Has copyright laws gone too far in the economy today? What will happen in the future?
Eversince the RIAA passed that law that legalized free music, nowadays its seems like everyone who sides with them will also side for anything downloaded from the Internet without paying is illegal. If music is art, then what is to happen in the later future that are art-related material?
As both a musician & artists, I am totally fine with others downloading my material as well as sharing it online, as long as they don’t put it in their names or upload my material on their own accounts without my permission.
With that being said, I worry for the everyday art we get online for free, as well as some literature or documents. I fear having to pay $1 just to see a .jpg or .gif image, or even downloading embedded images on webpages online.
Copyright is good, but when there is too much of it, it hurts the economy & industry it serves.
Seriously, enough is enough!
New concepts of fair use in the Internet age are not yet matured. To help understand things look back to the past. Back in the 19th century publishers objected to public libraries loaning out books for free. In the 1970′s television producers wanted to ban VCR’s.
In the end, libraries generated more readers and books sales, VCR’s generated more viewers and more products to view.
But in each of the cases above, you had business standing in the way of expanding fair use, not artists. And that is what is going on now. The businesses making money from copyright only want two things. Longer protection and ever more restrictive fair use terms. It seems the artists have little to say.
I don’t pretend to know the answer, but you can’t fight technology. so attempts to control that are never right. And Because of the power of corporate copyright holders no American work has gone into the public domain in 30 years. Even works of people that have been dead for more than 50 years. So it is easy to see that the system is really screwed up. It’s no longer about insuring artists reap the benefits of their work within the medium they work in, it’s all about corporations milking the gravy train.
As I said, I do not know the correct answer, but I do know the wrong people are deciding (corporations and lawyers instead of artists)
Adelaide Australia
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