Is copyright outdated?

There has been alot of buzz on the "internets" about an abusive, undemocratic new law which is due to go into effect in merry ol england. Here's a cut from boing boing:

"The British government has brought down its long-awaited Digital Economy Bill, and it's perfectly useless and terrible. It consists almost entirely of penalties for people who do things that upset the entertainment industry (including the "three-strikes" rule that allows your entire family to be cut off from the net if anyone who lives in your house is accused of copyright infringement, without proof or evidence or trial), as well as a plan to beat the hell out of the video-game industry with a new, even dumber rating system (why is it acceptable for the government to declare that some forms of artwork have to be mandatorily labelled as to their suitability for kids? And why is it only some media? Why not paintings? Why not novels? Why not modern dance or ballet or opera?).
So it's bad. £50,000 fines if someone in your house is accused of filesharing. A duty on ISPs to spy on all their customers in case they find something that would help the record or film industry sue them (ISPs who refuse to cooperate can be fined £250,000).
But that's just for starters. The real meat is in the story we broke yesterday: Peter Mandelson, the unelected Business Secretary, would have to power to make up as many new penalties and enforcement systems as he likes. And he says he's planning to appoint private militias financed by rightsholder groups who will have the power to kick you off the internet, spy on your use of the network, demand the removal of files or the blocking of websites, and Mandelson will have the power to invent any penalty, including jail time, for any transgression he deems you are guilty of. And of course, Mandelson's successor in the next government would also have this power.
What isn't in there? Anything about stimulating the actual digital economy. Nothing about ensuring that broadband is cheap, fast and neutral. Nothing about getting Britain's poorest connected to the net. Nothing about ensuring that copyright rules get out of the way of entrepreneurship and the freedom to create new things. Nothing to ensure that schoolkids get the best tools in the world to create with, and can freely use the publicly funded media -- BBC, Channel 4, BFI, Arts Council grantees -- to make new media and so grow up to turn Britain into a powerhouse of tech-savvy creators. "

So scary it seems like its not real.

Here's an interesting comment to this article by bencollier on boing boing. His take on this has to do with the fact copyright and enforcing copyright is futile due to the level of technology and how easy it is to copy things:

"The laws, and the society being shaped by those laws, has ceased to be a reflection of scientific reality.
This isn't just about this one (ridiculous) piece of legislation. It's about the fact that copyright exists at all in an age when I can reproduce anything I find online with the same ease that I might whistle the tune I hear from a bird in the woods.
It's about the fact that everywhere I go I'm bombarded with psychological warfare from massive corporate entities whose only goal is self-perpetuation.
It's about the fact that the media are so devoted to shifting units that they don't report news any more, they concoct it, to serve an industry that deals in selling worthless goods attached to the images of manufactured phantoms whose appearances are graphically altered to make them appear impossibly perfect.
The whole thing has to come down, all of it."

Futile attempts at controlling us and our free stufs from the pirate bay. Silly goverments, free movies are something that keeps jobless masses of discouraged(no jobs), disenfranchised(no jobs), uneducated(college costs too much) people from organizing mass revolutions and lynching the uber class. If somebody is downloading free movies, they will watch them and be happy and forget their worries for an hour and half. In this economy, not too many unemployed citizens have $50 to spend on a video game or blue ray flick. Did disney not make enough profits this year to let the poor folks have some entertainment? I guess thats besides the point because we will download and watch whatever is out there anyways dammit. Long live the free stuffs!!