A copyright harm report was removed from the site of one of the US Congress committees one day after publication.

On Friday, November 16, an interesting document appeared on the Republican Study Committee website, an organization uniting more than 170 members of the US House of Representatives from the Republican Party. Under this 9-page report, many activists of pirated parties around the world would not hesitate to subscribe. Less than 24 hours later, this report was removed from the site under the pretext that it did not pass all approvals and does not comply with the RSC standards at all. What was in this, so hastily hidden document?

Full text is available here . I will give you a brief summary of this report.

Three popular copyright myths

1. The purpose of a copyright is to guarantee the author a worthy reward. In fact, the following is written in the US Constitution: “The Congress has the right ... to promote the development of science and useful crafts, securing for a certain period of authors and inventors the exclusive rights to their writings and discoveries."
   
   In the modern rhetoric of rightholders “promoting the development of science and useful crafts”, which is not necessarily reduced to existing schemes for extracting profits from intellectual property, it is often replaced by a simpler and narrower statement that the author “deserves financial reward”
2. Copyright is the epitome of free market ideals. In fact, copyright violates the basic principles of free trade. In the modern system of protection of copyright holders get guaranteed, created artificially and state-subsidized monopoly.
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   Guaranteed - because copyright arises automatically. Artificial - because monopoly is created and regulated by laws, and the extent of the damage caused by its violation can literally be taken from the ceiling. For example, in the case against Limewire, there was a figure of 75 trillion dollars (this is the annual GDP of planet Earth, and this is certainly more than the entire recording industry has earned since the invention of the recording).
   
   Finally, state-funded law enforcement agencies, courts, and prisons are involved in the prosecution of copyright infringers, in this sense, a guaranteed monopoly is subsidized by the state.
3. Modern copyright legislation promotes creativity and innovation. At the dawn of copyright protection periods ranged from 14 to 28 years. Today, economics and logistics work many times faster, and therefore the timeframes, if they need to change, then downwards. Instead, they have exceeded all reasonable limits, and continue to grow, which in fact leads to the fact that the monopoly persists indefinitely. Because of this, many rightholders are not interested in creating new works, but only in receiving rent from old ones.

Copyright damage

It is very difficult to judge things that were not created due to copyright restrictions. However, some of the destructive effects of copyright are obvious:

1. Backwardness of the USA in the field of contemporary DJ culture and remixes. In many other countries, a young independent musician, having only a computer with DJ software, can freely create and distribute their mixes. In the US, DJs can only play live, and the creation of records is practically blocked by exorbitant licensing prices. Payments to the authors of the original tracks and samples can pull on $ 100,000 for each track.
2. Obstacles to research. Many scientific works of the twentieth century are protected by copyright and are not freely available.
3. Copyright creates problems for libraries. Despite the amazing opportunities that the Internet provides, a huge amount of information is available only on paper. Technically, it would have been possible for a long time to scan and put all the literature written by mankind on the Internet in general. But on the way of creating a global library in which there is everything, there is a copyright. Traditional paper libraries digitize books for the sake of safety and ease of internal use, but cannot publish them online.
4. Related industries. If the term of protection of books, films and music was not more than a couple of decades, it would be easy to create new ones based on old, but still popular works. For example, how many interesting fan films, studies, guidebooks, and other material could be created on the basis of films like “Star Wars”?
5. Political censorship. This is perhaps the most ugly example of copyright abuse. Many documents that journalists can rely on in their investigations and publications may be protected by copyright. Their publication, possibly of great public importance, may be blocked under the pretext of respecting copyright.

Possible solutions

1. Change the procedure for determining damage. Modern legislation in the United States allows you to impose from 750 to 30 000 dollars for each fact of copyright infringement, and up to 150 000, if the violation is considered intentional. Thus, after standing a couple of weeks in the distribution of a single music album, you can get a lawsuit for several million. In reality, such claims rarely reach court, since violators agree to pay several thousand in a pre-trial procedure. Astronomical sums are actually used for intimidation and extortion. This is completely inconsistent with the declared goal of “damages”.
2. Expansion of fair use. Now the concept of “fair use” is defined blurry and illogical, so, in the US, “parody” is fair use, and “satire” is not. This study provides many examples of how the average American, unaware of this, constantly violates copyright by performing completely ordinary everyday actions.
3. Punishments for false claims. Unsubstantiated requests for the removal of copyright materials and the prosecution of "violators" have become commonplace, since there is almost no responsibility for false claims.
4. Radical reduction of copyright terms. Instead of the current 70 years after the death of the author, it is proposed to limit copyright to 12 years of free universal protection, with the possibility of selective paid renewal for individual works, and the fee should be the higher, the longer the extension period.