Copyrights and copywrongs

MSNBC has a very good article looking at the history of copyrights, their implementation into law by the founding forefathers to protect democracy, and the extreme danger the DMCA will be to our country.



Copyright is a 'deal" that the American people made with the writers and publishers of books. Authors and publishers get a limited monopoly for a short period of time, and the public gets access to those protected works and free use of the facts, data, and ideas within them.

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Without a legal guarantee that they would profit from their labors and creations, the framers feared too few would embark on creative endeavors. If there were no copyright laws, unscrupulous publishers would simply copy popular works and sell them at a low price, paying no royalties to the author.

But just as importantly, the framers and later jurists concluded that creativity depends on the use, criticism, supplementation, and consideration of previous works. Therefore, they argued, authors should enjoy this monopoly just long enough to provide an incentive to create more, but the work should live afterward in the 'public domain," as common property of the reading public.

Source: MSNBC.com

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