from BusinessWeek [via Scripting News]
So far, there's little doubt who's winning the digital copyright wars. In the courts, the Big Five record labels have squashed Napster and copycat file-sharing services Aimster and Audio Galaxy. On Capitol Hill, Hollywood has launched a lobbying assault to pass two bills, one that would mandate copyright protection in all new consumer electronics and another that would permit copyright owners to hack into consumers' personal computers if the copyright holders suspect illegal activity. Their strategy is straightforward: Follow our rules, or we destroy you.
In theory, that could all change on Oct. 9, when the U.S. Supreme Court will hear the case of Eldred v. Ashcroft. It's a challenge to the controversial 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA), which lengthened copyright terms by 20 years, stretching them to 70 years after an artist's death.
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ARISTOTLE'S COPYRIGHT? The rise of the Internet makes such incursions all the more threatening.... That's because, technically speaking, every download is a copy, which can be tracked and restricted by the copyright holder. So while you can photocopy a chapter of author George Eliot's 1873 novel Middlemarch and give it to a friend, that's not true for newer file formats.
For example, if you try to print or copy sections of Middlemarch on an Adobe eBook Reader, you'll be informed that Adobe allows users to copy only 10 sections every 10 days. Readers of Aristotle's Politics, which as far as anyone knows was never copyrighted, aren't permitted to copy or print any text.
Now, I am a believer in copyright, because I think works that fall under copyright should be protected so that the artist in question can reap the financial benefits of her creation. That said, I'm intrigued by technology that prevents copying, and the way it could cripple the availability of eLearning in a variety of ways, especially as it relates to the "great classics" that have entered the public domain. If the software prevents or restricts the copying, rather than an attribute of the file itself, then the software is hampering the exchange of information and ideas. There needs to be a way for the copyright holder to protect her work without messing with the exchange of other public domain works.
What is that way? I don't know.
