Against Perpetual Copyright
From LISNews -- "Lawrence Lessig, law professor and champion of the public domain, has created a Wiki to respond to the op-ed by Mark Helprin arguing for perpetual copyright." Click here.An interesting discussion of the purpose of copyright. I thought the closing quote from Macaulay in 1841 was right on still: "Copyright is monopoly, and produces all the effects which the general voice of mankind attributes to monopoly . . . I believe, Sir, that I may with safety take it for granted that the effect of monopoly generally is to make articles scarce, to make them dear, and to make them bad. And I may with equal safety challenge my honourable friend to find out any distinction between copyright and other privileges of the same kind; any reason why a monopoly of books should produce an effect directly the reverse of that which was produced by the East India Company's monopoly of tea, or by Lord Essex's monopoly of sweet wines. Thus, then, stands the case. It is good that authors should be remunerated; and the least exceptionable way of remunerating them is by a monopoly. Yet monopoly is an evil. For the sake of the good we must submit to the evil; but the evil ought not to last a day longer than is necessary for the purpose of securing the good." -- Thomas Babbington Macaulay, in a speech to Parliament on February 5th 1841.
posted by Linda @ 6:59 PM
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