We have a family friend that made a bad decision on the internet one Saturday afternoon, and he is now in jail.  He didn’t hurt anyone, and I don’t need to get into the details here, but now his life will never be the same.  During his sentencing, the judge even asked his lawyer to find a loophole.  But, the laws wouldn’t allow for a commonsense look at the situation.

We have several categories of laws like this in this country.  Mandatory sentencing with removed possibility of common sense being applied to each case-by-case scenario.  And, individual senators and other lawmakers can’t help affect change because they are too concerned about how it would look.  How a decision will be spun in the media.  Whether or not they will be reelected.

Reading through Lessig’s chapter and about Jack Valenti concerns me that copyright is going to be the next rabbit hole that our laws are going to fall into. When we have lobbyists that are pushing lawmakers into decisions based solely on financial interests, much like what has happened with Mickey Mouse and Disney, the only ones that lose are the people.

I firmly believe that there should be laws that protect creative property owners.  But, I am more along the lines of what Lessig argues.  I think that copyright protection should extend for a certain period of time, and then, that image, movie, song, etc should be fair game.  This is particularly true when you consider who these laws are actually protecting.  They aren’t protecting the sisters that wrote “Happy Birthday“; nope, they are protecting the company that owns the rights to the song – a completely different argument in my mind.

I think we are at an important moment in copyright law that we can still save ourselves from the ridiculous point-of-no-return, but it’s not far off.  And, I think this debate is a part of a larger question in our society about how do we repeal laws that don’t work?  What is the review process we are going to create in this country?  I think it is time for another check point in our system.

Incidentally, this isn’t the first time I have interacted with Lessig’s viewpoint.  If you haven’t seen it already, you should really check out RIP: A Remix Manifesto!  I have done some really amazing projects with my students using this video to teach copyright.

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