Slashdot Mirror
How the Obama Copyright Policies Might Unfold
An anonymous reader points out a column by James Boyle, who knows a thing or two about copyright, analyzing the Obama Administration's policy choices about intellectual property and high tech. "Traditionally, Democratic administrations take their copyright policy direct from Hollywood and the recording industry. Unfortunately, so do Republican administrations. The capture of regulators by the industry they regulate is nothing new, of course, but in intellectual property there is the added benefit that incumbents can frequently squelch competing technologies and business methods before they ever come into existence. ... The Obama administration's warm embrace of Silicon Valley, and Silicon Valley's checkbook, had given some hope that this pattern would change — and I think it will. Now, instead of taking copyright policy direct from the media conglomerates (who, after all, have a very legitimate point of view — even if not the only point of view) it is quite likely that the administration will construct it as a contract between content companies and high-technology companies such as Google. In some places, citizens and consumers will probably benefit, simply because optimizing for the interests of two economic blocs rather than one is likely to give us a slightly more balanced, and less technology-phobic, set of rules. And perhaps the administration will go further. But recent actions make me doubt that this is the case."
Obama was elected thanks to the media. They're the ones who refused to cover anyone except Obama, they're the ones who forced the Democratic Party to skip the part of their convention where they count delegates' votes, they're the ones who completely ignored Ron Paul's existence and went out of their way to paint McCain as a senile old man and Palin as a crazy country bumpkin.
Obama owes the media, and you'll bet they'll collect.
meet the new boss, same as the old boss...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
It the MPAA/RIAA have a legitimate point of view, then I can barely comprehend what illegitimate is.
They have paid for legislation and administration policy. To want your paid-for laws to be enforced is not a "legitimate point of view".
Barack Obama has decided that copyright issues are a matter of national security, and has appointed a number of former RIAA lawyers to various positions in his administration. I think it's pretty clear whose side Obama is on, and it does not bode well for the future of the Internet.
Obama: Change you can believe in. It won't happen, but you sure can believe in it.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Government moves slow, which is probably a good thing.
In the case of copyright, it has only been in the past few years that normal people have even cared about copyright. Up until now, it's mainly been an issue between creators, authors, musicians, performers, and publishers. And they've had some pretty riotous fights about it. For the average citizen, who feels it's pretty good for a musician or author to be compensated for his work, and it seemed reasonable to allow longer copyrights. Better the artist (or his chosen publisher) be compensated for their work, rather than some random publisher who had nothing to do with it. In general people favor giving an artist control of their creations.
In the last 20 years, it's become more of an issue because anyone can make copies of songs, and the average person can easily get the equipment to reuse the work and make something new and creative from it. For us who are on the edge of the technological wave, it is obvious that there are problems with copyright, and we have some ideas about what the solutions should be.
The average person, on the other hand, has no idea what the issues are, hasn't really thought about them, and the government tends to be even slower than the average person. So it isn't that Obama (or Bush) is in the pocket of the RIAA, in fact, if you look at his campaign contributions, they are probably just a small portion.
Ask your non-technical neighbors or family members what they think of copyright. They will probably think that it is a good thing, even if they pirate songs themselves. They just haven't thought of all the issues.
Qxe4
"Gee, how can I piss off a bunch of rich and powerful people.. I know, I'll take away their special rights to a government granted monopoly, that sounds like a great idea!"
How we know is more important than what we know.
This is insightful? It's the same old crap that gets intoned every time the subject of Obama comes up.
And anyone who points it out gets modded down.
I guess I'll wait until the next article, post "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss" and get modded up to +5, Original and Witty.
When was the last time anything fell into the public domain? That has to change before I will sit up and take notice of any positive changes. These days, if they didn't make their money in the first five years, any given work is nearly dead -- especially movies. Copyright terms need to be seriously shortened by default and let there be some sort of copyright appeals process if it can be shown that they didn't get adequate return on investment.
That was before the Southern Strategy.