“The battle lines over online copyright enforcement sharpened on Thursday when dozens of prominent high-tech entrepreneurs and investors signed a letter urging members of Congress to reject the PROTECT IP Act. The legislation, which has been making rapid progress through Congress in recent weeks, would establish a blacklist of ‘rogue sites’ and compel a variety of intermediaries to block access to them. It is strongly supported by Hollywood and the recording industry.”
Good for Hollywood.
Thought I would never say that.
People who make movies depend on revenue. From trash men to stars they all deserve that money. It is called being fair to the owners.
I will agree that the US Government was fooled into voting to protect works for up to 100 years before it becomes public domain.
Governments have to try to both encourage and protect private investment in all sorts of imagination. From software to car parts to movies. It all revolves around a person or group that has to make a profit.
Take a look at your job. How is it and all of it’s parts protected by trademark, copyright an patent’s?
Edited 2011-06-25 15:58 UTC
take a look at the internet economy and ask if the trillions of dollars in future revenue generation is worth the few companies worth a few hundred of billions dollars?
Jefro: I might agree with you under normal circumstances. But I heard a very good argument regarding copyright that I would like to share.
Our copyright laws are basically a contract between we as a society and content creators as a whole. We as a society deemed their profession worth while enough that we enacted special laws to protect them. They create content and in return, we as a society created laws to provide a limited monopoly for them to recoup their investment.
As a member of society I would argue that they have broken the contract. They have become very rich and powerful because of the contract, and with that power they move to ever change our laws. They keep extending the term of the monopoly by buying our Congress. They get laws like the DMCA and the Secure IP Act passed. They dictate the state of electronics that the consumer can buy. The abuse their monopoly to prop up their own failing business models.
As such, I consider the contract to be broken. As a party to a broken contract, Why would anyone feel obligated to abide by the terms of the contract? And their pathetic argument about starving workers? Let them starve. No one owes anyone a living. People have created content since the beginning of time. Most of the time they did it just because they wanted to. We can return to those ways. We would probably be better off for doing so.
Copyright is a good thing in general, but the draconian laws of late have just been taken to the excess by corporate greed and political corruption.
TechGeek is exactly right.