Copyright term extension rererevisited?

[MJ Ray]

Glyn Wintle <glynwintle at yahoo.com> wrote:
> As I remember what was said she was calling for was the option of
> a _voluntary_ system where users could choose to buy a licence that
> allowed them to download the content.

Becky uploaded her words to
http://www.openrightsgroup.org/2008/02/12/government-to-ban-illegal-filesharers-from-the-internet/#comment-163158

The bit that confused me was "They’re really a potential market for
rights holders and if rights holders got together with ISPs and talked
about licensing agreements much like the way that radio stations
licence to play music on air then I think so long as the government
stays out of legislating for a while that could be an emerging
business model that could work for consumers, the record industry and
internet users."

I'm not their potential market, I don't want to work for the record
industry and I suspect the BPI is not going to be satisfied by
anything short of 100% ISP take-up, so even having this idea in play
seems dangerous to me.

> [...] Its worth reading ORGs submission to the Gowers
> review, they where one of the major players in stopping the music
> industry from extending copy right term, they are not very lightly
> to be the people to then go and argue that the music industry should
> be given money for people simply using the internet.

I was surprised, let me tell you!  I spluttered on my sarnie!

> The Open Rights Group is the UK equivalent to the EFF in America.

Can you join ORG like EFF?  Else why would someone call themselves an
avid supporter but not be a member?

It's not clear to me whether EFF is directly accountable to its
members or not.  So I guess I should view ORG like EFF or SFC - they
sometimes pay for helpful stuff so don't discourage them, but they're
generally not to be recommended either, outside a few narrow cases.

Regards,
-- 
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