You are right, and I apolgize. My wording was not pefect. While Americans are mostly a great people and should be admired for that, I do affirm that the Bush administration is playing the a policeman’s role at Iraq at the expense of more important priorities for the Americans and and most Americans (I think) resent this. America’s priorities should be, among others, New Orleans rebuilding, the drug trade, political corruption, poverty, poor education, and fixing the non working legal system. America needs more a working legal system, to replace the current corrupt system, than an American designed democracy in Iraq, something that is an issue for Iraqi’s business, not Bush’s.

That aside, there is a very intersting article, Paas the Policy, that explains where all the laws and policies that are being internationally pushed and implanted come from. Read here: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=28096

Ain a nutshell:
“Now, policies seem to fly around the globe until one lucky government somewhere can make it stick, and then all the others play competitive “We have to keep up with the Joneses” neighbour games.”.

Of course, the ideas for policies and laws emmanate from the dark rooms of the large international corporations whose shareholders are spread all over the world.

And talking about shareholders, does anyone have an idea how many shares or percentage thereof the benevolent Saudi familily or or the Mafia leadership have in the entertaiment industry, where all the copyright ideas come from?

Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com

I also think that those who like to Bush-bash should remember that the NII bill that was the substance of the 1996 WIPO treaties, and the DMCA itself, were all Clinton/Democrat bills. To claim that this is a partisan issue in the USA is to be entirely unaware of the facts. In fact, I worry how much worse the USA will get on copyright policy if the same uninformed Democrats form the next US government.

Unless Canadian citizens as a whole vote out every politician who supports bogus copyright reform, it is nobody’s fault but their own when they start living with the crappy laws we do.

I think we are witnessing the beginning of the end of a major era in world history. It may take fifty years, it may take a hundred, but the age of copyright is drawing to a close……….

Here: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20051128/adams_01.shtml

The history of copyright legislation says that all legislation is the result of lobbying, political pressures and investment, the influences from lawyers who are in the copyright law business and of course and most importantly, the pressure from the governments of other countries. For Canada, this is the USA. This last group being the policeman-of-the-world wannabe, particularly so under Bush. It all means that the method of legislating has been totally lacking in objectivity and contrary to the national interests.

It is time, in all countries, for the up to now silenced social scientists and even psychologists to have their say on the effects of copyright laws and on how authors can be motivated to produce more or higher quality works.

The first step is a survey. Before any new changes are made to the copyright laws of any country, a survey should be made to determine the current state of affairs: What percent of the people are copyright infringers and how authors are being compensated. For example, in music, what percent of the alleged author royalties reach the authors and what percent is retained by the music publisher that create nothing and (unlike movie producers) invest essentially nothing.

The purpose should be to determine if with the current laws, a reasonably large percentage of the population or of school age children are infringers. Also if authors are not beinf properly rewarded, or if the arts are not attracting talent or are not flourishing or if the arts are not reaching the public. These determinations will tell us if the whole idea of copyright needs to be redone. Simply put: Inoperative laws are discarded.

A use of the survey data may be the benchmarking. This is the comparison of say, countries in various measurements. Here is a good measurement for benchmarking: How many original paintings are found in the average home in Italy vs. the USA. The comparison may indicate on which country the copyright law works best as it relates to paintings. Or perhaps the results in both countries are so bad that a wake up is necessary.

Please do not be shocked that legislators never do any benchmarking studies to determine any law’s effectiveness. They not know the meaning of the word “benchmarking” and they never look back after a law is passed or changed unless they get more pressure from, you guessed it, the special interest groups..

The need for the survey is simple to reason:

- If most kids are copyright infringers then the law that prohibits infringement is inoperative for the purpose of protecting authors against infringement and causes too much criminalization. Simply put: Inoperative laws or laws that create victimless crime criminals should be discrded.

- If authors are not compensated reasonably well for their effort, the law is inoperative for the purpose of promoting the author’s production and well being. The hypothesis that money is an incentive to authors is an unproven hypothesis at this point. Perhaps the data collected can be useful on proving or disproving the hypothesis.

- If art is not made available for the people’s enjoyment then that could be a sign of the failure of the copyright laws.

Since the purpose of copyright laws is not to prevent infringement but rather, for the good of all the people, to give a limited time economic exploitation right to incentivate the production of authors, it is important to measure the results of the laws.

The problem with having a inoperative laws in place where a large part population are infringers also has the effect that the entire legal structure of a country is weakened and corrupted through common violation of the law. We are already there. For example, so much lying by is done and tolerated in the courts that the courts have become corrupted and inoperative. Today there is hardly any respect for the laws, a worldwide problem. Even the constitutions of countries are commonly violated almost universally.

The survey:

For the survey several categories of infringement should be defined.

-The casual and minor infringer: This is the person that copies a song for a friend on a blank CD, or downloads an image on the Internet to use it as a Windows Desktop Background, or downloads a song, or photocopies a poem at the public library.

- The casual infringer that has no idea that he/she infringed because of a lack of knowledge of the copyright law or of the copyright status of copied matter.
- The pirate that copies/fake brand products to sell the copies for a profit.
- Those that have possession and enjoy purchased infringing and fake brand products.

The survey should also be designed to determine what percent of the population have read and understood the copyright law in those aspects that restrict the copying of works under copyright and trademark.

Several categories of people should be sampled, so that profile of infringement can be developed for the various groups, such as, for example,
students, politicians, parents, educators, lawyers, judges, workers, retired people, artists, authors, athletes, entertainers, religious workers, consumers of arts and music, soldiers, etc.

Soldiers? Yes, tell a American soldier in Iraq that he can or has been sued because he downloaded some songs on the Internet. He will surely ask himself what the hell it is that he is fighting for other than oil.

I hope this posting motivates other to start thinking about real changes to the copyright laws so that the governments are not operating against and criminalizing the people for common everyday activities our parents, grandparents and political leaders use to do and still do but are now classified as crimes because a sleeping, unknown law has been waken up by the music cartels.

Remember the good old carefree days when copying a no longer sold record into a cassette to give to a musician friend , or photocopying a recipes in a book at the library to give to mom, or the making a drawing of Mickey Mouse in school, or copying a math problem in a old text book for use in the math class or installing a game a friend gave your son in your computer or when click on the “set as wallpaper” menu option could all be done without consulting a copyright or trademark lawyer or getting copyright clearance or being abused by the copyright cartels?

Set as wallpaper? Yes, clicking on this option of your browser is probably a copyright infringement action because the image insalled on your computer as wallpaper has almost surelty a copyright owner that is not you.

Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com

TT