Weekly Topics - Week 5: Computers and Law I

Book cover

In this week’s assignment we’re reading Chapter 2 from the book “The Case for Copyright Reform” by Rick Falkvinge and Christian Engström. I’m going to write some thoughts about Chapter 2 and its ideas.

The Chapter 2 “A Constructive Proposal for Copyright Reform” suggests some ideas for a copyright reform. It states that a big problem is the privacy. It is near impossible to enforce limited file sharing without surveilling everybody’s private communication. But that can’t be the solution:

“The right to privacy is more important than the right of big media companies to continue to make money in the same way as before, because the latter right does not even exist.”

 

The text goes on with the proposals of the political party. I strongly agree with the first proposal called “Moral rights unchanged”. It says that the moral right of the author should always stay with the author. It shouldn’t be possible so sell the moral right. I actually learned about that in my home university in a course named “Press-, copyright- and data protection law”. We learned, that in Germany it is impossible to sell the copyright of a work. Instead, you sell the right of use (to different extends). But it is not possible to sell the copyright. However, in the United States it is possible to sell the copyright of a work. This strikes me as odd and therefore I agree with the proposal of the political party.

The second statement “Free Non-Commercial Sharing” is in its core a proposal I’d agree with. However, it needs to be regulated to some extent. My concern is that it could be easy to define the term “private sharing” too broadly.

I don’t really have an opinion about the third statement. It proposes to shorten the exclusivity of copyrighted works from 70 years to 20 years. I learned in the other course about the 70-year rule well as well and didn’t think about it being too much.

I strongly agree with the fourth statement “Registration after 5 years”. It proposes that copyright protection should be given automatically. If rights owners want to extend the exclusivity of a work beyond the first five years, they’ll need to register for that.

I also agree with the next proposal “Free Sampling”. I also think that it should be allowed to remix and reuse parts of existing works. It gives the artists so much more to work with and in the end we, as the costumers, can only profit from that (by enjoying the music, film, etc.).
The last statement “A Ban on DRM” sounds a bit like the second statement (Free commercial sharing). I therefore agree with the statement.

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