Historian warns against copyright-fight heavy hitting
Copyright-dependent industries risk alienating the public and undermining intellectual property laws with their unregulated and aggressive tactics, according to an historian who has studied nearly 400 years of piracy and intellectual property law.
Adrian Johns, a professor of history at [the University of Chicago], told technology law podcast OUT-LAW Radio that the behaviour of large multinational companies whose business is based on copyright, such as record labels, publishers and broadcasters, threatens to turn the public against them.
"There's a trend towards almost absolutism, which I think is very unfortunate and could in the end be self-defeating," he said. "The big concern that I have is not the one that most people have which is that this is going to crimp the future of cultural change, though I think it may do that. It's that eventually the nit-pickiness of this kind of move might create a backlash that is more damaging than what it is trying to prevent."
Johns has just published a history of piracy, noting that the concept was first applied to ideas, rather than maritime theft, as early as 1650. He said that current industrial practices relating to the defence of intellectual property are risky....
Read entire article at The Register (UK)
Adrian Johns, a professor of history at [the University of Chicago], told technology law podcast OUT-LAW Radio that the behaviour of large multinational companies whose business is based on copyright, such as record labels, publishers and broadcasters, threatens to turn the public against them.
"There's a trend towards almost absolutism, which I think is very unfortunate and could in the end be self-defeating," he said. "The big concern that I have is not the one that most people have which is that this is going to crimp the future of cultural change, though I think it may do that. It's that eventually the nit-pickiness of this kind of move might create a backlash that is more damaging than what it is trying to prevent."
Johns has just published a history of piracy, noting that the concept was first applied to ideas, rather than maritime theft, as early as 1650. He said that current industrial practices relating to the defence of intellectual property are risky....