Just when I start challenging anti-copyright activists to prove their methods work, corporate jerks and their political puppets continue to undermine the argument for reform instead of abolition by trying to make copyright laws even more onerous, pernicious, and restrictive.
The Copyright Alliance, a new lobbying group formed from the usual suspects (RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft, Disney, etc.) is pushing their O&Os (a TV term for broadcast outlets "owned and operated" by a network) to consider further restricting fair use, lenghtening copyright terms, etc. Those O&Os most notably include John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Howard Berman (D-Calif.).
It is entirely possible that the Revolutionary War could have been prevented if King George hadn't been such a jerk and enacted such stupid and onerous laws and taxes that the people had no choice but to revolt. So I look at the Copyright Alliance, a group of college-educated people, and wonder if they all cruised through their educations without taking a history class. Those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.
While I argue against the abolition of copyright, there are a number of points where I agree with the abolitionists. Copyright was never meant to last as long as it does and these constant extensions of copyright terms do nothing to further or encourage innovation. Fair use is an important doctrine and its continuous diminishment does nothing to further or encourage innovation. All these things do is help big corporations try to wring a few additional pennies out of already wildly profitable properties while creating a public harm.
I try to encourage reform rather than abolishment. At its root, copyright serves a purpose and provides a benefit. But as we tack on term extensions, restrictions, and all sorts of other ways for copyright owners to try to squeeze money out of the public, we lose that public benefit.
Copyright needs to loosen up, not tighten up. We need to support things like The Fair Use Act to reform copyright, rather than stupidity like the Copyright Alliance's proposed restrictions.
Yes, piracy is a problem. Is fair use a problem? No. But to try to make piracy more difficult, we try to kill fair use. It's like trying to prevent drunk driving by making people take a harder test to get their driving licenses. Yes, by restricting the number of drivers on the road, we'd likely reduce the number of those who would drive drunk, but we'd also stop a lot of responsible people from having transportation to work.
All in all, the Copyright Alliance makes two major mistakes. They try to make laws so restrictive, pernicious, and onerous, that it becomes the duty of a reasonable man to oppose them, meaning they end up stoking the fires of revolt and work against their own long term interests in return for some short term gain. And they basically throw out the baby with the bathwater in a fit of blind avarice.
I may bait and challenge the anti-copyright crowd, but it's not because I necessarily think they're wrong in their opposition of copyright as it exists today. I just think they're espousing a pie-in-the-sky idealist paradise for content creators that is no more workable or possible than the one Karl Marx espoused for the proletariat. I want them to refine and prove their ideas so they don't have to be taken on the strength of faith, or on the strength of our dissatisfaction with the current system.
Instead of asking content creators to side with them to support untested utopian ideals, they need to seriously put their ideals to the test, and if they don't work, then use the scientific method of hypothesis and experiment to revise them and come up with something that they not only believe will work but can document will work.
But with groups like The Copyright Alliance around, perhaps they don't need to be practical and prove their claims. They just need to be patient and wait for groups like The Copyright Alliance to make things so bad, the public will embrace the abolition movement because reform has failed. The danger is that instead of getting the Continental Congress when The Copyright Alliance pulls a King George, we might get Cromwell or Robespierre.
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