RE: Essay on copying

[Sandy Thatcher <sandy.thatcher@alumni.princeton.edu>]

Except that the value of rare books depends partly on their 
scarcity! :)


At 7:42 PM -0400 8/2/11, Hansen, Dave wrote:

>While I thought this was pretty amusing, it's also a good 
>illustration of the disconnect between the way librarians and 
>some publishers view copyrighted works.
>
>Whereas librarians view these works as things of value in and of 
>themselves--works that express creative and unique ideas that 
>are useful for society, defenders of strict copyright 
>enforcement (and the author of this blog post, and many 
>publishers) seem to view them as mere proxies for value, much as 
>currency is merely a representation of the underlying goods that 
>it can purchase. Further, two reason currency retains value is 
>because (1) people believe it is worth so much, and (2) the 
>printing authority keeps its supply scarce (those two ideas have 
>a complicated relationship). Viewed that way, the value of a 
>copyrighted work is dependent entirely on the control and 
>enforcement of copying. If no copies were made at all, it would 
>be the most valuable monetary instrument in the world! But 
>copyrighted works have an independent value in and of 
>themselves, and in fact, cultural works often accrue value the 
>more they are copied and used.
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
>[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Joseph Esposito
>Sent: Monday, August 01, 2011 10:51 PM
>To: Liblicense-L@Lists. Yale. Edu
>Subject: Essay on copying
>
>Members of this list may wish to look at this essay by a Canadian
>intellectual property about the case for making copies of
>currency.  I thought it was very insightful and recommend it
>highly, as it bears on many of the issues that have occupied this
>list over the years.
>
>Short link:
>
>http://bit.ly/pXEX0V
>
>Long link (this broke in my browser, but you can try it):
>
>http://jamesgannon.ca/2011/04/15/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-copy/
>
>Joe Esposito