[LINK] The Future of Copyright

[Rick Welykochy]

Kim Holburn wrote:

> http://www.cato-unbound.org/2008/06/09/rasmus-fleischer/the-future-of-copyright/

Very good read.

I enjoyed the mention of the resurgence of the sneakernet.

     One early darknet has been termed the “sneakernet”: walking by foot
     to your friend carrying video cassettes or floppy discs. Nor is the
     sneakernet purely a technology of the past. The capacity of portable
     storage devices is increasing exponentially, much faster than Internet
     bandwidth, according to a principle known as “Kryder’s Law.” [7] The
     information in our pockets yesterday was measured in megabytes, today
     in gigabytes, tomorrow in terabytes and in a few years probably in
     petabytes (an incredible amount of data). Within 10-15 years a cheap
     pocket-size media player will probably be able to store all recorded
     music that has ever been released — ready for direct copying to another
     person’s device.

     In other words: The sneakernet will come back if needed. “I believe this
     is a ‘wild card’ that most people in the music industry are not seeing
     at all,” writes Swedish filesharing researcher Daniel Johansson. “When
     music fans can say, ‘I have all the music from 1950-2010, do you want a
     copy?’ — what kind of business models will be viable in such a reality?”

Unlike online file sharers, some of whom are being prosecuted as we discuss
this topic, sneakernet is much harder to police. The response to sneakernet
might lay in ACTA (Anti Counterfeit Trade Agreement) as mentioned earlier this
week on Link.

<http://ipjustice.org/wp/campaigns/acta/>

And Australia is chiming in

<http://www.dfat.gov.au/trade/acta/discussion-paper.html>

More laws, more shifting goal posts, more draconian measures. Existing
laws that control and prosecute the distribution of counterfeit goods
and illegally copied works are not enough. We must continue until we
legislate ourselves into a legal black hole with no way out.

As far as illegal copying goes, the digital genie is well and truly out of
the bottle with no way of getting the toothpaste back into the tube to coin
a mixed metaphor.

cheers
rickw



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Rick Welykochy || Praxis Services || Internet Driving Instructor

"Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly."
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