GoldenEye 007 Nintendo 64 Community, GoldenEye X, Nintendo 64 Games Discussion

[radorn]

http://gbatemp.net/t262963-the-library-of-congress-says-copyright-laws-suck

The original gbatemp post has a number of URLs embedded in the text, so I recommend reading it there if you want to get more info. I'm just copying the text here so you can have a look at it, but I'm too lazy to recreate the original links

Quote:

You think only "pirates" and "freeloaders" rail against current copyright laws? Well, think again - even the Library of Congress seemingly has had enough. The topic is recorded sound preservation, and in a 181-page in-depth study, the Library of Congress concludes that apart from technical difficulties, US copyright law makes it virtually impossible for anyone to perform any form of audio preservation. The painted picture is grim - very grim. The very detailed and in-depth report has been ten years in the making, and was commissioned in the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000. The goal of the study was to inform Congress of the state of audio preservation, the difficulties encountered, what kind of standard procedures are needed for preservation, and so on. The conclusions in the report are grim, at best. "Were copyright law followed to the letter, little audio preservation would be undertaken. Were the law strictly enforced, it would brand virtually all audio preservation as illegal," the study concludes, "Copyright laws related to preservation are neither strictly followed nor strictly enforced. Consequently, some audio preservation is conducted." While the recording industry undertakes some preservation, they will only preserve those recordings from which they think they might profit in the future (what a surprise). Another important - and very well-worded - complaint in the study is that copyright law is seen as so restrictive by the public, that people simply dismiss it outright. "In the perception of the public, copyright law has a reputation for being overly restrictive," the study notes, "This perception fosters a dismissive attitude toward the law in communities that can hardly be characterized as rogue elements of society. This detailed study confirms something that I - and many others with me - have been saying for a long time now: modern-day copyright is no longer performing its intended function, i.e., to promote the sciences and arts. Instead, it has become a license to print money, existing almost exclusively to secure the exorbitant income of big content. Source For my own input section, I'm going to quote a friend of mine. greyfa.de wrote: The problem is that Copyright and Patent Laws make illegal an act that is, really, the simple nature of Human interaction: The dissemination and application of knowledge, language, emotion, and idea. It is, in simple terms, a lock and limits placed upon mimetic behavior. The nature of our minds is to form, share, and apply Ideas. Successful Ideas spread and become a part of Culture. Unsuccessful Ideas are lost to memory. All Human knowledge formed as these Ideas. All Human Culture formed from these Ideas. And the only way for an Idea to be successful is to spread. This isn't a new idea. We all know this to be true. A song becomes popular, and it becomes embedded in our Culture. A movie becomes popular, and we all make references to it, quoting and sometimes miming it. An invention succeeds in the market by the popularization of its use - sometimes to the extent where it becomes a part of our daily lives: Cars, computers, firearms, even our homes. That is the nature of the successful Ideas: To become a part of our lives. But not all Ideas are Good. In the 1500's, a new Idea spread: The Idea to restrict the application of knowledge to a Chosen Few. The purpose of this new meme was to ensure that only the first person to capitalize on it should be permitted to do so. And this Idea isn't wrong. Certainly, the one to form an Idea should have the opportunity to profit from it. And most people realize that this is Just, since the expression of Ideas must be rewarded. Yet the meme spread to the Law. Kings, Leaders, and powerful businessmen saw an opportunity to control the spread of knowledge. There is some benefit for a despotic Leader to control what Ideas become memes and what Ideas should be suppressed; for when you control the thoughts of your People, you control your Empire. And so it was with the Stationer's Company and the Kings and Lords of the lands: when you control who can say what, you can control the spread of Ideas; and controlling the spread of Ideas allows you to control which Ideas can take root. This was easy to do in the 16th and 17th centuries, since few were privileged enough to control printing presses. But in other lands, Copyright had no presence. The freedom to express and share Ideas was absolute: unrestricted access to literature permits an unrestricted explosion of new Ideas and the development of new technologies and works. And, unsurprisingly, when there is fierce competition to sell a highly demanded product, prices fall, and when prices fall, the spread grows. And so grows the expression of Ideas. Without Copyright, Culture is unbounded. In the presence of Copyright, our natural desire to share Ideas is impugned. And worse, the foundation of our Culture - the early Ideas that formed it - is held captive by the very Laws that seek to ensure its dissemination. Locked away in the archives of the Big Studios are thousands of films and recordings - expressions of Ideas that formed our Culture - are rotting, slowly wasting away to dust as a few Archivists struggle to preserve them. Copyright has made it impossible to preserve our own Culture, while once-successful Ideas turn to dust. Meanwhile, those who want to celebrate our Culture are punished and treated like criminals. Those who want to express themselves get sued into poverty. It's sad, to me, that musicians pin their hopes and dreams on a recording business that cheats them out of their own earnings. It's sad, to me, that movie directors who want to encourage remixes of their movies are undercut by their own studios and production companies, who work to silence the very people who are celebrating them. It's sad, to me, that the companies that are charged with enforcing music Copyright are little more than an extortion ring, crushing small businesses and forcing many of them to go out of business simply for wanting to play music for their customers. It's sad, to me, that a small company can call into question the real ownership of an entire category of works by claiming ownership of a Copyright they didn't even have. The real crime here is not piracy. The real crime is Copyright.

I should add that I never liked the term "piracy".
Piracy is a term that he copyright industry came with to describe, at first, the gray industry of bootlegs, and later also applied to anyone copying something they don't own the copyright for (I may somwhat agree with the first case, but absolutelly not in the second case)
Pirates are criminals that aboard boats in the sea to rob them and kill their ocupants if they need to (or feel like it). The romantic "freedom" view on piracy has never convinced me.
For this reason I find it offensive that they call me a pirate for copying a song, film or game.

Last edited by radorn on Sat Nov 06, 2010 11:01 am; edited 1 time in total

[acceptable67]

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Quote:

The real crime here is not piracy. The real crime is Copyright.

_________________

Rare wrote:

Perfect Dark Forever.

[oldyz]

the is a big conflict -

If you make music it is a very good dream to record something good enough and have people pay for it and so live of its sales the rest of your life.

the problem , you cant stop people from finding ways to capture the music and reproduce it -
#1 its in people's heads
#2 there always someone in the world who can do everything you do exactly the same - or better- same voice , same music playing skills
#3 magnetic, electronic or x way of capturing sound -
# 4 mutant super parrots that can reproduce all sounds they hear

The ultimate solution for a musician to escape this is to survive by being always on tour - and never recording a record, tape , cd etc.

OR in case of music - If you make a good enough contribution to culture -
an X percent of government money should be paid to you for the rest of your life, not a lot of money - but enough to pay off - say the electricity.
Or let them have tax credits or exceptions when doing survival jobs.

In the case of all music shared trough the internet -
If you pay 60 dollars a month for the access - 10 percent should be directly paid to all creators of popular things

there is no way to control information sharing, but at least society should find a solution to the "Starving genius / artist" - problem.

I don't think inventors should en up being Super rich -
once you reveal your idea it is for the world to improve & imitate.

the only way for inventors to be super rich is if you invent a
genie's lamp and never reveal it to the world.

the private companies are using the copyright thing to control creativity and only allow a few - this is also a way for certain PURITAN style groups to censor things - there is a lot of censored materials in the hollywood vaults - and some censorship losers find copyright law a good way to censor something they find the public should not see.

There has to be a way to reward ideas in a just form, but original inventors should not have the abusive power to destroy or stop improvements on their inventions made by other people -

this in no way is even close to solving the ideas trafficking problem -
but the current way of doing things is destructive and broken -