Reply To: Political Statements
Copyright is an anachronism, and the current interpretation of it is absurd in any case. We really need a new paradigm for understanding artists’ rights in the digital age. The current quasi-legal and poorly defined umbra of fair use doesn’t even begin to balance the scales, and at least the EFF is one of the few organizations out there that recognizes this.
I don’t mean to imply that artists shouldn’t have a right to control their works – obviously they should. But the current legal boundaries of copyright basically span everywhere, with only a very flimsy (and sometimes difficult to uphold) umbrella of Fair Use to mitigate what is otherwise a choke-hold on artistic expression and education.
It’s pretty ridiculous that you can’t turn on the radio in a classroom and discuss a song that was just broadcast over the air with students to discuss trends in modern music or musical theory. That’s how broken the modern definition of copyright is.