On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 5:03 PM, Brian McNeil
<brian.mcneil(a)wikinewsie.org> wrote:
Joking aside, I think that if I had a moment alone with Peter
Mandelson and could curb my violent impulses for five minutes, I'd put
it to him that cutting off someone's internet for illegal downloading
is a punishment liable to be suffered as much by the innocent as the
guilty.
Take a bog standard family of four, married with 2 kids... maybe a 15
year old son downloads copyrighted media, gets caught, internet cut
off.
Now dad can't run his business, mum can't do her grocery shopping and
the studious daughter who respects copyright can't get her homework
done.
[Note, I'm aware that I'm assigning rather stereotypical gender roles
re work and shopping, I hope you will forgive me...]
I understand that being cut off wouldn't happen until there's been
more than one warning, which would give parents a chance to intervene
and son to change his ways but you could still argue that the family
as a whole has effectively been warned despite three of them being
beyond reproach.
I'd also like to tell Mandy that copyright terms of life plus 70 years
is helping a select few whilst denying huge amounts of culture to the
many and that owning something for 70 years after YOU'RE FRICKIN' DEAD
is unlikely to be the spur to activity the government thinks it is. In
addition, a next generation that inherits income from copyrighted
works actually is disincentivised from getting a job if the income
from the copyright is sufficient to support them. The government
normally *loathes* people who don't go out to work, but apparently
it's fine if your dad happens to have written The Da Vinci Code.
Arstechnica has a good article relating to this today.
Those
well-entrenched and profiting from creative works have a 100+ year
history of scaremongering and depriving the public domain what they
agreed to give it in the first place.
Are you referring to this one?
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/10/google-book-digitization-pr…
If not please send a link as I'd be interested to see it.