copyright due for overhaul (Re: Software pirates face ten years in jail)

[Adam Back]

Jeremy

Have you ever used napster or any of the next gen file sharing
programs such as gnutella / morpheus / kazaa?  If so you might want to
reconsider your opinion unless you consider 6.75 years in the clink
appropriate.  (See the article "dealing in infringing copies of
copyright material" -- would that make running kazaa fall under this
draconian and retrogressive legislation?)

The other problem apart from appropriateness of response is that many
consider copyright is due for an overhaul.  You've got to wonder when
a significant proportion of the online population ignore a law whether
it is time to revisit the value of the law to society.  The law is a
victimless crime, that the law exists is absolutely purely societal
convention.

By way of example of the sheer scale: kazaa (which uses the fast track
network protocols) typically has 1.5 million users simultaneously
online, sharing 1.5 Petabytes (that's 1000 terabytes) and I'd guess a
fair proportion of that content is copyrighted works for which the
copyright owner or authorized distributed has given no explicit or
implicit approval for the distribution of the works.

The MPAA, RIAA and SPA are essentially powerful special interest
lobbying organizations attempting to bias the legal systems of the
world to enhance and defend their bottom line in a world which has
seen the advent of essentially the same order of sweeping change in
the Internet as the printing press on book copying.

I personally don't think DMCA for example is at all in the public
interest.  I don't think the continued increasing of copyright term in
the US and elsewhere is in the public interest.  The RIAA in
particular isn't even very fair to the artists who's rights it may
claim when it suits are what it is defending.

Personally I think we'd be in a better world if copyright where simply
scrapped.  An argument for copyright is typically that it is necessary
to protect the interests of individual artists -- writers, musicians
etc. however the current reality is that it has been perverted into a
tool of the mega-corporations monopolistic content-cartels to extract
price gauging rents for content whilst paying a negligible fraction to
the original authors.  

The latest trends of outlawing circumventing copy controls (DMCA) are
quite evil and stifling of progress.  In the US the current battle is
over proposals to outlaw sale of general purpose computers without
digital copyprotection mechanisms extending right out to peripherals
-- encryption to the monitors, and speakers, copy-protection
encryption in the hard disk firm ware.

The trend of erosion of previous copyright exemptions such as fair use
quotation and so on is further evidence of the expansionary and
monopolistic rent seeking behaviour of the media cartels and their
powerful lobbying groups.

Adam

On Tue, Apr 16, 2002 at 01:34:34AM +0000, Jeremy Barker wrote:
> This legislation corrects what is really a bug in the law. The
> existing 2-year maximum sentence for copyright offences is a joke
> and has been long overdue for correction. When the bill becomes law
> the 10-year maximum sentence for copyright offences will be the same
> as the maximum for trade mark offences.  BTW a 10-year sentence
> actually is a maximum of 6 years 8 months in jail.

> jb
> 
> Peter Fairbrother wrote:
> 
> > http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2108386,00.html
> >
> > I won't comment now, except to say I'm slightly disappointed with Vincent
> > Cable, with whom I have had some lively, interesting and informed exchanges
> > in the past. Man's supposed to be a Lib-Dem, for God's sake.
> >
> > -- Peter Fairbrother
> 
> 
>