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Week 5: Copyright reform

In today's blog post I will be sharing my opinion on the book The Case for Copyright Reform by Christian Engströmand Rick Falkvinge and on copyright issues in general.

The book starts off with a claim that today’s copyright legislation is out of tune with the times and I must agree with that. There is a dire need for a referendum when it comes to copyright laws, as they are threatening our privacy. And to me, a person who isn't really familiar with all of these copyright laws, it seems that these new laws aren't being passed partly because of big corporations who are afraid to lose part of their income.

In the second chapter they bring out some key changes that they propose:

Moral Rights Unchanged - when it comes to moral rights, I think these don't really need a change. As said, no one should be able to claim that they are the author of someone else's creations. ”Give credit where credit is due”

Free Non-Commercial Sharing - I agree with this point a lot, the current laws for non-commercial sharing are just ridiculous. I think that new movies and books shouldn't be available for peer-to-peer downloading, of course, but with old movies or books, for example, I think everyone should be able to download them if it's just for their own use. As said in the book, it's cultural expression and we shouldn't restrict it. But then again to know exactly what people are sharing with one another, someone would have to monitor the stuff being sent which would just be a violation of privacy. So really the two options would be to make everything illegal (like it pretty much is now) or make all downloading for your own use legal.

20 Years of Commercial Monopoly - I agree that today's copyright protection law that protects work for the creator's lifetime plus 70 years is quite absurd and isn't reasonable. As for how much exactly should it be shortened, I do not know, but 20 years is definitely fairer than 70...

Registration After 5 Years - again, I would agree with this change, there are a lot of works that are still copyrighted, yet no owner to be seen. So I think this alternative would at least alleviate the current problem. 

Free Sampling - this one I agree with wholeheartedly, as I have seen musicians and other creators struggle with it quite a lot, for example using literally a two-second sample of a song in their video and having it taken down due to copyright claims.

A Ban on DRM -  I agree with this as one of my dear friends has had problems with it, more specifically with the USA's Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) on a streaming platform called Twitch, essentially getting all of your content banned because a fragment of a song was heard in the background and now you will get banned if that might occur again. I think DRM should bennedor at least it shouldn't be so strict.


Although I managed to only read the first few chapters of the book, it really is a good read and I will definitely read it further and based on what I have read so far, I'd also recommend it to others.

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