Technically Legal

We discussed this book before, but I just finished reading William Patry’s Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars. It’s fantastic. You can read his related blog too.

I think this book is pretty much required reading for anyone who wants to intelligently engage in modern copyright discussion, but to give you a teaser, and to sum up the thesis of the book, I give you this blockquote:

Copyright industries fail to innovate but are saved but others who do. Resenting the success of the innovator, copyright owners then claim that the innovator’s success is caused solely by the value provided by the copyright owner. The innovator is described metaphorically as a parasite, fattening itself off of copyright owners. The solution put forth is for the innovator to disgorge a health share of its profits to copyright owners (who, left to their own devices, would have starved to death decades ago). After such economic castration, innovations are no longer regarded as a threat but rather as one more dependable source of income feeding the beast.

I will warn, the book has a rather high frequency of typos, though only a few factual errors.

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