June, 2008

Suggestions for copyright reform, and reflections on music as service and product

by Rasmus Fleischer
The Conversation
June 22nd, 2008

While re-restricting copyright law to the regulation of commercial exploitation may be a step in the right direction, the definition of “commercial” is without doubt tending to become more and more blurred.

Read: Suggestions for copyright reform, and reflections on music as service and product

Social Norms, Technology, and Copyright Law

by Timothy B. Lee
The Conversation
June 20th, 2008

Every successful legal regime works in tandem with a set of social norms and economic constraints that do most of the heavy lifting. Laws against burglary work mostly because most people have internalized norms against theft, and because we all have locks on our doors. The actual anti-burglary laws just play clean-up, catching the rare individual who isn’t deterred by the locks or the social pressures. If we lived in a society in which no one had locks on their doors and most people thought burglary was OK, no conceivable set of legal sanctions could keep burglary under control.

There is evidence that that’s the world we’re heading toward with regard to copyright law.

Read: Social Norms, Technology, and Copyright Law