Re: copyright under stress

On Thu, Jun 22, 2000, Edward Barrow <edward[_at_]plato32.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Jun 21, 2000, Eric Eldred <eldred[_at_]eldritchpress.org> wrote:
> >
> > But wise businesspeople ought to experiment (as Courtney Love
> > and Michael Ovitz are doing) and not rely on encryption and locks --
>
> Why should they not also experiment with encryption and locks? ...

Oh, they will. But I don't like it. It's like DIVX, a rental "pay-per-view" model that takes away fair use and reader rights. I'd much prefer a balanced model that respects copyright. Not a model that veers to the extreme to either side, and that feeds on the other extreme. It would to me be a horrible situation if the only business model the big publishers feel they can work with would be one where they had complete control over usage (and that fostered wild "piracy" on the other side). A political democracy needs to have freedom of individuals to produce and make use of these works in many ways that the copyright owners might not want. In the DIVX case, the free market could decide. I am not so sure that the publishers haven't been able to change the laws now so they can impose a similar model on us with new digital media.

-- 
"Eric"  Eric Eldred  Eldritch Press
mailto:Eldred[_at_]EldritchPress.org
http://www.eldritchpress.org/EricEldred.vcf