Edward Felten Quotes

Vigorous enforcement of copyrights themselves is an important part of the picture. But I don’t think that expanding the legal definition of copyright outside of actual copyright infringement is the right move.

The question is not whether we want to keep this open, neutral Internet – we do, or should – but whether government rulemaking can give us the result we want.

In making policy designed with copyright in mind, you end up making decisions about whether other important technologies, such as privacy-enhancing or file-search technologies, should be encouraged or discouraged. A collision is happening between creativity and protecting IP.

Given that you’ll never be able to prevent copying, the question is, what can you do to minimize it? What can you do to make consumers happy enough with legitimate use of the system that they’ll be willing to pay for it?

Even if there were no illegal copying, the advent of digital distribution will put a lot of stress on the movie and music industry. When the distribution costs comes down, that puts more price pressure on the rest of the cost.