the “right to read” and other digital copyright musings

November 22, 2008

The Right to Read by Richard Stallman is an insightful scifi piece that is grounded in local laws and policies that have already been enacted or proposed.

The Future of Reading (A Play in Six Acts) (via Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, The Cult of Kindle), which references Stallman’s essay, is another reflection on the same topic — poetic and thoughtful.

I was already convinced that DRM is a crazy notion, but I found it interesting the read about its disturbing manifestations in Google selleth then taketh away, proving the need for DRM circumvention) which references the arcane legal review system that determined that cell phone unlocking is an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) (and therefore legal), but playing DVDs on Linux and distributing audiobooks from libraries are not exempt and therefore illegal. Go figure.

Squint your eyes a bit and you can see a brave new world.

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