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In section 3 of the course (yes, I am that far behind), we are asked the following self-assessment questions. Here are my answers.
Question 1Firstly, does the expansion in the scope and term of copyright law raise concerns? Well, I think it does. The copyright laws are getting more and more extreme, and lasting for longer periods of time. The whole thing started in England with the Statute of Anne. In 1710, Queen Anne published a law which allowed authors to choose who would publish their works, which meant printers could not just print what they wanted, they had to have the permission of the author first. This was a watershed, and we are still feeling the consequences of it today. When the US broke away from the UK (a good thing, I think everyone will agree), then they allowed their authors to 'own' the works for 14 years from the point when they were written. In 1911, the UK changed the term of copyright, which was 28 years from date of publication, to 50 years after the death of the author. Not only has the length of time copyright runs for changed, but also what it covered. It started with just the printed word. Now it covers pictures, maps, audio (radio), visual (tv, films), statues... The list seems endless. So all this really cool stuff which is on the web (current site included I hope) is stuck in this time-vault, which means that no-one can play with it (make copies, re-mix mp3s, copy films and edit them to suit your tastes etc.) until years after it's relevant, so much that it's no longer cool, more like cold. There are two main problems with these laws as I see. Firstly they give too much power to a small group of people. I'm not talking about the authors here. The authors rarely have copyright. In most cases they have to give up these rights to the people who are publishing the works. In fact we are in a very similar position to that before the Statute of Ann, where the publishers were getting away with murder, and the poor authors were being hard done by. Only a small amount of the writers, bands, film makers etc ever get their work seen. The rest die in obscurity because the producers/publishers don't like it. We need to have a situation where anyone can publish their work. The way of taking a good photo, is to take lots of photos. The way of making a classic film, is to make loads of films. We have to enable everyone to make stuff, and then try and sell it. If every film was available for download onto a CD/DVD in a very short time (which it can be on using the internet & broadband), and each download would involve a small amount going from the downloader to the author (say between £0.50 and £5.00), then you would have a situation where people who made great films, got paid a lot, and people who made rubbish films, got paid nothing. Where everyone could produce, and get paid for it. And where people would not break copyright, since there would be no advantage to doing so. Secondly, the current laws encourage people to break them. There are loads of people who own illegal works. It's easy to do, and difficult to stop, and people who break the law can make a lot of money. If you changed the situation so that it was difficult to break the law, and easy to catch those who do. It should cost more money to get hold of a ripped song that it does to buy it legally. We are forced by the current system to get hold of films, radio, tv, music, books the way the producers want us to. We can't, for example, just listen to music by the Beatles on a radio station. Instead the station gets paid to play certain tracks, and so we have to listen to that. Yes, you can hear some things again from the BBC website, but what happens if you heard a song from an old musical, and you can't get it out of your head. There is no way you can get hold of just that song. You have to search for people selling the movie, buy the whole thing, and then play the bit you want. As a consumer, you have no freedom to choose what you want to consume, or how you want to consume it. The people in control, the producers/publishers etc, are the ones who say what I buy, and how I buy it. I can't get BBC to give me stuff in Windows Media Player, because they feel that the commercial realities of the day mean that it is better to use Real. (I have heard that they have a forum for people who don't want to get it in Real format, but it is referred to as 'those idiots who don't understand the commercial reality'. Apologies to the BBC if I have got this wrong.) So I am constrained to use a particular piece of software to get what I want. What happens if I don't want to use that software? Tough. So, the longer the terms of copyright extend, and the more they cover, the more power is given to a smaller and smaller group of individuals, who are not the authors or creators of work, and the less power is given to the consumers. If we change this, by allowing anyone to produce, anyone to distribute and anyone to choose what they want to buy, and how they want to buy it, then we will soon find a world where the people who actually do the good work will get the money. The people who buy get the ability to buy in the way that they want, and they laws would not be broken so much, which would save us all money since we would not be taxed so heavily to pay for cracking down on copyright crime. (As an aside, in Canada, there is a tax on all recordable media, such as CDs, which is paid to the producers of music, as the government assumes that the vast majority of this media is used to illegally copy copyright material. At least they are honest enough to state they are taxing people because of copyright theft.) Question 2Napster was a phenomon. It certainly started a change in the way the internet was perceived. It shook the record companies foundations, and it lead to |