steve@theStarport.org (Stephen R. Savitzky)
Date: 31 Aug 2001 21:08:01 -0700
What if today's copyright laws had been around in, say, 1776?
Would Francis Scott Key have been thrown back in jail for stealing the
tune of "To Anacreon in Heaven" to use for "The Star Spangled Banner?"
I find it amusing that so many of the US's patriotic songs, including
its national anthem, were written to borrowed tunes.
What about "My Country 'Tis of Thee", to the tune of "God Save the
King"? Could our revolution have been nipped in the bud by vigorous
copyright enforcement? This sort of thing isn't allowed anymore, even
if you pay royalties on the music, without the permission of the
copyright holders.
Would anyone have been able to read Paul Revere's one-bit digital
message ("one if by land, two if by sea" -- adding one to each bit is
an obvious form of encoding) if a password had been required? Would
he even have been able to _send_ it if the encoding method had been
patented?
Would the Declaration of Independence still be in the Library of
Congress if it had been written in digital-rights-managed bits instead
of durable hard-copy parchment?
[Readers from other countries can easily subsitute examples from their
own history. The Soviet-era _samizdat_ comes to mind, for instance.]
