napster: civil disobedience re: copyright laws

[Steve Schear]

At 05:07 PM 6/13/2001 -0400, you wrote:
>excerpt from the article:
>
>"...Civil disobedience in the face of copyright laws promotes the democratic
>ideal that information is a public good, thereby sustaining the Internet
>community's founding belief that 'information wants to be free.' "
>
>i didn't know (as the article explains) that the EU no longer has 'work for
>hire' boundaries. rip away...
>phillip
>
>http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1276-210-6269374-1.html?tag=bt_pr

An interesting article, but not entirely factual. The author states that, 
"Historically, copyright protections were afforded to promote expressive 
discourse fundamental to a democratic society." I think a bit of digging 
shows that not to be the case.

================================================
 From http://webserver.law.yale.edu/censor/samuelson.htm

The Anglo-American copyright system grew from a private sector function of 
the English Stationers' Guild in the 15-16th century. It mainly functioned 
to regulate the book trade to ensure that members of the guild enjoyed 
monopolies in the books they printed. Conveniently for English authorities, 
the guild's practices provided an infrastructure for controlling (i.e., 
suppressing) publication of heretical and seditious materials. The English 
kings and queens were quite willing to grant to the Stationers' Guild 
control over the publication of books in the realm in exchange for the 
guild's promise to refrain from printing such dangerous materials. Until 
its abolition, the Star Chamber was available to back up judgments 
emanating from the stationers' private enforcement and censorship system.

If the pre-modern copyright system promoted freedom of expression by making 
books more widely available, this was an incidental byproduct of the market 
that arose for books, not an intended purpose of the then-prevailing 
copyright system. Far more harmonious was the relationship between 
copyright and censorship in that era. Men burned at the stake for writing 
texts that were critical of the Crown or of established religion. The 
stationers' copyright regime was part of the apparatus aimed at ensuring 
that these texts would not be printed or otherwise be widely accessible to 
the public.

==================================================

I think it would be much more accurate to say that copyright's "modern 
era," which began with the Statute of Anne is about to celebrate its 300 
anniversary. However, the fact that a private, pre-modern, copyright form 
lasted for over a century, which was motivated by the profit of monopoly 
control and with the government's help censorship, is an important example 
in understanding how revisionist history is created and should not be ignored.


Steve Schear

"War is just a racket ... something that is not what it seems to the 
majority of people. Only a small group knows what its about. It is 
conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses." 
--- Major General Smedley Butler, 1933