Ancient Books Go Online

jd writes "The BBC is reporting that the United Nations' World Digital Library has gone online with an initial offering of 1,200 ancient manuscripts, parchments and documents. To no great surprise, Europe comes in first with 380 items. South America comes in second with 320, with a very distant third place being given to the Middle East at a paltry 157 texts. This is only the initial round, so the leader board can be expected to change. There are, for example, a lot of Sumerian and Babylonian tablets, many of which are already online elsewhere. Astonishingly, the collection is covered by numerous copyright laws, according to the legal page. Use of material from a given country is subject to whatever restrictions that country places, in addition to any local and international copyright laws. With some of the contributions being over 8,000 years old, this has to be the longest copyright extension ever offered. There is nothing on whether the original artists get royalties, however."

Comments

Re: Ane the fall of Long Tail Theory

[radtea]

In reality, money is created out of thin air every day.

In reality, the money created out of thin air in a fractional reserve banking system is debt. Debt is still money, but to pay it off requires... more debt. Fractional reserve banking is a Ponzi scheme. We are currently experiencing the collapse of it.

Oh, and if the total amount of money were constant interests rates would not be zero: the future value of money would still be less than the present value, in the sense that I'd rather have a dollar today than 1.1 dollars ten years from now unless deflation really got out of control, so debt and interest would still be with us. But any productive enterprise would have to be MORE productive than the deflationary increment in monetary value to be worth investing in. Of course, since economic growth in a system of sound money would be much slower than in a fractional reserve system this would be much less of a barrier to entry than today. And all of the economic growth in such a system would be real, rather than the fictional growth--followed by inevitable collapse--that fractional reserve economies experience.