Discover the "truth" of copyright

Continuing the discussion from Let's discuss the OGL:

I’ve been a silent radical towards copyright, because I’m the kind of person that likes to be really sure about something before I go spouting nonsense at folks, and copyright has been difficult for me to grok as it relates to individual creators.

I focus on individual creators because as a Calfornia-Amercian that seems to be the only authentic class of worker in the process that is trying to get by on their labors; everything else is either exploiting or catering to the exploited.

This quest is to deep dive the roots of copyright as a function of society. One might say we want to study the teleology of copyright. :wink:

I’m aware of the broad strokes, but I also learned about them while drinking that particular kool-aid. At the time I had this mind that is made sense at the time, how the Statute of Anne provided protection for private printers to develop their industry, but with strict limits in place when compared to Bono and company selling us to Mickey.

But ya know, everyone is being so groovy lately, really questioning the systems we have in place, I’m wondering if my initial assessments weren’t made from the framework for property ownership and balance, which of course was a lie and kept me docile for half a decade (:roll_eyes:), and therefore by delving deeper with a fresh perspective I might understand more about how humans use copyright across space and time, and it might inform me going forward.

This is a quest because I expect it to run a while, while I learn new things. I need help because I’m going to start at Copyright - Wikipedia, which means NPOV.

What should I read? :slight_smile:

As much as I am thoroughly unimpressed with RMS these days, the man has done a lot of meditating on the nature of copyright. His Free Software Free Society book is a good read on the subject from his point of view. It is also freely available under the GNU FDL I think.

Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture and Remix would also be good, the former tracking how copyright has changed and mutated since the 70s. Both under creative commons licenses I believe.

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Haha, I know a lot of this context, but a cold read sounds like a warning: maiki, you musn’t think on copyright too much! Stay grounded in reality!

:crazy_face:

Thanks! I’m sure I have at least 2/3 of those locally already. :slight_smile: