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Originally Posted by darryl
This seems to be the final report. We discussed the draft version earlier, and fortunately at least these recommendations made it through. Whilst I hope Government acts unfortunately I just can't see it. The lobby groups are just too effective, and the copyright in the grave issue is way too hard, enshrined as it is in International Law including conventions. I wonder what power Government now retains even to reduce the term. Nothing shows more clearly how copyright law has been subverted to favour the massive corporations who now constitute the majority of the rights holders.
There is a little more hope on geo-blocking and it is doubtful that vpn use results in a copyright breach by the user in any event. There is of course a breach of contract but at least in most cases little or no damage seems to be done.
Without general and widespread grassrroots anger the lobby groups will win as usual. And quite frankly, few seem to care.
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Any country that wants to can change copyright duration or even drop copyright entirely. Up until the mid 70's the US didn't recognize foreign copyrights, thus the unauthorized Ace versions of Lord of the Rings in 1965. The big reason that the US doesn't do this is reciprocal copyright, i.e. getting other countries to enforce US copyrights. Foreign rights to US works is a gold mine for Hollywood and individual authors. There are countries out there right now where you can ignore copyrights to your hearts content.