europeans didn't understand the "3 strikes" baseball metaphor. They should adopt a "three yellow cards leads to a red card" policy.
Airplane Photos, Airline News, Planespotting Guides
Yes in the linked PDF I don't see a clear repudiation of this technique.
At the moment there is a EU directive in place that is contrary to the French proposal. This is not stopping the French government from going ahead with their proposal though. It can still become French law within a few short months.
Eventually it will be struck down through citizen's actions (suit to the European Court resulting in fines) or through a change of government. Governments can be very very stubborn.
The only hope in France is to convince a majority of French representatives that this is a bad proposal before it is voted in.
As I wrote above watch the ACTA process where it is going to slip in again. An international trade treaty with the US.
I seek whatever the fuck I want, and you can shut the hell up about it.
"Anyone who surreptitiously installs a rootkit in anyone else's computers thrice shall be kicked out of business"
European Parliament elections are coming up soon, have yet to find a resource to help pick decent candidates to elect, reward these kinds of decisions...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament_election,_2009
Ok, I guess my karma will suffer from the opinion above but please, could someone explain we what would be a balanced approach that would enforce right of creators and freedoms of Internet users?
I think you've managed to ignore a far more important point. Why should government enforce the rights of creators? If they don't like what people are doing with their creations, then sue them. Oh, people are doing it by the millions and there's no practical way to sue them all? Tough ... time for societies and content creators to adjust to a new reality, and not try to force the old one upon the vast majority of the world's citizens: people that don't want it.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
The difference between this and road regulations, is that breaking the road rules can result in people being killed or seriously injured, as well as significant costs to individuals.
Copyright infringement on the other hand, typically only harms large corporations, and the actual level of harm it does is often massively overstated (most people would never have bought all the media they copied, simply due to cost if nothing else).
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
> Secondly, the ability to sue file transfer software editor is just ridiculous. It violates the principle that software is neutral and that it is individuals that perform the acts.
With some regret I must point out that in the EU, this is not without precedent. Germany has banned 'hacking tools':
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/31/1629259
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/13/0218246
It would appear not everyone agrees about the 'software is neutral' thing.
Your ideas about about ten years ahead of where most people are and they will sound extremist to them. Many politicians still see copyright as property and therefore infringement as theft. Copyright as a government granted monopoly to create scarcity is far too complex for them. They see redressing copyright in favour of fair use as being government intervention in a free market of creativity rather than appropriate regulation of a resource to encourage economy and free speech. They still see it as balancing the majority rule with minority rights, and that copyright infringement is minority rights infringement as the mob seek to steal and in response civil rights must be suspended.
Instead it's much better to talk about fairness and the right to trial, and due process being removed by 3 strikes than anything you're talking about. Your ideas are too extreme and are not persuasive right now.
The best communication builds upon existing ideas and directs them in compelling ways. Communication is about having a sensitivity for your audience and where they're coming from. Understanding the law makers and the public is the difficult part and going too far at once will scare them off.
Be smarter.
On the one hand, the USA was never intended, as is Constitutionally barred, from having direct power over citizens and from interfering with state laws. The US federal government does not have the Constitutional authority to 'strike down' a state law. The EU, on the other hand, started out huge. The crafters of the EU constitution never had any visions of a government strictly limited to a select few tasks, such as common defense. The EU "constitution" treaties basically permit the EU government to do anything it likes. That's the state the US federal government is in right now, but it's only de facto, it was never intended that way, and it took awhile to get there. The EU is an openly totalitarian central government right from the start.
Copyrights do not protect the rights of creators. There is no such thing as "intellectual property". Copyright and patent laws are in fact a violation of property rights, as they force individual owners of property from using and manipulating their own property as they choose. Look up Stephan Kinsella.
So their policy hasn't changed since before the fall of the Berlin wall? I didn't believe them when this argument came up over The French Connection (engine re-used for ghostbusters) on the Apple //e. I thought it was censorship over a game involving french police selling drugs, not over piracy over unpaid licensing fees...(for some other french game?) but now I believe them.
pleaselook at my blog kruhm.org if you want more detailed info, many posts about it really
the french gov is still planning to force feed hadopi despite the EU... more info here (there are more tags for it but this is the latest stuff from my blg) http://kruhm.org/tag/christine-albanel/
So the wrong side won the US civil war? Just checking. You're allowed to say 'yes,' I know it wasn't really about slavery (though you have to ask yourself whether the revolution wasn't, given the timing).
Yes, of course the wrong side won. Of course, neither side was libertarian, but the North was the aggressor against the South. It was the North which invaded and sought to conquer another country, and the South which was defending its own territory, attempting to repel a foreign invader.
It also wasn't a civil war, of course, since a civil war is one between factions in the same country, vying for control of the same government or territory. The political bonds between the North and the South had been severed, therefore any war between them could not, by definition, have been a 'civil war'.
By "the revolution", what do you mean? Are you referring to the revolution of 1776? No, it wasn't about slavery. Or are you calling the secession of the Southern states prior to the "civil war" a revolution? It wasn't one. In a revolution, one faction seeks control of, or seeks to change, a government. In a secession, a party to that government simply seeks to leave. The secession was not about slavery either. Some said it was, even at the time, but tariffs were a much greater factor. The tariffs at the time were a proportionately greater burden on the south. In his inaugural address, Lincoln threatened invasion of the south if the tariffs were not paid.
i can't think of anything more idiotic, except maybe laws based on car analogies.
that bastard Nixon and bastard Regan and bastard Bush, and the other Bush all get states (ie not their money) to house bazillions of inmates on MANDATORY minimum sentences. Mandatory minimums give power to legistators that they are not meant to have and prevent judges from deciding what punishment matches the crimes, regardless of any argument of weather these things should be illegal.
The EU in held of legally by this massive "constitution" that nobody has read. It basically tries to define as many right as possible simply so the EU can try to dictate on them, and attempts to take power away from the countries in order to divide and conqueror. It has the potential to be a sharp double-edged sword, and lead to a situation like the US where Top government has very little responsibility and is generally a huge burden on the states. The EU needs a seperation of powers between states and the EU like the US constition and needs to defend them.
If AU is going with a firewall, sounds like they may be looking to merge with China.
You can see those controlling tendencies expressed through Rupert's Media outlets in USA. 'Conservative' (exploitive) capitalists in the US and AU have more in common with the dictatorship in China than most EU countries, right now. Capitalists always look to flourish where they can exploit human capital. It's not clear that capitalism can flourish if it doesn't have some underclass to exploit.
A lot of half-truths here...
"Many years ago? Steamboat Willie is still under copyright! The man has been dead for half a century, yet his first work, written when cars needed to be started by hand and antibiotics were even a dream in a doctor's eye, is STILL under copyright! Is there ANYONE here that can stand up and with a straight face say that is fair?"
I'll take that action. Here in Canada it's life plus 50 years - that's long enough for the children and grandchildren - in short, the family members who knew the creator in life - to enjoy the legacy. Then it is turned over to the public domain. And it is fair for your children and grandchildren to enjoy the fruits of your labour.
In the United States, it's life plus 70 years, if I remember correctly (it could be life plus 75). That was put into place to account for the increased lifespan...well, not quite true. It was put in place in Europe to account for the increased lifespan. It was put in place in the United States because European legislation stated that length of copyright would be determined by country of origin, and that meant that any American intellectual property would go out of copyright sooner, and make it harder for Europeans to invest into American IP (such as a movie, etc.).
"But thanks to the outright bribery of politicians all over the globe it has long since quit being a contract and has become instead a way for evil multinational corporations to print money for all eternity."
You've fallen into a common trap here - you're mistaking abuse of a law for the law itself. They are not the same thing. You're also misunderstanding the importance of copyright. So, I'll explain it here.
Copyright is a set of laws that provide a legal framework that allow creative artists to negotiate with those who would distribute their work, providing protection to both sides to prevent one from screwing over the other before a contract is signed. However, if a creative artist signs all of their rights away, they lose that protection. Hence the ability for abuse by the RIAA, etc. It's a horrifying situation, I agree, but it is not endemic to copyright. It is far more endemic to sociopathic corporations, and copyright is only one of many laws that get abused.
"When copyrights exist for longer than most humans lifetimes they cease to be anything more than a complete stranglehold over our entire culture."
Very wrong, particularly when looking at the Internet, of all places. We are drowning in content. And once something is under copyright, such as a book, or play, painting, song, etc., it is always in the best interests of the copyright holder to keep that work available as long as possible. A book that is out of print cannot generate any revenue.
What determines the availability of a book, song, film, etc., is nothing more than simple economics. It costs money to produce and publish a book (I know - I own a small publishing company). So long as the sales of the book will make money, the book will stay in print. Once the book stops making money, it comes out of print. In fact, if you go to your local bookstore and look at all of those new books, most of them will have an in-print lifespan of less than ten years.
In fact, the technology that has done more than anything else to maintain culture in the literary world and keep books available is print-on-demand technology, which means that a book can be kept available for sale without requiring warehouse space. That revolutionized the book industry. And it had very little to do with either copyright or the Internet.
To misquote Serenity, when it comes to the alarmist views of the copyright debate, nothing is as it seems. Copyright is not the grand arena, the pirates are not scrappy heroes against terrible odds, and our culture, far from being under a stranglehold, is bursting at the seams. We are drowning in content, and never has it been so easy to create. The copyright abolitionists and reformers keep referring to some mythical golden
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
The French lose.....again.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
2 more related developments on this situation today, covered on http://www.kruhm.org/
Personnaly, I don't find the principle of three strikes and you are disconnected so problematic as it looks like road regulations[...]
It "looks like" but it's nothing alike. It's more lik a banning someone from using public roads instead of invalidating his driver's licence.
If you want it to be like road regulation they should ban the usage of P2P program which was used by the offender. So if you used Gnutella you can't use it for a year.
STRIKE THREE! France, you're out! :D
I am the lawn!
Why should government enforce the rights of creators?
Why should governments enforce the rights of anybody, really? Because, you know, that's exactly what they're there for. Or should we resort to mob rules to enforce rights?
Assuming copyright continues to exist over the next decade or so, you've got the choice between it being enforced by the government, as with speeding fines and so on, or handled by civil cases brought by private companies.
If it's the government, punishment would be limited to a small fine or disconnection. If it's private civil cases you could end up hounded by lawyers and sued into oblivion like Jammie Thomas.
Either approach suffers from the extreme difficulty in proving someone actually broke the copyright in any meaningful way. Civil courts can just guess at what's most likely but if it's criminal law then you could just take it to court where they would need some nasty extra legislation to make anything stick. Again, this looks a lot like speed camera laws in the UK.
So in answer to your question, I think they just need to recognise that people are going to copy some files and mostly get away with it, just like people are mostly still getting away with speeding and are just careful to watch out for cameras!
You thought you could break the laws of physics without paying the PRICE?
Why should government enforce the rights of creators
Here's one big reason: Because in many of the countries in-question, they've buggered things up so badly that the majority of their exports are now "virtual" goods. All the physical stuff is for the most part produced in places such as China, India, etc.
The domestic markets that *do* product goods, such as the auto-industry and others, have driven into the ground by piss-poor management.
So really, these collective governments have about two choices:
(a) Start pushing to start *producing* quality physical products domestically again.
(b) Push idiotic laws upon your own citizens, and through foreign citizens through treaties, to prop up a model which treats virtual goods the same as physical.
... superceed your rights to revenue. I guess that says it all.
Don't like it? Don't publish in digital form, or any form that can easily be converted to digital form. State-sanctioned revenue-zeroing is the fast way to eliminate revenue from "the Information Society". I don't know about you, but if is it available for free, I'm not paying.
Then we can rely on the Star Trek replicators to make sure we all eat.
Waow!
While it is understandable that prople may complain that big media / entertainment companies abuse their dominant position and lead to a price point that is unacceptable, it is difficult to me to accept that no creator deserve any protection
So writer's book can be copied and sold all over the street. Same thing for musicians. Also software makers (companies and individual) have to recourse if they decide to go closed source and make an honest living?
So you are basically against making money from creations? The world that you aspire would be only based on fabrication and distribution and private and personnal leisure. Very dull indeed.
Sorry. As much as I am against major companies milking their customers, I cannot accept such extreme and short sighted position on the argument that people wants it. Everybody want free lunches but at the end of the day someone has to grow the vegetables and raise the cow.
I am aware that there are some proponent of the "gift based economy" but it does not see it applicable here on a systematic base. The major devlopment of arts in Europe started during Renaissance as there were wealthy mécÃnes ready to PAY artists. By giving up any protection to creators, you would cause that kind of systems to be reinstated. Only a small and wealthy elite would pay for private concerts or other cultural events. Neat progress!
Why should government enforce the rights of creators?
Why should governments enforce the rights of anybody, really? Because, you know, that's exactly what they're there for. Or should we resort to mob rules to enforce rights?
You entirely miss the point. The laws already on the books provide remedies for copyright infringement, it's just the that copyright owner has to be the one to go to court to defend his or her rights. Hence the RIAA lawsuit mill. That's a far different affair from having big government perform that function for them at taxpayer expense. I don't think you really understand the issues here, but this is very serious.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Your ideas about about ten years ahead of where most people are and they will sound extremist to them.
I doubt that very much. And (as I've already repeated twice in this thread) I am not promoting the end of copyright. What I AM saying is that government has no place providing wide-scale law enforcement services to private entities at taxpayer expense. That's what I'm talking about. That, and the fact that copyright, as it has existed for so long, is not sustainable in the Internet era without seeing the kind of overreaching laws and unreasonable extensions of government power that are going on all over the world. Believe me, when you tell people who are accustomed to doing something en masse that they can't any longer, and furthermore they'll be royally screwed when they do ... well. They'll understand.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I doubt that very much. And (as I've already repeated twice in this thread) I am not promoting the end of copyright.
Why not? You should. Copyright is immoral as it is inherently a denial of legitimate property rights.
Your ideas about about ten years ahead of where most people are and they will sound extremist to them. Many politicians still see copyright as property and therefore infringement as theft. Copyright as a government granted monopoly to create scarcity is far too complex for them. They see redressing copyright in favour of fair use as being government intervention in a free market of creativity rather than appropriate regulation of a resource to encourage economy and free speech. They still see it as balancing the majority rule with minority rights, and that copyright infringement is minority rights infringement as the mob seek to steal and in response civil rights must be suspended.
Instead it's much better to talk about fairness and the right to trial, and due process being removed by 3 strikes than anything you're talking about. Your ideas are too extreme and are not persuasive right now.
The best communication builds upon existing ideas and directs them in compelling ways. Communication is about having a sensitivity for your audience and where they're coming from. Understanding the law makers and the public is the difficult part and going too far at once will scare them off.
Be smarter.
You have some interesting points, but the your major mistake is in referring to copyrighted works as "scarcity". Clearly, something which can be perfectly copied with negligible use of time and resources cannot legitimately be called a scarce good. This is much of the problem with the copyright system itself. (Another issue is that anything non-physical simply cannot be property, by definition, but that's obviously related.) But you are certainly right that copyright is a government-granted monopoly. More than that, however, it's a monopoly on the use of other people's property. i.e. the government tells a person that he cannot use the computer, paper, and other resources which are legitimately his property in a certain way. Copyright is a violation of one of the most fundamental of rights -- the right to property.
There's a more fundamental right - right to own one's body and one's labor. If I sit down and spend a year of my life writing a book, and citizens copy the book without payment (whether by computer or using a 1700s-era printing press), then they've stolen my year's labor without just compensation.
In effect, they've turned me into a slave.
Of course in that situation I'd quickly grow tired of being abused, and stop writing. And that means a decrease in the output of creative arts.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
There's police roaming the streets making sure people aren't violating my right to property or to physical integrity. There are auditors in banks making sure bank managers aren't doing anything funky with my money (even if those lost a fair bit of credibility recently...). There's plenty of people already in place being paid by governments to make sure their citizens' rights are not infringed upon. Conceptually, that there'd be a copyright police to protect the right to intellectual property is perfectly fine: it's only the ultimate logical conclusion of several other things we take for granted. The real issue at hand is that IP is treated as a right of the individual, rather than a right of society as a whole; the issue is the agenda behind the changes and the editorial lines those changes take. The issue is not that there might be a copyright police, but rather that "copyright police" is a nicer way of saying "government-paid corporate attack dog".
Still, this does not in any way invalidate my point: Enforcing rights is part of the charter of a government. Or, extending your own arguments, we'd conclude that, since there are laws on the books that provide remedy and punishment for car theft, we should just leave it for litigation, and police shouldn't do squat if they witness a car being stolen.
There's a more fundamental right - right to own one's body and one's labor. If I sit down and spend a year of my life writing a book, and citizens copy the book without payment (whether by computer or using a 1700s-era printing press), then they've stolen my year's labor without just compensation. In effect, they've turned me into a slave.
You claim that one has a "right to own one's body and one's labor", while implicitly accepting my point that one has a right to the free use of one's property. But they cannot both be true. A right, by definition, literally cannot be in opposition to another right. It is simply impossible. So check your premises. One or the other is not a true right.
Now, I certainly agree that one owns one's body. But several things must be true of a thing in order for it to be labeled property. First, it must be tangible, physical. Only actual objects may be owned. Second, it must be scarce. If I own a chair, I own the only chair that is that exact chair -- it is a scarce good. If someone takes my chair, I no longer possess it. Even with things which are not considered "scarce" in common language, are indeed scarce. If I hold some air in a bag, no one else has exactly that same air, even though there may be a lot of similar air around the world.
Thomas Jefferson said it rather well:
Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.
No one can 'steal' your labor, because labor cannot be property. If you go somewhere where no one else has gone and use your labor to transform the earth or an object of nature, the land or object can become your property, as a result of your labor, but your labor itself is not property. It is quite possible to expend labor in a manner which gains you no property -- whether to waste time and effort, or to expend labor for some temporary pleasure or immaterial virtue or benefit.
On the other hand, the right to own one's own body is fundamental and is the same right as the general right to hold property. You own your body in the same manner in which you own your computer, your books, your keyboard, your cardboard box, and so on, except that you owned it first, before you could own anything else. (As for alienability, that's a separate debate, with quite interesting arguments on both sides... but it doesn't affect my main point here.) Thus, if your property right in your pen and paper is violated, then your right to own your body has been violated -- they are one and the same right, the right of property. As for the slave analogy, that has absolutely zero validity whatsoever. A slave is forced to work. No one
Still, this does not in any way invalidate my point: Enforcing rights is part of the charter of a government. Or, extending your own arguments, we'd conclude that, since there are laws on the books that provide remedy and punishment for car theft, we should just leave it for litigation, and police shouldn't do squat if they witness a car being stolen.
My goodness, are you reaching to make a point. There are far too many issues completely ignored by your post that I'd suggest you go back and get a slightly larger picture here. Start with Ray Beckerman's blog and work from there. You seem intelligent: I think you'll be able to figure out the flaws in your argument after a little research.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I doubt that very much. And (as I've already repeated twice in this thread) I am not promoting the end of copyright.
Why not? You should. Copyright is immoral as it is inherently a denial of legitimate property rights.
Well, it's a tradeoff, and any good engineer knows that sometimes you have to make one. Whether or not we should have done so (or, more importantly, should continue to do so) is another story.
... apparently that's changing now. I believe that's wrong.
In any event, I was trying to unconfuse the issue: some people seem to think that having copyright means that government has the function of policing said rights. That's kind of mindblowing to me, actually. It's never been the case throughout U.S. history, and I fail to see why it should be now. Copyright gives you the right to seek redress for any infringement via the court system. The onus of detecting and prosecuting such infringement is the copyright owner's responsibility not law enforcement's. Well, that's how it used to be
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Now, when it comes to accomplishing certain goals, sure there's a trade off, but I don't see principles and moral absolutes as something worth trading away, even if there was some material benefit to myself, and I'm certainly not willing to empower rulers to make that trade in my name.
I agree with the crux of your last paragraph, though -- even if we allow the copyright system to remain, government most certainly should not be actively policing copyrights.