COPYCENSE

“I think we are witnessing the beginning of the end of a major era in world history. It may take fifty years, it may take a hundred, but the age of copyright is drawing to a close. I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it’s inevitable. And I say this as the author of two books and over 75 columns like this one, all copyrighted.

“When the photocopier came along, people simply didn’t think it was wrong to copy a few pages out of a book, even though it was against the law and the authors would have preferred that they buy the whole book. So eventually, the Fair Use doctrine evolved with respect to copyright materials. The law changed. It’s now OK to photocopy parts of books for educational, non-commercial use.

“You can see where this is going, can’t you?”

Ernest Adams. The End Of Copyright. Gamasutra. Nov. 28, 2005.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.