Let's improve U.S. copyright law in 2013
In each letter I'm going to explain that current copyright terms are way longer than necessary for copyright's stated purpose[2], and I'm going to ask for copyright terms to be limited to a maximum of 10 years with no exceptions. Compared to current copyright terms this sounds really short, but think about how long 10 years is---it's maybe still too long. I'm also going to ask that currently active copyright terms all end within 10 years.
If you're a U.S. citizen, I challenge you to do the same (though you can mail fewer people if you want).
By the way, if you're buying stamps, you'll want to buy "forever stamps". You can use them for mailing letters even if the price goes up after you buy them.
[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/omar_ahmad_political_change_with_pen_and_paper.html
[2] "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
15 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 48.9 ms ] threadhttp://www.copyrightreform.eu
I strongly believe that such legislation would only complicate my life. With high-speed networks and new protocols it's not that hard to imagine companies like Adobe or Autodesk moving their products almost completely to cloud. You would no longer "own" professional software, you would only rent access to it.
That is exactly the current situation. Read the EULA sometime. If they want to keep that model, force them to make it explicit, and stop fooling people into thinking they own what they were sold.
What I fail to see is how legalizing file sharing on massive scale (akin to MegaUpload) and banning DRM technologies would improve consumer rights. The natural response from the market would be to move to the cloud which means even more restrictions and privacy concerns than in the current model.
I agree that there are some reforms needed, but I'm against revolution that this document proposes.
The battle over copyright is going to be ugly -- it was ugly in 16th century England, and it is going to be ugly in 21st century America. We are going to see increasing attempts to prevent people from violating copyrights (which will conveniently undermine other, less convenient rights), an increase in the attempts to indoctrinate children into the "copyrights are a natural property right" way of thinking, and further exploitation of creative works (how dare you compose a song that borrows a tune from another song? If you do not work for us, we won't let you!). We are going to see copyright used as the excuse to establish firewalls, to arrest programmers who dare to write code that is useful to individuals at the expense of corporate profits, to sneak restrictions into computers and unwind the entire PC revolution, etc. The culture of illegal cable will expand to include illegal computers of all kinds -- computers that won't enforce the will of corporate overlords, computers that will allow users to write their own programs without asking permission, computers that won't care about expiration dates on data.
What baffles me is that many major artists argue for more copyright. It's like they are drinking the kool-aid of the corporate masters. What they should be doing is negotiating better contracts. Instead, they have a few stars supporting a majority of losers. The losers never make anything, and the stars make orders of magnitude less than they otherwise would. It's nothing to do with copyright law. It's simply a poor business model post internet.
I still vote, and don't mind doing stuff like this, but I'm afraid unless you have a few million dollars to throw at capitol hill your vote doesn't count for much, even all of hacker news combined.
Nevertheless, count me in.
I presume this would show a dramatic drop off which varies by market. It will probably also show that long copyrights only benefit a vanishingly small fraction of content creators.[1]
The problem will be that this data is unavailable to the public or government for most works.
Therefore, the first legislative step needs to be a "Copyright Beneficiary Reporting Act". Any copyright holder which receives more than X ($1000?) in revenue from a work in a calendar year must report the revenue for that work.
We can let that collect data for a few years and then make some informed decisions.
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[1] I think by and large these long term popular sellers, particularly in entertainment, should be thought of as lottery winners. The public, for whatever complicated reasons, fell in love with the work. Entertainment content creators are mostly just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. It is the public that chooses what is popular. If, as a content creator you hit the lottery and make a ton of money, great! That is what fuels the industry and provides the content, but you should recognize that the public is a huge part of that success and you aren't entitled to win the lottery continuously forever.