[Ojc-announce] Re: [Newspoetry] good time to start boycotting amazon.com

[sigfried at shout.net]

Joe Futrelle said:
> 
> On Tue, Dec 28, 1999 at 09:07:06AM -0600, sigfried at shout.net wrote:
> > gillespie william k said:
> > > Being asked to boycott Amazon.com is like being asked to give up the first
> > > amendment.
> [snip]
> > The bigger issue is copyright and patent
> > law in general.  I don't yet have a proposal for replacing copyright law with
> > something else.
> [snip] anyway, what
> > do you think of copyright law?
> 
> I think it blows.  It only protects owners.  The free flow of ideas is
> critical in countless ways.  Imagine a law where you could only
> copyright original ideas, and your rights were limited to being cited
> when someone used them.

Yeah, but what about the rights of authors?  What if publishing companies
could publish anything they wanted without asking permission, and only
mentioning the author's name, no royalties.  Whoever had the biggest,
fastest press and distribution system would make all the money on published
books and authors would get nothing but recongnition.

No special copyright scheme (copyleft, public domain, defensive copyright,
etc.) protects against this except for standard copyright.

s