Nigel Hamilton wrote: > I think Lawrence Lessig and Richard Stallman should think a little > more about their audience.
I think Lessig does very well at targetting his audience. > Yes ... we all read books and listen to music ... but a great > majority of us are also authors - we write web pages, emails, manuals, > specs, books, talks and programs (esp). I'm all in favour of copyright law as a means to protect the works of the author. I'm not suggesting anything otherwise. My (Larry's) point is that it should be as it originally was, a "Copy Right, Publish Wrong" law which allows you to make copies (in the sense of backup copy) of a work but not publish them (in the sense of a copy to give to someone else). This doesn't affect the rights of the author in any way and additionally protects the rights of the consumer to make a backup copy, for example. Copyright law has become a "Copy Never" law. This is clearly nonsensical because it prevents us from legally using NFS, web browsers, etc., that technically copy a work to display it. Because copying is so easy, the content providers are now trying to fix the hardware to make it harder to copy anything without the right level of "trust" (in the sense of "trusted computing", i.e. trusting Microsoft). They can do this because they have a law which says "you shall not copy" to back them up. The law has been corrupted. Copyright was never, and should never be about restricting the physical act of copying part of a work. It is what you do with the copy that matters, not the fact that you made a copy. Anyway, I think I've said my piece on copyright law now. Read Lessig's article if you haven't already. He *is* a lawyer and knows more about it than I ever will. A
