So, the movie industry is like a caged dog. Throw it a meaty bone once in a while so it stays alive and makes a nice pet, but don't let it get too full.
Not flamebait at all. That is precisely what I mean. Copyrights exist (supposedly) for your benefit and mine. They exist for the sole purpose that one day the creations will go into the public domain and we can all enjoy them.
That doesn't make them right.
Doesn't make them wrong either.
It is what it is. A system to allow people to share, and if those doing the sharing have no other means of supporting themselves, gives them the control to be able to extract some sort of renumeration for their efforts. What's *wrong* with that ?
As an FOSS developer (I can barely call myself that coz I have patched some FOSS stuff and contributed it back) I must stand in full support of the movie and music industry when they attempt to exercise their control over their own copyrights, becoz the GPL gives me (or at least, the person who wrote the software originally that I have patched) the same such controls to ensure that the work starts in the public domain, and when the copyright expires, stays in the public domain.
Copyrights are all about practical effect. It is practical to have new technologies invented that make our lives better. It is practical to have entertainment.
Practical at whose expense?
Thos that want to benefit from the work of others without doing it themselves.
Arbitrary? If it makes our lives better and would not be invented/created otherwise it should be protected by copyright. If it does not make our lives better or it would have been invented/created anyway then it should not be protected by copyright. I don't see that as arbitrary at all. Copyright is very costly to the taxpayers. My tax money is supposed to fund infrastructure and services which benefit me. Not make someone else rich.
I'm not sure why Tracy thinks copyright is costly to the taxpayer
In other words, everyone around you is here to serve you. Since you're not qualified to judge what makes my life better, what you mean is, "If it makes *my* life better it should be protected." Or maybe, "If it makes the copyright officer's life better", or maybe even, "If the copyright officer or legislator has been visited by The Divine Ominpotent Overlord of Material Gratification, and The Divine Ominpotent Overlord of Material Gratification grants divine insight that a particular work, or all works in a particular form in a particular medium, makes our lives better, then it should be protected by copyright".
This is the opinion, being held by the many, that grabs society like a paralyzing cancer that kills in the name of practicality. There is no "better" but what a person can choose of his or her own free will, and that fact is *certainly* not worth ignoring for mere entertainment or gadgets. I'd rather live poor, free of that straitjacket, than comfortably entertained to death.
I don't think this is what Tracy is saying at all, and by extension, not what everybody in society thinks as well
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