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I no longer blog regularly on copyright issues. Over a dozen years of watching the Copyright Wars evolve and turn into grinding trench warfare I got bored of it. But guess what, the world doesn't care how bored I am, it keeps slogging along and right now, copyright is in a very interesting state. It's beyond broken - it's irrelevant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BL829Uf2lzI
OK, maybe it always was irrelevant, but that didn't stop the Content Cartel from suing music fans, more or less en masse. The Internet keeps growing, though, and music fans have stopped being the biggest problem the music business has - now it's streaming services, which have essentially ended the idea of "owning" music anyway.
See also, YouTube, which is a major player in people (like Hank and John) constantly 'breaking' the law... and no one cares. What they care about is the rules of the corporation (in this case Alphabet/YouTube) of which we are all citizens. YT sets policies that are informed by the law but only insofar as that serve's YT's purposes. When those policies disenfranchise small creators... oh well. When those policies generate rafts of bogus paperwork... well, YT cares only to the extent it has to deal with that paperwork. If it can foist that work off on other people, so much the better.
There's an argument made in the video that "culture blew past the law" and Hank's not wrong about that, but it's also not a new thing. We just have Internet-powered culture now. Does that make copyright interesting again? I doubt it, as a regular pastime, but occasionally... sure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BL829Uf2lzI
OK, maybe it always was irrelevant, but that didn't stop the Content Cartel from suing music fans, more or less en masse. The Internet keeps growing, though, and music fans have stopped being the biggest problem the music business has - now it's streaming services, which have essentially ended the idea of "owning" music anyway.
See also, YouTube, which is a major player in people (like Hank and John) constantly 'breaking' the law... and no one cares. What they care about is the rules of the corporation (in this case Alphabet/YouTube) of which we are all citizens. YT sets policies that are informed by the law but only insofar as that serve's YT's purposes. When those policies disenfranchise small creators... oh well. When those policies generate rafts of bogus paperwork... well, YT cares only to the extent it has to deal with that paperwork. If it can foist that work off on other people, so much the better.
There's an argument made in the video that "culture blew past the law" and Hank's not wrong about that, but it's also not a new thing. We just have Internet-powered culture now. Does that make copyright interesting again? I doubt it, as a regular pastime, but occasionally... sure.
