Re: Paul Krugman holds forth on the future of publishing

My question:
>> First, what are the artificial restrictions?
>
Lee Passey:
> Copyright law.

All societal covenants are, in that way, artificial restrictions. In  
this case, artificial doesn't necessarily mean bad. I'm rather fond  
of the rule of law, in general, and given the alternatives.

If we were to argue that the international community should have made  
copyright shorter, I'd be right there with you. I, personally, think  
that life plus 70 is waay over the top, but I also like the idea of  
co-operating with other countries.

As for the argument that the ease of dissemination will remove any  
ability to enforce IP rights, I can only say that I think a society  
that can't enforce those rights will soon have very large problems.  
We will be the poorer for it if art is only produced by amateurs, or  
only comes with advertising attached, but we'll really be in  
practical trouble if our flood of invention and technological  
improvements dries up.

I still believe that the best DRM is social expectations. We need to  
change those that say it's okay to use someone else's work without  
permission simply because it's easy. After all, most of us wouldn't  
dream of taking someone else's physical property simply because we can.

Marion Gropen
Gropen Associates, Inc.
www.GropenAssoc.com
Offering Financial Advice By-The-Question,
Downloadable Profit-Enhancing Tools,
and Classes to the Small Press Community.




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