Six Steps to Digital Copyright Sanity: Reforming a Pre-VCR Law for a YouTube World

A free speech lobby group presented a six-step reform program for outdated US copyright laws. “Public Knowledge” president Gigi Sohn presented the plan in a New Media conference speech at Boston University in October 2007 and expressed no patience with the "disconnect between the law and the technology" of media production and distribution.

"For the past 35 years, the trend has been nearly unmitigated expansion of the scope and duration of copyright, resulting in a clear mismatch between the technology and the law," she said. Technology advances with the internet, mobile phones make it easier to copy and distribute music, movies, articles, books, and so on. Meanwhile, the kind of legislation that gets big-money lobby support from content producers makes it increasingly illegal—but not necessarily harder—to use these new powers of information and entertainment.

Question: How would you say your editorial and created content is affected by today's technology and how do you feel about the ease of access the world has to it?

Original speech transcript: http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/1244
By Gigi B. Sohn
Presented to the New Media and the Marketplace of Ideas Conference
Boston University College of Communication
October 26, 2007

The speech is a little long but interesting. Enjoy.