Copyrights and Stupidity
It's getting to the point where I'm wondering whether copyright law has any value at all. Witness this idiotic proposal from Germany:
It looks as if publishers might really be lobbying for obtaining a new exclusive right conferring the power to monopolise speech e.g. by assigning a right to re-use a particular wording in the headline of a news article anywhere else without the permission of the rights holder.
I can see it now - the literary police swooping in and shutting down a blog for malicious reuse of a sentence. If sentences can be copyrighted, are there any limits at all? The only "positive" from this is that it reassures me that North America does not have a monopoly on stupidity with respect to copyright law....
Technorati Tags: stupidity
Comments
Re: Copyrights and Stupidity
[anonymous] June 19, 2010 14:54:37.081
Hey the phrases "Copyrights and Stupidity" and "I can see it now" are copyrighted sentences! You owe and owe and owe for using them! Oh, so is "without the permission of the rights holder"... in fact every sentence and sub sentence of your post is copyrighted by some German... stand and deliver your coin!
Re: Copyrights and Stupidity
[Joachim] June 20, 2010 3:37:34.291
No, the US has no monopoly on stupidity, neither in copyright laws nor anywhere else.
id you know that each time you buy a CD burner or all-in-one-printer, PC or a pack of CD-R's, the price includes a copyright fee here in Germany?
hat's because we're all copyright criminals here abroad. So we're at least one step further that you are ;-)
Re: Copyrights and Stupidity
[HKN] June 21, 2010 11:14:06.077
the copyright fee is indeed a good solution because it prevents us from being copyright criminals and would suggest any further stupid copyright is unnecessary - in theory
Re: Copyrights and Stupidity
[James Robertson] June 21, 2010 12:00:49.020
Umm, no. That's what we call presumptive guilt, and it's actually what I'd call evil.