Guess we don’t need to torture the RIAAs lawyers now. They’re cutting their own throats! (Bwahahahahaha)
A reasonable change to copyright law would be to require that copyright holders must retail market their copyrighted product on an annual basis to a certain dollar amount, or else they lose their government protection.
If a copyrighted work, like Mickey Mouse, is retailed for a large amount of money every year, Disney should be able to retain that copyright as long as it makes money. But at the same time, Disney could not *refuse* to market other works, such as Song of the South, because they don’t want to. If they refuse to market the product, they deserve no copyright protection.
This would make available for sale vast libraries of copyrighted works that are not now legally available, though they have been in the past. Either the copyright holder sells them, or stands back and lets someone else sell them.
Unfortunately, while most people would *prefer* that the copyright revert to the creator of the work, in the vast majority of cases, this cannot be, as the creator of the work has sold their rights, or ceded them by contract, to the existing copyright holder.
The RIAA, especially, has for years included a contract clause for artists that they are employees, who have no rights at all for their own works, but this was not enforced. However, a few years ago, they got the US congress to pass a bill saying that the clause was enforceable. This means that the RIAA holds the copyright of the creator of the art, not the artists themselves.
Overall, the effect of this change would not affect first run copyrights, the majority of profit for corporations; it would only affect older works.
The public would see a vast increase in the amount of public domain content. Artists not seen for decades would return to the limelight, newly repackaged. And if the library holders didn’t want to market them, it wouldn’t matter, because somebody probably would.
If the artist wants to give their work away fine, but no one can make a reasonable, just argument for obtaining a illegal copy of a copyrighted media product. The RIAA is trying to protect it's investments with these stupid lawsuits, and although I think they are doing it in a very marketable destructive way, I hope it will lead them to discover a more viable way to deliver it's product material.
Was he guilty of breaking the "copyright law" according to the extortionist thugs at the RIAA? Probably. But F the RIAA if they think that these lawsuits are legitimate in their own right. What if a kid records Metallica off of the radio station with his cassette player?
The RIAA is an evil organization that destroys the lives of college students and kids who SUBSCRIBE to music sites. See their stories here, along with a video debate of the scumbags who run these types of organizations:
http://media.www.thegeorgetownindependent.com/media/storage/paper136/news/2007/03/28/Commentary/Riaa-Evil-2808823.shtml
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/09/09/the_riaa_sees_the_face/
http://www.herroflomjapan.com/2006/04/06/riaa-to-students-drop-out-of-college-to-pay-settlement/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhiYYOQcO-A&feature=related
No it won't. They're liberals. So, like the 400,000 who die a year from obesity (not) and the 50,000 killed by drunk drivers (not), they'll just keep on citing it because the sheeple aren't informed and don't know any different.
A bad day for the RIAA is a good day for just about everyone else.
Perjury goes unpunished. Thank you, Clinton Legacy....