Proposed copyright law raises controversy - new legislation tries to control technology itself

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/04/08/BU140716.DTL ^ | April 8, 2002 | Benny Evangelista

[weegee]

Nearly a century ago, the music industry argued that its future was threatened by a new method of creating and distributing multiple copies of a performed song.

The new technology? The player piano roll.

Two decades ago, the movie industry fought against an innovative device that it claimed was as dangerous as the Boston Strangler: Sony's Betamax videocassette recorder.

[hoosierham]

The writers of laws want ever more restrictions as seen by the chronology.

I say if 28 years was enough when the average man lived perhaps twice that then it is still enough now, when artists have longer productive lives (can create more works).

The greed of the entertainment moguls is legendary but the quality is not!!!

[atafak]

so the "artists" are quite willing to steal everyone else's rights to new technology, but expect everyone to respect their "property rights"...sorry, bozoes...if you don't want the public making copies of your "art" works, keep them to yourselves...long live napster and its clones!!...

[steve-b]

so the "artists" are quite willing to steal everyone else's rights to new technology, but expect everyone to respect their "property rights"

In fact, it's not (generally) the artists themselves -- it's the middlemen who see their business model eroding out from under them.

You raise an excellent point, though. Copyright law (like law generally) depends on the perception that it is fair and beneficial to people generally. Once it is seen as a special favor to some faction that bribed the politicians, it is cast into contempt.

In this particular case, if people are forced to break the law to do perfectly legitimate and reasonable things (e.g. compile favorite songs from a dozen CDs in their collection onto a single mix CD for convenient listening), then their resistance to breaking related laws for less justified purposes (e.g. bootlegging copies of somebody else's CDs) is lowered.