Z:gnu-www-ja-copyright-versus-community-2000--f8b7b1-But the publishers are trying/en

But the publishers are trying to do exactly the opposite. At exactly the time when the public's interest is to keep part of the freedom to use it, the publishers are passing laws which make us give up more freedom. You see copyright was never intended to be an absolute monopoly on all the uses of a copyright work. It covered some uses and not others, but in recent times the publishers have been pushing to extend it further and further. Ending up most recently with things like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the US which they are also trying to turn into a treaty through the World Intellectual Property Organisation which is essentially an organisation representing the owners of copyrights and patents and which works to try to increase their power, and pretends to be doing so in the name of humanity rather than in the name of these particular companies.