The Logic Off Topic list

> Copyright is a fluid concept. It has not always existed. It was invented
> for two main reasons: (1) was to protect consumers; (2) to overturn
censorship.
>
Thanks for the info, Kool, and I've also just barely started reading a book
on record bootleggers, this book in particular concentrates on the
live/broadcast/unreleased recording type of bootleggers who may be doing a
service depending upon your viewpoint (not trying to get into that debate
just differentiating as opposed to those who simply take a regular recorded
release and pirate it).  The interesting thing is how it traces the history
of copyright law in the 20th century to become a tool of the recording
industry, starting with the early attempts to stop the opera bootlegs being
produced in the 1900s (the first decade I mean).  Of course those bootlegs
were intolerable by today's standards as the technology only allowed
recordings of 2 minutes at a time, but now those are the only trace we have
of the opera at the dawn of the century.   Anyway, the origin of the
copyright law there wasn't promoted so much by the recording industry, which
of course was still figuring out how to even be an industry, but rather by
those staging live performances and the artists.  But with the rise of the
RIAA and established recording techniques, copyright law became "tweaked"
more and more to protect the industry rather than the consumer or the
artist.  The book is at
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0312142897/qid=1014140429/sr=2-1/ref=
sr_2_1/002-4137411-5291234 and even from the bit I've read I'd highly
recommend if you're interested in bootlegs and such.

It also very briefly covers the earliest recorded issues around copyrights,
the reproduction of folios and such prior to the Anne statute and how those
influenced the popularization of Shakespeare and such, just a few pages but
interesting nonetheless.  It's useful I think to recall that people used to
copy works fairly freely and yet artists still made a good living (loose
definition of "good" but no different than today) and publishers published
and people consumed.  While of course I, no more than anyone else, wants to
be directly ripped off, I do think that a greater degree of legally
recognized sharing and borrowing would be good for artistry.

> However, whether or not the Statute of Anne was beneficial to authors was
> another matter. In point of fact, the benefit to authors was pretty
minimal

The other interesting thing I read was how authors weren't really highly
regarded until the end of the 19th century.  Prior people bought books based
on titles or publishers.  The concept of an author being a "star" and
"artist" is a very recent phenomenon.  I'm not saying many authors didn't
have followings and impact earlier, but among the literate population it
wasn't the phenomenon it has become.

> But then hay ... you've all got delete buttons, haven't you!!

I threw mine out with my Logic CD, do I need it????