Some additional thoughts on copyright, sparked by the Eldred v. Ashcroft case:
Do we really need to have copyright?
Notice the point was not to promote large incomes for authors and inventors, much less for media conglomerates or patent attorneys. The government only got involved because of the general benefits that flow from innovation and creativity.
There’s the old saying that good artists copy and great artists steal, and that’s not based on outright theft, but the acknowledgement that we are all influenced by others’ work, and things like hip hop music and photoshop collages point out how great new art can be created when combining other works into new works.
Riding Along With The Internet Bookmobile
“Universal access to human knowledge is what we as a culture and as parents need to do, and we’re screwing up. Ninety-eight percent of all books are inaccessible to my child for any amount of money,” Kahle says, as we pull into Urbana, Ill. Ninety-eight percent of all books in copyright are “terminally” out of print, according to estimates by Lawrence Lessig, professor of law at Stanford University and lead attorney for the plaintiffs in the Eldred case. Universal access to human knowledge? The law is designed to prevent access to knowledge — at least the human knowledge that no longer earns its keep in bookstores and movie theaters.
