copyright category archive

Slashdot Copyright Discussion (re: Gowers Report and Dead Artist Petition)

Slashdot has a story picked up from Lawrence Lessig about the Gowers report and resulting petition signed in part by dead artists. There is this comment by “Toby the Economist”:

If I’m a painter, and I create a great work of art, does it pass into the public domain after n years?

If I’m a programmer, and I create a wonderful piece of software, does it pass into the public domain after n years?

If I’m a singer, and I create a great song, does it pass into the public domain after n years?

Oh. It does. Erm, why?

It’s basically judicial theft.

The ethical rule is this; if you make something, it belongs to you, and you can do what you want with it - and that includes handing it

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Makin’ Copies! ‘The Promise of a Post-Copyright World’

Remember the Richmeister character from SNL? One of Rob Schneider’s recurring characters. The sketches were funny, although it was the kind of potent stuff that quickly got overplayed.

The catchphrase–Makin’ Copies!–occurred to me today in the wake of several things I’ve been reading about copying. When I looked around I found this transcript that made me smile. (And made me miss Phil Hartman.)

Anyway, it occurs to me to think about what a great thing it is to be able to make copies. Perfect copies. Today of digital information, tomorrow of physical objects. I’m amazed and dismayed at how threatening this is to so many people, and how they would like to restrict and …

Architecture of Annoyance

This isn’t so much an Architectures of Control kind of item, but Dan Lockton’s post about his Epson printer made me think about my own annoyance with my HP scanner. Let’s call it an Architecture of Annoyance.

First, continuing on the pecuniary theme of a recent post, please indulge me in telling you about how I came to own the HP ScanJet 2400. Warning: The story contains a personal revelation of possible copyright infringement. (The copyright musing sprouted all kinds of shoots and leaves, but seems appropriate for a post about optical scanners.)

I don’t have sophisticated scanning needs. I previously owned some cheapo Astra scanner that worked adequately although clunkily and finally went kerplunk while I was scanning a book I had picked up from the library.

Copyright: Danger!

Oh, oh. …

Free Culture: An ‘Inside the Slush Pile’ Exclusive!

In the first installment of this series, I promised to lend my keen insight to a comparison between the old print publishing business and the new online publishing business. What qualifies me to perform this service? Well, I have limited experience in the traditional publishing industry, having garnered forty-two rejections on five short stories over a two year period, and I have a blog that’s all of two months old.

Who could possibly be more qualified to pontificate on the subject?

(Do rejected stories count towards publishing industry experience? Or is that just editorial experience? In either case, don’t worry, you will receive the benefit of my wisdom.)

Also as promised last time, and …

Eeyore is Dead

Originally published in Free Software Magazine.

No, not Winnie-the-Pooh’s friend, but that computer I mentioned last week. Do you feel cheated? Maybe you were expecting a murder mystery instead? Although Eeyore the donkey seems more like the died-of-natural-causes type. Let me briefly eulogize Eeyore the computer before wandering erratically to a new subject: copyright control.

Eeyore-the-Computer is dead

My plan to install Ubuntu on an old computer named Eeyore didn’t go so well. I finally sat down Friday night (I know: life in the fast lane) to give it a go and it turns out the machine is totally dead now. Disconnected all the drives and still couldn’t get to the BIOS. As is …

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I was simmering, simmering, simmering. Emerson brought me to a boil.”– Walt Whitman
A while back, a coworker lent me a book called Self-Reliance, “The Wisdom of Ralph Waldo Emerson as Inspiration for Daily Living.” Edited and introduced by Richard Whelan, who says that he loves Emerson’s essays and has read them many times over the years but found eventually he could get the same and even better experience by just reading the many sections he had underlined over the years. He writes:

I came to think of the essays as gardens in which the underlined passages were magnificent flowers — and all the rest a rampant and choking growth of nineteenth-century rhetorical weeds and vines that were best rooted out and cut back. It was then

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