Open Access As The Antidote To Privatizing Knowledge And Learning By Techdirt at Above the Law
The very first copyright law in the US was officially called ”An Act for the Encouragement of Learning.” Indeed, that was the actual stated purpose of copyright law at the time. It wasn’t supposed to be a system for protecting the revenue of artistic folks. In fact, it didn’t even cover most artistic works at the time. It was limited to “maps, charts and books.” Music? Not protected. Paintings? Not protected. Sculpture? Not protected. That’s because it wasn’t about artwork, but about the spread of knowledge through learning.
Yes, the idea was to provide a limited monopoly to incentivize the initial creation, and the exchange was that it would then be given into the public domain soon after, such that everyone could learn from it. Yesterday, we covered the importance of the public domain, and today’s topic for Copyright Week goes hand in hand with it: the idea of open access.
Continue reading “Copyright Week: Open Access As The Antidote To Privatizing Knowledge And Learning”
Given what authors are paid nowadays, copyright is useful only to Dan Brown, Tom Clancy, Stephen King, and a couple others. For everyone else, it’s merely some sort of vague honorific.