Re: Just-out comment on *Eldred*

List members may be interested in the commentary on *Eldred v. Ashcroft* (on the SCOTUS agenda for 9 October) just published by BusinessWeek.

"A Case to Define the Digital Age," by Jane Black, is at: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/sep2002/tc20020927_7367.htm

Okay. Read it. Digested it. Neato.

But I don't get this part:

The rise of the Internet makes such incursions all the more threatening, according to Lessig. 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.

Huh? Obviously, I can copy and re-copy .pdf files to my heart's content, outside Adobe Reader.

or, am I missing something Received on Mon Sep 30 2002 - 04:48:59 GMT