The Copyrighting the Future: Keeping ahead of the game consultation finishes in a month’s time (6 February). They actually called it that – “copyrighting the future” – can you believe it?
In case you haven’t seen it yet, this is the consultation that ignores the Gowers review findings and tries to start it all over again. Please respond and try to avoid term extension, DRM/TPM and other similar landmines. Any comments you can leave me to help us all would be very much appreciated!
(Sent to copyrightfuture@ipo.gov.uk)
One thing confuses me about certain ends of the Copyright lobby.
When the Statue of Anne was penned in 1709, with a 14-year Copyright term, the time between creating a work and its distribution was huge. Getting a book published and sold took a long time – but the feeling was that the length of time stipulated provided an adequate balance between the effort put in, the returns to the original author, and the enhancement of the national cultural sphere when that copyright expired.
So why is it, as the time between creation and widespread distribution shrinks, that some feel the copyright terms need to be LENGTHENED? In an era when I can write a song or record a video on a computer and put it in front of millions of people the same day, why do I need MORE time than the creative people did under Queen Anne?
And why has the Gowers Review been binned, when it already made recommendations against term extension further into insanity?
I’ve already sent an E-mail to them, they said they’ll be in touch within a few weeks from today about workshops/seminars, hopefully I’ll get invited. I don’t know if it will make any diffrence but it should be interesting.
You can read about David Lammy here
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/david_lammy/tottenham
he seems to follow Labour policy quite closely in his votes, some of his written answers are a bit worrying e.g.
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2008-12-10a.241331.h&s=copyright+speaker%3A10678#g241331.r0
On the other hand Ars Technica seemed very positive about the whole thing, lets hope they’re right.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081217-uk-talks-mashups-drm-cd-ripping-as-it-opens-copyright-overhaul.html
Thanks for the comments. I’m seeing quite a mix in online coverage about this. For example, futureArch seemed quite positive in http://futurearchives.blogspot.com/2009/01/copyright-agenda-for-c21.html but I haven’t yet asked them why, due to http://mjr.towers.org.uk/blog/2007/blogtools#captchacomments
Maybe I’ve picked the wrong view, but “Incentivising investment and creativity” and “Access to works” both seem to be re-asking 2006 Gowers questions.
I can’t say I’m qualified to answer if they are, but the document refers to “going further”, “building on” Goweres, weather that’s a euphemism for ignoring or actually means they really are building on Gowers, we’ll just have to wait and see. In the meanwhile, here’s hopeing 🙂