Copyright law has been around since the invention of printing in the 15th century. Since then it has gone through many changes and iterations, however it hasn't completely adapted to the Digital Revolution of the last couple of decades. "The Case for Copyright Reform" by Rick Falkvinge and Christian Engström has some proposed changes to address this.
First of all they would like to keep the recognition of authors untouched. An author of a work should be recognized as such. This isn't a controversial statement and I agree with it. Secondly a change to non-commercial sharing of copyrighted materials is proposed. They say that only commercial sharing should be regulated. I wouldn't agree with this point if they hadn't made another point about privacy earlier. Namely you wouldn't be able to determine if something being shared was protected by copyright without spying on the conversations of users. Therefore, you couldn't enforce this and keep the privacy of the users.
Next, the time that copyright is in use for a given media should be shortened from the life of the author plus 70 years to 20 years after publication. Clearly another good proposition since currently, by the time the copyright expires for an author's works, that author is probably forgotten by most people. How many authors can you remember that have passed over 70 years ago? How many works of them can you name and how much is the public and investors interested in them. This change has to be made.
An improved system for finding authors of any works is proposed. Since it's common for works not to have authors connected to them, making finding authors sometimes impossible. This would give new life to works that otherwise couldn't be used, thus making this another excellent proposition that I agree with.
I can't really relate to the point about sampling. The authors say that sampling, remixing or in other ways reusing a work should be completely allowed. I would say that it is better to be original than to reuse material, I understand that sampling has a place. However it is the authors' opinions that it should be completely allowed without asking for permission. I believe that with the new system for discovering authors that was proposed you can easily discover any given author and ask for permission that way.
Finally a ban on DRM is proposed. I wholeheartedly agree with this one. DRM has only hurt legitimate users by ruining their experience. Usually an illegitimate copy of a work with DRM removed can give a better experience than something legitimate. DRM is a terrible technology that only gives headaches to end users and should be banned as the authors state.
Sources:
http://falkvinge.net/wp-content/uploads/large/The%20Case%20For%20Copyright%20Reform%20(2012)%20Engstrom-Falkvinge.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Revolution
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