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Yet Another Study Shows How Copyright Can Hinder The Spread Of Knowledge
- tzs 16y agoThe article fails to make clear that the article it is describing compared Germany and the UK in the mid 1800s. Back in those days copying technology was slow and expensive, and books earned most of their money quickly after publication. Some have argued (including Stephen Breyer, who later became a Supreme Court justice: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Uneasy_Case_for_Copyright http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Uneasy_Case_for_Copyright) that because of this, book pirates could not get their works out fast enough to cause a significant impact on the sales of the original, and so there was little need for copyright. The key word there is "was". Copying technology has improved somewhat in the last 150 years. Given that copying technology was limited in the mid 1800s, it seems unlikely that the differences in copyright law between the UK and Germany had much impact on the difference in literary output. It was far more likely to have been cultural. Wasn't Germany also outproducing the UK at the time in science, mathematics, music, chess, and philosophy? Only one of those might have been affected by copyright laws, and so it seems more likely that the greater German literary output was due to the same factors that gave them greater output in most intellectual pursuits. You can still see this kind of thing today. For example, compare the New Orleans Jazz scene to the Fresno, CA Jazz scene. Copyright laws are the same in both cities. New Orleans has just developed as a more music-oriented culture than Fresno.