Re: The day apple and amazon hate holden caulfield

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "David P. Reed" <dpreed () reed com>
Date: March 11, 2010 8:56:51 PM EST
To: dave () farber net
Cc: ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
Subject: Re: [IP] Re: The day apple and amazon hate holden caulfield

I wonder if those of us who are "old" are missing the point here.  If copyright becomes the ultimate arbiter of 
cultural norms, and every day I think it's becoming clearer that it will, let's imagine the future we have bequeathed 
to our grandchildren.

Every high-school teacher will have to clear copyrights in order to quote a line from Arthur Miller's play, The 
Crucible.

In order to write a history paper, each high school student will have to track down the owner of every primary source 
and secondary source document that they cite phrases from, get clearances, and perhaps pay modest royalties.

In order to practice the piano, or play "chopsticks" in a recital, every student will have to license the performance 
rights to the pieces.

In order to debate policy, each political candidate must gain permission from his/her opponents to quote their past 
speeches, in order to discuss their opponents views.

All in the name of protecting the "intellectual property" of people who utter or scribe marks on paper.

This is so far from the law of copyright created, not to protect authors, but in fact, to protect the profits of 
printers who had a high capital cost, which the Kings desired to protect as a matter of policy.

However, when printing and digital transmission became cheap, with very low capital expenditure, we made up the fiction 
that somehow the protection for printers was really a protection for "authors".

Despite the fact that authors since the beginning of time had been creating just fine, without Kingly protection of 
their "property".

And scientists had happily created large amounts of human knowledge and know-how, without the protection of "property".

I guess the 21st century is full of people who hate science, hate culture, but worship Mammon.





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