http://bernardgaynor.com.au/why-homosexual-activists-should-applaud-senator-bernardi/

I teach people who got TERs of 50. I can’t think of anyone else that does that would even contemplate believing this. This is the type of garbage that comes out of edumacation departments (and every other department in universities now) to justify them taking anyone into their courses, including people that won’t get any benefit from them.

You seem to have a problem with people making an income from the work we create.

I have no problem at all about people making an income from work people create. Its what I do.

You say copyright should be about encouraging the creation of work, not about people making money. The two are inextricably linked.

They are often linked, but the latter is not actually required for the former. Do you think that there would be no music created at all if copyright did not exist? Or that people would not write software if they could not get copyright protection? Of course not.

I think copyright terms of life + 70 years is getting pretty ridiculuous. Do you think that someone would create significantly less music/TV/movies/software/books if say copyright was just 30 years rather than life + 70? I very much doubt it. On the other hand by expiring copyright after 30 years or earlier it allows many more people to build upon what already exists and create derivative, but still creative works.

On a more practical viewpoint the sooner the media industry gets its act together in making it easier to legally purchase content and package it in a way that people want, the more people will buy than just download. A lot of people who used to download music buy it these days because its actually easier to buy it than just illegally download it and it is rarely DRM’d. Or they use services like spotify that allow them to pay a monthly fee to listen to pretty much anything they want. But the record industries had to be dragged kicking and screaming into allowing it.

Compare the experience of using a DVD (lots of non skip sections including compulsory trailers that few people want to watch) versus playing a downloaded file which has all the junk stripped. Not to mention you can play the latter on virtually any device in any area of the world rather than having to re-buy your entire media collection because you moved countries or now have an android based tablet instead of an apple based tablet.

DRM is another big issue – all it does is make life difficult for those who legally pay for content. When buying DRM’d content you risk buying something that you won’t be able to play tomorrow.

And then there is availability and different pricing between countries. If I buy a book electronically from the US it is much cheaper than buying it in Australia even when it gets downloaded from the same physical servers. And then often content isn’t even available in Australia when it is in the US. In this age of worldwide communities that makes about as much sense as releasing new programs in NSW months before it is available in Victoria.

You seem to have a problem with people making an income from the work we create. Why should that be? In independent film and television, fees are very low. Ownership of copyright and the exploitation of that ownership is how people pay the rent. You say copyright should be about encouraging the creation of work, not about people making money. The two are inextricably linked. If you want to watch my work, you can pay for it, except if I decide differently.

Sure, copyright laws shouldn’t be too onerous. But, let’s not get too laissez-faire about it either.