Criticism of copyright
Some call for remission of the policies to a previous state—copyright once covered few categories of things and had shorter term limits—or they may seek to expand concepts like fair use that allow permissionless copying.
[10] Lawrence Liang, founder of the Alternative Law Forum, argues that current copyright is based on a too narrow definition of "author", which is assumed to be clear and undisputed.
[11] Liang argues that the concept of "author" is tied to the notion of copyright and emerged to define a new social relationship—the way society perceives the ownership of knowledge.
Liang challenges this logic, arguing that "many authors who have little hope of ever finding a market for their publications, and whose copyright is, as a result, virtually worthless, have in the past, and even in the present, continued to write.
[11] The Center for the Study of Public Domain has raised concerns on how the protracted copyright terms in the United States have caused historical films and other cultural works to be destroyed due to disintegration before they can be digitized.
[12] The center has described the copyright terms as "absurdly long" which hold little economic benefit to rights holders and prevents efforts to preserve historical artefacts.
[12] Director Jennifer Jenkins has said that by the time artefacts enter the public domain in the United States after 95 years, many culturally significant works such as old films and sound recordings have already been lost as a consequence of the long copyright terms.
[27] Recent developments related to BitTorrent and peer-to-peer file sharing have been termed by media commentators as "copyright wars", with The Pirate Bay being referred to as "the most visible member of a burgeoning international anti-copyright—or pro-piracy—movement".
[28][29] One well-publicised instance of electronic civil disobedience (ECD) in the form of large scale intentional copyright infringement occurred on February 24, 2004, in an event called Grey Tuesday.
Groups that argue for using existing copyright legal framework with special licences to achieve their goals, include the copyleft movement[34] and Creative Commons.
[37] Scholars and commentators in this field include Lawrence Liang,[38] Jorge Cortell,[39] Rasmus Fleischer,[40] Stephan Kinsella, and Siva Vaidhyanathan.
