by master
craftspeople -- for ease of reproduction. Piano rolls weren't as
expressive as good piano players, but they scaled better -- as
did radio broadcasts, pulp magazines, and MP3s. Liner notes, hand
illumination and leather bindings are nice, but they pale in
comparison to the ability of an individual to actually get a
copy of her own.

Which isn't to say that old media die. Artists still
hand-illuminate books; master pianists still stride the boards at
Carnegie Hall, and the shelves burst with tell-all biographies of
musicians that are richer in detail than any liner-notes booklet.
The thing is, when all you've got is monks, every book takes on
the character of a monkish Bible. Once you invent the printing
press, all the books that are better-suited to movable type
migrate into that new form. What's left behind are those items
that are best suited to the old production scheme: the plays that
*need* to be plays, the books that are especially lovely on
creamy paper stitched between covers, the music that is most
enjoyable performed live and experienced in a throng of humanity.

Increased democratic-ness translates into decreased control: it's
a lot harder to control who can copy a book once there's a
photocopier on every corner than it is when you need a monastery
and several years to copy a Bible. And that decreased control
demands a new copyright regime that rebalances the rights of
creators with their audiences.

For example, when the VCR was invented, the courts affirmed a new
copyright exemption for time-shifting; when the radio was
invented, the Congress granted an anti-trust exemption to the
record labels in order to secure a blanket license; when cable TV
was invented, the government just ordered the broadcasters to
sell the cable-operators access to programming at a fixed rate.

Copyright is perennially out of date, because its latest rev was
generated in response to the last generation of technology. The
temptation to treat copyright as though it came down off the
mountain on two stone tablets (or worse, as "just like" real
property) is deeply flawed, since, by definition, current
copyright only considers the last generation of tech.

So, are bookwarez in violation of copyright law? Duh. Is this the
end of the world? *Duh*. If the Catholic church can survive the
printing press, science fiction will certainly weather the advent
of bookwarez.

#

Lagniappe [Lagniappe]

We're almost done here, b