UGN Security
Posted By: jonconley Orson Scott Card's take on mp3 Sharing - 09/17/03 12:35 PM
"MP3s Are Not the Devil

Since every penny I earn depends on copyright protection, I'm all in favor of reasonable laws to do the job.

But there's something kind of sad about the recording industry's indecent passion to punish the "criminals" who are violating their rights.

Copyright is a temporary monopoly granted by the government -- it creates the legal fiction that a piece of writing or composing (or, as technologies were created, a recorded performance) is property and can only be sold by those who have been licensed to do so by the copyright holder..."


The rest is available here , posting taken from SlashDot.Org .
This reminds me of something I read...

That copyrights were originated to protect the publishers, not the authors.

Can I find a ref? Yes! here

Quote:
The history of American copyright law originated with the introduction of the printing press to England in the late fifteenth century. As the number of presses grew, authorities sought to control the publication of books by granting printers a near monopoly on publishing in England.
Copyrights have always been about monopolies, not about the artists.
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