Is Copyright Law The New Prohibition?
from the try-to-avoid-that dept
Declan McCulllough's latest column talks about how the debate over copyright issues is getting louder on all sides. He discusses a few of the different challenges to current copyright law, and then compares copyright law to Prohibition, explaining that setting up laws where the punishment doesn't even remotely fit the crime isn't likely to help anything. All it really does is turn more perfectly good citizens into federal criminals. It also increases a disrespect for the law. McCullough hopes that politicians realize this and don't make any stupid decisions on copyright law, and instead try to fix some of the problems with existing copyright laws and "square them with reality".
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
ignorant of history
they want something they can have it (eventually).
There are a lot of federal crims that have
pushments that don't fit the crime. Governments
are strange like that.
Prohibition is just probably 1 of 10 things that
the people were able to take back in any given
time period/era and as every cop knows an average
person going about their boring average daily
life probably violates at least 5 laws in a day.
As technology improves the ability to prosecute
those violations, this will become more and more
obvious.
[ link to this | view in thread ]