Copyrights & Too Much of it

[janggut]

it is a good thing, protecting your rights but is it a good thing when it's just too much?

when it comes to copyrights (music, films, games, software etc), the industry needs to protect itself but at the same time it shouldn't stifle itself in the same way.

so what do u think of the current Copyrights Act or Digital Millenium Copyright Act?

anyway here's a link to a page in Guardian.

link

[Shan]

Uh, Jags, did you take the article with you. ;D

All I found was a Sorry page.

Can't read it if I can't find it.

Shan

[Elliot Kane]

Corrected the link Should be easy enough to read, now

[Elliot Kane]

...Just read it. That's just scary. We can only hope that someone actualy talks to the politicians in the very simple terms that they might understand... Like, "It's a vote loser."

Quite apart from games companies - this is going to hugely impact on business software. It might even destroy a large number of EU businesses and damage the economy.

Let's hope it fails.

[janggut]

thanks for the edit, EK. i think i need Chaos Cascade Posting 101. ;D

remember Poland's decision earlier on for the copyright vote for EU? i think it may be a reverse this time to a YES. & it is scary. for the good of all, i am also hoping that the EU politicians will again say no to it.

[Dark Phoenix Rising]

This has been a bugbear of the software industry for a while now, and the last time this got to parliment there were demonstrations outside the EU parliment and, it was, shall we say, postponed until a later date.

The only real reason for this is to give the big business a hammer that they can then use on smaller companies to improve their profits. This is already happening in America, and would you believe that it's the american big boys that are involved in this law as well?

The register link to the story with some back articles as well

As for the DMCA, this is just a way for the recording and film industries to try to keep their current market plan, there have been numerious other suggestions as to how they could change their business model and still profit (e.g. this).

To put is bluntly, I disagree with the idea of software patents and the DMCA as they currently stand, I do agree that you need to be able to gain software patents, but not in the loose frame work that they currently stand. As a programmer I am aware that most software advances are not really advances but instead come from a better understanding of how your language works. Unlike advances in cryptography, or other areas like that, most programming is simply someone coming up with an idea and saying that would be nice, at which point most programmers turn round and say, ok cool we're do it, you'll have it in a couple of days. Either that or they build on an existing idea.

[Dark Phoenix Rising]

Update on the software patents bill

It was pretty much thrown out of the parliment

[Elliot Kane]

Good! Thanks, DL