Re: NY Times Ethicist Condones Ripping Off E-books

From: "Robotech_Master" 

<snip>
It's not surprising there are a lot of misconceptions about copyright.
It's grown dense and tangled over the years, until it's practically an
arcane and mystic art. Even some copyright lawyers are calling for it
to be reformed and simplified:

http://www.teleread.org/2010/03/22/jessica-litman-calls-for-copyright-reform/
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/cleaning-the-barnacles-from-the-ss-copyright.ars
-- 
Chris Meadows aka         | WWW: http://www.terrania.us      | Somebody
Robotech_Master           | ICQ: 5477383  AIM: RoboMastr     | help, I'm
[email protected] | Skype, LJ-Gizmo: Robotech_Master | trapped in
[email protected]        | Facebook: Robotech.Master        | a sig file!


There certainly is some confusion.

I was taken aback this weekend to find that both Professor James Boyle and The Economist show an appalling ignorance of the reasons for the 1710 act, and its place in the unfolding from total central control to the freely available and affordable access to entertainment and information today.

The Queen Anne Act, among other things, transferred the nominal power over a creative work from the publisher to the creator. This was an important shift in freedom and recognition of natural and obvious ownership. However, the realities remained that the cost of producing and selling were generally too great for a creator. But they could at least argue the contract. 

By the nineteenth century the moves to give the creator better control led to authors in Europe - led by the French - imitating the convention for patents and signing the Berne Convention. Soon the two joined forces under the IP umbrella. And the term in early Berne was life plus 50 [which surprised me when I learnt it!].

Some in the 'freedom for free' movement think that the Queen Anne Act was the start of restriction. This is to reverse the truth. Even before printing the Vatican excercised total control over copying, ideas and expression. The move away was with the creation of the Church of England, when the restriction on non-religious drama and writing was lifted in England, and the flowering of Shakespeare and his contemporaries gave us a golden age of ideas to use ;-)! [Though a lot of those came from the Bible - as do a lot of Hollywood plots.]

Improvements in technology and education over one and a half millennia have given us now an incredible level of access. I have my doubts whether changes in copyright will actually alter that one way or the other. What the wrong moves will bring about, I believe, is a greater control by corporations - which takes us back to pre-Queen Anne, not forward.

Joseph

Joseph Harris - Debt Control Man
http://www.controlyourdebtcrisis.co.uk
Author: Control Your Debt Crisis on Your Own Terms
http://twitter.com/debtcontrolman 
SAQ - SAve the cheQue


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