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> I think it's time the tech industry starts asking for broad sweeping changes of the copyright laws.

This is a great idea. Broad sweeping measures, hopefully with a catchy name, to counteract the current nuttiness. Call it something like "The Internet Freedom Act"

You can't be against Freedom, cay you?

Artistic Freedom Technology Act

I agree. It's time to not just resist further expansion of copyright and copyright enforcement, but to push back.

* Reduce copyright terms to 4 years, non-renewable

* Require registration of works with the copyright office

* Assess an annual fee proportional to revenue earned from the copyrighted work

* Provide for stiff penalties for asserting copyright over works you do not hold the copyright to.

* Affirm that public domain works can never be copyrighted.

>Require registration of works with the copyright office

Yaay - more bureaucracy and competitive advantages for the established business that can afford the fees/process. Kill open-source copyright claim validity in the process ?

>Assess an annual fee proportional to revenue earned from the copyrighted work

Yaay - taxes on top of taxes !

I partially agree with a slight modification. I write a lot of free software / open source software. This relies on copyright of course, to enforce the freedoms. I don't want an onerous registration environment, but if it was "copyright terms to 4 years after last publication without registration" but registration with a fee after that. So if I continue to make the software, it gets the copyright and if I get bored, it turns into PD - and that's fine.

Interestingly it sounds like these "recognized" copyright holders want registration of copyright too ... they say they are willing to provide a regularly updated list of all the copyrighted works they want to be censored.

If that's what they want, give it them. Bringing back copyright registration might not be such a bad idea, at least in a form where after 14 years of free copyright, you have to pay $1 per work per year and provide the contact name and address of the registered copyright holder. All unregistered works older than 14 years would automatically fall out of copyright into the public domain.

I don't understand the thinking behind this scheme. I mean, for example, $1 per year isn't even enough to justify the trouble of collecting it.

The reason for $1 per year is twofold:

(1) It's low enough that it doesn't exclude anyone. If it was $10,000 per year or some other large amount, it would exclude a significant number of people.

(2) The aim of registration is not to extract fees. It's to make sure that works are registered; as soon as an organization goes out of business or loses track of what it's claiming, it forgets to register it, and it's public domain permanently.

Point (2) reveals a flaw, which is that organizations would spring up to do the registration (you'd pay them $100 and they would keep the registration going for 100 years). That's why the copyright holders' real name and address is required -- so that these intermediaries need to keep track of the claimant. You might also try banning such intermediaries, if that would work.

It's not bulletproof, but it's surely better than the current case where long-abandoned works rot on floppy disks that can't legally be rescued. http://www.pcworld.com/article/248571/why_history_needs_soft...

As long as companies like Twitter are openly embracing country specific censorship I don't see this happening anytime soon. Just looking at the recent developments - Megaupload, Google Profiling and Twitter's new found love for Censoring doesn't make me hopeful that Tech companies will stand up for the interests of their users.

  > As long as companies like Twitter are openly
  > embracing country specific censorship

As I understand it, they are just complying with local laws (regardless of the morality of the law). This says nothing about lobbying to change the current laws, or create new ones.

God no.

This is not about the tech industry, this is about civil rights. If the tech industry starts messing with the law in the same way the copyright industry has done, the general public will just get screwed in a different position. Don't for a second think that the major corporations in tech won't march on and start lobbying against privacy laws and such.

There's nothing about the tech industry that is inherently more ethical or less self-serving than the entertainment industry. Corporations messing with laws that affect civil liberties is never a good idea.

Yeah, but what's the equivalent of the MPAA/RIAA in the tech industry? It's crazy how much more money the tech heavyweights have over the music/motion picture industry, yet, the tech industry seems to have almost no influence in politics. Can't they lobby for not being censored?

It's not just about money, it's about connections. It's not as though I could go to Washington with billions of dollars and suddenly have the same influence as Big Oil or Big Media or whatever else. That kind of power takes decades to acquire and secure. That's not to say money has no influence, but it isn't everything.

I think it's time a few big players in the tech industry lead the charge toward making shit like this completely impossible. Regulation and lobbying and beltway insider bullshit is their game, and their rules. Eventually that too will change but that change isn't going to come about playing by their rules.

The problem is that you can censor the internet in the first place, not that some assholes want to censor it. There are always going to be assholes.