Some questions:

What happens when you have a country of people who know nothing about the laws thay have to abide?

The solution is LEGAL GUIDES

Legislators/politicians should legislate so that when products require legal know how for proper use the product is sold with a legal guide. A camcorder is a good example. Any kid can run foul with the laws very easily… and wind up in jail for many years.

The law should apply to camcorder, cd burners, computers, tape recorder, mp3 players, etc. Anything that can make a criminal of a kid.

Sounds so simple I am amazed no one thought of it before. It is only fair that kids know what is prohibited before jailing them for breaking the rules. It’s the decent thing to do.

Of course there would be some minor problems with the making of the guides. Here are some:

- The guides would be written by lawyers and no one would understand what they say. After all everything depends on how a judge interprets the law and their ultra complex and frequently contradictory jurisprudence.

- Different guide would be required for each state, each country. Can you imagine a camcorder that costs $100 to make in China but 500 legal guides add a cost of $500?

- Kids have no patience to read complex instructions. When they buy a product they want to use it immediately. To master the contents of the legal guides would probably take a year of guide reading and legal studies.

- By the time the guides are read by the kids, they are probably obsolete… made obsolete by recent case jurisprudence.

- No lawyer may be willing to put their names on the guide. After all they could be sued if the slip with the slippery copyright laws and the related case jusrisprudence.

- No matter what one lawyers says about the law, another one will say the opposite. That is what the do all the time. It’s called litigation. So the guide, to be fair, must include the various legal theories that may apply so that the kids choose the one they like the most.

There will surely be many more problems with the guides, but they can all be overcome with dillgence and hard work of the brilliant legislators that people typically elect and that wind up in the copyright comitees in the legislatures.

Does anyone agree with me? Or are we going to jail all the kids?

Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com

But in the meantime Star Spangled Banner is licensed by the performance collectives for profit and people are threated with lawsuits if they do not buy the collective licenses. Also anyone sued for using the star Spangled Banner will be advised by a lawyer to settle, that being more economical to get the court to laugh. Remember the download lawsuits and their settlement offers.

I guess it’s easier to make teenagers with camcorders the boogeyman than it is to ruffle feathers in tinseltown tracking down those dastardly evil-doers on the inside who “spoil the magic of the movies for everyone.”

–TG

One perfectly legal use for a camcorder is as a doorstop.

–TG

Incidentally, the melody to the Star Spangled Banner was an old English drinking song that Francis Scott Key put the words to. He never asserted a copyright over them. I don’t know what those who slap an “encircled-C” on a rendition of the song think they are doing, but an infringement suit would likely get laughed out of court.

It would be like the RIAA trying to sue someone for having “Amazing Grace” in their shared directory.

–TG

Ansdwhat of the theater owner? After all, his/her projector and screens were used in the recording process Is the thater owner not a RIAA criminal like to the parent that owns the computers used by the kids to download songs?

Pehaps the RIAA lawyers should go to Japapn to advise the judges there on thier “theory of reponsibility theory”.

Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com

Certainly they cannot be used for a birthday party, after all “Happy Birthday” is copyrighted (stolen from the public domain library may be a better word).

Also they cannot record any human activity, as a licence is required to record anyone’s image.