Just When You Thought It Couldn’t Get Worse
The current digital copyright law is a mess, and people are losing their traditional rights to use copyrighted material to those who control the copyrights.
Everyone has been expecting the law to be amended to return things to the traditional balance that we all grew up with, but that is not what has happened.
CNet reports: Congress readies broad new digital copyright bill that gives all the rights and powers to the people who sell anything in a digital format.
The big media companies have the power to buy Congressmen, so users are screwed again, and the people are going to be turned into criminals if they buy CDs, DVDs, or download them legally and try to use them as they always have.
What the media companies don’t seem to understand is that they are reducing the value of legally buying their products if people can no longer use them as they have become accustomed. No one is going to be willing to buy a separate copy of a CD or DVD for every device they own.
2 comments
Thanks for the heads-up, Bryan; I just wrote an extended post on the subject. There seems to be no end to the assaults on the rights we as citizens thought we had secured in the past.
The stupid thing is that most people buy music to load it on their iPOD or MP3 player. These guys don’t keep up with what’s going on, and we both know that this isn’t helping the people who actually create the music or movie.
I have bought multiples of CDs at concerts of groups I really liked to spread their work around. I have had the ability to burn CDs for a very long time, but I wanted the groups to prosper and create more music.
I don’t send people my copy of a Terry Pratchett book, I buy them a copy, because I want him to write more books.
This sort of thing really screws up the system.