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March 1, 2005
Berkman Profs: Betamax Ain't Broke. If There's a Problem, Let Congress Help.
Posted by
JZ, JP, and Terry Fisher (a.k.a., Jonathan Zittrain, John Palfrey, and William W. Fisher III) have now filed their brief in the Grokster case [PDF], sensibly arguing:
- the Sony Betamax rule works well; it should neither be changed nor ruled inapplicable to today's technologies;
- New business models may eliminate the need to adjust copyright law to protect the revenues of copyright holders;
- Other modifications to copyright law would help copyright owners more, and hurt society less, than revising Betamax, and those modifications are best left to Congress.
Bravo, guys.
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1. Neo on March 1, 2005 10:54 PM writes...
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/000776.html
Ed Felten and colleagues, with the distinguished inclusion of Kernighan (of C fame), have done similarly.
"Changes to copyright that would benefit copyright holders" ... hmm. I would consider top among those shortening (retroactively affecting existing works of course) copyright terms to a few years, which is when most of the commercial value is extracted anyway. It would force copyright owners to get off their fat keisters and keep generating new works to stay ahead of the loss of revenue streams from older works falling into the public domain, while giving them a richer and more current public domain on which to build new works. Oh, wait -- forget I said all of that. It made perfect sense back when the purpose of copyright law was to "promote the progress of science and the useful arts"; but since they passed whatever amendment it was that changed the progress clause to say "allow fatcats to profit indefinitely at public expense from a finite amount of work, while holding back the progress of science and the useful arts" I suppose shortening copyright terms no longer makes much sense.
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