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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
For the last decade, the Congressional debate over copyright law has been in a stalemate. Content companies have pushed for stronger protections, but their efforts have been stopped by a coalition of technology companies and digital rights groups.
But on Tuesday, we saw a rare moment of bipartisan and trans-industry harmony on copyright law, as the Senate unanimously passed the Music Modernization Act, a bill that creates a streamlined process for online services to license music and federalizes America's bizarre patchwork of state laws governing music recorded before 1972. That will mean effectively shortening the term of protection of older music published between 1923 and 1954—under current law, these songs may not fall into the public domain until 2067.
The bill managed to get the support of several groups that are normally at each others' throats: music publishers, record labels, songwriters, major technology companies, and digital rights groups.
The bill isn't perfect, but Public Knowledge—a digital rights group that usually opposes legislation sponsored by big content companies—gave the bill its endorsement, describing it as a "significant step forward for music consumers and fans."
The Senate must now negotiate with the House, which passed its own version of the legislation earlier this year. Public Knowledge was not a fan of that legislation because it keeps pre-1972 sound recordings out of the public domain for much longer. The big question now is whether the final version of the bill will look more like the consumer-friendly Senate version or the more industry-friendly House legislation.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday September 20 2018, @08:49PM (3 children)
I agree with your sentiment, but I think the above bit might be looking at the situation the wrong way around.
You have a system of government where money is (almost) completely unrestrained, so the interests with the most money can ensure the most attention of the decision makers.
It looks to me like the elected people have no choice but to give the money-wielding people what they want, and if that happens to align with what the voters want, then that's just a bonus.
I could be wrong, but that's just my outsiders view.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Thursday September 20 2018, @11:35PM (2 children)
But the industry insiders have picked a fight they can't win. They're fighting against reality.
Either Congress can pass laws that bow to the reality that copying is really, really easy, and is a public good that enriches us all. Or we can have more bad laws that most of us continue to ignore. What they should do is help crowdfunding and other forms of patronage work better, and make plagiarism harder to do.
In a way, our politicians are playing the entertainment industry for a bunch of fools. Take their bribes, and pass laws that mandate water shall flow uphill, pi is equal to 3.0, and copying 50 year old recordings is a felony that does millions in property damage. Then laugh up their sleeves when the courts strike the laws down or the public doesn't even notice they're trampling upon the rights of those poor, starving or deceased artists.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Friday September 21 2018, @12:30AM
You make some good points.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday September 21 2018, @05:24PM
Both you and the Zombified one make good points.
The other reality is that having mandated that water shall flow uphill anyone who allows gravity plumbing can now be ostracized and prevented from obtaining direct access as a rulemaker. If the political opponents of such person want to make a big deal of it. I think there's a parallel to be drawn to the Kavanaugh nomination here in that the crimes of one's youth can come back to haunt one ("crimes" when talking about copyright being of an entirely different level than that of rape - statutory or otherwise - yet still potentially parallel). Even if the entertainment industry doesn't end up getting a nickel more they gain the benefit of being able to capture more of the regulatory process because those operating outside of it can be shunned away from it.
This is being played as the "big chance" to modernize the system and show the kind of bipartisanship that is all but lost (and should never have been so but for the ideologues on both sides beating their drums).
But I'm just realistic enough to see that the system does exist. Good reason, bad reason, ugly reason the system does exist and will take measures (like this) to preserve itself. And the alternative is to try and tear the system down. We've seen how well that works in other spheres. I'm just glad that I've been old enough to outlive the DRM system and thus preserve the music that is mine by direct purchase of files and have the resources to back up my collection.
This sig for rent.