Legal Commentary

Copyright - issues to ponder

By David Canton

Mike Masnick of Techdirt has a post entitled  How Long Can You Go Without Infringing On Copyright? that  points to a post on Dvorak.org, discussing how hard it is to not infringe on copyrights, noting that the original system was not built for a digital world.   The point is that when copyright laws were first made, it was not easy to “accidentally” violate copyright.

Michael Geist points to a post by Princeton Professor Ed Felton on his Freedom to Tinker blog entitled A Modest Proposal: Three-Strikes for Print that mocks the French proposal to create a “three-strikes” system that would kick people off the Internet if they are accused of copyright infringement three times by suggesting it should apply to print as well.

UPDATE:  Also take a look at Cory Doctorow’s post on Boing Boing entitled  Copyright protects critics, but leaves fans out in the cold  refering to his Guardian column that looks at the fact that copyright protects critics who want to talk trash about creative works, but gives no real protection to people who want to say nice things about them.

Full post as published by eLegal Canton on May 14, 2009 (boomark / email).