I just discovered Andrew Dubber's site - he writes on copyright and music, which is an area I dabble in here. This post, where he quotes Paul Birch, is illustrative of the problem we face with the content industry (music, movies, etc):

In response to Mark I actually think there is nothing wrong with making a copy for your own use, in a sense side-loading to an iPod or similar is an extension of that use. Under current copyright legislation there is a need for customers to be allowed that facility but without it giving rise to them then making multiple copies for sale. The very specific instrument that allows the one and not the other is the difficulty in drafting any amendment.

Birch seems to believes that ideally, we should be able to copy music for our own use - but since it's so easy to "do the wrong thing", it needs to remain illegal. This is the logic that left speed limits at 55 mph for decades, even as drivers nationwide ignored that limit. Andrew went on to point out how copyright law just hasn't kept up with digital reality very well:

When you looked at this page, you made several copies of it without even meaning to. There’s one at your Internet Service Provider and another in the Internet Cache folder of your hard drive (Copy my website, will you?! Where are my lawyers?).

What we have is old law and practice trying very hard to stifle the new reality, in order to preserve the now (increasingly defunct) business models that were premised on scarcity.

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