Staffer axed by Repub­li­can group over retracted copyright-reform memo. The Repub­li­can Study Com­mit­tee, a cau­cus of Repub­li­cans in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, has told staffer Derek Khanna that he will be out of a job when Con­gress re-convenes in Jan­u­ary. The incom­ing chair­man of the RSC, Steve Scalise (R-LA) was approached by sev­eral Repub­li­can mem­bers of Con­gress who were upset about a memo Khanna wrote advo­cat­ing reform of copy­right law. They asked that Khanna not be retained, and Scalise agreed to their request. [Ars Tech­nica]

Appar­ently the Repub­li­can fac­tion of the Boot On Your Neck Party wants to be sure every­one under­stands that they’re just as much in the MAFIAA’s pocket as the Demo­c­ra­tic fac­tion, and that vot­ing Repub­li­can will cer­tainly not change anything.

His­tory of Copy­right [Falkvinge on Infopol­icy]

Given the recent fuss raised by cor­rupt politi­cians (SOPA and ACTA) and thugs enforc­ing the “laws” of the Evil Empire on its pup­pet states, its inter­est­ing to look at this seven part series on the his­tory of copyright.

Seen on Twitter:

The Irish Copy­right Act appears to have been copied almost ver­ba­tim from the UK Copy­right Act. How ironic.

@sensiblestu

That’s prob­a­bly because the copy­right indus­try lob­by­ist who wrote the act sent the same file to the politi­cians he bought in each country.

Today is SOPA black­out day, as many promi­nent web­sites protest a bill which, if passed, would allow the copy­right indus­try to shut down any site that links to another site which con­tains links to what they con­sider copy­right infringe­ment, such as The Pirate Bay. There would still be ways around it, so I decided to exer­cise one of them today: I saved a backup copy of every post here, and inserted it into Freenet, where it is impos­si­ble for any gov­ern­ment to remove it.

India’s copy­right pro­pos­als are un-American (and that’s bad). India has long been one of the few coun­tries on the US Spe­cial 301 “Pri­or­ity Watch List” (PDF) as one of the world’s top offend­ers when it comes to piracy and copy­right infringe­ment. While the inclu­sion of Canada (yes, Canada) on this list has always seem patently bizarre to us, the case for India is more eas­ily made.

Here’s how bad it is: “The piracy rate for music in the online space is esti­mated at 99%… India was among the top 10 coun­tries in the world for ille­gal file­shar­ing (P2P) activ­i­ties… In one case, pam­phlets were being dis­trib­uted with the morn­ing news­pa­per offer­ing pirated soft­ware and refer­ring read­ers to the web­site www.cd75dvd150.20m.com to place orders… It is esti­mated that India’s cable com­pa­nies declare only 20% of their sub­scribers and that the piracy level in this mar­ket is at 80% with sig­nif­i­cant losses… The sale of high-risk trade books at traf­fic junc­tions in New Delhi appears to be a les­son; last year it was at epi­demic pro­por­tions.” [Ars Tech­nica]

Clearly the cul­tural approach to works of art is dif­fer­ent in India than it is in the United States. In the United States, copy­right law exists “to pro­mote the Progress of Sci­ence and use­ful Arts, by secur­ing for lim­ited Times to Authors and Inven­tors the exclu­sive Right to their respec­tive Writ­ings and Dis­cov­er­ies.” What this means in con­crete terms is that US copy­right law is bought and paid for in its entirety by a very large cor­po­ra­tion to ensure that a man who died in 1966 is moti­vated to con­tinue working.

We can tell how suc­cess­ful those US copy­right laws have been at ful­fill­ing their stated pur­pose by the fact that India has been pro­duc­ing more films per year than the US since the 1970s.