Copyright Law
A lot of you have probably read this on Slashdot (in fact, they even quoted the same piece that I'm going to), but here's an interesting article on the Supreme Court ruling on file sharing software. It's probably a very real concern to a great many of us, eh?
The article discusses how the Supreme Court ruling was a well thought out, middle-ground decision, and a very difficult one, due to the nature of copyright law itself. The poor Justices ended up juggling innovation and protection, and trying to find a way to avoid dropping any of the balls. The writer's stance is that they did a good job, but that there is still a problem to solve: copyright law has become anachronistic in the current age, and needs severe redrafting to ensure that it does more good than harm.
"The length of copyright protection has increased enormously over the past century… This makes no sense. Copyright was originally intended to encourage publication by granting publishers a temporary monopoly on works so they could earn a return on their investment. But the internet and new digital technologies have made the publication and distribution of works much easier and cheaper. Publishers should therefore need fewer, not more, property rights to protect their investment. Technology has tipped the balance in favour of the public domain.
A first, useful step would be a drastic reduction of copyright back to its original terms—14 years, renewable once. This should provide media firms plenty of chance to earn profits, and consumers plenty of opportunity to rip, mix, burn their back catalogues without breaking the law. The Supreme Court has somewhat reluctantly clipped the wings of copyright pirates; it is time for Congress to do the same to the copyright incumbents. "
A related article that appeared recently on Wonko.com is sarcastically titled, "Box office slump? Yeah, and Bill Gates is on welfare." Ryan Grove looks at the trends of movies' gross profits, and points out that the claims that we're in a "box-office slump" is nothing more than "utter bullshit".
Why do we hear so many complaints about things when, looking at it carefully, there really isn't a problem? What it comes down to is that people are going to be people, and they aren't ever going to be satisfied with what they have. If by complaining about something a worker could get more money, how many wouldn't stoop to griping?