When you create something in artistic format such as a piece of writing or music, you automatically get protection to use that creation how you wish without anyone necessarily being able to use it without your permission. This protection is known as copyright and allows the author to exploit their hard work and try and make money from it. The format that you create the piece of work determines how long the protection lasts for – it is not forever – and this duration has been at the heart of some quite strong discussion recently.

Looking specifically at music, to quote the Patent Office website:

Copyright exists in your original music composition or score for your life plus 70 years from the end of the year of your death. The same length of time applies for the lyrics, whereas the sound recording only lasts for 50 years from the end of the year in which it was made or, if published in this time, 50 years from the end of the year of publication. If not published during that 50 year period, but it is played in public or communicated to the public during that period, then copyright will last for 50 years from when this happens.

A socialist might ask why is there a duration at all whilst a capitalist would ask why is it not longer? The two extremes, whilst not really a fair description of the representatives of the two sides of the argument, do allow some form of reasoning to be applied to a) why there is a duration at all and b) why the number of years is set as it is.

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Today I was impressed by the government. It doesn’t happen often, but today it did. What was impressed by? I was linked to an online petition through the Open Rights Group I am a member of, hosted by the Downing Street website. I went on to discover that the website is running a trial of an online, automated petition system that allows any British Citizen to submit a petition to Downing Street and let any other British Citizen electronically sign it.

Petitions have long been sent to the Prime Minister by post or delivered to the Number 10 door in person. You can now both create and sign petitions on this website too, giving you the opportunity to reach a potentially wider audience and to deliver your petition directly to Downing Street.

The system is run by mySociety and the software used is open source and can be downloaded by anyone.

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David Mytton is having a kind of themed week on his blog. On Monday, today and Friday he is posting a discussion/analysis of certain moral questions interspaced by two posts yesterday and tomorrow with business advice.

On Monday the topic was:

Is there any difference between lying to someone and withholding something from someone?

and today the post is:

If a friend did something illegal, would you inform the appropriate authorities?

The latest post by Geeklawyer, specifically the first paragraph, caused me to think about the differences between inciting hatred and violence.

Geeklawyer is glad that the ultra right wing extremist British National Party (BNP) leader Nick Griffin was acquitted of charges of using words or behaviour intended to stir up racial hatred. He is of the view that only speech which incites, or is genuinely immediately likely to do so, violence & discrimination should be unlawful. If hating $(todays_unpopular_group) is lawful, and even this government is not proposing to make it illegal to hate Muslims, then inciting hatred should not be an offence either. Inciting violence yes, inciting opinions no. Criminalising incitement because it makes it easier to prevent violence is not the answer since it has knock on effects on free speech.

What is basically being said here is that hate is a feeling and/or opinion – it is not something physical and is many cases results in no detriment to the hated object so far as physical action is concerned. In the UK we have the right to free speech and so we can enjoy hating whatever or whoever we want without fear of being arrested. Even when the hatred is voiced it still counts as opinion and we still have the right to freely say what we want.

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…the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion;

This is an interesting quote from a treaty with Tripoli, drafted in 1796 under George Washington and signed by John Adams in 1797 (the first president and vice president respectively) because the common perception is that America is perhaps the most religious country in the world. This may or may not be correct, but as the BBC reported:

A survey done in 2001 by the City University of New York Graduate Center found that 85% of Americans identify with some religious faith. In contrast, in Canada and the United Kingdom, two societies often perceived as quite similar to the United States, only 28% and 17% respectively described religion as similarly important in their lives.

This clearly presents us with a paradox – despite the founding of the USA as a secular country, religion has far more of a part in daily life than in England where the entire constitution is based around a central church, a monarch as head of state and religion influencing many aspects of society including law and education.

Over the last few weeks I have been reading the latest book by Richard Dawkins, Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. Previously, I have read The Blind Watchmaker which goes into great biological detail about evolution, with the specific intention of countering creationism – and it does a very good job. So based on my experiences with that title, I immediately purchased a copy of The God Delusion which takes aspects from all of his books and presents them in a logical format in order to completely disprove religion.

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