Copyright has outlived its usefulness.
There, it's been said in public. All the Copyright law in the world is archaic in the face of digital technology.
Copying is a part of the fact of digital use of anything that is distributed electronically today. It happens in the background, inside the software and hardware systems that are used to access the content and distribute it. If today's Copyright laws were really enforced, the digital age simply could not exist - it would be far too expensive because we'd end up paying a premium every single time that digital data moved from storage to memory on the server, to the memory on network routers, to memory in the PC, and finally to digital storage on the consumer's system. We'd then have to pay again for the copy moved from storage to memory during playing each and every time it was played.
If this were applied to the traditional book or vinyl record, it would be akin to paying each time I pulled a book from the shelf and opened it to read it, or removed a record from its cover to put it on my turntable to play it. Of course these concepts in the physical world are seen as absurd. The question is, why should we put up with them in the digital world?
My reading of the whole background to why Copyright law exists tells me that it was conceived as a balance between the need for the public's ability to learn from and build upon the ideas and concepts of today to build a better and more diverse and rich culture while allowing and encouraging creators of that culture and diversity to benefit from their works.
It was conceived and developed in an era of scarce and expensive copying facility - the printing press, record press, etc. The output of these scarce and expensive devices was and is, if taken to its most reasonable base result was to allow the purchaser of a copy to "Use" or "Enjoy" the content of the copy at any time, in any place, without further interaction with the vendor of the copy and/or creator of the original, "forever".
"For it is certain, that neither Homer, nor Virgil, nor Chaucer, nor Spencer, had any idea, that, after they had published their works to the world, they, and their heirs and assigns, retained this property, this exclusive right of transcribing, or re-printing their works for ever.
"In short, upon examination it will be found, that there is no foundation for this copy-right in authors, in the common principles of law, and that the only ground for it is this, that, from the love of knowledge, and the admiration of the works of learning and genius, mankind are prone to give authors, not only the merit, but the reward that is due to them for their works; and upon this principle every civilized state in modern times has introduced exclusive privileges to authors, in the publication of their own works, some for a longer, some for a shorter time. But this suggests no idea of an original property in the author; on the contrary, it is inconsistent with it..." Lord Justice Clerk of the Scottish Court of Session, 1774, Hinton v Donaldson.
So let us adapt today's law to achieve the same results. Let's state up front that the whole idea is to allow the purchaser of a legal copy the ability to "enjoy" and "use" that copy for personal, non-commercial use, no matter what technical device that copy moves to/from or how many copies might be left behind at home, in the car, on phones/players, at the office, cabin, etc. in order to achieve this. Limitations might be "one at a time" for playing/viewing/interfacing to the human conciousness (who knows when the direct-to-brain technologies will arrive) and some reasonable limit on concurrent "interfacing" by friends, relatives, or other non-commercial groups that might include private parties once in a while but might also place some reasonable limit on how often but not how big other than maybe "in the owner's private residence" or some such.
It also needs to recognize that the player or other interface equipment the individual uses to "enjoy" the work belongs to the individual, not the publisher or content creator, and that its actions are not allowed to be interfered with by the content. Property rights need to be protected, including the ability to pass the property on to others in the same fashion that books or other hard-goods may be passed on; sale, loan, bequeath, etc.
Only then will the law again be in balance as it has been in the past.
richard
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