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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
The House of Representatives has combined the largely good Music Modernization Act with the CLASSICS Act, which would add new royalties and penalties to recordings made before 1972, without giving anything back to the public. That same mistake was replicated in the Senate with S. 2823.
The CLASSICS Act would extend federal copyright restrictions and penalties to sound recordings made between 1923 and 1972, making it so that songs recorded in that era would, for the first time, not be able to be streamed online without a license. Currently, various state laws govern this relationship, and those laws don't give record labels control over streaming.
The CLASSICS Act gives nothing back to the public. It doesn't increase access to pre-1972 recordings, which are already played regularly on Internet radio. And it doesn't let the public use these recordings without permission any sooner. While some recording artists and their heirs will receive money under the act, the main beneficiaries will be recording companies, who will control the use of classic recordings for another fifty years. Important recordings from the 1920s, 30s, and 40s won't enter the public domain until 2067. And users of recordings that are already over 90 years old will face the risk of federal copyright's massive, unpredictable penalties.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Friday August 03 2018, @07:54PM (5 children)
Paying for a federal spending increase with a tax cut for the rich sounds an awful lot like buying votes with the public's money.
And, bailing out the farmers impacted by Trumps dumb-ass trade war with taxpayer money also sounds like wealth redistribution.
Is there anything else the Republicans did this week you'd like to project onto the Democrats?
(Score: 0, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @07:59PM (4 children)
Was there anything done this week by republicans democrats wouldn't have done themselves? The uniparty achieves it's goals while distracting gullible fools with political theater and newsreel drama. There is no difference.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @09:26PM (3 children)
The DNC is terrible in its own way and has supported shitty copyright updates as well, but if your first reaction is to play Whatabouts Them People then you need to take a step back and breathe.
There is quite a bit of difference, and quite a bit of overlap between the two parties. Don't equivocate, that is just a tactic to make people feel helpless and apathetic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @11:35PM (2 children)
They both screw you on different issues. Since the parties alternate, in the end you're fucked on everything. The only way to escape this cycle will be to create new parties that actually stand for something other than corporate interests. We actually hold ALL the power and yet we do nothing.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @03:28AM
List of third parties in US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_party_(United_States) [wikipedia.org] Mind you, those are just the current third parties; it doesn't include the ones that were tried and disbanded after their failure.
We are not going to vote our way out of this. We are not going to raise some new party and capture the reigns of government.
Our country was founded by people meeting the armed representatives of the legitimate government on the field of battle and blowing their brains out. Not even a hundred years after that, two sections of our country met on the field of battle and blew each other's brains out. In both instances, everyone had already tried everything they could think of other than fighting, before the fighting. Still there was the blowing out of brains.
Time for round three, I'm afraid. (I'd love to be wrong.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @05:50AM
Totally agree, and more parties will help bring the GOP and DNC in line.