On 2/22/07, Alice Taylor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
The problem with this argument is that the technology doesn't respect the consumer's right to choose. The technology currently removes rights under fair use, and breaking that technology also involves breaking a (ridiculous) law. It's a broken situation all round, and it doesn't come down to whether anyone's saying content creators should be paid. Course they should. Blanket licensing would solve this, for instance, without any DRM technology required. There are other ways and means of generating revenue, and certainly a slew that the collective minds haven't even thought of yet... I for one welcome the new business models. Let's try them all and see what sticks in this new and shiny digital world, rather than trying to brute force yesteryear's analogue models onto the world of upload once, copy forever.
Whilst I agree with your argument, it's worth noting that 'Fair Use' is a US legal concept, and of little relevance in the UK, where we currently have the alltogether more restrictive set of exceptions and limitations to copyright called 'Fair Dealing' (Although this may change in the wake of the Gowers Review last year). The other point worth noting concerning James's argument is that the assertion that 'It's the content-creators choice to have crap in their content or not.' suggests the notion that copyright is a property right over creative work, in the same way that one can have an ownership right over a pencil, or car. This is simply not true - Copyright law (in both the UK and US) has always been framed as a time-limited *monopoly* right, *granted* to authors to give an incentive to create (and therefore to contribute to the public domain at the end of the copyright term), not as a pre-existing *property* right, *recognised* by the law. (The term 'Intellectual Property' is a misnomor in this respect, and in fact has only been in common use since approximately the 1970s.) I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. Cheers, Tim
