Slashdot Mirror
Rethinking How Congress Pushes Copyright Laws
pigrabbitbear writes "Lamar Smith just can't get a break. The Texas congressman and widely despised author of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) ruffled the Internet's feathers once again this week with the quiet unveiling of a new piece of legislation that's drawing criticism for being plucked out of SOPA's language and rushed through Congress. The Intellectual Property Attaché Act (IPAA) would streamline the process by which the U.S. protects its intellectual property by enforcing U.S. copyright law abroad through specially assigned diplomats or attachés. These officers would report to a new agency-level position, the Assistant Secretary for Intellectual Property and push agendas that, according to the bill's language, are 'consistent with the economic interests of the United States, both domestically and abroad.'"
It may be interesting to check how much he has been paid by lobbyists to drive this.
Maybe it's time to study Lamar Smith in detail for any kind of inappropriate behavior. Everyone is guilty of something.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Note that copyright is exact opposite of sharing ideas => major driver of the progress.
Copyright was seen as necessary evil to protect investments into expensive R&D.
But tell me what "investment" is needed to come up with idea of:
1) Showing an animated icon in browser's loading area.(by Microsoft)
2) That tablet is a rectangular shape with rounded corners (by Apple)
3) Searching in multiple sources (by Apple)
Apparently patents like this exist only to be used as legal weapons vs competitors.
And then we have rights on music/movies. I doubt Elvis would create less songs inf copyright law protected his work for 10 years, instead of a 100. Oh, and just recently in EU it was "only" 50 years. Now they've changed it to 100. Incidentally, if not the change, one German company would lose rights on Elvis's songs...
Back when the first bill was killed, I was certain that it was over. And yet, the neo-cons try over and over and over to get their agenda through. My guess is that their under-the-table money depends on getting these bills through.
Sad. They put more effort into styming our nation, then they do into solving unemployment, high deficits, and our on-going illegal issue (though they will no doubt introduce HR-2885 in the next couple of months; an e-verify bill that is so bad (basically, little penalties on the businesses) that the dems will not pass it).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Sorry to burst your ideology, but pretty much all your facts are wrong.
>>There's a few hundred thousand in this country that are rich, and the rest of us are, or soon will be, dirt poor.
The US has the most millionaires of any country in the world, with 3M (about 1 out of 100 Americans is a millionaire!): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millionaire#Number_of_millionaires_by_country
The real median household income rose steadily from 1947 to the present day (not counting the current recession): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_Income_Distribution_1947-2007.svg
This includes all levels of income earners in America.
>>We can't manufacture most of the goods and services we depend on.
Manufacturing is doing fine: http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2011/08/us-industrial-production-resumes-growth.html
>>It's just a matter of time until they can (and will) take the lead and do away with our exploitations.
If China stops exporting to us, there will be a disruption of our market as we shift production around. But China's economy would be destroyed.
There is no problem with copyright per se. The problem is that copyright got way out of hand, and I doubt that's what the founding fathers of the US had in mind when they thought that it's a good idea to give the creator of content the sole right to reap the fruits from it.
Back in those days, the "unfairness" was on the other side of the swing. Creators had to hurry to publish as fast as they could because if it was even remotely some kind of success, others would copy and sell it. Back then, the "bad guys" were not the users of content, the publishers were. They would not sign up artists, they'd wait for the artist to have success with their limited ability to publish, then rip them off by copying their creation and quickly reproducing it. The idea was to protect the artists against the publishers.
The system has been perverted into the one we have today. Copyright no longer protects the artist either, rather, it protects the publishers now.
And I am quite certain that this is exactly the OPPOSITE of what the inventors of copyright had in mind.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Maybe someone should start a kickstarter campaign to buy a senator?
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.