Thursday, February 9, 2012

Debate on Piracy and Copyright is more than 100 years old

David Malki, author of the webcomic Wondermark, has been reading old newspapers and discovering that issues of intellectual property rights have been thorny and contentious from the beginning. He's doing a series of blog entries presenting arguments from newspapers of the late 1800s and comparing them to current arguments. Turns out the internet hasn't really changed the name of the game! It's worth a read; I find it fascinating.

He makes a point that I think is the most pertinent in all the discussions:

So, in a world where piracy exists, my task as an author is to make the legitimate consumption of my work the path of least resistance.

Hear, hear! (Creators of Leverage and White Collar, are you listening? Please allow me to purchase your latest seasons in Canada!)

(Note that this is the second time a tweet may have been more appropriate than a blog entry. I'm keeping track. Maybe if it happens again I'll consider using my Twitter account.)

2 comments:

  1. Ah, no, that was way more than 140 characters. (Granted I've been known to string ten tweets together and then wonder if I should have just written a blog post. Heh.)

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    1. Yes, the 140 word limit is another reason I can't do Twitter. Obviously I'm not much good at brevity.

      By the way, I can't figure out how to follow your blog (because there's not a really big obvious button that says FOLLOW that I can click on, and I'm not savvy enough to know how else to do it!)

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