2. The internet and the digitalisation of content has made the piracy of copyright material easy, threat free and for a generation of younger people, guilt free. This will worsen.
This is a technology issue. The owners of the technology have always been the ones in control of the dissemination of content.
A brief history:
The people who had access to scribes and writing could copy books and distribute them as they wished, but those people were limited. They controlled the dissemination of that information, except for, as crash has mentioned, oral recitations.
Then there was Gutenberg. And the people, limited in number, who had access to the technology of the printing press controlled the dissemination of the content. Except, again, for some oral recitations.
The people who owned the musical instruments controlled the dissemination of music, except for people who could hum a good tune.
Then there was recording. The technology for stamping records was expensive, and only a few people had access to it. They controlled the dissemination of music for a while.
Then these cool things came out, kind of like 8-tracks, only not as sucky, called 'cassette tapes'. They could be used to record things from a record and disseminate the music to a wide audience. Anyone who had that technology was somewhat in control of the dissemination of that music.
Then there was an Internetty thing, which functioned on computers, which could hold both the content of written works and the content of audio works. As we can predict from the rest of the history, the people who had/have access to this technology control the dissemination of any content the Internet can carry.
And so it has been the case throughout the ages that the people who own the necessary technology have
always owned the content. It has nothing to do with 'a generation of younger people' who run around theiving without guilt or shame. It is simply a matter of a new technology, one which does not rest in the hands of a small group of people but instead in the hands of the people at large.
And that's where the issue lies; these entertainment companies want it the good-ol'-days way. They want a few peoplethemin control of the dissemination of content. But, hey.
that's just not the world we live in anymore. Large numbers of people are now in control of the dissemination of the content by virtue of having access to the necessary technology. And this is actually a good thing. Hildred McOldIrish could never have dreamed of access to all the information we have today. Instead, she lived her life a poor illiterate peasant, dying from an easily curable (by modern standards) disease at the young age of 35, never knowing nothing much about anything but potatoes and little green men (not the X-files kind).
The entertainment industry wants us to return to the era of Hildred, where only a few people have control over the dissemination of content. That a government would even entertain the idea as far as ours has so far done should put fear into all of us and call us from our television-induced comas to make sure that they do not take away the technological progress that so many people have worked so hard to advance. Not to mention the threat to education and access to culture posed by such foolishness.
And this is in addition to what I've said before; that if a company wants to profit from a technology they have to suffer from it too, or else it's up to them to minimize that sufferingnot the government.
Companies - like Microsoft and SAS that are reliant on software rights would fall as their content would become worthless. Many would say that they can live without these things but they really haven't thought it through.
OpenOffice.org
3. It's unlikely that any measures that the megalithic copyright holders try can do anything to protect their rights in the long run but not everyone everywhere will break the law - particularly businesses.
What rights? For the longest of human history it has always been the case that those with access to the technology have access to the content and
control its dissemination. The notion that we need to stop people from using the technology they have access to is a rather novel, and a rather stupid, one. Scribes always copied books without worry if they wanted a copy of the book. If they had the technology, they had the content, and it was the same for anyone else. There have never been anything so silly as 'rights' to ideas and information and content that haven't been rife with injustice.
1. Copyright law is necessary to protect the creator's work.
Protected? Protected from whom? From people who want to enjoy it or learn from it? Is that who the creators want to keep their work from... from
their audience?
I really doubt it. But if so, these 'creators' need a new hobby.
Jon
* Oops; I neglected to include a history of visual performances, but I think it can be guessed based on the other histories (themselves just guesses).
Love your enemies!
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