Our Government is about to take away most of our rights on the Internet, all in the name of preserving the profits of the movie and music industry, two groups that have already made copyright a permanent thing, even though it spits on the memory of the Founders. The idea of making some money off of a creation is okay, but the Founders understood that society and the US in particular would benefit if that time was limited.
But after Disney and other companies became powerful (by using creations that were freely available) they were able to “persuade” (buy off) the Government into making copyright permanent, so that creations never become free to use by the next generation of Disneys. Regular people will lose their rights, all in order to protect another year’s worth of profit, even though the companies have had 80+ years to make their money.
The Internet has been the one channel that the movie and music industries couldn’t control, which means we US citizens were not being controlled, which means we were free to speak, to create, to copy and create new things from the copies (the Founders called this “fair use”).
Now we have one chance to keep our free channel open, but Disney and Sony and Fox and Comcast have a lot of money that they’ve used to buy Congress, and to spread lies and propaganda about the Internet and its users.
Watch what will happen if Sony and Fox and others get their way:
There is absolutely nothing wrong with a corporation protecting their work, regardless of it’s age. This is along the lines of OWS people wanting their “fair share”. No matter how you spin it. This is a GOOD thing.
That’s not what copyright law is for, it’s for protecting *for a limited time* the ability to make money from a creation. If copyright was perpetual, then Disney could never have made “Snow White”, because the copyright would have prevented it from becoming public domain. These things are supposed to become freely available after a time, so that others can build on the creative efforts of the originals. That’s why the original Constitution stipulated a 14 year lifetime for copyright protection. Now, it’s 75 years *after the creator dies!* And in the next few years, Disney will push for a law extending that to 100 years, just so they can maintain a stranglehold on the creations of people who are long dead. That’s wrong, and no amount of corporate spin can make it right.