Firstly, thanks to everyone in getting Multiverse back up and running!
Mike - a fairly consistent debate these days surrounds the idea of copyright; on the one hand you have corporations lobbying government to extend the term of copyright, and introducing legal and technical restrictions to prevent people copying the works they own; at the other, you have people using technology as a way to realise the old dreams - from the open source software that powers Multiverse, through to Copyleft, the idea is of building something communally that isn't owned, controlled or distributed by the Man.
I'm intrigues as to where you sit on this scale - on the one hand I know that politically you would describe your closest affiliation would be to anarchism. You could even see Jerry Cornelius as an experiment in 'open source' literature (one that 'failed' from your point of view at least).
At the moment the debate has largegly centered around music, with TV and film just coming in; while text and images were the first things to be digitised, it would cost someone more to print their own copy of a book than buy it, and very few people want to read a book at a computer. Even is you had a book size screen, and text the same quality as the best printing presses, there would still be issues with reading in the bath, on the beach.
However, as a thought experiment, let us imagine that in 100 years, books have gone the way of vinyl - a tiny niche - and that most people read everything on magic wireless 'smart paper'.There are no publishing costs, no warehouses of unsold books, no distribution costs - just like web pages now. The publishers and record industry would be out of business. (At least so long as you ignore the fact that mySpace is now owned by Moloch's News International).
The key thing about this new world is whether copying is going to be controlled or not; for the first time it would be possible for me to simply copy Dancers for someone at work, without just lending them my copy or suggesting they borrow it from a library (sorry, just being a little facetious there, but some people do act as if the idea that someone could read or listen to music without paying 'The Man' was entirely new and due to technology).
Getting back to the point, the choice we are being presented with is whether we want a world where information is locked up, in protected and 'uncopyable' digital formats - a world where publishers of information would still retain power - or one which would be truly free.
My hunch is that your inclination would be towards the second, but I'm interested as to where you see the rights of authors fitting in, and of course how authors would make an income if there is no direct royalty from 'selling copies'.
Mike - a fairly consistent debate these days surrounds the idea of copyright; on the one hand you have corporations lobbying government to extend the term of copyright, and introducing legal and technical restrictions to prevent people copying the works they own; at the other, you have people using technology as a way to realise the old dreams - from the open source software that powers Multiverse, through to Copyleft, the idea is of building something communally that isn't owned, controlled or distributed by the Man.
I'm intrigues as to where you sit on this scale - on the one hand I know that politically you would describe your closest affiliation would be to anarchism. You could even see Jerry Cornelius as an experiment in 'open source' literature (one that 'failed' from your point of view at least).
At the moment the debate has largegly centered around music, with TV and film just coming in; while text and images were the first things to be digitised, it would cost someone more to print their own copy of a book than buy it, and very few people want to read a book at a computer. Even is you had a book size screen, and text the same quality as the best printing presses, there would still be issues with reading in the bath, on the beach.
However, as a thought experiment, let us imagine that in 100 years, books have gone the way of vinyl - a tiny niche - and that most people read everything on magic wireless 'smart paper'.There are no publishing costs, no warehouses of unsold books, no distribution costs - just like web pages now. The publishers and record industry would be out of business. (At least so long as you ignore the fact that mySpace is now owned by Moloch's News International).
The key thing about this new world is whether copying is going to be controlled or not; for the first time it would be possible for me to simply copy Dancers for someone at work, without just lending them my copy or suggesting they borrow it from a library (sorry, just being a little facetious there, but some people do act as if the idea that someone could read or listen to music without paying 'The Man' was entirely new and due to technology).
Getting back to the point, the choice we are being presented with is whether we want a world where information is locked up, in protected and 'uncopyable' digital formats - a world where publishers of information would still retain power - or one which would be truly free.
My hunch is that your inclination would be towards the second, but I'm interested as to where you see the rights of authors fitting in, and of course how authors would make an income if there is no direct royalty from 'selling copies'.
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