Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2016 22:43:16 +0000

So much to ponder here.

"Copyright is not a god-given natural right." Well, I'm not a lawyer and only an amateur theologian, but I'm pretty sure that Article 1 of the Constitution is quite explicit about copyright as a right. The Constitution is as close to God as you can get in the US -- at least as long as we confine ourselves law and politics and can resist the temptation to appeal to the metaphysical insights of the late Tammy Faye Bakker.

Then, I fail to see how confining a discussion of copyright to the nineteenth century is a knock-down argument for its abolition or "radical" reformation in the 21st. Hey, I think looking at the history of anything is worth doing, but you might as well look at the whole history. And if you are going to use only a part of the past as a way of undermining something in the present, you need to spend a lot more time on what's wrong with the present and how directly past practice can be held accountable. It's even more dubious to use a past state of affairs to justify wrongdoing in the present. This is not so much using history as abusing it.

Michael

-----Original Message-----
From: Kevin Smith <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2016 10:28:33 +0000

It is probably worth remember that the policy of ignoring copyrights granted by foreign governments, which is what SciHub is doing, was also the stance of the American publishing industry throughout the 19th century.  Publishing grew as fast as it did in the U.S. in part because it was able to publish works from abroad without negotiating royalties, since our nation did not recognize rights over foreign IP.

, and we should avoid reifying it.  It is, in fact, a form of economic social engineering design to achieve particular conditions.  When it no longer serves its purpose, it may be time to reconsider our commitment to the copyright regime once again, as a policy decision made for specific historical conditions that no longer obtain.

Kevin