A constructive proposal for copyright reform

 In the end of the second chapter there is a statement: "Copyright needs to be reformed urgently" and I could not agree more. I've been following a couple of famous YouTubers over the past few years and the topic of copyright laws comes up very often. I've understood from those YouTubers that if your uploaded video contains a copyrighted video or sometimes even a small sound clip then they can force copyright laws on your video and take the entire revenue of the video, even if the copyrighted clip was only a small fraction of the entire video. To me that sounds like stealing in broad daylight and there is nothing you can do about it. You can of course report the issue to YouTube directly, but with the amount of daily videos that are being uploaded to the site you may never get an answer. 

In the book they bring out several proposals to help solve the current copyright issues:

Moral rights unchanged

"Give credit where credit is due" basically sums up the entire argument there. There is no need to fight about who is the author of something, as there is always one true author.

Free Non-Commercial Sharing

I totally agree with what was talked about in the paragraph of the book. Copyright should only regulate things that are being shared for a commercial purpose. Because trying to tell someone that they can not share a movie they bought with their friend seems rather counterintuitive.

20 years of commercial monopoly

Having the authority to keep something from someone for more than 70 years and at the same time having a monopoly on the entire stock seems absurd. In my opinion the amount of years should not be brought down to 20 years it should be at a minimum of 10 years.

Registration after 5 years

It is a good idea to automatically give newly published works 5 years of protection, because if those 5 years run out then you do not need to go out looking for someone who may or may not be difficult to find. 

Free sampling

It would make the life of various producers much more easier if you could take samples from existing works without going through all of the legal trouble. 

A ban on DRM

"The aim of DRM is to restrict consumers' and citizens' ability to use and copy works, even when they have a legal right to do so." From that statement alone you can see that the entire purpose of DRM is to make peoples life harder for no reason at all. And at the same time big corporations who have the manpower and money to write their own laws can basically get a free pass to do whatever they want. 


I was previously not aware of all the depths of copyright laws, but from hearing little bits of information here and there my thoughts were that copyright laws need to be changed for sure. And by reading this book my opinion has been now set in stone.

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