Conventional wisdom of the past decrees that copyright is essential to the well-being and motivation of the suppliers of the publishing stock in trade, authors.
This self serving position is contrary to mountains of evidence accumulating as the web goes into its teenage years of development beyond the geeks. There are thousands of new authors of everything from childrens fiction to scientific treatises on many subjects, and everything in between, things like this blog included.
In this Speigl article, the argument is made, convincingly so given the current evidence from the web, that copyright law is in fact an impediment to publication, and its benefits, rather than a protector.
