Friday, May 26, 2006

Back to the Future

C.E. Petit's been thinking along similar lines to the kind of thing I've been saying in my book about intellectual property. (I go back a little further to begin my story with the Battle of the Book in Ireland in the 6th century but it's basically the same theme)

"Four hundred years ago, almost precisely.

In the early part of the seventeenth century, a debate over ownership of written works raged in Parliament...

Two incompatible paradigms struggled for supremacy. On the one hand, the monopolists and their allies...

On the other hand, a puzzlingly diverse set of philosophers, scholars, and others...

In the end, the second group "won" the battle, resulting in the Statute of Anne and, not quite two centuries after that, the IP Clause in the US Constitution. There have been many, many battles over the years since, such as the yet-unsettled battle over whether copyright is a natural right or a statutory right.1 Those battles continue today...

How ironic that we can now see many of the same monopolistic effects railed against in Parliament four hundred years ago… and that this time the monopolists justify their rents with not just their financial and technological prowess, but with twisted interpretations of copyright (particularly work for hire) and commercial law. "

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