james_davis_nicoll (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
james_davis_nicoll) wrote2009-01-11 12:16 pm
james_davis_nicoll) wrote2009-01-11 12:16 pm
A defect I just noticed
There have been a few occasions recently where copyright owners (or persons/organizations acting on their behalf) have suddenly changed the terms of access to their IP (which in the examples I have in minds ranges from text to music). This is easy enough to do with on-line information, something that a capable web-manager can presumably deal with in a few minutes or a less capable one can handle in an hour or so (apparently). From the end-users' point of view it can be annoying to discover that information one has paid to access has suddenly vanished [1] but the end-user does not own the information and end-users who complain are almost certainly communists or at best anarchists.
It occurs to me that I've never had a book or magazine go blank because someone decided they no longer wanted me to have access to those words. Surely this is a glaring hole in how we manage information? I have books upstairs whose authors later revised their works: would they really want me to be able to see how the words used to go? And if I hadn't lost my magazine collection in a flood, I'd be able to pull out some pretty embarassing stuff from the 1970s.
What we need is a new kind of book where the print fades after a reasonable amount of time, a month or so, where as long the publisher was happy with the rental agreement the end-user could get new copies of the book at the end of each expiry date.
1: For some reason, I never see waves of outraged complaint when owned information becomes easier to legally come by.
[This footnote is wrong]
It occurs to me that I've never had a book or magazine go blank because someone decided they no longer wanted me to have access to those words. Surely this is a glaring hole in how we manage information? I have books upstairs whose authors later revised their works: would they really want me to be able to see how the words used to go? And if I hadn't lost my magazine collection in a flood, I'd be able to pull out some pretty embarassing stuff from the 1970s.
What we need is a new kind of book where the print fades after a reasonable amount of time, a month or so, where as long the publisher was happy with the rental agreement the end-user could get new copies of the book at the end of each expiry date.
1: For some reason, I never see waves of outraged complaint when owned information becomes easier to legally come by.
[This footnote is wrong]