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Julia Reda, the only Pirate in the European Parliament, who has been mentioned here in various contexts now blogs with more good news.
[June 16], the Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament passed an amended version of my copyright evaluation report with a broad majority. (Find the detailed breakdown of the votes on my overview page. The final adopted text is not yet available--I will link to it as soon as it goes online.)
The amended report was supported by all political groups--the only two opposing votes were cast by MEPs from the far-right French Front National.
In this report, the Parliament recognises that copyright reform is urgently needed not just to improve the Digital Single Market, but also , to facilitate access to knowledge and culture for all people in Europe. It calls on the Commission to consider a wide variety of measures to bring copyright law up to speed with changing realities and improve cross-border access to our cultural diversity, going further than the plans so far announced by the Commissioners.
For the first time, the Parliament asks for minimum standards for the rights of the public, which are enshrined in a list of exceptions to copyright[...]
- to allow libraries and archives to digitise their collections efficiently,
- to enable the lending of e-books over the Internet and
- to allow the [automatic] analysis of large bodies of text and data (text & data mining).
Related: Julia Reda, the Only Pirate in the European Parliament, Weighs in on Copyright
Original Submission
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 18 2015, @08:55PM
Copyright does create artificial scarcity. This is an objective indisputable fact. Without copyright, data can be copied as many times as our technology allows, which needless to say is a lot.
As to what it was designed to do, it was designed to allow the parasitic wealthy to exploit the bright minds which didn't have such fortune, at least in it's modern incarnation. Our laws are as anti-meritocratic as you get, all the while being defended by claims of meritocratic virtue. It reminds me of how slave owners used to brag about how good their subjects have it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by physicsmajor on Thursday June 18 2015, @09:51PM
Copyright creates no scarcity whatsoever, because in an age of costless copying information is, for all intents and purposes, not scarce. Copyright attempts to impose scarcity, by force of law, upon an inherently non-scarce quantity.
This is an important distinction! If it actually did create scarcity, suddenly all the bluray burners in the land would cease to work at the stroke of a lawmakers' pen. No matter how much they might wish - or delusionally believe - that to be so, it isn't.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday June 18 2015, @10:29PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday June 19 2015, @12:30AM
Copyright most certainly does create scarcity! Copyright is scarcity by government/corporate fiat. It is just what the name means, the legal right to make a copy. That it is ineffective and archaic doesn't change the intent, which is to treat information like material goods. The law makes token acknowledgement that information is different, by having copyright expire and enshrining a few other differences from property law. In spite of that, it is a conceptual failure, because at the core it still treats information as if it is no different than a scarce, material good.
It is an incorrect simplification that has been all too seductive, and many have bought the fallacious arguments of the copyright extremists, who have taken advantage of the confusion to brush mitigating details aside, and insist that "property is property" and "copying is stealing", except of course when they don't own the copyrights, then they just take it if they want it and force the victims to sue to make them play by the rules they so publicly lionize. Might as well say "sin is sin" and you will burn in Hell whether your sin is mass murder or merely coveting your neighbor's possessions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 18 2015, @10:52PM
It must suck to be a band that signed a contract with a recording company before most people were aware that audio files could be delivered via the 'Net.
Years ago, Nine Inch Nails, Courtney Love, et al were saying to do it yourself via your own domain.
Middlemen are absolutely NOT necessary.
...and go out and PERFORM.
Bands who make big bucks get that by doing CONCERTS.
It's -always- been that way.
.
Another interesting example is the Jazz band Down to the Bone. [wikipedia.org]
The guy who "writes" their songs doesn't appear to read (or write) music, doesn't perform with them, and doesn't play an instrument--yet he seems to make money from this undertaking.
slave owners
One more data point: Bob Crosby was NOT the "boss" of The Bob Crosby Orchestra (nor The Bobcats).
They used his name in the band's name because his big brother was already famous.
Way back into the 1920s, those bands were worker cooperatives.
Everybody got an equal vote on decisions and the pay was distributed evenly among all the workers.
...and Bob Crosby didn't read music or play an instrument either.
-- gewg_