Google Sends Repeat Infringers To Copyright School 182
maczealot writes "Google is launching a new 'Copyright School' for use as a re-education tool for offenders on YouTube. The apparent purpose being to head off additional legislation, lawsuits, regulation and other negative impacts to the site. They even have campy cartoon videos for this school."
Finally. (Score:5, Interesting)
Finally, a sensible approach to copyright infringement. Instead of suing everyone in sight into oblivion, they've decided to follow the model used by traffic police. Force violators to attend "school" and try to educate them about the law and the dangers of violating it, instead of the shoot first, ask questions later approach.
I'm sure this won't work for everyone, but hopefully it will save a good number of people from being bankrupted.
Pot Calling the Kettle Black (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Finally. (Score:4, Interesting)
There are further, and quite massive differences. Speed limits are a good idea, and, barring things like speed traps, are mostly fair. They make our roads safer. We have studies showing that there are fewer fatalities when speeds are lower. Saves gas too, which was the original intent of the national 55 mph speed limit.
Copyrights on the other hand, are legal fantasies, largely unenforceable on individuals. They are blatantly unfair. They cause more harm than good. What of all the works that were removed from the public domain without any compensation whatsoever to the public, each time copyright terms were extended? Robbery! Many of us understand this about copyrights, and no cheesy "educational" film is going to persuade us otherwise. I'm sure Google understands these films are nothing more than bad jokes at best, offensive to our intelligence and common sense. The propaganda is so badly done it should be obvious to any reasonably intelligent kids. Couldn't be any better than Capt. Copyright! It's little better than forcing rape victims to watch films implying it is all their fault because they didn't dress appropriately. But if it serves to appease the idiotic copyright extremists who might well be the only people on the planet who actually believe these films will win others over, while backfiring by helping to persuade more people that copyright laws are crazy, Google likes that. And so should we.