Fixing Copyright: The Purpose Of Copyright | Techdirt

Since the GOP decided to chicken out on holding the very necessary debate on copyright reform, let's keep the debate going without them, and hope they join in. As we've discussed, the Republican Study Committee released a fantastic report from staffer Derek Khanna, and then retracted it under lobbyist pressure. The RSC wants to claim that the paper didn't go through its full review process, but we've heard from multiple sources that this is simply not true, and that the RSC is pushing this story to appease angry lobbyists (apparently the US Chamber of Commerce has taken over as the leader of the cause on this one, following the initial complaints from the MPAA and RIAA). Either way, all this has done is draw much more attention to the report, which you can still read here. But, clearly, some in Congress realize this is a debate worth having. So if they're too afraid of some industry lobbyists, we might as well kick off that debate for them. We're going to do a series of posts digging into Khanna's paper. The paper, of course, starts off by debunking three commonly believed myths concerning copyright law, which are often used by policy makers to justify bad policies..."