Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/10/15/a-new-copyright-bill-would-be.html
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Who’s introducing it?
They need a visit from the Punch-in-the Nuts* Fairy.
* or Ovaries
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You rang!
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Remixing copyright works shouldn’t be this dangerous, but it also shouldn’t be such a dominant form of expression. If small changes to other people’s art was a small minority of the creative works out there, the business model of these vindictive copyright bills would cease to work.
“The CASE Act of 2019 was introduced on May 1, 2019 in the U.S. House of Representatives (H.R. 2426)[4] by Representatives Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Doug Collins (R-GA); and for the first time in the Senate (S. 1273)[5] by Senators John Kennedy (R-LA), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Mazie Hirono (D-HI). Original House co-sponsors include: HJC Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and HJC IP Subcommittee Chairman Hank Johnson (D-GA), as well as Martha Roby (R-AL), Judy Chu (D-CA), Ben Cline (R-VA), Ted Lieu (D-CA), and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA).”
I recommend an extra courtesy punch in the nuts for Kennedy, just because.
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How does this not violate the 7th Amendment?
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I assume that’s why there’s a weaksauce ‘opt-out’ provision.
As long as it isn’t literally impossible to skip the kangaroo court your rights have been preserved, safely behind glass and approximately as distant from actual practice as the platonic forms; so everything is fine.
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Genuine question: how do people like EFF’s lawyers think copyright should be enforced?
At the scale of individuals downloading music, the idea that you can remedy infringement through civil cases is clinically insane; even if a billion people pirate your song, no one of them deserves financial ruin for that. It makes more sense if someone, like, straight-up publishes a book they don’t own the rights to; but in a more realistically complicated case, like a bestselling novel quoting an unlicensed poem, you soon get absurd outcomes.
“Streamlined” fake courts might sound like an answer to the first problem, but even if they weren’t intentionally rigged in favor of corporate rights holders, it’s like, there’s a reason real courts are slow and expensive, and that reason is fairness. If there were a fair way to dispense $1 claims in 20 seconds, real courts would already be doing it.
But so – if we were starting again from scratch – has anyone ever proposed a copyright regime that could actually work? (Apart from just the honor system, though even that might be an improvement).
Presumably because you have the right to opt out, however nominal and hard-to-exercise that right may be in practice. ETA snap.
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Sure, plenty of people, who will never be heard by a senator or congressperson, have pointed out that copyright should last less than even Queen Anne’s generous 14 years. In the age of digital distribution, financial actualization should generally be achieved within five or ten years of a work. When major Hollywood productions make hundreds of millions in a weekend, the need for copyright protection after that fact is just greedy.
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I presume that the entire system will simply collapse under an avalanche of claims and counter claims during any election cycle.
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#aaronslaw
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I think you need an apostrophe in there; but, yeah.
that’s the way the twitter-verse tags it… anyways okay 
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Since when has a Hollywood production ever made money?
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And those plenty of people are wrong. Copyright law is not just for huge entertainment conglomerates, although they sure act like it is. The law also protects the poor schlub who has self-published a novel and is selling it on the internet and he makes only pennies per sale. Unlike Disney, he actually needs the longest copyright period he can get.
There really is no one-size-fits-all approach to copyright law. At least, not if the lawmakers care about whether or not it hurts people.
And to answer someone else, lots of Hollywood productions make tons and tons and TONS of money. If it was a losing proposition nobody would do it. The most truly creative people in Hollywood are the studios’ bookkeepers.
I thought (incorrectly) that the link to the Wikipedia page on “Hollywood accounting” would have been a sufficient marker of irony. Sorry.
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I am a self-published author. It’s not pennies. I make a little over two dollars per digital download of my works. But my enemy isn’t copyright expiration or piracy. It’s lack of interested readers. Having my old works in the public domain could boost interest in my current works. It’s why Cory let people download Creative Commons versions of his works. Building a readership in the age of plenty is difficult. Making a buck is secondary to that.
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