Mark Cuban: Copyright Has Become Copywrong

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: pho: Copyright Has Become Copywrong
Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2005 10:23:44 -0800
From: Dean Kay <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]

Copyright Has Become Copywrong
By MARK CUBAN
Special to the Star-Telegram
Posted on Sun, Dec. 11, 2005
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/opinion/13377068.htm

I am fully supportive of intellectual property rights. I own more
than $1 billion in content and technology IP. Laws allow me to
take action, if I so choose, when people steal my property. We
don't need any more laws.

I oppose the government's being in the back pocket of the music
industry and costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars
trying to do what neither the music industry nor Congress can do:
end the illegal copying of content.

Not only is our government unable to solve this problem, but it
has created far more problems in trying to do so -- from Sen.
Orrin Hatch's suggestion that computers be blown up to the 2004
introduction of the INDUCE Act (which went nowhere) to bringing
us to a point where every new software idea (whether from a
technology startup or a 10th-grader in a software class) requires
a legal opinion before it can be published to ensure that the
music industry won't sue.

It used to be a national pastime for kids to take apart cars or
stereos to learn how they work and to learn new skills. It's
illegal to do the same thing with software. If your eighth-grader
wants to try to deassemble the software in a talking Elmo or
Microsoft Word in order to learn to become a better programmer,
that's illegal.

If your future Mozart wants to make a copy of the music CD that
was a Christmas gift so he or she can put it on an iPod and
listen while trying to re-create it on the digital piano from
last Christmas, that's illegal.

If you sing Happy Birthday at your 6-year-old's party, videotape
it, burn it to 20 DVDs and give them out at Christmas, that's
illegal. You have used music that you don't have rights to and
distributed it without licensing and paying for it.

If your store uses a radio to provide background music, you owe
money for the songs. You are a criminal.

This ridiculous expansion of copyright by our government, based
on the demands of the music industry, has put innovation
increasingly at risk. I think that's a bad idea.


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