Portfolio in 300 Words or Less

Piracy is nothing new. As long as there have been printed books, people have been stealing them. Printing houses engaged in various forms of piracy. They stole galley proofs, ran additional print runs, and even sold abridged versions. The response to these forms of theft was to give more power and rights to the author and to authors’ guilds. However, these copyrights emerged in a time where “the physical technologies involved changed little” (Howard 91). Today, technology changes annually as new methods of access and distribution change constantly. I am worried that the copyright laws of the 16th-17th centuries are stubbornly enforced today, without acknowledging a new information/book culture. Where before copyright laws seemed to be focused on the author, today it concerns itself with the pirate and the punishment.

 

 

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