Sunday, October 19, 2008
Bush Signs Intellectual Property Enforcement Bill
Electronic Frontier Foundation: "On Monday, President Bushed signed a controversial intellectual property enforcement bill into law. This set of proposals for heightened intellectual property enforcement first appeared at the end of 2007 in the House's original PRO IP Act. The winding history of the bill not only sheds light on the agenda of the entertainment industry, but leads to an instructive conclusion -- that the vigilance of public interest groups and involved citizens is having a positive impact on copyright policy."
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5 comments:
While I've been all for more Intellectually Property laws to be passed, this is honestly a step in the wrong direction in my view. Intellectual Property was never defined, and I think that before we can start passing things that say how intellectual property should be treated, it needs to actually be defined. There has always been a loose definition, but that state it's hard to define how you protect something that on a lot of levels is defined as someone's thoughts.
this article really isnt about what is IN the bill but what isn't. I agree with charlie about the need to define intellectual property first. On the otherand, I dont know how one CAN define it and therefore how one can prove that an idea was theres in the first place, especially if they havent spoken it etc.
In the world of theatre, does this mean havingto pay royalties everytime a theatre uses a revolving stage in Les Mis? This to me spells trouble, not help.
It's pretty important to look at what didn't get passed in this bill, especially the clause about IP holders getting probono case handling by the DoJ. Can you imagine what kind of cluster (expletive deleted) would have arose from such a possibility? IP cases are often ridiculous as it is, but having DoJ waste their time on a stream of stupid lawsuits that probably shouldn't have been created in the first place? It scares me.
I think that this is both necessary and a bit ridiculous. We hgave gotten to the point where art is something that one can own.. and I am not fully sure how I feel about that. I have been incountered with a situation recently where someone was working on sound for a show and they were doing the same show, with the same company, in a different state and the sound designer for the show made all their own designs. Then the other designer was coming on the soul purpose to copy their work. Now she doesnt understand if it is alright for them to just take her work and call it their own, which it isnt, or to fight for recognition. This is a case were I am 100% on this law being passed but then there are the people who will take this to the way extreme.. So we have to see the best and worst of both sides of this law.
While the EFF has certainly done good work here, and is doing far more in the area of private communication (policy and technology,) it still seems worrisome that this bill passed. While we can argue that artists (maybe especially in our industry where attribution can be tough) need more protection, the bottom line is that this bill does not serve artists. Artist's don't get royalties out of law suits, they get worse PR that makes it harder to sell albums. This bill did not serve to help protect individual artists, it served to further prop up the rapidly less glamorous buisness model of studios that functionally own artists' image and creativity.
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