Quote:
Originally Posted by Giggleton
I finished that free culture book on the train this morning, It's sick that we have allowed those media conglomerates such a stranglehold over the culture. The more I read, the more I view piracy as a natural right.
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If you're looking for more, Lessig's
Remix is something of a sequel to it, and Boyle's
The Public Domain: Enclosing the commons of the mind is an exploration of the legal background of copyright.
My favorite bit from The Public Domain (emphasis added):
Quote:
Imagine someone walking up to you in 1950, handing you a book or a record or a movie reel, and saying “Quick! Do something the law of intellectual property might forbid.” …You would have been hard-pressed to do so. Perhaps you could find a balky mimeograph machine, or press a reel-to-reel tape recorder into use. You might manage a single unauthorized showing of the movie—though to how many people? But triggering the law of intellectual property would be genuinely difficult. Like an antitank mine, it would not be triggered by the footsteps of individuals. It was reserved for bigger game.
This was no accident. The law of intellectual property placed its triggers at the point where commercial activity by competitors could undercut the exploitation of markets by the rights holder. Copying, performance, distribution—these were things done by other industrial entities who were in competition with the owner of the rights: other publishers, movie theaters, distributors, manufacturers. In practice, if not theory, the law was predominantly a form of horizontal industry regulation of unfair competition—made by the people in the affected industries for the people in the affected industries. The latter point is worth stressing.
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