Just what would Henry Adams have thought about the copyright controversy–to be exact, copyright’s sometimes-harmful effect on the spread of uppity ideas or muck about politicians and bureaucrats? Here’s a little clue from The Education of Henry Adams, where he recalled his struggle to place an important business-and-political expose:
…Any expression in an English review attracted ten times the attention in America that the same article would attract in The North American. Habitually the American dailies reprinted such articles in full. Adams wanted to escape the terrors of copyright, his highest ambition was to be pirated and advertised free of charge, since in any case, his pay was nothing.
Methinks Adams might have heartily approved of Creative Commons. While I’m pro-copyright, and while writers need to be paid for work on which they depend for their livelihoods, there should also be provisions for situations such as Adams’ when he was writing about the conspiracy of Jay Gould and Jim Fisk to take over the gold market.
How I empathize with Adams in his eagerness to communicate heart-felt ideas and subversive information–for free, if need be. In most cases, our media monopolies aren’t exactly panging for detailed looks at copyright gouges and the related campaign finances of Hollywood-owned politicians. As far as I know, the Detroit papers never picked up my little TeleBlog item about the entertainment industry’s $49,859 investment in Detroit Rep. John Conyers for the 2002 election cycle–which I mentioned in the context of the bill he cosponsored to provide a possible $250K penalty or five years in prison for sharing a single file. I even phoned a Washington political writer for the Detroit News and gave her the email address of a nationally recognized legal expert at Wayne State.
Oh, well. This is why people blog without financial rewards–and why we need to protect fair use, pre-authorized reproduction in noncommercial situations, and other concepts that go along with “free” in both the economic and political senses of the word.
"The "competition" is the small publisher and independent author, who can sell online independently of Amazon (and anyone else)... But who struggle to achieve presence ..."
"Stanislav - "I am confused by “Howard”‘s reply. This is the RETAILERS talking about boycotts, yet he is responding to the publishers!"
Are you seriously saying ..."
Just what would Henry Adams have thought about the copyright controversy–to be exact, copyright’s sometimes-harmful effect on the spread of uppity ideas or muck about politicians and bureaucrats? Here’s a little clue from The Education of Henry Adams, where he recalled his struggle to place an important business-and-political expose:
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