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How Copyright Broke
(Originally published in
Locus,
September 2006.)
The theory is that if the Internet can’t be controlled, then copyright
is dead. The thing is, the Internet is a machine for copying things
cheaply, quickly, and with as little control as possible, while
copyright is the right to control who gets to make copies, so these
two abstractions seem destined for a fatal collision, right?
Wrong.
The idea that copyright confers the exclusive right to control
copying, performance, adaptation, and general use of a creative
work is a polite fiction that has been mostly harmless throughout
its brief history, but which has been laid bare by the Internet, and
the disjoint is showing.
Theoretically, if I sell you a copy of one of my novels, I’m con-
ferring upon you a property interest in a lump of atoms — the
pages of the book — as well as a license to make some reason-
able use of the ethereal ideas embedded upon the page, the copy-
righted work.
Copyright started with a dispute between Scottish and English
publishers, and the first copyright law, 1709’s Statute of Anne,
conferred the exclusive right to publish new editions of a book on
the copyright holder. It was a fair competition statute, and it was
silent on the rights that the copyright holder had in respect of his
customers: the readers. Publishers got a legal tool to fight their
competitors, a legal tool that made a distinction between the
corpus — a physical book — and the spirit — the novel writ on its
pages. But this legal nicety was not “customer-facing.” As far as a
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