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DOJ Ramping Up Crackdown On Copyright-Infringing Sites

Posted by Soulskill on from the let-joe-pesci-sort-'em-out dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Obama administration is just getting started in its mission to shut down rogue websites that illegally share copyrighted content such as movies and music. The White House's intellectual property czar, Victoria Espinel, said Monday that the Internet community should 'expect more of that' pre-emptive action as the administration ramps up its efforts to combat online copyright infringement — especially the illegal copying and sale of pharmaceutical drugs."

1 of 366 comments (clear)

  1. Ya this is my problem by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I support copyright. You need to be able to make money from creative works if we want people who work on that kind of thing full time. So there has to be some kind of protection, exclusivity, otherwise you can't make money in a capitalist society. Now if you want to replace capitalism with something else, that's another issue so let's not discuss that here. However in the framework we have, we need something like copyright.

    Fine, however we need to recognize that it IS an artificial construct, and the only reason we have it is to, as the Constitution says "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." Well to best do that it needs to be a reasonably limited period. That ensures a few things:

    1) You can't just make money forever by doing one thing. If you wish to continue to make money, you'll have to continue to make new works.

    2) It ensures works get distributed, not locked away. When they are under copyright you want to distribute it so you can make money for the short period permitted, and after that anyone can distribute it.

    3) It allows for others to build on existing works. Creativity does not exist in a vacuum, we build on idea from the past. When idea enter the public domain it allows them to be used as the foundations of new ones.

    So I agree, we need a shorter copyright term. Personally I'd do it something like thus:

    Upon the creation of a work you get an automatic 10 year copyright, no work required. This means that even if you create something you don't think has value, but realize later it does you aren't screwed. During this time you have unlimited control and rights over the work. You do as you please with it. At the end of 10 years you have three choices:

    1) Do nothing, the work then falls in to the public domain.

    2) Register for an exclusive extension. You then receive another 10 years of exclusive, unlimited control. After that the work will be public domain.

    3) Register for a non-exclusive extension. You then receive another 30 years of rights, however you are required to license derivative works for a standardized fee to all that want it. You can profit from your work, and from the derivatives, but you MUST license it for derivatives and the fee you get is fixed.

    My objection now is this forever copyright thing we've got going.