Quote:
Originally Posted by gweeks
Having had discussions with new hires just out of college and kids just graduating from high school I was appalled at the general opinion about copyright. I expect copyright to be dead in 20 years or less. None of the young people I've talked to have any respect for copyright at all.
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I am worried about the following scenario: A large majority of the people ignores copyright, the law is barely enforced, so that the law is almost dead-letter in respect of the ordinary citizen. As a result there is not much pressure from the public to change the unfortunate aspects of copyright law (such as the DMCA or ridiculous copyright lengths), even though such laws continue to have adverse effects (e.g., by restricting the activities of a
law-abiding minority).
Compare the situation with use taxes. A lot of people, perhaps a majority, fails to pay the legally-required use taxes on out-of-state Internet purchases, and there is no enforcement of the use tax law on ordinary citizens (except with respect to car purchases). As a result there is not much pressure from the public to change the system to make use-tax payment easier and more convenient (I think there may be some jurisdictions where a monthly use-tax payment is required, which would be a really annoying amount of paper work. I don't have that nuisance in my jurisdiction, but it is still a nuisance to remember to record every Internet purchase on which sales tax has not been charged), or to abolish use tax.