As of this moment, I'm not sure, but I maybe banned from mydd because there seems to a concerted effort to talk about copyright law in what I considered by some pretty simplistic political, but not legal terms.
I'm posting this here in case people are interested in the subject of copyright law. I'm not going to go through the entire history but suffice to say there is a modern trend of wanting to treat copyright law as purely the instrument of big corporations. I want to bring up something that is rarely talked about in liberal circles: copyright law as a way to protect the interest of labor.
More below
I should start by saying that copyright law is not designed to protect the sweat or effort that you place into a work, but instead is meant to protect the creativity that you place into it.
We all know of the big time ideas of what this mean- the famous writer or RIAA or any number of other bogiemen, which are rightly chatised for what they are.
But, there are others never talked about in these discussions. What about the labor side? What do I mean by labor if I'm not talking about sweat or effort? I mean there are a whole class of professionals out there, from writers, to my friend an art director to another who is a graphic designer who makes their money off of things like the work for hire doctrine, and when they create it independently other aspects of copyright law.
To put another way, without copyright law how do we protect these people who aren't wealthy from exploitation if we change copyright law in such a way that they are unable to bargain for what they are owed.
I can tell you having negotiated these kinds of contracts there are few bargaining chips available other than the protections that copyright law provides.
Now, I imagine many of you who happened to be interested in this subject will say that you are concerned with corporate America- but that doesn't answer my concern. How is going after corporate America by changing the copyright law do you know affect what are in essense the labor rights of my friend who supports himself and his partner through the fact that he can gain an enforceable copyright in what he creates?
I've also noticed a desire to avoid legal and/or consequential discussions of this nature, and instead rely on emotional tugs of one or another example without answering does that mean the system in general is not working? If you don't think it is, how do you think we should respond to the labor for whom this system is working?
I've got my opinion, but I'm looking for others. I would prefer if you can give me some ideas that aren't purely emotional or anecdotal, but instead can truly grapple with the bigger picture of what changes will mean for everyone and not just the example you bring up.
I think the worse thing we can do is to trade the set of faith based analysis by the right with the same sort of approach on the left. When I have discussed this elsewhere at mydd, the response has been to avoid the discussion, trollrate me or act as if I'm a shill for corporate America just because I can see that there re two sides to this issue.