Slashdot Mirror
The Tyranny of Copyright?
Pinky3 writes "The Sunday New York Times Magazine has a long article entitled The Tyranny of Copyright? Views of both supporters of CopyLeft (Lessig and Zittrain) and Copyright (Ginsberg and Goldstein) are laid out. The article constrasts the cultural commons to the 'permission culture" and covers the unintended consequences of various US laws passed long ago." Dear NYT editors: "Copy Left" really shouldn't have a space in it. Thanks.
This reminds me of computer crime class a couple weeks ago. We were discussing different communities, and one of them was the open source community. One significantly older graduate student said this.
"Why would you give away your work for free?"
She was completely dumbfounded. The problem is that the older generations still have the protestant work ethic. In our generation the protestant work ethic has died. People are willing to actually do some amount of work for the greater good of society. After we meet our needs by doing "real" work, we are willing to do things that are both productive and fun for the good of others. This has not happened often in history because usually leisure activities are not productive. The rise of geekdom has created the furst truly productive leisure activity, writing software. And since it doesn't cost anything to make, we give it away for free with little or no copyright. This new way of thinking completely dumbfounds anyone who is used to it the other way.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Were not NYT writers and editors the imbeciles responsible for irreparably damaging the English language by convincing millions of people that a comma was not needed before the and in a series?
Seeing as Slashdot has kepts its errors rather internal, rather than damaging most of humanity, I'd say they can comment just fine.