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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, @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.

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  • (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.