Republican Document Slams Copyright Law, Promptly gets Redacted

What happens when your party releases a document that lambasts one of your staunchest supporters? You redact it, of course! That's what happened earlier this week with the Republicans. An 8 page document titled "Three Myths About Copyright Law and Where to Start to Fix It" was released by the Republican Study Committee, the House's Republican caucus, tackled the issue of copyright law. and it didn't tow the usual party line.

The document was partly a lesson on what copyright was originally intended to be, and part a skewering criticism of the current legal structure. It started off by mentioning that copyright law was originally a method to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." The original idea was to provide content creators a brief window of monopoly off of which to profit from their creation, before that creation entered into the public domain. There, it would be freely available and able to enrich the minds of many who couldn't enjoy it under the copyright. As well as being able to be expanded and worked on by others. It also tackles the fact that current copyrights aren't actually helping to foster more creativity or content creation, just more control. Current copyrights expand beyond the life of the creator. There is no way that they can enjoy the fruits of their creation after they are dead, which means that the protection isn't in line with the original mandate of copyright law.

There are many more tidbits in the paper, but I'm not going to cover them here. Its only 8 pages long, so go ahead and give it a read. But suffice to say, in the end, the paper recommended changing copyright terms to a mere 12 years.

Are you surprised this thing vanished within 24 hours?

Engadget