The other reason is because people continue to infringe upon their rights. If people stopped taking what's not theirs, you'd have a hard time getting anyone to spend time on this legislation.
Unfortunately, in Canada, the government is protecting our cable networks and limiting companies like Netflix. This protectionism is lazy because it doesn't ask these providers to advance to what Netflix provides (ie, complimentary streaming with cable subscription), it asks the Canadian citizen to "not worry about it" - effectively leaving Canadians with less options in the guise of "protecting thousands of jobs".
Regulators say, "Well, since they don't get Netflix like the US, they'll keep their cable subscriptions." But instead, we're lowering our cable packages and pirating as needed. So the cable companies try to squeeze our bandwidth down to ridiculous per GB rates so we won't download. Luckily, the backlash was strong enough to hold rate limiting off - for now. Downloading torrents isn't a huge technical feat. And setting up automated processes to download your favorite tv shows and movies is becoming easier and easier.
If Rogers or Bell just built the technology necessary to compete with Netflix, Netflix wouldn't have enough advantage over cable (broadband + cable is more convenient than broadband + cable + Netflix + Netflix compatible device).
Antagonizing content consumers may be counterproductive to your efforts to convert them into customers.
The argument against this law is that it's better to have content be easier to create and distribute, and worth the trade-off.
You also make copyright law itself less necessary. Its primary purpose is not to protect authors and creators, but rather to incentivize distributors. That's where all the cost and risk was when copyright originated. Now that distribution costs have dropped to nearly nothing, there is little necessity for copyright.
I've never seen anyone claim that copyright was to protect distributors.
Then I guess you have not been in this discussion for very long, or never paid attention. The fact is, copyright was never meant for creators. It was invented by distributors for distributors. The first copyright law was a censorship law to limit the amount of books printed when the printing press was was getting widely available in England that gave a total monopoly on publishing to a guild of publishers, without even attributing a book to the original author, but instead to the guild member who registered the book, attaining its newly invented "copyright".
You know what's the funniest thing about this? The content industry hails this as a stepping stone for authors and their rights, and what's worse, the public believes them. It's a lie, simple as that. Authors never asked for copyright. There was no collective push to stop the copying of their works. On the contrary, they wanted their works to be read.
The internet has made copyright obsolete. Moreso, it has made it harmful, and it needs to go away. The internet's here to stay. Copyright, by any means, isn't.
Intellectual property is system of monopolies inherently incompatible with a competitive, creative and innovative free market, how the IP-industry managed to turn this argument around in the minds of most people is truly scary.
To all who are interested in facts over fiction: if you want an even more comprehensive view on the matter, try http://questioncopyright.org/promise.
The mainstream interpretation most certain is that copyright is to protect creators, not distributors.
That is certainly the idealized, simplified narrative that most everyone will have been taught these days, but in terms of how copyright actually came about, way back when, it is largely a case of post-hoc rationalization. Hence the link: majority opinion doesn't change reality, only its perception.
nobody forces the creator to create [or distribute the work]. Keep it in/to yourself. Nope, somehow "creators" feel that the society is owing them the copyright protection.
Of course not. We just want to encourage them to do so.
Nope, somehow "creators" feel that the society is owing them the copyright protection.
That's the agreement between this society and creators who publish their creations.
well, i doubt that Coens would stop creating if this copyright/IP system didn't exist. What i'm sure about is that there wouldn't be those crappy patents with my name on them. You get what you encourage. Enjoy.
While this is probably true, it certainly doesn't mean that distributors want such competition. They want a competitive advantage, and it's much cheaper to get such an advantage by picking popular authors than having a technological arms race or price war with other distributors. Copyright was introduced to provide an artificial monopoly for distributors.