The digital copyright laws of the new era have failed to address the consumer's rights. Companies and organizations, such as the RIAA, have been fighting tooth-and-nail to 'protect' their rights in this digital age of easy copying. Their arguments are one-sided and poor attempts at 'real world' metaphors.
To begin with, they argue that 'pirating' music, movies, etc. is equivalent to stealing a television. Wrong. These days even a five-year old likely knows there is something wrong with that argument, even if they don't know what. What pirating is really like is photocopying the blueprints of TV and using them to make and exact replica for your self. The only difference is that, in the digital world, it is cheaper and far easier. Now, laws do exist to guard against corporate espionage, for example, and thus considering piracy as illegal is justified IMO. However, this leads to their next fallacy.
By claiming piracy as illegal as is the 'giving' of the pirated content to someone else, they are basically claiming their rights over every copy of a given content in the world. That is, every copy of your favourite song. All we do is to buy the rights to listen to that song. And here's where the crux of the problem comes.
Presumably and historically, we buy the rights to listen to that song in perpetuity. It's not stated but, I believe, it's understood. For example, in general it has always been legal for a personal to make a copy of said content for their own use. Hence you were allowed to copy onto the same media or new media as you wanted. I think you agree that 'in perpetuity' is implied in this agreement. So what's happened recently.
Well, with the new DRM (digital rights management) technology and groups like the RIAA cracking down on users, we are losing that right. We are now forced only to be able to play what we pay for on technology that they approve. This is the case with such tech as certain HD movies and download sites such as ITunes. The companies no longer accept our right to listen / to watch the media when and where we chose and they no longer accept our right to purchase said viewing/listening rights in perpetuity.
If they wish to claim such broad, sweeping rights, then they should at least recognize our rights as consumers. We should be able to freely trade in old copies of CDs, cassettes, DVDs for the same content on new media when it is available (or for no more than the cost of the new media itself).
It will never happen, for many, obvious reasons and therein lies the real injustice.
EH Rydberg
No comments:
Post a Comment