I've heard a lot about PROTECT IP and SOPA recently. Being a regular resident of the internets, it's usually vehement opposition. It did get me thinking about copyright though, and I have a few observations.
First, consider the following situations:
1. Buying and watching a movie
2. Renting and watching a movie with a large group of people
3. Copying a movie
4. Downloading a movie
5. Quoting a line from a movie
6. Reenacting a scene from a movie in a video
7. Recording a video where a movie is playing in the background
8. Posting a scene from the video on Youtube
9. Posting the entire movie on Youtube
10. Making a parody of the movie
11. Singing a song from a movie
12. Performing a song from a movie in front of an audience
This could be arranged in some order of legality, if that's possible, but that gets confusing. Expand it in your head though. Consider these alterations to each. How much copyrighted content is involved? Did the audience pay to attend? How large is the audience? Is that audience over the internet? What about music or books instead?
So then, which are legal and which aren't? Obviously #1 is and #4 and #9 aren't (although on #4, some argue otherwise). #5 is pretty innocuous but what it were a book and you quoted a paragraph, a page, a chapter, or the whole book? The others would seem legal (by my common sense anyway, unless you get paid) but might not be. It depends, I suppose? It would less of a problem if it were possible for the casual user to request permission to use content and pay royalties but there's no easy way to do that.
From what I've learned about SOPA is that it grants copyright holders to more easily decide where the line is and then enforce it by blacklisting sites. They already can submit DMCA takedown requests and sites that don't comply can be taken down. Blacklisting involves blocking the site entirely by removing references to it from search engines and other sites plus blocking it's revenue sources and domain name. It probably won't work against the targeted piracy sites; they'll find a way around it. It'll probably block small, personal sites though. And since #7 is apparently enough to get a Youtube video pulled in the current system, I'd expect a lot of sites blocked.
And do you know how long copyright lasts? Life of the author plus 70 years. Or 95 - 120 years for anonymous or for-hire works. Nothing created in my lifetime will be ever be free domain by copyright expiration. Probably.
