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A comment on Fair Use Is Not an Exception to Copyright, It’s Essential to Copyright.

Re:Fair Use Is Not an Exception to Copyright, It’s Essential... by skywhopper on Thursday January 22, 2015 @10:12AM (#8929512)
The EFF brings up potential new copyright modifications to tighten down on fair use. It's important to remember that in 1998, the US Congress extended copyright protection retroactively for 20 years, putting off new additions to the public domain until 2019. So all of us who care about copyright ought to be ready for a new copyright extension act coming in 2017 or 2018, to extend things even further. That will be the optimal time for the industry to push for another DMCA-style law that will complicate our lives even further and push more power into the hands of media conglomerates and out of our control. Be prepared.
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Re:Fair Use Is Not an Exception to Copyright, It’s Essential... by 6stringmerc on Thursday January 22, 2015 @11:20AM (#8929937)
AKA "The Mickey Mouse Curve" - easily searchable for a visual reference point. I completely agree "Be prepared" is important not only for the arts, but for technology. The fact that people can be subjected to breathalyzer evidence but that code can not be revealed due to "copyright and trade secret protections" is a foul twisting of US law. Is it on the level with SOPA and Net Neutrality? Not quite, but we all should definitely be aware of the implications and...to be frank...monied stakeholders who want to buy laws they like...
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Re:Fair Use Is Not an Exception to Copyright, It’s Essential... by api on Thursday January 22, 2015 @12:03PM (#8930223)
Those extensions are known as the "Mickey Mouse protection act," since more or less their sole purpose is to ensure that Mickey never enters the public domain.
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Re:Fair Use Is Not an Exception to Copyright, It’s Essential... by spacemanmatt on Thursday January 22, 2015 @12:39PM (#8930446)
...inasmuch as Mickey is a proxy for Disney's (some others, but mostly Disney's) mindshare which copyright protections are about to expire. I really wish the original copyright law stipulated that for a given work, controlling law is what's on the books at the time it was printed.
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Re:Fair Use Is Not an Exception to Copyright, It’s Essential... by snowwrestler on Thursday January 22, 2015 @11:07AM (#8929844)
Changes to copyright law are probably more likely to pass Congress as part of international trade agreements these days, rather than as stand-alone bills.
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Re:Fair Use Is Not an Exception to Copyright, It’s Essential... by nitrogen on Thursday January 22, 2015 @11:43AM (#8930091)
How convenient that the copyright provisions in those agreements largely come from Hollywood...
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Re:Fair Use Is Not an Exception to Copyright, It’s Essential... by 6stringmerc on Thursday January 22, 2015 @12:21PM (#8930326)
...and guided through the Federal landscape by none other than former Senator Chris Dodd. If the MPAA can actually prosecute wholesale piracy in China/India/etc, I'll have to look outside and see if a flying pig might smack into my living room window. From my experience, they prefer to sue grandmothers, families and college students in the US, because fish in a barrel.
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