The imbalance inherent in copyright systems

Kragen Javier Sitaker, 2017-07-19 (2 minutes)

It’s 2028. Last year, you visited your mother in a nursing home and sat with her and talked for a long time, which was sometimes difficult, because one of the other residents was listening to music on the radio on the other side of a curtain. You video-recorded the whole session and stored it on your computer. You told her you’d come back to visit the next week, but trouble came up at work, and you had to postpone the visit for another week. On your next visit, she no longer recognized you. A few weeks later, she died. Now your computer has flagged your video as copyright infringement and deleted it because of the music in the background. You would like to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

Your brother stored a copy of your last recording of your mother before she died on Dropbox, but Dropbox also flagged it as copyright infringement and deleted it. After he protested publicly, Dropbox reported him to the police for child pornography, and indeed the police found child porn videos were in his Dropbox folder when they seized his computer. He swears he didn’t put them there, but he’s not having good luck convincing his cellmates of that. You would like to make sure you don’t entrust companies like Dropbox with the ability to plant incriminating files on your computer.

Ever since you watched a video on YouTube about spearfishing off the coast of Panama, every web site you visit shows you ads for ammunition and “paracord”, whatever that is. Your request for a visa to visit your sister in Spain is declined; no reason is given. You realize that watching videos on YouTube is dangerous.

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