what moral obligation? (Re: DRM technology and policy)

[Peter Clay]

On Thu, 24 Apr 2003, Adam Back wrote:

> As you agree that the current copyright expansion is bad, also I'd be
> interested to hear other ideas for how to reform copyright.

The official UK CDR position on this is that copyright reform doesn't
appear to be necessary, and we should not have had the DMCA and EUCD in
the first place because they fail to solve something that is not really a
problem, in a very restrictive way with a lot of collateral damage to
software freedom.

Ben Cox is absolutely right that making money off people's work directly
without giving them a choice or a cut is not right. There's no reason to
abolish restrictions on commercial copying.

There then comes the question of making money off devices that are capable
of infringing copyright. This was first addressed 20 years ago in Sony vs.
Universal, and the subsequent Congressional inquiry that led to the
American Home Recording Act. The VCR has not destroyed the movie industry,
no matter what Valenti may have testified. Similarly, Napster did not
destroy the record industry. If all those 60 million people downloading
several tracks a month had done so instead of buying CDs, then we'd have
seen record stores boarded and shuttered within months. We haven't.
Downloading does not appear to substitute for purchasing.

http://www.ukcdr.org/files/press-releases/20030307_debunking_the_piracy_myth.txt

Pete
-- 
Peter Clay                                         | Campaign for   _  _| .__
                                                   | Digital       /  / | |
                                                   | Rights!       \_ \_| |
                                                   | http://www.ukcdr.org


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