Well, the entertainment industry fanned the flames of marxism and anti-capitalism and made it “fashionable.”
Reap what ye sow boys.
The entertainment industry doesn’t help their own cause when they constantly pass extensions to copyrights that are about to lapse in the public domain. If these guys had their way, we’d still be paying royalties for Twain, Mozart, Scott Joplin and Nat Hawthorne.
Along the same vein—I’m trying to do the right thing and buy MP3s, and I’ve found something interesting: some HUGE bands are almost impossible to find. Aerosmith (you can only buy full albums for some of their older stuff). The Beatles (very little available, the rest is “tribute” crap). AC/DC (same as The Beatles).
I just want to buy a few choice songs. If I’m lucky, all they’ll make me do is buy an entire album for one song. Unbelievable. And they wonder why people just download the stuff free...
Copyfraud?
Talk about a false dichotomy!
Copyright (and patent) holders are not all alike. Sometimes copyright functions as the Founders intended when they gave Congress the right to grant copyrights and patents, “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.”
More often than not, now, it impedes progress in science and the arts by securing to commercial interests who often are not the author or inventor of anything, exclusive rights to the works of others for seemingly unlimited times.
The most egregious example of this is the use of the state granted monopoly by Henry Holt and Co. to suppress derivative artistic works based on the works of Robert Frost. In he goth band Unto Ashes recently had to ask (and was ultimately denied) permission to use Frost’s 1928 poem “Fire and Ice” as lyrics for a song. Frost died in 1968. This is promotion of the arts? (The song recorded in Europe is really quite lovely. The lyricist wrote a parody of Frost’s poem attacking Henry Holt and Co., which replaced the track on the American CD.)
The conflict is not between copyright holders per se and the interests of society, but between commercial interests that have perverted the Constitutional basis for intellectual property law into a means of securing state-granted monopolies, which impede progress in the sciences and the arts.
Then sue Apple/ITunes then. Why go after the consumer for using the technology he or she paid for.
63 pages.
Dunno... I have a natural aversion to monopolies and roadblocks to progress.
I personally think our copyright system is a mess and needs a massive reformation.
Yea tough. That's the way it works in America.
Well, that is how the Constitution designed our system of copyright to be. Unfortunately, it is not that way anymore. We will no longer be at odds when the Copyright Cartel and Congress read the Constitution and truly understand the intent of copyright, and the public forgets this idea that everything should be free.
Hey, dildo-breath! Who was it that bribed Congress to extend copy-wrong to something comparable to 10 times its original Constitutional duration, in the guise of protecting among other things, Disney works based on plots which had fallen into the public freakin’ domain? Remember that, public domain? Who was it that bribed Congress to TRY to neuter our fair use RIGHTS?
Gross overreaching by the industry coupled with political corruption has certainly hurt their cause. Unlike many libertarians, I’m a firm believer in copyright protections, but no rational person can support the current set up.