Question Copyright? OK.

Glyn Moody's post, 'Towards a Post-Copyright World', intrigued me. The world is creating more music, writing and images than ever before. Litigation costs are through the roof. Lessig said to fire more lawyers (Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity (2004)). Copy protection mechanisms are always bypassed.

You don't have to be a lawyer to notice that stuff's broken, but it certainly helps. Lawyers seem to be doing just fine last time I checked.

So I ended up at QuestionCopyright, and reading what Glyn suggested - The Promise of a Post-Copyright World. Here, let me dose you with something from the article:

...The first copyright law was a censorship law. It had nothing to do with protecting the rights of authors, or encouraging them to produce new works. Authors' rights were in no danger in sixteenth-century England, and the recent arrival of the printing press (the world's first copying machine) was if anything energizing to writers. So energizing, in fact, that the English government grew concerned about too many works being produced, not too few. The new technology was making seditious reading material widely available for the first time, and the government urgently needed to control the flood of printed matter, censorship being as legitimate an administrative function then as building roads...

That runs contrary to what I've read - but it makes sense. What I'd read was that authors were having their stuff ripped off by anyone with a printing press, but then - thinking about it, governments haven't really been very big at supporting creators of content, and I doubt that a starving creator on bended knee influenced the government enough. Suddenly the law being originally about censorship makes sense.

Whether you agree with it or not, the article should at the least provoke some brain cells to break from the bran flavored stupor that they may be soaking in.

Reading up on the FAQ, I'm impressed with the level of thinking involved over there - it's not the guttersmack stuff, it's free thinking which is written well.

Question Copyright? OK. Will be reading that site some more. Thanks Glyn.