Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

GOP fires author of copyright reform paper
BoingBoing ^ | 12/7/2012 | Cory Doctorow

Posted on 12/10/2012 8:49:45 AM PST by ksen

Derek Khanna, the Republican House staffer who wrote an eminently sensible paper on copyright reform that was retracted less than a day later has been fired. So much for the GOP's drive to attract savvy, net-centric young voters. After all, this is the party that put SOPA's daddy in charge of the House Tech and Science Committee.

But it's pretty terrible for Khanna -- what a shabby way of dealing with dissent within your ranks.

Staffer axed by Republican group over retracted copyright-reform memo [Timothy B. Lee/Ars Technica] (via /.)


TOPICS: Books/Literature; Business/Economy; Computers/Internet
KEYWORDS: 112th; boehner; copyright; khanna
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-28 next last
Copyright protections really have gotten ridiculously out of control
1 posted on 12/10/2012 8:49:49 AM PST by ksen
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: ksen

Copyright should only mean “I got here first”.


2 posted on 12/10/2012 8:56:04 AM PST by Dead Corpse (I will not comply.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: ksen

Copyright reform AND Patent reform are long overdue

You have people wasting hours and hours filing patent requests for the stupidest of things

I worked for one company who invited a guy to every technology meetingt and we wasted at least half of each meeting with him butting in with comments about filing for a patent for anything anyone said

If you invent something new, or somethign you THINK is new, you should just be able to submit a simple form, and then it is registered and stamped with the date

There should be no need to search every exiting patent to see if something resembles it, that costs a lot of time and money

just file it, and then it is up to you to defend it, if someone else makes a million bucks off the idea.


3 posted on 12/10/2012 9:07:08 AM PST by Mr. K (some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: holdonnow; suspects

Of interest PING!


4 posted on 12/10/2012 9:10:16 AM PST by Timber Rattler (Just say NO! to RINOS and the GOP-E)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: ksen

As a writer and the spouse of a composer, I disgree. The copyright laws are too lax and limited - they should be perpetual, just like property ownership.


5 posted on 12/10/2012 9:13:17 AM PST by kabumpo (Kabumpo)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: kabumpo

You write a poem about a tree. Should no one ever again be able to write a poem about a tree without giving you a royalty?


6 posted on 12/10/2012 9:16:46 AM PST by DManA
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: kabumpo
As a writer and the spouse of a composer, I disgree. The copyright laws are too lax and limited - they should be perpetual, just like property ownership.

That would be unconstitutional:

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.

7 posted on 12/10/2012 9:27:45 AM PST by Conscience of a Conservative
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: Mr. K
There should be no need to search every exiting patent to see if something resembles it, that costs a lot of time and money

The harsh reality is that the government exists to self-perpetuate and to grow in size and power. The very idea that it should be efficient and/or useful in its operation is a long-gone, quaint notion.

The fed gov is in desperate need of a major overhaul, and Copyright/Patent problems are only a symptom of the cancer.

8 posted on 12/10/2012 9:31:42 AM PST by TChris ("Hello", the politician lied.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: Conscience of a Conservative; kabumpo
As a writer and the spouse of a composer, I disgree. The copyright laws are too lax and limited - they should be perpetual, just like property ownership.

That would be unconstitutional:

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.

kabumpo... the whole purpose of the constitutional protection for intellectual property is to encourage creators to continue to create by ensuring that, for a time, they can profit from their ideas. But the ultimate principle behind it is to promote the progress of science and useful arts.

Protecting IP perpetually stifles this goal, because those who stand to perpetually profit from one great idea are dissuaded from continuing to produce great ideas. Additionally, perpetual protections would limit innovation based on previous ideas - either by limiting the knowledge that others have, or making it financially unfeasible (through royalties, etc.) to improve a previous idea.

If anything, the current copyright laws are too restrictive. 28 years (and 14 more if you bother to pay attention to renew) -- the provisions of the Copyright Act of 1831 -- are plenty enough. The idea that one work should provide royalties for the entire lifetime of the author plus several generations (as is currently the case) is patently absurd.

9 posted on 12/10/2012 10:29:34 AM PST by GCC Catholic
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: kabumpo

Perpetual copyrights would be a cultural disaster. Forget school fine arts programs, they couldn’t pay the licensing fees. It would be great for this generation of composers, but that’s about it, since there wouldn’t be much in the way of the next generation.


10 posted on 12/10/2012 10:37:56 AM PST by Boogieman
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: ksen

Another interpretation of the article is that young people love stealing copyrighted work, don’t respect the concept of copyright to begin with, don’t understand why downloading music for free is illegal, think it’s find to film movies in theaters and upload them to torrent sites, and the GOP is going to have trouble reaching these young people if they keep respecting the idea of copyright.

You know which young people are NOT looking to amend copyright laws? Young people who have become artists, who keep getting their work stolen when they can barely make a living on it anyway.


11 posted on 12/10/2012 10:47:57 AM PST by CharlesWayneCT
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Conscience of a Conservative
And there's good reason for that limitation. Copyrights and patents are inherently unnatural and ungodly creations. To say that you own an idea flies in the face of our core social programming. We hear ideas, we repeat them. We see good ideas, we want to reproduce them. That's the way we work, the way God made us. It's how manking betters itself.

Britain in the 17th century recognized the value in allowing creators the ability to benefit exclusively from their creations. The cost of invention was rising, and it was only fair to allow those creators to benefit from their creations after they'd invested their own time and money into them. This encouraged people to create new things, which benefited society. Still, the inventors of copyright ALSO realized that they were fundamentally harming society by preventing these good and useful inventions from being more widely used. So, we limit patents and copyright. The creator is allowed a period of profit, and then the government gets out of the equation and allows the free market to do its thing. Copyrights and patents are inherently socialistic and anti-market concepts (it's government protection and regulation of business), and SHOULD be limited as much as possible.

The founders of our own country recognized the same thing, which is why our Constitution grants the ability to offer copyright and patent for a limited period.
12 posted on 12/10/2012 10:48:24 AM PST by Arthalion
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: ksen
Copyright protections really have gotten ridiculously out of control

That's because the government is too big and too corrupt.

The GOP and the government became hostile to technology when W too office.

13 posted on 12/10/2012 10:51:21 AM PST by Moonman62 (The US has become a government with a country, rather than a country with a government.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: GCC Catholic

No, it is not absurd. A writer can spend ten years writing a book, living in dire poverty the entire time. He can live in abject isolation and lose his health, he can sustain permanent physical and emotional damage from trying to bring one book or piece of music to life. If the work later becomes acknowledged as a masterpiece, of course he and his heirs should have the right to benefit from his unique gifts and his extraordinary sacrifices.


14 posted on 12/10/2012 10:53:05 AM PST by kabumpo (Kabumpo)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: DManA

You seem not to understand the basic concept of literature. The copyright isn’t based on subject matter - a tree, a rose, the sunrise, etc.
There are many poems, songs, etc. on many subjects. It is the unique work of the author that has the copyright. The topic of trees is not the point. The point is the individual work - Housman’s poem, “Loveliest of trees! The cherry now/is hung with bloom along the bough...”


15 posted on 12/10/2012 11:04:08 AM PST by kabumpo (Kabumpo)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: Boogieman

Well, you don’t know what the licensing fees would necessarily be, so your statement is invalid. And arts schools are actually stifling creation these days, so your point is moot.


16 posted on 12/10/2012 11:08:21 AM PST by kabumpo (Kabumpo)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: CharlesWayneCT

Thank you. You seem to be the only other person here who understands that art is not the same as a gadget, like a new kind of can opener.


17 posted on 12/10/2012 11:13:34 AM PST by kabumpo (Kabumpo)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: kabumpo
You can spend ten years mining coal as well, living in dire poverty the entire time. You can lose you health, and sustain permanent physical and emotional damage from breaking your back in a coal mine all day. None of which guarantees him a free paycheck for the rest of his life, and it CERTAINLY doesn't guarantee one for his heirs.

Copyright is a socialistic concept, and while it does have a place, it's place must be limited. An idea is not a thing, and when an idea is shared nobody is deprived of anything. Copyright ensures compensation for the original creator, but it is, at it's core, nothing more than charity from the government and society in general. As with all government charity, it must be limited or it will inevitably lead to corruption (as our current system so clearly has).
18 posted on 12/10/2012 11:13:37 AM PST by Arthalion
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: Arthalion

Art and technology are not the same, and it is typical of the dunderhead philistinism one encounters on the Right to equate them. And then everyone complains that the Left has total control of arts and letters. Part of the reason for that is demonstrated in this thread.


19 posted on 12/10/2012 11:21:47 AM PST by kabumpo (Kabumpo)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies]

To: ksen

the GOP:

Winning the hearts and minds of lobbyist

Losing the hearts and minds of everyone else

Change your registration to independent. They need to see the more consequences besides the disastrous election of 2012.


20 posted on 12/10/2012 11:23:38 AM PST by CriticalJ (Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress.. But then I repeat myself. MT)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-28 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson