A Constructive Proposal For Copyright Reform

 The ideas proposed by Rick Falkvinge and Christian Engström are fascinating and indeed may solve a lot of problems with copyright that we face today. The system that we have today no longer protects the artist, but the corporations that profit off of their work. I would like to list all of the changes proposed and give a few comments on each of them.

  1. Moral rights unchanged - this is what one might call a no-brainer. Personally, I have toyed with the idea of making distribution rights revocable, as in giving the author the right to revoke distribution rights from someone at any moment, though that will undoubtedly create many problems;
  2. Free non-commercial sharing - it is unlikely that lobbyists would agree to that, as corporations are increasingly moving towards subscription-based services, in essence making it so that no individual owns any copy of content;
  3. 20 years of commercial monopoly - MCU would start entering the public domain in 6 years from the moment of writing. Yes, please. It is time they stopped beating a dead horse. Jokes aside, what about continuously ongoing services? MMOs or games that are being constantly updated? When does the countdown begin? Though perhaps this will solve the problem with these games being constantly released in an unfinished state;
  4. Free sampling - this is just how art and science work. There is nothing original, everything is just a remake of a remake of a remake;
  5. A ban on DRM - cursed be the mage who created the first Defensive Regulatory Magicon.
In general, the ideas proposed are very good, though I would also like to add an idea of my own that content creators may not like - once something has been released, it may not be "unreleased". Once a piece of entertainment (or any information really) has seen the light of day, its creator may not change their mind and restrict access to it.
But as for the original 5 ideas - in an ideal society they could be implemented, but our law is governed by those who have the deepest wallets, so we may never see this reform take effect.

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