Lessig: Google Sued
Google has been sued by the Authors Guild, and a number of individual authors.
This follows similar threats hinted at by the American Association of
Publishers. The authors and the publishers consider Google’s latest fantastic
idea, Google Print — a project to Google-ize 20,000,000 books — to be “massive
copyright infringement.” They have asked a federal court to shut Google Print
down.
It is 1976 all over again. Then, like now, content owners turned to the courts
to stop an extraordinary new technology. Then, like now, copyright is the weapon
of choice. But then, like now, the content owners of course don’t really want
the court to stop the new technology. Then, like now, they simply want to be
paid for the innovations of someone else. Then, like now, the content owners
ought to lose.
This is the best case to illustrate the story I told at the start of Free
Culture. Property law since time immemorial had held that your land reached
from the ground to the heavens. Then airplanes were invented — a technology
oblivious to this ancient law. A couple of farmers sued to enforce their ancient
rights — insisting airplanes can’t fly over land without their permission. And
thus the Supreme Court had to decide whether this ancient law — much older than
the law of copyright — should prevail over this new technology.
The Supreme Court’s answer was perfectly clear: Absolutely not. "Common sense
revolts at the idea," Justice Douglas wrote. And with that sentence, hundreds of
years of property law was gone, and the world was a much wealthier place.
So too should common sense revolt at the claims of this law suit.
http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/003140.shtml
Veja também: Apresentação de Lessig sobre "Free Culture":
http://lessig.org/freeculture/
Inserir comentário
Comentários sobre esta mensagem
Novo comentário
to top