Jimmy Wales wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
There is a
quote from the Swedish Academy's announcement of the Nobel
Prize for Steinbeck. There is a quote from Battle Hymn of The
Republic by Julia Ward Howe, explaining the title of the book.
There's a quote of Woody Guthrie's reaction to the film version of the
book.
"Battle Hymn of the Republic" was published in 1862, and is thus in the
public domain anyway.
Oops. I knew it was a Civil War song, so I feel silly. Well, the
other two are good examples anyway.
No need to feel silly. It's an all too frequent mistake that any of us
can make. Unfortunately, it's the kind of situation that restricts
intellectual discourse through copyright paranoia. This specific
example was easy to check, but others are far more difficult. The
citizen who believes himself to be "law-abiding" has a bad habit of
failing to give himself the benefit of the doubt, or is too willing to
abide by laws that don't exist. The prosperous ones do not stand on
such ceremony. I often wonder whether we are being too compliant in our
copyright attitudes.
I was just reading today about the NTP v. RIM case over patent
infringement, and getting more irritated about these companies that
accumulate IP rights of one sort or another with no intention of
producing anything. Their sole purpose in life is to collect royalties
from unwitting violators. I would propose that IP law have a
"Use-it-or-lose-it" element. Perhaps a bit like what happens when a
prospector stakes a mineral claim to a piece of land; here at least, he
is required to begin developing that mineral claim within a certain time
or lose it.
Sorry, but copyrights are such an easy subjec for me to rant about.
Ray