Head Tale

Quite often, I'll do a post on a topic then come across further information at a later date that would expand and improve the post.

Usually, I just go back and add the information to the original post, even though I know the odds of anyone seeing it are slim.  But in this case, as a supplement to my recent post about the end of copyright (cleverly disguised as a post about a cheesy 1970's action TV show), here's a good essay about the end of copyright.

I think we
are witnessing the beginning of the end of a major era in world
history. It may take fifty years, it may take a hundred, but the age of
copyright is drawing to a close. I don’t know if this is a good thing
or a bad thing, but it’s inevitable. And I say this as the author of
two books and over 75 columns like this one, all copyrighted.

This especially ties into the point that someone recently conveyed me about how people struggle to hold onto something hardest when they know it's already over (paging Hillary Clinton! )

Right now,
the music and movie industries are howling and beating their breasts
and doing their best to go after anybody who violates their copyrights
on a large scale. The fury with which they’re doing it is a measure of
their desperation. The Sony rootkit debacle is a perfect example: in an
effort to prevent piracy, they secretly installed dangerous spyware
into people’s PCs, which itself may have been a criminal act. This was
about the dumbest public-relations move since Take-Two lied about the
Hot Coffee content, and as with Take-Two, it will cost them vastly more
than they could hope to gain from it. Did they really think nobody
would find out?