Why Current Intellectual Property Law is So Wrong-Headed

Why Current Intellectual Property Law is So Wrong-Headed.

  • Jamie Boyle: Deconstructing Stupidity. It
    is as if we had signed an international stupidity pact, one that
    required us to ignore the evidence, to hand out new rights without
    asking for the simplest assessment of need. If the stakes were trivial,
    no one would care. But intellectual property (IP) is important. These
    are the ground rules of the information society. Mistakes hurt us. They
    have costs to free speech, competition, innovation, and science. Why
    are we making them?
  • This important essay asks,
    and begins to answer, the key question of why IP law has gone so wrong.
    Boyle points out that there's money on the side of a less Draconian
    system than we have — the technology industry dwarfs the entertainment
    cartel — yet the law totally favors the entertainment side. The
    answers, he says, are complex and rife with mythology, pushed on all of
    us by the copyright interests, that skews the result.
    Read it. [Dan Gillmor on Grassroots Journalism, Etc.]

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