Copyright gone wrong. Don't hit the back button yet! Usually when a blogger mentions copyright, you know what's coming: "I can rip anything I want, and anyone who says that's wrong is a jerk." For a change of pace, Lawrence Lessig has a good story this morning about how copyright law and its current interpretation in the courts makes it hard for copyright holders not to keep their work, but to give it away:
Ron Suskind wanted to make sure that the records supporting his book, The Price of Loyalty, were in the public domain so others could draw upon them to verify, or critique, his account of Paul O[base ']Neill[base ']s time at Treasury. In principle, the documents should be in the public domain because they were government documents. But there would always be a way for someone to argue that, e.g., the digitization created a separate right, or special marks on the document created a special right, or whatever.
[Paul Boutin]
12:14:25 AM 
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