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Copyright extension is out of tune with reality
,----[ Quote ]
| Politicians often do and say silly things when they come into contact with
| celebrities.
|
| So it was last Thursday when a star-struck Andy Burnham, Britain’s secretary
| of state for Culture, Media and Sport, showed up for a speech and
| photo-opportunity with the former lead singer of the Undertones, a punk-pop
| combo of the 1970s. In addition to the usual pleasantries about Britain’s
| creative industries, Mr Burnham set out a novel argument about the law of
| copyright protecting musicians’ work.
|
| There was, he said, “a moral case” for performers – who often do their best
| recorded work in their 20s and 30s – to benefit from it throughout their
| lifetime. The government would therefore consider extending copyright for
| recordings to 70 years from the present 50.
|
| As political speeches go, this is pretty silly. A moral case? You might just
| as well say sportspeople have a moral case to a pension at 30.
|
| Copyright is an economic instrument, not a moral one, and if you consider the
| economic arguments – as I did two years ago at the request of Gordon Brown –
| you will find that they do not stack up. All the respectable research shows
| that copyright extension has high costs to the public and negligible benefits
| for the creative community.
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http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ba280756-ca07-11dd-93e5-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1
Good for Gowers
,----[ Quote ]
| And whose words are these? Why, none other than Andrew Gowers, who once again
| shows his deep grasp of copyright. Pity that the government is likely to
| ignore all appeals to logic, and to join the EU in a retrograde extension of
| the term of copyright protection for sound recordings that will give
| practically nothing to hard-working musicians, lots to the parasitic music
| business fat cats - and take away from everyone else through the enclosure of
| the public domain for another 20 years.
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http://www.computerworlduk.com/toolbox/open-source/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=1646&blogid=14
Spot the Disconnect
,----[ Quote ]
| So how do we reconcile those? Well, could it be, dear Times whingers, that
| the Internet actually *drives* traffic to your precious films and TV
| programmes, whatever they are? Could it be that the Internet is actually
| going to keep you all employed and so fraffly well-paid?
`----
http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2008/12/spot-disconnect.html
Recent:
Creative Commons Asks How You Define "Non-Commercial"
,----[ Quote ]
| Joi Ito and the Creative Commons need help getting the word out -- and
| defined. Creative Commons licenses allow (to varying degrees) the content
| they apply to to be freely used, distributed, and altered, with varying
| levels of attribution or certain restrictions on commercial use. One of the
| gray areas Creative Commons has been grappling with is how exactly one
| defines "non-commercial."
`----
http://ostatic.com/blog/creative-commons-asks-how-you-define-non-commercial
Award-winning Open Source Doc Looks at Digital Copyright
,----[ Quote ]
| Digital technology opens up an unprecedented global economy of ideas. RiP
| explores the robber barons and revolutionaries squaring off across this new
| frontier as the film journeys from the control rooms of Washington to the
| favelas of Brazil.
|
| Along the way, Gaylor interviews key figures about the complexities of
| intellectual property in the digital era, among them Creative Commons founder
| Lawrence Lessig, culture critic Cory Doctorow, Brazilian musician and former
| Minister of Cultural Affairs Gilberto Gil, and Jammie Thomas, the single mom
| successfully sued by the Recording Industry Association of America for
| illegal downloading.
`----
http://www.mediacastermagazine.com/issues/ISArticle.asp?id=93048&issue=12032008
Introduction to Copyleft Movement
,----[ Quote ]
| When a car breaks down on a high way, the driver opens the bonnet and checks
| if he can fix the problem. Often, experienced drivers do so. If he does not
| know, he will take the car to the garage or call a mechanic if he cannot tow
| it to the garage. The mechanic in the garage fixes the problem, and the car
| is back on the road. This is what happens with every other technology. Does
| this happen with software?
|
| [...]
|
| I did not spend time explaining giving technical or economic reasons for
| using FS. This is not because FS is not a superior technology. FS is already
| a success story. From small industries to big one, everyone is using it. The
| list of success stories is very big. You will possibly hear about them from
| other sources. Most people who use FS often talk only about the technical
| features, and much often about the economical aspect of it. Since there is
| little awareness about the social, ethical and political reasons mentioned
| above, I chose to talk about them instead of the technical and economical
| arguments.
`----
http://playingwithsid.blogspot.com/2008/12/introduction-to-copyleft-movement.html
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