There's a wonderful battle going on at the moment in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, over the future of the dread bill, the DCMA. At stake are a number of important issues, but basically it comes down to how long a creation can stay in private hands. With DCMA, the U.S. Government is trying to make private ownership of artistic creations perpetual. While that sounds good for artists who own their creations, it is in fact death: most rights are quickly transferred to the immortal corporate entities that control publication, and artists are left with substantial, permanent constraints on their ability to be derivative of prior works. As Spider Robinson points out in a great short story Melancholy Elephants, this could eventually lead to the end of art.

So the court case is important. On the front lines, the U.S. lawyer Lawrence Lessig is arguing the case against the DCMA. And he's got a blog, which has a very interesting running commentary on the issues and the state of the battle. Read on...

posted by Tom at 11:23 AM | link |