100 Years of Copyright Hysteria

Nate Anderson pens a fine historical retrospective for Ars Technica: a look at 100 years of Big Content's fearmongering, in their own words. There was John Philip Sousa in 1906 warning that recording technology would destroy the US pastime of gathering around the piano to sing music ("What of the national throat? Will it not weaken? What of the national chest? Will it not shrink?"). There was the photocopier after World War II. There was the VCR in the 1970s, which a movie lobbyist predicted would result in tidal waves, avalanches, and bleeding and hemorrhaging by the music business. He compared the VCR to the Boston Strangler — in this scenario the US public was a woman home alone. Then home taping of music, digital audio tape, MP3 players, and Napster, each of which was predicted to lay waste to entire industries; and so on up to date with DVRs, HD radio, and HDTV. Anderson concludes with a quote from copyright expert William Patry in his book Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars: "I cannot think of a single significant innovation in either the creation or distribution of works of authorship that owes its origins to the copyright industries."

Comments

What the geek choses to forget.

[westlake]

Here's what Thomas Jefferson said

Jefferson was part of the slave-holding elite.

The "light" wasn't for the blacks who built the University of Virginia or who were brought to the school as servants for its - all-male - students.

Jefferson lived as aristocrats have always lived - pretty much as if he had unlimited funds - and unlimited hands to draw upon - and like many of his class he spent most of his life on the edge of bankruptcy.

This tends to have disastrous consequences for those dependent on The Master's patronage.

Jefferson's slaves might reasonably have asked why they weren't being compensated for their own contributions - or whether they might be in better hands with a northerner who knew how to turn an idea into an invention that just might bring in some much-needed cash.

It interests me how easily the populist-anarchic-socialist-libertarian geek takes on the coloration of an aristocratic elite-
when the really interesting things in American art and invention have always had solid lower and middle class roots - a world thoroughly tainted with thoughts of property and profit.