The Rants of Issachar
Saturday, December 15, 2007
More on Copyright...
The house is off for Christmas, so the new copyright law won't be introduced until the new year. Michael Geist posted this today, and I thought it was interesting that he picked up on two different things that have happened.
The first one he talks about is how quickly the issue took off from grass roots efforts online. Copyright aside, this is interesting. I think that the rapid communication that we have online and the ease with which we can reference and access sources is really going to help the democratic process. Voter turnout has been falling in recent years and the most commonly cited reason that I have heard is a feeling that your voice isn't being heard anyway. This is going to help change that.
The second thing that Geist talks about is how the copyright debate has changed from the focusing on copyright holders rights to focusing on consumer rights. This is good. The purpose of copyright is to encourage development of culture. To do this we need to balance the rights of content creators with the fair use rights of consumers (and other content creators).
The first one he talks about is how quickly the issue took off from grass roots efforts online. Copyright aside, this is interesting. I think that the rapid communication that we have online and the ease with which we can reference and access sources is really going to help the democratic process. Voter turnout has been falling in recent years and the most commonly cited reason that I have heard is a feeling that your voice isn't being heard anyway. This is going to help change that.
The second thing that Geist talks about is how the copyright debate has changed from the focusing on copyright holders rights to focusing on consumer rights. This is good. The purpose of copyright is to encourage development of culture. To do this we need to balance the rights of content creators with the fair use rights of consumers (and other content creators).
"The primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors, but "[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." To this end, copyright assures authors the right to their original expression, but encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work. This result is neither unfair nor unfortunate. It is the means by which copyright advances the progress of science and art."
-- Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 US 340, 349(1991)
