Michael Geist’s Copyright Consultation submission
… is available on his site. Well worth a read.
Possibly related posts:
… is available on his site. Well worth a read.
Possibly related posts:
I am a Family Physician in Southern Ontario with an overindulgent geeky side!
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Wow! Having read several submissions on this topic thus far; I am still in awe of how far we have come. I, although I hate to age myself, remember when to avoid copyright infringement all one had to do was ensure that you properly acknowledged sources in an essay. How far we have come; and how much copyright law (in the digital age) now impacts on our daily lives. I shudder to think how many of us, under current legislation, have, unknowingly, broken the law…
1Exactly why I feel it is so important to advocate for sane copyright laws, that makes activities of everyday people legal. A truly free society should not have laws that criminalize the majority of the population. Such legislation has significant chilling repercussions and significantly squashes civil liberties even if they are rarely enforced.
Those who are in the public eye and need to follow the letter of the law (librarians, teachers) would be severely limited in their work by restrictive legislation. Those doing more private things (sending music & clips to friends, or even pirates) would still do what they do.
On the flip side though, it would give police or those with more political power far too much leverage against you. A story I heard once was about the old soviet union – where if you did something the Party didn’t like but wasn’t explicitly illegal on the books, they would just charge you with the crime of dealing in black market goods. Since the state was so poor at providing the necessities of life, it was a practical certainty that viirtually everyone had black market dealings.
Will ‘copyright violations’ be our black market? Is that a road we want to pursue, in a vain attempt to preserve outdated business models?
2