RE: Essay on copying

["Hansen, Dave" <drhansen@email.unc.edu>]

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