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So, is this article interesting because it comes from The Economist? I think most of us here have been reading copyright law analysis and critique that's far be
by chbarts 17y ago
So, is this article interesting because it comes from The Economist? I think most of us here have been reading copyright law analysis and critique that's far beyond this since before the DMCA was passed.
- lutorm 17y agoOne of my yardsticks is that when the Economist supports something, it's clear that those that claim that it would be "bad for business/bad for the market" are no longer to be believed.
- jsankey 17y agoAlthough the analysis in the Economist is excellent, they can still get it wrong. Perhaps not in this case, but often, there are valid counter-arguments which are worth listening to.
- dkimball 17y agoI agree. When it was Lawrence Lessig saying this, there was a certain note of the crank about the idea (very much increased by the performance of Michael Hart of Project Gutenberg in the lead-up to _Eldred v. Ashcroft_). But when the world's magazine of record says it, it's as mainstream as UNICEF. (Not that being as mainstream as UNICEF is necessarily a good thing.) That's how changes to the world normally occur: not through a revolutionary minority, but through the development of a consensus which serves as a suitable powder keg. Look at British and French SF from the twenty years before WWI, for example.
- anamax 17y ago> One of my yardsticks is that when the Economist supports something, it's clear that those that claim that it would be "bad for business/bad for the market" are no longer to be believed. What's the basis for that belief? Surely it's not "biz survived" because biz can survive things that are bad for them. Also, the flourishing of other biz doesn't imply that some biz wasn't hurt. For example, criminalization of morphine (early last century in the US) hurt legal drug retailers.