Week 5 - The Case of Copyright Reform ?

Importance of Competition and Consumer Rights

 

Aaron Swartz

The idea of a copyright or Intellectial property is to encourage innovation and protect the investment one has made to solve a problem or create value. However Copyright laws have been abused to the point where public monies funding public research has been locked behind close doors.

Case in point, publishers of research papers such as JSTOR have been, and are actively gatekeeping journals which the tax contributing public has to pay to view. The tragic death of Aaron Swartz who died in vain, in his pursuit to make information free.

 Aaron Swartz was a digital pioneer, civic advocate who contributed to RSS and he sought to protect Internet freedom.


The problem with DMCA

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act  stifles scientific research and free expression when magazines, online boards and service providers are forced to censor discussion on any topic which includes computer security. 

In the lawsuit against the magazine "2600", professor Edward Felten was threatened with prosecution over his research on security in a computer program. Such examples make the world less safe and ripe for exploitation when software companies are incentivized to sue rather than patch or rebuild their programs.

While there are countless examples in the name of debatable "security", DMCA also threatens competition when technology giant Apple threatened BluWiki for hosting information on how to use 3rd party software to backup music and data which users own and have paid for. In this case not only is free speech being attacked, preventing others from accessing their own devices contributes to E-waste when it is harder to find information on how to repair their devices.


Consumer Rights

Why is Copyright reform important ? There are too many "circumvention" laws  to be named, of which they are lobbied and passed under the guise of protecting "innovation". As a consumer the abuse of copyright leads to higher prices when content bought is locked under ridiculous regulation such as "DRM". Imagine paying for a movie or book, but being unable to access it using other devices or when your device cannot be repaired.

Copyright laws need to be Reformed and not abused so that people should own and not "rent" things they have spent hard earned money for. Without any changes, lesser competition leads to stagnation and worse yet unsecured computer systems.


References:

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/the-brilliant-life-and-tragic-death-of-aaron-swartz-177191/

https://internethalloffame.org/inductees/aaron-swartz

https://www.cctvcambridge.org/AaronSwartz

https://www.eff.org/files/2014/09/16/unintendedconsequences2014.pdf

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