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Jonathan Zittrain On The Spiderweb of Copyright Law

Posted by timothy on from the it's-the-arbitrary-stupid dept.

Jonathan Zittrain, director of Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, takes an unusual approach to critiquing copyright in this Legal Affairs article. He explains with an analogy to the bizarre patchwork of United States tax codes a reason that (in the words of one of Zittrain's colleagues) "all the cyberprofs hate copyright." It goes beyond simple indignation that current copyright laws often grant seemingly unfair monopoly powers, and into the tangled minutia of the laws themselves.

1 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. Yeah, it's OT, but a good point by useosx · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    > A gerrymandered tax code primarily costs the public
    > money--measured by overall inefficiency or extra taxes
    > unfairly levied on those without political capital.

    Can anyone say "Trickle-Down"? Does anyone believe in trickle-down? When the rich get tax breaks, the money doesn't trickle down to the poor, it trickles down to the coke dealers who sell the rich kids dope.

    And if you think the poor have as much political capital as the rich, just ask all the black folks who were turned away from voting in Florida in 2000 because they were "felons"...when their only crime was Voting While Black. One article among many about it.

    Now if only I were as eloquent as Mr. Zittrain, I wouldn't be modded down as both Flamebait and OT.