Week 5 - Computers and Laws I: Can Property Be Intellectual?

 The main idea behind the book is to alter the idea of copyright legislation. In the first chapter, the writer begins the paragraph by denoting the fact that youngsters can be seen as criminals in the eyes of law because of copyrighted file sharing. 

Living in the internet era, it does not seem possible to establish a rule or ban against file transferring between citizens. There is no technology to differentiate the copyrighted material and the private messages without revealing the information. 

Another interesting scenario that the writer mention is that if people spend less money on purchasing CDs, they will spend the revenue to buy concert tickets which are more lucrative for artists than buying a CD. Furthermore, people in the past were not fully aware of the power of public libraries. Many people and authors were against public libraries because if people would use the same book without purchasing, the author could not earn money. However, it turned out that public libraries increased the number of book readers and made people enthusiastic to purchase books.

In the second chapter, there are six short proposals. The moral rights should be unchanged. No one can claim that they are the authors of a specific book without having written that. Free Non-Commercial Sharing should be considered. Because ordinary people should have the right to send a book to their loved ones. Only commercial acts should be copyrighted. 20 Years Of Commercial Monopoly is proposed instead of some absurd numbers like 70 or 80 years. Not a potential investor would be interested in that. Written books or articles must be registered after 5 years. In this case, every article, song, book would have its own author, solving the orphan work issue. Moreover, for people who would like to remix, or reuse the material, the new law should be introduced clear exceptions and limitations to allow remixes and parodies.

To conclude I would like to mention that some of the points in the books have not aged well. I feel like, in terms of copyright of movies, these days nearly everyone either pays for different services or share (Netflix, HBO,Amazon) to watch films and series. It is nearly impossible to find a person to download a large movie from the torrent. Many film industries have agreed to share the movies on the same platform, and the subscription price is fairly reasonable. A Mark Twain quote would fit here "Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet"

Resources;

http://falkvinge.net/wp-content/uploads/large/The%20Case%20For%20Copyright%20Reform%20(2012)%20Engstrom-Falkvinge.pdf