Re: Digest Number 3470

From: "Bill Janssen"
> joseph harris <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> ...except with the intent of destroying copyright
>> by the back door - something Google seems intent on 
>> doing.
>
> Well, that may be the right thing to do, in this day and 
> age.  Not that
> I object to the basic idea behind copyright --  
> compensating creators for
> their creation effort -- it's just that the march of 
> technology has made
> trying to count copies of creations a pretty crufty way of 
> doing that.
> And much of the existing case law seems to be about that 
> mechanism.
> Anything that would honestly try to address this problem 
> would, I think,
> necessarily upset a great deal of established wisdom about 
> copyright.
>
> Bill
>

I am sympathetic to the idea that there is an argument to be 
made here. The problem with such a view is, however, that 
the vast majority of published and other IP is not digital; 
and is unlikely to be overtaken in the near or medium 
future. This does leave counting copies as the most 
appropriate.

In the digital world the contest is between establishing 
rules to continue that, which in the short term is most 
likely, and finding an online way of making adaptations that 
achieve desired objectives. The debate is confused by an 
industry problem in popular music, which is less about 
copyright than about big corporate gorillas. I am not 
convinced the objectives have been thought through to the 
point where a real policy can be devised.

Joseph Harris 



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