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posted by LaminatorX on Friday April 24 2015, @02:23PM   Printer-friendly
from the useful-progress dept.

It's election season in the UK, and the Green Party's policy document has been coming under scrutiny recently. In it is a desire to reduce copyright term to 14 years (not life + 14 years, but 14 years from publication).

Unsurprisingly, this has received a bit of a backlash from various parties.

There's no chance the Green Party will form the next government, so this is all academic, but is this a sensible idea? Are people overreacting?

 
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  • (Score: 2) by melikamp on Friday April 24 2015, @08:07PM

    by melikamp (1886) on Friday April 24 2015, @08:07PM (#174827) Journal

    Commerce has to do with money and/or commodities. Just because something has a value, doesn't mean it has a monetary value or is valuable as a commodity. The value of the freedom to share bits of information with other willing participants is a great example of such a non-commercial value. You can put a price on it if you want, but it's NOT what makes it valuable (for most people; you may well be an exception).

    In fact, sharing crap like music tracks has a strictly negative commercial value. Uploader pays for using the net, downloader pays for using the net, and both waste time (=money) on listening to some madman torture his guitar. No matter where we look, it's a commercial loss all over. This is as non-commercial as it gets.

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  • (Score: 2) by CirclesInSand on Friday April 24 2015, @11:14PM

    by CirclesInSand (2899) on Friday April 24 2015, @11:14PM (#174879)

    A choir chat accepts donations has to do with money as well, but you probably don't want your laws to apply to them.

    A person who makes a copy of software for you in return for manual labor has no money or commodities involved, but you probably would want a law to apply to them.

    It is hard for a person to see that their own definitions are ambiguous, but your distinction of "commercial" is arbitrary and not a logical qualifier for any public policy. Whether or not an intent is prosecutable should never depend on yours or anyone else's definition of commercial, because it is not objective.

    • (Score: 2) by melikamp on Friday April 24 2015, @11:42PM

      by melikamp (1886) on Friday April 24 2015, @11:42PM (#174887) Journal

      A choir chat accepts donations has to do with money as well, but you probably don't want your laws to apply to them.

      Of course I do. Money transactions take place which have to be reported and taxed in most jurisdictions. This is clearly a commercial activity.

      A person who makes a copy of software for you in return for manual labor has no money or commodities involved, but you probably would want a law to apply to them.

      I don't understand. Making a copy of software is so cheap, it is essentially costless. Who would pay for it?

      but your distinction of "commercial" is arbitrary and not a logical qualifier for any public policy

      I am not a lawyer or a legislator, but what you are saying makes no sense to me. Surely IRS has a way of telling where commercial transactions take place, because it's taxing them. So when someone has to report income from sharing files, they also have to obey the copyright. Wow, that was easy, right? So an ad-supported file-sharing website (like TPB or kickass.to) would have to obey copyright, but a gratis and ad-free website would not.

      • (Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday April 28 2015, @01:04AM

        by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Tuesday April 28 2015, @01:04AM (#175917)

        An ad-supported website is not making money off of selling the content, as they would make money even if someone visited but downloaded nothing.