UK Think Tank Calls For Fair Use Of Your Own CDs

jweatherley writes "The BBC reports that a UK think tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research, has called for the legalization of format shifting. In a report commissioned by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, they state that copyright laws are out of date, and that people should have a 'private right to copy' which would allow them to legally copy their own CDs and DVDs on to home computers, laptops and phones. The report goes on to say that: 'it is not the music industry's job to decide what rights consumers have. That is the job of government.' The report also argues that there is no evidence the current 50-year copyright term is insufficient. The UK music industry is campaigning to extend the copyright term in sound recordings to 95 years."

Progress

[Doc Ruby]

"It is not the music industry's job to decide what rights consumers have. That is the job of government."

It's not the government's job to decide our rights. We have rights, they are inalienable. It's the government's job to protect our rights. Protect our rights from corporations which would ignore or destroy them for a buck, or the power to make a buck. And we create our government to protect our rights. Our job is creating and perpetuating that government.

When the founders of the US specified the rights we have that the government would protect, they also made a compromise with the existing economy. The government would promote "the progress of science and useful arts" [usconstitution.net] by granting temporary monopolies - exclusive rights - to authors and inventors of their writings and discoveries. This limitation on freedom of others to copy and use writings and inventions was necessary in the late 1700s, and for many years after. But as the centuries have progressed, those writings and inventions have changed the economy so that "the progress of science and useful arts" is better promoted by more copying, not less. Even if temporary monopolies like copyrights and patents are still necessary, they are necessary for much less time than before. Instead, those monopolies are now extended for much more time, totally unjustified by any necessity to "promote progress".

The original time set in the 1790s was 17 years, a human generation. The next generation that grew up with the writings and inventions could, by the time they became adults and likely started having their own children, use those writings and inventions freely. Writings and inventions passed into the folk art, the folk consciousness, the folk wisdom, the folk heritage, for everyone to use. By which time, most of the value, especially of the writings, was delivered not by the author, but by the audience, the consumers, the people using it and perpetuating it. And any honest author will tell you that the process of adoption of their writings by their people is the most powerful promotion of their useful art.

Maybe the Internet has changed things, along with the rest of communications, manufacturing and distribution tech over the past 200 years. If anything, the lifecycle of content is much shorter before it's "old", either folklore or just obsolete. Likewise with most inventions. The length of copyright and patent exclusion should be, if anything, shorter - maybe 8-10 years, maybe 2-5. Maybe different for different kinds of "writing", whether a news article or an opera. But certainly promotion of progress is much more hurt now by these monopolies.

We still have control over our governments. Except when we ignore that control, and corporations and other greedy monopolists move into the power vacuum. If we don't create governments to protect our rights, we're creating ones to destroy them.

Re:We are not granted rights

[civilizedINTENSITY]

But IP isn't really a fundamental right, like property. It *is* different. The artifical legal creation of pseudo-property rights was done for a purpose, rather than based on any sort of inherent principle. IP is a form of social engineering. If we do away with that social engineering, we needs must do away with IP. The principles upon which property rights rest don't extend naturally to cover IP. Since the only IP rights that exist where created by government for the purpose of social engineering, then truely it is correct (in this instance) to say that it is the job of governemnt to determine what rights consumers vs producers vs middlemen have.

Re:I see just one problem

[ATMD]

Yup - this is exactly why I don't bother submitting stories to Slashdot.

Re:I see just one problem

[gbjbaanb]

Same here. Thing is, I now see links to 'Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop" at the top, where once I used to see 'metamoderate' links. So yesterday I bothered to send in a story and it was rejected. (It was about a very cool gadget [polymervision.com] Philips has just made (the real one looks less gadgety, but is still so good I saw it on TV, all the presenters gathered round and said 'wow' and were obviously really impressed and not just parroting what they'd been told to say).

So, that's that then - no more submissions from me, and no more meta-modding either. And I don't want to take the friggin' survey! What has become of slashdot?

Re:Oooh, so close!

[bjelkeman]

That's as may be, but the UK is much closer in attitude to the US than it is to continental Europe.

This is said quite often in the UK, but as a non-UK European who has lived nearly half my life in the UK and several years in the US I would argue that this is a misconception. I consider the British much closer to the Swedish or the Dutch, for example, than the US Americans in most social aspects I can think of. The structure of the legal system may be further away from continental European systems and foreign policy is closer to the US than many other European countries, but from my point of view there is more in common between the society in the UK and the Netherlands than there is between the US and the UK.

But then there are probably as many points of view of that as there are people. ;)