Republicans Briefly Make Sense On IP

Republicans were briefly saying things that made sense about intellectual property law this weekend.  Then, they swiftly realized their error and recanted.

On Saturday the House Republican Study Committee released a radical but sensible position paper on copyright that called for limiting statutory damages (which are typically far higher than actual damages), expanding fair use exceptions, punishing false copyright claims and limiting terms.  . . . Mike Masnick and Cory Doctorow called the report “a watershed moment,” and there was lots of discussion on twitter and elsewhere about how this represented a Republican move towards recapturing youth and reasserting support for markets and innovation over business interests.

Alas, it was not to be. Within 24 hours the report was yanked. It doesn’t take much inside knowledge to guess what happened It does give me some pleasure, however, to say that you can still read the report courtesy of the Maryland Pirates.
 

From here.