[ExtractStream] Re: My dangerous idea.

[sharkey@a...]

> As far as what is legal and what is illegal please note that the
> copyright industry has had carte blanche for essentially the entire
> 20th century to write the law as they saw fit no matter how
> convoluted or illogical it became. Now that the digital revolution
> has given all of us a stake in how such laws are crafted we might
> hope that something corresponding to what people expect the law to be
> already (logical, coherent, fair) will become the law.

I agree that things have gotten out of hand with copyright law and that
things have tipped too far in favor of the copyright holder in recent
times, but the activities you are suggesting would break not only
modern U.S. copyright law, but the 18th century versions as well.

The original copyright laws were quite well balanced, and I don't think the
Napster "let's just ignore copyright and do as we please" approach is any
better than the "let's extend copyright indefinitely and lock out fair use/
first sale rights with encryption" approach being pushed by the major media
industries. A proper balance is needed. We need aggressive enforcement
of reasonable copyright laws. Arguing for extremist positions such
as the effective dismissal of all copyright is not a good way to return
to a balanced situation.

Eric