Re: No surprise - Pirates want free stuff.
Quote: No surprise - Pirates want free stuff.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
I did not notice the report saying anything about free. Based on what I have read so far it is very clear that all it wants is an equality of rights between man and machine for reading and an equality of rights and obligations between physical and electronic content.
One of the reasons why modern civilization is where it is now is the Statute of Anne. If it was not for it, science and technology would be (probably) at least 100 year back from where it is today.
What the publishers want is to roll back the clock 400 years and return us to the days of Bloody Mary and the Licensing Act of 1662 which gave the publisher more or less unlimited rights _INCLUDING_ the right of ownership of content. No thanks - we tried it. It results in:
1. A guaranteed publisher monopoly
2. New content not being published because the publisher is perfectly happy reprinting old shite which it owns
3. Lack of reimbursement of content creators because all the money ends up with the publishers.
Sounds familiar, does not it?
Over the last 20 years digital publishers have managed to roll back half of the Statute of Anne (and whatever is copied from it to other country legislations) provisions to the days of Bloody Mary for digital content. I am not surprised that [insert your publisher trade body] is screaming murder here. They screamed murder in 1710 when the Statute of Anne was drafted and enacted too. After all who would give away voluntarily a jolly good combination of monopoly, entitlement to violate fair use and contract law with an icing of criminalization of what should be civil offences on top.
We know what is the endgame of this - no thanks. Time to redress it and apply what was already applied once to redress it 300 years ago. Nothing more, nothing less. RTFL (Read the Fine Law).
Biting the hand that feeds IT
