Can we ever have too much copyright protection?

Yes. The Federal government has gotten way too big, and our copyright law is a symptom of the expansion in the size and scope of the federal government.

_Today copyright law is seen by many as a form of corporate welfare 
that hurts innovation and hurts the consumer. It is a system that picks winners and losers, and the losers are new industries that could generate new wealth and added value.  We frankly may have no idea how it actually hurts innovation, because we don't know what isn't able to be produced as a result of our current system._

In fact, it's not about the growth of big government, it's about the evolution from a democracy into a corporatocracy where big business interests control the levers of power. 

Reshared post from +Lauren Weinstein

The House Republican Study Committee issued a remarkably interesting brief on intellectual property yesterday — then suddenly withdrew it it today!   Why?   Follow the money!  In any case, I preserved a copy of the original report, and have marked it so that there can be no confusion about the fact that the RSC has disowned it (see below for RSC letter): http://lauren.vortex.com/WITHDRAWN-Republican-Study-Committee-Intellectual-Property-Brief.pdf
– – –
From: Teller, Paul
Sent: Saturday, November 17, 2012 04:11 PM
Subject: RSC Copyright PB 

We at the RSC take pride in providing informative analysis of major policy issues and pending legislation that accounts for the range of perspectives held by RSC Members and within the conservative community. Yesterday you received a Policy Brief on copyright law that was published without adequate review within the RSC and failed to meet that standard. Copyright reform would have far-reaching impacts, so it is incredibly important that it be approached with all facts and viewpoints in hand. As the RSC’s Executive Director, I apologize and take full responsibility for this oversight. Enjoy the rest of your weekend and a meaningful Thanksgiving holiday…. 

Paul S. Teller
Executive Director
U.S. House Republican Study Committee
Paul.Teller@mail.house.gov
http://republicanstudycommittee.com

Reshared post from +Dan Gillmor

House Republicans liked the idea of serious copyright reform, but it looks like they also report to Hollywood when push comes to shove.

Reshared post from +Denise Howell

Tip/request for the +YouTube team:  "That content is not in the video" — i.e., this is a false positive — should be an option when an upload "matches third party content."  There's no such option.

After earning my engineering degree, I went to work at what was then Delco Moraine NDH (it later became Delphi and got spun off from +General Motors) on anti-lock brake systems. Amazingly my first assignments were working on the ABS for the Elan and the race version of the Esprit known as the X180R. What more could a young, freshly minted engineer ask for than to work on a pair of Lotus sports cars?

The Elan was a first in many ways for Lotus, reviving the name of one of the company's classics for its first ever front wheel drive model. Roger Becker, Ken Miles and the other chassis wizards at Hethel came up with some brilliant solutions to the problem of using the same axle to do propulsion and steering. If you hopped in and didn't know which end was providing the tractive effort and pushed the Elan around a track, you might not guess that it wasn't rear drive. This was mainly due to a rear suspension geometry that incorporated some passive steering by toeing in under side loading. 

As fun as the Elan was drive, it was unfortunately expensive to build despite the Isuzu turbo-four under the hood and even with its $40,000 price tag, Lotus still lost money on every example they sold. As a result Lotus ended up cancelling the Elan after just three years of production. That decision came about five weeks before the ABS system I worked on started production so the only ABS equipped Elans were the handful of development prototypes and about a dozen pilot production examples. 

It's a shame that the Elan went away prematurely, but the result was that Lotus regrouped and returned to the their roots to create the Elise a few years later without which Lotus probably wouldn't be with us today. 

Slo-mo basset hounds FTW!

Reshared post from +ze frank

at least we can all agree on some things

Enough already. The USPTO needs to stop granting these ridiculous patents, judges need to invalidate all existing ones throwing out lawsuits based on them and consumers need to stop supporting the system by buying this stuff. 

Reshared post from +Atheist ®

~John

Among the obsolete sites that are still living even if they are no longer maintained is the official site of Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign.