Yes, people can abuse freedoms to do Bad Things. Lots of universities still print 'resource booklets' for their courses by photocopying chapters out of copyrighted textbooks and binding them together. Publishers have been trying to stop this, or extract a fee, for decades. It's not working.
Should we put all photocopy machines under lock & key and have lawyers watch what everyone is copying to prevent this? Don't they have other important uses that make our open and productive society what it is?
Yes, people trade brand new songs in MP3s as well as older songs. In some cases it leads to new CD sales. In many cases the new songs are deleted because they aren't interesting enough. In a few cases people keep them. The odds are good that those people would not have bought the CD anyway.
What the RIAA and MPAA are trying to do is equivalent to locking up all photocopy machines to stop a fraction of the population from accessing a fraction of their 'intellectual property' with an unknown and unknowable effect on their revenues. Remember, the justification for legal action is
loss of revenue. Can they prove that MP3 trading is not increasing their revenue through wider exposure? No.
Can it be proven that absolute copyright has had bad effects on the economy in general? Yes. Copyright is costing ALL OF US now. Time to reform it.
An article about the Limits of Copyright by Lawrence Lessig, Harvard Law Professoer and an author of the petition:
http://www.thestandard.com/article/d...,16071,00.html
The 'home' site of the Eldred v. Ashcroft petition:
http://eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/e...legaldocs.html
LOOK at the list of co-signers! This is not a ground-swell of kids who want to copy music. This is rebellion from the established academic and scientific world.
[ June 27, 2002, 17:25: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]