Mageth

I agree wholly with Tron on the above - copyright timespans are far too liberal, IMO. I think right now, in the U.S., a copyright on at least some material is good for something like 75 years past the death of the creator, which is ridiculously long in my opinion.

In general, I think copyright protection is a good thing, but I also think the current law needs to be adjusted in light of issues that have arisen with the Internet. Unfortunately, such fixes to U.S. code tends to take years, if not decades, to catch up with the times.

Mageth

So, the reason I'm using the word "information" is that I can't really see any convincing evidence that copyrights can't be used to limit access to basically any kind of information. Therefore, I think your poll is simplifying things; copyright and IP law IS limiting the dissemination of certain information; exactly what information is not well established.

As has been pointed out more than once, copyrights protect expressions of ideas, not the ideas themselves (what you're calling "informaiton", I think). For example, in your example of the population study, a copyright may protect any presentation of the information gained from the study (e.g. a journal report, a book, etc.), but would not protect the information itself. There's also ample "fair use" protection for using the expressions themselves.

A few questions for you: If you and lots of other people regularly violate copyright law, don't you think that the law is potentially destructive to the psychological working of the legal system as a whole? Isn't an essentially toothless law reduced to a "don't" without real weight? Couldn't that make other laws seem less convincing too?

In my opinion, no. Lots of people regularly violate speeding laws, but that doesn't necessarily lead one to the conclusion that speeding laws are "potentially destructive to the psychological working of the legal system as a whole" and thus should be abolished, does it?

As is the case for many laws, it's generally not worthwhile/cost-effective to pursue small violations of copyright laws (e.g. Arrowman copying a few music files). One reason is that small violators are hard to detect; another is that it takes considerable resources to pursue any one case. Therefore, generally, only "big" violators are pursued that may, for example, be costing the copyright holder significant sums of money, or may be damaging to the copyright holder in another way (e.g. claiming credit for an original work of someone else). As mentioned, pursuing "big" perpetrators while letting small perpetrators go undetected and/or unpunished is a general, and IMO useful, principle that applies to many types of laws. Things seem to work pretty well using this principle, and IMO this in no way should lead to the conclusion that the laws in question should be abolished.

Carlos

Quoting (fair use) is allowed under copyright rules as long as the source is attributed and the amount copied is kept reasonable

AFAIK, there are two main approaches used to protect copyrights. The first is the enforcement of the law. This works poorly against the little guy, but well against the big guy.

You argue that the law is not working as individuals can violate it and realistically expect they will not be punished. Yes, I agree - the individual making copies for himself and a few of his friends will not be caught. There are too many of them, and their individual impact is little - it is the aggregate impact that matters. It is not cost effective for the government to pursue these people. Those making or enabling substantial number of copies to be distributed (free or making a profit) are a different case. These people are far fewer in number and have a far greater impact than the average person. The government does go after these folks (at least in this country).

That ignores one area where the law is incredibly effective: those cases where the transgressor-to-be is a company and not an individual. The products that a company would produce would be sold openly; there is no way to hide copyright violation. At most it can be obfuscated, if the product itself is not violating copyright, but the process used to create it did. At any rate, the potential of lawsuits is enough to deter most companies from doing this. Those that do violate copyright tend to get sued, taking care of the rest. These companies have a lot to lose, and the risk is usually too big.

The second approach used to protect copyright is to make it difficult to duplicate the item in question. This works poorly against the big guy, but well against the little guy.

A big company could spend the money required to create a duplicate record or book, break the copy protection found in some software, implement a competitor's manufacturing process or product. Yet they don't - because the first approach takes care of them by making it financially risky.

The little guy can't create another record, would have to copy by hand or xerox a book, cannot crack software and could care less about the designs of a big company. (We're talking about the average guy.) At least that's the way things used to be; new technologies have made it so that it's easy to copy a few things. Namely, digital data.

Is the law failing? Sure, if you constrain yourself to a very limited part of the whole. Overall, it continues to work well.

Mageth

Originally posted by Carlos:

It is not cost effective for the government to pursue these people. Those making or enabling substantial number of copies to be distributed (free or making a profit) are a different case. These people are far fewer in number and have a far greater impact than the average person. The government does go after these folks (at least in this country).

I have to point out that the U.S. government typically waits for a copyright holder to bring a copyright violator to its attention (e.g. by suing) before taking action. So it would be more proper to say that it is not cost-effective for a copyright holder to pursue small violators, and that the copyright holder more often pursues large violators. Otherwise, spot on.