Rating

★★★★☆

Category

non-fiction

Read

2019-07-27

Pages

192

Good, quick, high level overview of copyright in internet age. At times felt a little one sided. The final chapters particularly good, in particular hadn’t thought of this framing before:

The Internet has given us hyperinflation for copying. Copyright’s test for industrial activity—are you making or handling a copy?—is no longer a good way to sort entertainment-industry transactions from personal, cultural, private activity. Insisting that normal people, doing normal things, should be able to navigate a system designed for a big, sophisticated industry is a fool’s errand.

Put it this way: it makes perfect sense that the lawyers at Universal Studios should have to talk to the lawyers at Warner Bros. when Universal decides to build a Harry Potter ride. But when a twelve-year-old wants to post her Harry Potter fan fiction or the Harry Potter drawings she made in art class on the Internet, it makes no sense for her to negotiate with Warner’s lawyers.

It’s impossible to control who loans a friend lunch money, but that doesn’t mean financial regulation is dead.

Also:

In 2005, Sony BMG shipped six million audio CDs loaded with a secret rootkit that covertly installed itself when you inserted one of those CDs into your computer.

I still don’t buy Sony products today and had forgotten why. This is why!