Copyright and Copywrong - cont'd

I hadn't read Cory Doctorow's piece until just now.

Everything Cory talks about in that piece is on the same page that I would be on in any efforts to make copyright law sane. What's missing from that particular piece, in my opinion, is the basis for copyright law, to begin with.

Before the internet, before television, before records and CD's and mp3's, before radio, and even before the phonograph, there was copyright law. The right to copy one's own original works has always been vested in the author, by default, at first by social convention and later by law. This is where it starts. Someone writes an essay, or a short story, or an article for the newspaper, or a whole novel... it doesn't matter how long it is or how brilliant or stupid it might be, it just has to be original... that work is automatically, by legal default, owned fully and completely by the author... until they enter into an agreement with someone else that states otherwise.

This legal basis of copyright law, focusing upon the protection of the original author, goes back to the beginning of the 18th century in England.

You won't get any argument from me as to the complexity and agenda driven nature of legislation around the world ever since, and all the bullshit that has driven copyright law into the realm of utter insanity, and clearly been aimed more recently at furthering the benefit of distributors, rather than authors. But underneath it all, and at the heart of the "right to copy" original works, there will always be the individual author.

No discussion of copyright should ever ignore that.