Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) plans a hearing on Thursday before the House Intellectual Property subcommittee to pursue his worthy goal of copyright reform.
The hearing is called “A Case Study for Consensus Building: The Copyright Principles Project” and focuses on a group called the “Copyright Principles Project” that produced a white paper called “The Copyright Principles Project: Directions For Reform.”
Goodlatte has a refreshing desire for less polarization in America’s debate on copyright reform, but I must note that the Copyright Principles Project is a strange kind of “consensus” on copyright — because it’s no consensus at all.
There are no creators involved in the Copyright Principles Project at all! None. As in not one.
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This registration idea has been around for quite a while. The pitch to artists is never from other artists — it’s usually pitched as a good thing because the Internet would unleash a torrent of untold riches if people could just find you. This must be someone’s idea of a joke, because if the Internet has unleashed anything on artists, it is not a torrent of people trying to pay us. It’s another kind of torrent—a Bit Torrent.
See the full story here: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/building-a-real-copyright-consensus-91231.html