Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward
The ethics of High Chivalry got blown away by the Gunpowder Revolution, it didn't come back. Same thing is happening to Copyright. It's being blown away by digital technologies.
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Now as I pointed out, commercial exploitation is still affected by copyright, as there is enough value at stake for litigation. The random user has been successfully sued, the legal costs for the suit vastly outweighed the about that could be seized. 100,000 such "victories" would, by itself, bankrupt the music industry.
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Copyright isn't being blown away, exactly, but if it's going to be effective, it needs to be reshaped. It needs to deal with unauthorized commercial exploitation (which was always the intent, but 50 years ago, people didn't have the ability to copy a movie in their homes), and on free distribution
that has a commercial impact, and give up on trying to stop "copies."
Copying is now a matter of daily business & social life; there's no legal difference between your computer's automatic copying of a web page and your deliberately copying a friend's ebook. The web page presumably gave permission by existing--but what if it revokes that? Existence on the web doesn't give you the right to copy it; what if they've got an unencrypted page with company documents, that the only give the URL to select people, and prosecute for copyright infringement anyone else who visits it? What if a company decided to make its money this way: post some sensitive documents online, track the IP addresses of any unauthorized person who visits the site, get a warrant & prosecute for copyright infringement?
And yeah, that's a rather silly example--that fits perfectly with copyright law as it currently stands. (Google "Righthaven.") The law has allowed companies whose sole purpose is to prosecute copyright infringement--without proof that the infringement is causing any harm to anyone.