Techdirt: In a weird bit of performative nonsense, Senators Thom Tillis and Pat Leahy, along with Representatives Hakeem Jeffries and Nancy Mace, have come together to... try to help kids lock up culture under copyright. Specifically, they want a bill that would allow kids to register a copyright for free for participants in the Congressional Art Competition and the Congressional App Competition. It is not at all clear why this is necessary, other than to perpetuate the myth that you need a copyright to be creative.
1 comment:
I don’t really understand copyright or patent laws, but this was still an interesting read. It's not really a surprise to me that “big copyright” is in the pockets of senators. What’s more shocking is that there is a “big copyright” at all. The article does seem a bit biased and fails to explain their argument well enough for copyright novices like myself, but I still managed to get a general idea of what they were arguing. I guess it’s unproductive and misleading to offer free copyrights as a prize for a kids’ art and app competition. But other than maybe making it seem like one goal of being creative is to attain a copyright, I’m not sure how much harm this is doing. I’m not exactly sure why this article is so angry about this. I’m sure very few kids will look at this offer and interpret it as “I must only create so I can attain a copyright.” That seems a little crazy to me. I do believe that “big copyright” has an agenda to push and that ‘hooking” the kids on copyright could be profitable for them, I guess. But just because I was offered one free copyright for my app in my youth, that does not meet I will come to believe that I must get a copyright every time I create an app in the future, and that is all I should strive for. There is a very good chance I didn't fully understand the article, but this problem seems a little overblown to me.
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