Posted on 11/19/2010 9:56:42 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Thanks to a bill that has received bipartisan support in the Senate, the Department of Justice may soon have the power to suspend domain names if the Attorney General deems a site as having copyright infringement “central to the activity” conducted by the site owners. Hollywood and the recording industry has pushed the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) to get the government in position to seize Internet sites that damage the property rights of intellectual property producers, bypassing the existing remedies of lawsuits and damage recoveries. However, the ambiguous nature of the definition and the wide latitude it gives the executive branch in imposing remedies without due process should have everyone in the First Amendment space nervous — especially the blogosphere:
COICA is the latest effort by Hollywood, the recording industry and the big media companies to stem the tidal wave of internet file sharing that has upended those industries and, they claim, cost them tens of billions of dollars over the last decade.
The content companies have tried suing college students. They’ve tried suing internet startups. Now they want the federal government to act as their private security agents, policing the internet for suspected pirates before making them walk the digital plank.
Many people opposed to the bill agree in principle with its aims: Illegal music piracy is, well, illegal, and should be stopped. Musicians, artists and content creators should be compensated for their work. But the law’s critics do not believe that giving the federal government the right to shut down websites at will based upon a vague and arbitrary standard of evidence, even if no law-breaking has been proved, is a particularly good idea. …
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
What Good Can a Handgun Do Against An Army?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/2312894/posts
I’ve been saying for years that the lawyers, using the copyrights issue, will eventually shut down the internet in the United States.
Five years for physical creations, three years for ideals or recordings, and you'll see all this insanity and stupidity go vanishing away as labels work extremely hard to find methods and manners to make media accessible to the customers. You're welcome to rest on your laurels, but do it on your own dime, and keep the government out of it.
I have very strong opinions on this. The copyright clause in the Constitution should be explicitly fixed at 75 years, except for computer software, which should be no more than 30 years.
Sonny Bono used to be a big advocate of extending copyrights because he was afraid he might live to see his music become public domain.
He didn’t live to see it. Karma, anyone?
How many lived to 75 when the Constitution was written? I believe if the founding fathers intended such a length of time they would have included terms like 'lifetime'. And 30 years for computer software? So today, some titles for the Timex Sinclair would be starting to become public domain? Another five years, and most tape based software would be public domain? Even ten years is an extraordinarily long time for software to be used, and by today's standards, two years is the typical generational lifetime for standards like office productivity software, games usually a single year of expected lifespan.
Copyrights and patents were a way to guarantee that an innovation had a chance to first benefit the inventor, with an exchange that if you took advantage of it, then you had to give up the details of your product, and it became public domain at the end of that protection. It was to inspire, to create, and evolve. By your standards, innovation in computers would take one and a half generations, in other products almost four generations.
If people want to hide their designs, and not use the protection of patents and copyrights, that's their choice. But those who do use those who can and will enforce copyrights with weapons bared and stiff court sentences should not have a system of protections that can easily outlive them, and absolutely and completely outlive the usefulness of the protection or the product itself.
This law would be abused for sure as a convenient pretext.
Missing the point.
In 1789, mainly individuals got patents and copyrights. Individuals have a limited lifespan.
Today, most copyrights and patents end up held by corporations which are theoretically immortal. They want to hold the rights forever. Even when one does die, the rights are bought by another corporation who plans to also profit in perpetuity.
This began with Disney lobbying to extend its Mickey Mouse franchise since 1923 which was just about to expire on its second and last 27-year copyright in 1978. The extention they got from Congress was to 95 years, i.e. 2018. But they don’t intend for that to be the last extention, but to get Congress to keep pushing the “limit” back forever. Most D’s and R’s are in the big corporate pockets on this one.
Many FReepers inexplicably agree with the corporations and disagree with the Constitution and its rationale.
I believe that if you can’t enforce your own copyright/patent without intrusion beyond the 4th Amendment, then what you have is not/no longer copyrightable/patentable, no matter what government thugs say.
“How many lived to 75 when the Constitution was written? I believe if the founding fathers intended such a length of time they would have included terms like ‘lifetime’”
You do have to consider that people tend to live longer today than in 1789.
“And 30 years for computer software? So today, some titles for the Timex Sinclair would be starting to become public domain? Another five years, and most tape based software would be public domain? Even ten years is an extraordinarily long time for software to be used, and by today’s standards, two years is the typical generational lifetime for standards like office productivity software”
I once had a discussion about this on a computer forum, and many people thought that was too long. So maybe you’re right.
“...games usually a single year of expected lifespan.”
There is a certain software company that I will not name (it’s not any of the big ones) who stubbornly holds on to a certain computer game from the 1980s that they didn’t even create (sold to them by the original programmer). They have never developed anything decent themselves and essentially live off variations of this one game while terrorizing anyone who offers their 25-year old software for download.
“Copyrights and patents were a way to guarantee that an innovation had a chance to first benefit the inventor, with an exchange that if you took advantage of it, then you had to give up the details of your product, and it became public domain at the end of that protection. It was to inspire, to create, and evolve”
My point exactly. What’s the motivation to create anything new when you can keep milking the same product for 20+ years like I mentioned above?
“Today, most copyrights and patents end up held by corporations which are theoretically immortal. They want to hold the rights forever. Even when one does die, the rights are bought by another corporation who plans to also profit in perpetuity.”
Yes, companies are theoretically immortal. But they are run by people who eventually die. There is not a single person left at Disney today who was there in the 1930s. It’s now a completely different company run by people who had nothing whatsoever to do with “Steamboat Willy”. Ergo, holding onto those old cartoons is ridiculous.
“Many FReepers inexplicably agree with the corporations and disagree with the Constitution and its rationale.”
There should be no distinction between copyrights owned by a company and ones owned by an individual. In other words, you get a limited amount of time and that’s it. No dice.
I think the estate for the Brothers Grimm should sue Disney for copyright infringement.
Did you go to the link and read the article?
I’m beginning to wonder what country we live in today.
what changed? who made liberals&skinks King?
I read it last time it was linked.
It is reasonable in dealing with an army of occupation.
But in dealing with your own army, if you can kill them, why shouldn’t they kill you?
But they didn’t cause the problems.
Civilian leaders give them and you the orders.
It is they who must be removed from office like Nov. 2, 2010, or like other memorable dates in history.
Most of them are not like King Zog ;-)
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