The
original article (which the techdirt article is reviewing) points out:
Quote:
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As the Supreme Court has recognized: "The immediate effect of our copyright law is to secure a fair return for an 'author's' creative labor. But the ultimate aim is, by this incentive, to stimulate artistic creativity for the general public good."
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It goes on to say, "The misunderstanding held by many who believe that the primary purpose of copyright law is to protect authors against those who would pilfer the author's work threatens to upset the delicate equilibrium in copyright law."
I love this article. I copied it out to my Reader a while ago (week or two? something like that) as an RTF (it doesn't need fancy formatting) and intend to keep it in there permanently.
I suppose I've made an unauthorized copy and could be sued for $150,000, or whatever the current ridiculous amount is. Which is why so many people have trouble taking *any* claims of "copyright infringement" seriously--there's no technical legal difference between "copy a web article to a non-wifi mobile device" and "scan, OCR & format a library book and email it to a stranger online, who might put it up on the torrent nets."