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Copyright Common Sense From Telecom Ericsson
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from a story at Torrentfreak:
"Entertainment industry lobby groups often describe file-sharers as thieves who refuse to pay for any type of digital content. But not everyone agrees with this view. Swedish telecom giant Ericsson sees copyright abuse as the underlying cause of the piracy problem. In a brilliant article, Rene Summer, Director of Government and Industry Relations at Ericsson, explains how copyright holders themselves actually breed pirates by clinging to outdated business methods. The most vocal rightsholder groups would ideally turn the Internet into a virtual police state, and at the other end of the spectrum there are groups that want to abolish copyright entirely.'"
Which sound reasonable, but assumes that both parties' demands are equally extreme. If one party's demands embody a fair and ideal solution, while the other's are off-the-deep-end bat-shit-crazy, meeting mid-way is going to result in a less than ideal solution, skewed in favor of the extremist party. Simply meeting in the middle would result in an arms race of making the most absurd and extreme demands.
...As capacity on networks and hard drives increase exponentially , sharing is going to expand.... exponentially.
Once upon a time, it would have been idiotic to claim that anyone that might hear a song as they walk down the street should pay a fee to do so. Content is increasingly moving through the population much faster/easier/pervasively than the sound of a performance. How the heck can anyone expect every transfer of content to result in a payment to multiple parties?
Oh, you would like EVERY SONG EVER RECORDED in the 1900's? Indexed? With reviews? Here, make a copy of this [ some future tech memory flavor ] card. You don't think that will be possible? You are not paying attention.
Copyright NEEDS to go away. It only exists to promote the production of content, and there isn't a shred of evidence that content is promoted by copyright today. There is every evidence that content is HINDERED by copyright.
I would like to podcast my Church's services. Can't, Copyright
I would like to listen to any radio station in the world over the Internet. Can't, Copyright, Broadcast right
I would like to toss my cable subscription in favor of streaming shows. Can't, Copyright and License restrictions.
I would like to record the occasional HD broadcast (given I have to have cable). Can't, Copyright and License restrictions and broken DVR by AT&T
I would like to listen to a book read to me while I drive from my Kindle. Can't Copyright
And even as I say I can't have all these things, really I can by just downloading what I want into the appropriate application. Today. Without any permission to do so from anyone.
And it is just going to get easier.
Content will be produced even without copyright, because content drives attention, and attention drives sells. Sells of what? Anything. Everything.
And people will ALWAYS pay modest amounts for packaged content. Because they are buying "ease of use", and "time". Why spend hours collecting and organizing pirated content when I can buy content already collected and organized? But mostly we CAN'T get our content packaged the way we want because of copyright. Because Big Content wants the past to continue. We pirate because we can't buy content at prices we can afford, and can't get it in the form we want to consume it in.
Big content wants to swallow the reductions in cost provided by the Internet (Little distribution costs, no manufacturing costs, no retail costs) but collect the same level of revenue on every sell. They want NOBODY else to make a dime. They want it all, mailed to them with a kiss, without providing any value to the consumer. Sorry, but that isn't the way it works.
Big content wants to make us all criminals by making content effectively illegal in the ways we want to consume content, unless we pay, and pay big. Higher prices even as the magnitude of available content explodes? How does that work with Supply and Demand? Oh wait! Copyright ISN'T about Supply and Demand, but how much Government Granted Monopolies can make the population pay for their content!
If you dig conspiracies, then Government wants the consumption of content illegal so they can be bigger, and can selectively put people in jail they don't like, and to suppress free speech, and as an excuse to exert more and more control over the population as a whole. If you don't care for conspiracies, then our politicians just want the contributions from Hollywood. Either way is bad for the common man.
We need to vastly cut back copyright, or accept that any of our children will have their future selectively demolished over copyright should they cross someone that doesn't like them. We need to cut back copyright unless we accept a desert of legal content in an ocean of available content. We need to cut back on copyright unless it is okay to censor the Internet and censor free speech and silence the citizens because some copyright might be infringed upon.
This is a rant. Yes, but it is also the truth.