Copy protection and copyright robs the future

Don't mind the bots with $ sign heads behind Mickey and Minnie please

Halley, David Weinberger and Dan Bricklin blog about Microsoft using Visicalc to show the backward compatibility of Longhorn. The irony is Dan's comment that the only reason that he, an author of Visicalc, has a working copy is because someone had made an illegal bootleg copy of it.

In May, I blogged about Brewster testifying about why the DMCA is preventing him from breaking copy protection on old software which he wants to archive. I think this is an important issue. Old films are decaying in the cans, books are decaying. Current copyright law combined with the DMCA prevent archivists from preserving most of the content created in any form. Mickey lives on in Disneyland at the expense of the wilting commons.

2 Comments

01. Matt Haughey - Oct 29, 2003 - 08:56

Depressing news on this front: looks like Australia is set to extend their copyright to 70 years plus life, just like the US and EU.

02. Ian Wilson - Nov 02, 2003 - 11:22

An interesting article at the BBC states that the law in the UK has been revised to allow for the archiving of email and web pages. I am not sure if this applies to everyone however.

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Joi Ito from Darius' Personal Weblog
November 3, 2003 5:13 AM

I enjoy reading Joi Ito's blog. Maybe someday I'll meet the guy - seems like the sort of guy who should be coming to my barbeques. A few days ago, he wrote this concise piece on copyright, which also includes... Read More

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