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What she's arguing for, and this is no secret in Brussels and even -dare I say- common sense, is better enforcement of copyright. The problem isn't with copyrig

by roel_v 15y ago

What she's arguing for, and this is no secret in Brussels and even -dare I say- common sense, is better enforcement of copyright. The problem isn't with copyright itself, it's with the difficulties that those who want to use it to monetize content encounter when it comes to making sure people abide by it. Working DRM is impossible with current technology, I think everybody reading this agrees with that; so there are two ways forward: change technology so that it becomes prohibitively difficult for the average customer to copy content without a rights holder's consent, of a whole different business model all together that separates payment from copying. Both are very hard problems for which there are no real solutions in sight. In the short and medium term, the only realistic trend I see is a more active stance from the rights holders themselves in defending those rights - i.e. more lawsuits, without government involvement. (Criminal law is not the right tool for this issue anyway, it's a shame that we've wasted 15 years on going down that route now).

vidarh 15y ago
The downside of civil lawsuits is that the threshold for costing someone who is innocent a lot of money is a lot lower: The copyright holder has an incentive to sue or threaten to sue on the basis of enough information that they on average make the most money through settlements and judgement, largely without much thought to the collateral damage along the way from people who end up settling on the basis of the risk of being sued regardless of whether or not they've done anything wrong. Conversely, if it's done under criminal law, while the end result for someone who faces prosecution may be higher, so are the standards required for evidence and the prosecutor does not see monetary gain from going after people on shaky grounds. If one is to keep doing this via civil lawsuits, the consequences of suing without real evidence need to be much higher, and the cost of taking the risk of a lawsuit if you're innocent needs to be much lower.
- roel_v 15y ago
  Why? Why is copyright different from any other area of the law? Anybody can sue anybody else right now, for example claiming that some sort of service has been performed, and the situation would be the exact same. The use of criminal law would be a gigantic drain on already scarce public resources, why waste them on something trivial? If anything, suing for IP infringement should be easier - so that everybody can do it, and not just those with 10k cash up front and several months or years time to wait out the result. The key to an effective copyright regime is a way to enforce rights. That way needs to be cost-effective, fast, accessible to any sort of rights holder, and needs to put control into the hands of such rights holders. Leaving enforcement up to a prosecutor (who will need to weight such cases with e.g. murder and rape cases!) is or does neither of those.
nl 15y ago
What she's arguing for, and this is no secret in Brussels and even -dare I say- common sense, is better enforcement of copyright. I don't think this is what she is arguing for at all. Better enforcement of copyright won't really help those artists making less than €1,000 a month from the copyright system - the unauthorised use of those unpopular, long-tail artists will just stop, or be driven further underground. It might provide an incremental lift to the incomes of very popular artists, but it won't magically fix the problem for others. I think what she is arguing for is a radical restructuring of copyright, doing away with fair use rights for things like web spidering. I think she wants to force Google to pay licence fees to spider websites or, failing that, to tax them. There is a fair bit of precedent for this argument coming from French sources.

by roel_v 15y ago

vidarh 15y ago

The downside of civil lawsuits is that the threshold for costing someone who is innocent a lot of money is a lot lower: The copyright holder has an incentive to sue or threaten to sue on the basis of enough information that they on average make the most money through settlements and judgement, largely without much thought to the collateral damage along the way from people who end up settling on the basis of the risk of being sued regardless of whether or not they've done anything wrong. Conversely, if it's done under criminal law, while the end result for someone who faces prosecution may be higher, so are the standards required for evidence and the prosecutor does not see monetary gain from going after people on shaky grounds. If one is to keep doing this via civil lawsuits, the consequences of suing without real evidence need to be much higher, and the cost of taking the risk of a lawsuit if you're innocent needs to be much lower.

roel_v 15y ago
Why? Why is copyright different from any other area of the law? Anybody can sue anybody else right now, for example claiming that some sort of service has been performed, and the situation would be the exact same. The use of criminal law would be a gigantic drain on already scarce public resources, why waste them on something trivial? If anything, suing for IP infringement should be easier - so that everybody can do it, and not just those with 10k cash up front and several months or years time to wait out the result. The key to an effective copyright regime is a way to enforce rights. That way needs to be cost-effective, fast, accessible to any sort of rights holder, and needs to put control into the hands of such rights holders. Leaving enforcement up to a prosecutor (who will need to weight such cases with e.g. murder and rape cases!) is or does neither of those.

nl 15y ago

What she's arguing for, and this is no secret in Brussels and even -dare I say- common sense, is better enforcement of copyright. I don't think this is what she is arguing for at all. Better enforcement of copyright won't really help those artists making less than €1,000 a month from the copyright system - the unauthorised use of those unpopular, long-tail artists will just stop, or be driven further underground. It might provide an incremental lift to the incomes of very popular artists, but it won't magically fix the problem for others. I think what she is arguing for is a radical restructuring of copyright, doing away with fair use rights for things like web spidering. I think she wants to force Google to pay licence fees to spider websites or, failing that, to tax them. There is a fair bit of precedent for this argument coming from French sources.