Copyright reform
 

I believe it's established that copyright needs to change. Since this is a federal issue, I'm trying to find places that I might influence policy in this regard.

Unfortunately, the main place I've been is Eff.org. My emails were declined from even getting there. This I found odd...

I want to look into seeing how to influence the ACTA as well as begin work to change this act and the DMCA into something based on consumer rights.

Basically, I saw Rick Boucher's proposal. I don't believe it goes far enough to offset the struggle to preserve my right to not only sample music, not only play games on the internet through places like Newgrounds and Kongregate, but also ensure more transparency with our laws

I'm probably in the minority but I believe that for the most part the law is fine. You dont have a right to sample music because you dont have the right to sample anything in the United States. You have no right to test drive a car, have a spoonful of ice cream, or try a bed for 90 days. These are all company marketing tactics and can deny them at any time. why should music be any different. If I write a song, put my hard work and creative ability to make it, then if I so wish to have compensation for you listening to it then I should have it. If I sell off this right the new owner deserves the same for paying the money for it.

My one gripe are some of the judgements. But thats an issue with some judges, not the legal code.

It's a problem because every creative endeavour ever builds off the work of other. Copyright law as it is at the moment impairs creativity and hurts the artist, not protects him.

Copytright reform should probably just extend to the point of protecting your average Joe from harassment and litigation. I'm not sure who has been following the controversy over the producers of the Hurt Locker sending threatening letters to 50,000 people who supposedly downloaded the movie through bit torrent and asking for a substantial settlement from each (not astonishing but probably something like 1500 dollars from each person--not inconsequential to each person). This is just outright harassment--they threaten you with legal action to sue you for tons of money in order to get you scared and give in and send them 1500 dollars in a settlement, even though if they ever actually took you to court being able to prove you actually downloaded/uploaded the movie and get a conviction against you would probably be next to impossible (this is why there's only been like a hundred suits against people up til now, it's so hard to actually prove any wrong doing).

Besides which the film is at best worth 20 dollars. That is the price of a DVD. It seems like the amount of money you're sued for shouldn't be able to exceed 20 dollars plus a fine of a few hundred dollars plus maybe some cost to the producers. It seems like it should all max out at about 500 dollars in a "fair" world.

It's closed off so hard even relevant parts of worldwide governments don't know about anything going on inside it. Seriously, even the info released gives next to no information past some of the topics they might talk about maybe in the meeting with no specific points thereof.

It totally goes back to your desire for transparency, because with ACTA, there is none and they don't care what anyone wants or thinks.




On fixing copyright law, I still say all it takes is wiping out the periodic "+ 1 zillion years" setup they have now for Disney and replacing the whole mess with a "however many years you're still using it plus [some reasonable number no more than 20]."

Yes, but I need something so that I can be heard. Right now, the WTO has a say, the RIAA has a say. The EFF can influence but I can't contact them. In order for me, a simple college student, to get this to higher levels, I need not only a forum, but also people to take this seriously. My goal is to work with the FCC in their proposal, which currently is falling on death ears in Congress. Also, I'm working to have more copyright discussions within public forums. Since I live in Texas, it's a lot more difficult since business runs roughshod over everything. Regardless, I need a starting point.

This is why I'm choosing to say "enough is enough." The debate has been one sided for far too long. Hell, even the internet czar is dealing with the outrageous things that the RIAA has begun with.

That's why I'm asking, where to go, how to influence and persuade. Trust me, I've read the ACTA's rules as well as the DMCA. I've watched but by the gods...

There has yet to be a concerted effort to get these projects off their feet.

I think you misunderstand this use of "sample." In this context, it means using part of a previous work to make something original.

Were you to sample a car, ice cream, and a bed as you used in your examples, copyright law as currently implied would suggest that you can't use bumper from an old Chevy as part of a sculpture, that you couldn't use a spoonful of ice cream in your barbeque sauce recipe, or ... well I can't think of a good one for the bed.

Using the sheets as a material to make pants from. ;)



@ Jagos: I totally agree, but there are bigger problems than I think you're understanding with this. Simply put, the transparency problem and the issue with people not having a voice in this are barriers to you ever being able to change it. Those have to be fixed first. Then you can work on the rest. And I am 100% behind that.


Edit: Or I may have just totally misinterpreted your post. So to answer your actual question, there's going to need to be a process where people need to shout loud enough about getting a voice to have their voices recognized, which is a chicken and the egg problem right now because of your noted lack of pathways to do so. ACTA is new enough that there probably isn't a large effort to open it up yet, and I'm pretty sure FreePress isn't dealing with it, at least not right now, so you're going to have to just buckle down and find a splinter group or two and see what survives long enough to make a statement.

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Current problem with the law is that the judgments given to the plaintiffs, the copyright holders, are incredibly disproportionate to any damage done to their actual profit margin. It's not "piracy is okay", it's "piracy is wrong but shouldn't be punishable with fines up to 250,000 dollars and five years in prison", and you sure shouldn't be able to threaten to take someone to court and get money out of them for doing nothing more than sending them a threatening letter, regardless of your ability to prove any wrong doing. That's extortionistic (it may not be the actual definition of extortion is why I'm not calling it that, but it is similar).

Of course, piracy may not be wrong, but it's probably harder to argue than what these copyright holders, or really, attorneys representing these copyright holders who want to make lots of money, are doing is just as wrong and probably has a worse impact on society than mere piracy, because it means you can get large sums of money out of people by just sending them a letter threatening to sue them. Your actual ability to win such a case is unimportant.

It's not even a matter of the copyright holders so much as it is the big businesses of the recording industry. At one point, artists were stripped of the copyrights to their own music by a guy who immediately jumped to RIAA afterward. You can't honestly look at that and tell me it's about the creators. In fact, the musicians get most of their money from concerts, so piracy basically isn't touching them, just the member corporations of RIAA.

As for the disproportionate pay, I'd say it's even worse than ripping off a song just because of the disproportionate amount. Stealing is wrong, yes, and I disagree with piracy on a moral level. On the other hand, this breakdown by Cracked puts the numbers into concrete terms. Basically, there's no way that people can pay what RIAA is demanding. It's a scare tactic, and one meant to ruin lives as effectively as possible. And it's still not stopping piracy, because nothing ever will. And it's not like piracy killed any of the media industry before. If it were a reasonable amount, like some small multiple of the cost of the song and maybe a reasonable additional fine for the act, no more than a few thousand dollars or whatever counts as reasonable for similar crimes, it would teach those people a lesson, but then it wouldn't make an example of them, which is what RIAA has been going for. Treating it like normal theft, while much fairer to the individual, is just a lot less scary.

Basically, justice is not being served, and because of the difficulty of finding people doing it, will never be served anywhere near to its full extent, but it's not causing the downfall of the industry, either, and if it was, they'd be unable to stop it.