Week 1 Blog Post 2: Response to Michael George

Micahel, I'm sure the current copy right extensions were a result of lobbying efforts from corporate interests and a few individuals that want to control their own interests. I can maybe understand this from their perspective but I agree with you that this has created a stifling system that inhibits creativity and places severe limitations on educators. I wish there would be just a little more common sense approach to this. I think a blend of the creative commons solution and copyright law may help to alleviate the dilemma.

May 5, 2011 4:33 PM  

 

Michael Said:

Wk1 Reading: Copyright Issues Part 1: Intro to Copyright

The current state of copyright law in the USA makes me very angry. As pointed out in the videos and reading, copyright law is specifically mentioned in the Constitution. However, Copyright was meant to provide the owner a ‘limited monopoly’ so that they could benefit financially from their creation. However, Copyright law now extends to 100 years for corporations or the authors life + 70 years. This makes absolutely no sense. The reason our forefathers created a system where copyright expired was to encourage authors to make the next cultural contribution. This is the key. As a copyright holder, in exchange for benefiting our culture you receive a limited monopoly on your work as payback. However, in our current system, you can pass your copyrights onto your grandchildren and they can generate license fees. Are we creating a class of ‘idle rich’ that produce nothing? Limiting copyright length would also benefit the remix culture because copyright would actually expire on older works and they would be freely usable. At the rate we are going, Copyright can soon be renamed to forever-right since congress continues to extend its length.