Few things get me more uptight than Piracy and the invasion of our freedoms by the authorities. Recently we've had two laws attempt to pass the the US Congress, 20+ Euro countries have signed up to some EU law, we've a cookie law on it's way, a UK student is being extradited under US Terrorism laws for creating a dodgy website and we've closed down a quasi New Zealand/German/Indonesian website for running 14% of the Internet.
All in the name of stopping piracy. When will it stop and how many of our freedoms have to go before Governments start taxing our internet use to pay for all the laws we're creating.
The truth is the horse has left the stable and no amount of door closing is going to induce it to return... The Internet is changing the world before our very eyes and new ideas need to be looked at.
My idea (as yet I've not read anything about this) - my idea - is that Copyright Law need to be looked at in much greater detail and updated accordingly. Who says spending 30 minutes writing a best selling song should earn you millions. Sometimes it can take a musician 30 years to write that magical song. Authors, Screen Writers, Actors, all creative people spend a lot of time climbing to the top - all most all of it is unrewarded and as any artist will tell you for every success story there are plenty of artist who work all their lives unrewarded.
In what other walks of life does the situation exist whereby you slave day in day out for often years and then in five minutes you get your break and that's it, you're on the front cover of every magazine.
No - in almost every other profession you work diligently earning as you go a suitable sum for your endeavours and always towards an incrementally larger goal. You don't walk into being the CEO of a multi-national company - you work your whole life towards.
The difference is you're paid all the way up to the top... Not so in an artist profession, not so in an actor career where the top paid success stories vastly out weigh the slave labour at the bottom.
All of this hinges on one thing alone - Copyright Law - the right of the individual to be paid for their conceptual idea ever after. And in huge amounts.
Now I hear a few defences of the current situation - but it's no good - the Steve Jobs or James Dyson's worked hard - but still they were grossly over-paid for their contribution to humanity.
What we need is a new system that pays our copyright holders more fairly (rewarding the creators themselves and not those around them) - we need a system that pays out over time, small amounts to encourage these geniuses to produce more good ideas and we need those surrounding copyright holders to be severely curtailed in their rights to bits of the pie.
Only then will the costs of the material be reduced to an acceptable level that people will be prepared to pay - And when you manage to get things down to that level then and only then will you succeed in combating piracy. You have to make it meaningless for the pirate to bother.
I reckon a track of music should cost no more than 4p, a digital book less than 20p, a photograph pennies.
So how does this affect you - ask yourself what action you would take if someone copied your idea, song, story... would it matter, do you feel honoured, put out - I suspect you'll only ever feel miffed is that someone made money out of your idea - and that's not a very noble thought.
