Staffer axed by Republican group over retracted copyright reform memo
Copyright hawk here:Content is a $100Bn industry. Technology is 5-6x bigger, but the tech companies trying to disrupt content are an insignificant fraction of that industry.Meanwhile, set aside whether you believe in the reforms proposed in the Khanna memo --- reducing statutory damages, increasing cost of enforcement, reducing copyright terms. Ask instead, "was this a politically effective policy memo?" Were its goals in the 113th congress realistic? Were its arguments persuasive? Something like 35% of all congresspeople are lawyers, and this memo starts out with a highly dubious argument about the meaning of the copyright clause.It seems to me (and I am prepared to hear smart people tell me how wrong I am about this) that a reasonable short-term goal would have been to reduce the term of copyright, ratcheting it back to where it was, say, before Sonny Bono. Instead, this "RSC" memo proposed beyond that a gift basket of what seem like mostly not-useful policy trinkets for Redditors: expanded fair use for DJ culture (really? spend political capital to modify regulations on a $100bn industry for... DJs?), lower statutory caps for damages (the MPAA and RIAA already sue for a tiny fraction of the likely liability for many infringers), and punishing false copyright claims (the claims studios take to court are overwhelmingly not false; penalizing bogus DMCA takedowns wouldn't move the dials at all).The real copyright reform is probably something like reduced term and compulsory licensing. What was the value to the RSC of trolling the Content industry for reforms that had no chance of happening, that wouldn't have actually kept people from being bankrupted by lawsuits, that wouldn't make it easier to launch tech companies, and that at the same time manage to almost uniformly enrage rightsholders?Was this memo really "shockingly sensible"? A lot of smart people say it was. But I wonder whether they're more shocked that any conversation could have happened at all, and not really looking closely at the content of the memo itself.