Reply #81: I have come to very firmly know, not believe, that the RIAA would

[Occulus]

sue you for humming one of their member's tunes in public if they thought they could get away with it.

Your story reminds me of the European analog to the RIAA; In Scotland, they're suing an auto repair shop because a stereo owned by an employee was playing a CD that employee legally purchased and DID NOT rip within hearing of other customers.

One article on this.

The same story, but a different writeup, via slashdot.

If they could transmit a signal at the end of a song that erased your memory of that song, I bet they'd do that as well.

It is things like this that make me pine for a copyright law that only lasts seven years (let's face it: if you can't make cash from your works after seven years, they're probably worthless as a product to begin with). Forget the "life of the author" bullshit; that's an infinite copyright for a whole lot of people.

It's time we took seriously the statements regarding "limited time" for copyrights. I'm for a strict, hard, and SHORT limit, after which the works automatically enter the public domain without the possibility of a copyright extension. Further, I'm also for everything available on the internet to be found to be de facto public domain; i.e., if it's online, it's free and public by definition.

That's already the practical case anyway.

Can you tell I'm deeply hostile toward our current system of copyright?