Copyright law ‘a necessary evil’: Lucas
p2pnet news view Politics | Music:-The Featured Artists Coalition Syndrome seems to be spreading.
Britain’s FAC at first came out strongly against the corporate entertainment industry Three Strikes and you’re Off The Net business plan it’s trying to have introduced around the world, then did a complete reversal, saying they supported it afer all.
UK peer Lord Ralph Lucas became an instant hero when, in a GooTube video , he stated:
“People have got used, and I think it is entirely reasonable, to a reasonable level of sharing between friends and within a small community of copyright material so that it doesn’t have to be purchased again at every incidence rate it’s used …”
But now he, too, gone the other way.
The damages-quantification amendment he recently proposed for the UK digital economy bill would’ve forced copyright holders to “detail the exact damage they [allegedly] suffered when trying to force alleged infringers off the internet will drop the plan,” says OUT-LAW.com.
But “Lucas told OUT-LAW Radio that copyright law was ‘a necessary evil’,” says the story, quoting him as stating >>>
The precise way I had looked at doing this does not work because I had been listening too much to the language being used about this being a Bill that was about people who downloaded copyrighted material. This bit of the Bill is not about that, it’s about people who make their material available for upload.
The only way the copyright industry can establish transgression is to go on to these peer to peer services, to download material themselves and can make a note of where it’s coming from. There is no known technology which will within the limits of the Computer Misuse Act and the Data Protection Act allow somebody to know who has downloaded material from a peer to peer network. All you can see is who has made material available for upload.”
The transgression we’re going to be dealing with is making music or making copyright product available for downloading by others [so] the question how do you decide what people are above and below the threshold becomes really pretty difficult and I don’t know that the Government has clear ideas on that and we will have to pursue them further. The idea under those circumstances of trying to put a value on the transgression won’t work. I’m not going to pursue that as a concept.
Lucas added:
“I think the key to protecting copyright in a digital age is to offer the customer something more than they can get for free. “e have to make copyright effective but at the same time copyright holders have to live in the real world.”
Stay tuned.
..… and identi.ca
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
came out strongly – Dear Featured Artists’ Coalition …, December 28, 2009
instant hero – Peer drops damages-quantification amendment to digital bill, January 15, 2010
OUT-LAW.com – Sharing between friends is OK: Lord Lucas, December 7, 2009
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January 16th, 2010 at 11:15 pm
I think understanding copyrights place and time limitations in a digital age is more important than blindly pursuing its expansion and the promotion of monopoly that puts humanity as a whole back for its continued duration.
January 17th, 2010 at 8:59 am
Politicians who say one thing and do another? That’s new. /s
I agree with Quartz and was pondering this just the other day. What would be a reasonable limit? When looking at both sides of the equation I realized how hard it was to answer that question definitively. So long as neither side can think in reasonable terms, I’m doubtful we will ever truly know. Human nature certainly doesn’t help, not when hate and fear are far easier emotions to assimilate. Whomever comes up with a radical new way of doing business in which the greed of both parties are satisfied (yes, both copyright holders and pirates suffer from it), enabling one side to profit monetarily and the other to profit culturally at little to no cost, will win the Nobel Prize in economics and likely many other awards of similar nature.
January 17th, 2010 at 3:20 pm
Copyright should be treated just like rent property, a value should be placed on it and taxed at that value ever year. A land lord pays property tax on rent property even if it is not making money. When money is made income taxes are paid on that, If he does not pay the tax then it is taken and sold and in the case of copyright should be added to the public pool with no copyright. Current copyright is a monopoly purchased from the 13 year olds that run this country and it started with Bill Clinton. Copyright should be reset to default just like the founding fathers set it. Corporate America needs to be banded from Washington there is nowhere in the constitution that gives a business rights. The constitution begins Preamble
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
January 18th, 2010 at 2:35 am
evil isn’t necessary because evil doesn’t exist.
there is no such thing as evil.
therefore copyright law isn’t necessary because
copyright law doesn’t exist.
there is no such thing as copyright law.