It's funny, in the whole copyleft=communism debate there's been a lot of 'CC is communist," "No, extreme copyright is communist!" But the fact is that neither are particularily communistic. Many of copyleft's advocates have an anti-corporate agenda, but many others believe in copyright reform because they support the rights of entrepreneurs to enter the market with new products without the say-so of the incumbents; that's not communist, it's practically libertarian.
But neither is copyright maximalism communist (in the USSR, the state held all the copyright and made certain works available without compensating their authors, and suppressed other works by claiming the exclusive right to reproduce them).
Copyright maximalism is *feudal* -- it is the descendant of the old system where the Roi would grant a favoured courtier the exlusive right to produce silver thread, or silk ribbons, or pipe organs.
It's the specific evil that the US Constitution's framers had in mind when they wrote the "limited times" and "to promote the useful arts and sciences" language into the Copyright Clause.
Just yankin' yer chain, dude. You're doing good stuff.
(Another Phoenix Guards book is good news, too.)
Ooooh, a new Taltos novel!
Back to work, you. Stop blogging! You owe me an editorial letter! Posterity awaits!
Don't forget "House of the Rising Sun" to the tune of "Gilligan's Island."
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| 2005 | 2 |
| 2003 | 5 |
| 2002 | 9 |
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