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."
meet the new boss, same as the old boss...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
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
It is a legitimate point of view from a political science point of view: they have their desire, which is essentially to be able to make money from each copy of whatever they made, and have complete control over it. Others (especially around here) have the desire to be able to take their creations and use it any way they want, without paying them at all. Both are legitimate, real desires.
Politics isn't about deciding who is right and who is wrong, it is about finding a compromise, or workable solution between two conflicting parties. In this case, the compromise is likely to be reduced copyright durations, and expanded fair use. Downloading music for free, as a lot of people want, is not likely to ever be legalized. The RIAA will not disappear until artists stop using their services, which may happen one day.
Qxe4
That's strange a candidate who has precisely zero chance of every becoming relevant is ignored by the people that are supposed to be covering the news. If only there were some organization with the guts to cover things that nobody really cares about.
Seriously though, what exactly entitles Ron Paul to coverage. At some point you actually have to put up a decent showing if you wish to get time on the national news, it's strange how you have to be involved in the news to make it into the news. Just because the news media has a tendency to give the right wing a free pass doesn't mean that it should.
Seriously though, what exactly entitles Ron Paul to coverage.
Well, clearly not getting second place in a state's presidential primary, as when that happened (Nevada) all of the news reports read "Romney first, McCain third", not mentioning the "Paul second" part anywhere. I agree Ron Paul had no chance of winning, but he got even less coverage than the others who had even less chance of winning.
Very good comment. One additional point to throw in about the RIAA's desires is that they want to be sure that all music has some cost (and therefore, value) associated with it. If all of a sudden, the best selling albums and singles become public domain, the record companies will have to work 10x as hard to compete against freely available music which is arguably of better quality than the tripe they're serving up.
It reminds me of the scene in the Grapes of Wrath where poor, starving farm workers tried to take some imperfect (i.e. not good enough for market, but totally edible) fruits from a farm's dump and they called in the national guard. If they can eat my garbage for free, the thought was, why would they ever pay for the "market quality" stuff?
So let's play this out a little bit. Let's say we drop the copyrights on everything over 17 years old. All of a sudden, everything older than Third Eye Blind is free. The majority of Metallica music. U2, Madonna, Pink Floyd, Paula Abdul... Jefferson Starship, Beatles, the list goes on. Anything recorded by Casals, most of Pavarotti's records... How many people would say, "I've got a lifetime of music to wade through that's free. Why would I buy this top-40 crap for even a dollar?"
Unless, of course, they actually turn out some product that's better than Britney. I'm not saying that there's no good music these days, but I'm saying that most of the pop stuff they put out now would have a hard time competing against a practically infinite supply of free music.
The CB App. What's your 20?