Comments on: Copyright & The 21st Century http://agnosticmaybe.wordpress.com/2011/02/20/copyright-the-21st-century/ the neverending reference interview of life Fri, 24 May 2013 07:03:22 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: kimboosan http://agnosticmaybe.wordpress.com/2011/02/20/copyright-the-21st-century/#comment-3437 Sun, 20 Feb 2011 18:12:14 +0000 https://agnosticmaybe.wordpress.com/2011/02/20/copyright-the-21st-century/#comment-3437 We can bring copyright into the 21st century by acknowledging that it is a modern invention created by business interests to protect intellectual property for the sake of financial gain. Copyright is NOT an inherent, god-given right to any person, corporation or beast. I’m not saying it is evil or wrong, but that it has a limited, specific purpose that has been warped out of all proportion by business interests who have a strong motivation to scare the crap out of everyone by claiming that a world without copyright protection means all artists will starve. As Gaiman (and EVERY single other experiment ever done using the “give it away” gimick) has proven, free and unencumbered sharing leads to sales, not bankruptcy.

Just as information wants to be free, so do creative works. Artists need them to be free, in fact; and I say that as a published author AND an InfoSci grad student.

In my idea world (*sighhh*) librarians would not even be having this discussion. Our entire profession is designed to assist and promote the free trade of information, entertainment, and knowledge; bowing to corporate demands about copyright is antithetical to that.

Of course in RL things are more complicated than that, with distributors and providers etc. so I know that’s unlikely. But damnation, it should be our GOAL.

]]> By: Liz B http://agnosticmaybe.wordpress.com/2011/02/20/copyright-the-21st-century/#comment-3432 Sun, 20 Feb 2011 17:19:56 +0000 https://agnosticmaybe.wordpress.com/2011/02/20/copyright-the-21st-century/#comment-3432 For those interested, I’d suggest reading some of the recaps from the O’Reilly Tools of Change for publishing conference; also, some of the presentations are available online. http://www.toccon.com/toc2011

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