[opendtv] Re: MPAA wants to stop DVRs from recording some movies

At 11:50 PM -0400 6/28/08, John Willkie wrote:
it that helps you feel better, okay. You're not providing me any new information, and in the grand scheme of things, you are drawing a distinction without a difference.
However, YOUR RIGHTS and MINE are non-existent in this context, at least as regards copyrights held by others. "Fair use" isn't a right; it's a legal defense to a claim of copyright infringement. Copyrights are a right that comes DIRECTLY from the constitution. 



As long as we are trying to be fair here...
The original intent of those who wrote the Constitution would tend to favor fair use over the rights of the creator of the intellectual property. The framers were concerned about the ability of content owners to use the power of government to protect their rights to the detriment of society.They believed, as I do today, that the rapid proliferation of new ideas and the ability for "the people" to use these ideas and build upon them trumps the rights of the creators to protect and benefit from them into perpetuity. Thus the Constitution was framed in a manner to limit the rights of the creators of intellectual property fo that give them exclusive r the benefit of the entire country.
There is a simple bargain in this. The power of the government can be used to protect the LIMITED rights of the creators of intellectual property via the granting of copyrights and patents that give them exclusive control of the intellectual property for a LIMITED time, after which the ideas are to be pushed into the public domain. Patents were intended to speed up the proliferation of new ideas by using the force of government to enforce licenses for those patents.
I think it would be more than fair to say that the framers would be very pissed off about what has happened to their original intent as it relates to patents and copyrights. 

There is a rich history behind fair use that predates our Constitution.

I would recommend reading the book at this link by Lawrence Lessig - it's FREE!

http://www.free-culture.cc/freecontent/

Regards
Craig



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