David Malki explains it all...
Well, maybe not all. But he does show us an interesting glimpse into the history of copyright in the US.
Ever since the SOPA/PIPA blackout last month - which I am pleased to report performed precisely as designed; score one for democracy! - I’ve been consumed with curiosity about the precedent for both this type of lawmaking and this type of protest.
It’s a bit of a cliché at this point to point out that the Walt Disney Company essentially owns American copyright law; whenever Mickey Mouse (created in 1928) threatens to move, over time, into the public domain, Disney has lobbied Congress to extend the legal span of copyright. So within progressive circles, copyright has been often been regarded as a weapon that corporations wield against culture. For example, although SOPA and PIPA are dead for now, a proposed international copyright treaty - ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement - has already been signed by the United States and is currently making the rounds in Europe. Negotiated completely in secret in closed sessions between lawmakers and media corporations, it is considered by some to be even more dangerous to a free and open Internet than SOPA/PIPA.
So in researching historical precedents, I was intrigued to read the following, in an 1877 collection of essays by Nathaniel Southgate Shaler:
What did he read that was so intriguing? Better follow this link to find out! And then poke around his site, because he is the creator of one of the most consistently funny web comics, and a true artist of collage from the public domain.
Read his two posts on the history of US copyright thought, copy out useful quotations, email them to those charlatans posing as your representatives.
Ever since the SOPA/PIPA blackout last month - which I am pleased to report performed precisely as designed; score one for democracy! - I’ve been consumed with curiosity about the precedent for both this type of lawmaking and this type of protest.
It’s a bit of a cliché at this point to point out that the Walt Disney Company essentially owns American copyright law; whenever Mickey Mouse (created in 1928) threatens to move, over time, into the public domain, Disney has lobbied Congress to extend the legal span of copyright. So within progressive circles, copyright has been often been regarded as a weapon that corporations wield against culture. For example, although SOPA and PIPA are dead for now, a proposed international copyright treaty - ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement - has already been signed by the United States and is currently making the rounds in Europe. Negotiated completely in secret in closed sessions between lawmakers and media corporations, it is considered by some to be even more dangerous to a free and open Internet than SOPA/PIPA.
So in researching historical precedents, I was intrigued to read the following, in an 1877 collection of essays by Nathaniel Southgate Shaler:
What did he read that was so intriguing? Better follow this link to find out! And then poke around his site, because he is the creator of one of the most consistently funny web comics, and a true artist of collage from the public domain.
Read his two posts on the history of US copyright thought, copy out useful quotations, email them to those charlatans posing as your representatives.