[ExI] On effects of extensive copyright laws...

[Tomasz Rola]

Howdy,

"No Copyright Law
The Real Reason for Germany's Industrial Expansion?"

By Frank Thadeusz

[ http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,710976,00.html ]

The author describes interesting effect of no/laxed copyrights on 19th 
century Germany, which led to big economic and social growth. On the other 
side, in British colonial empire copyrights had been exploited and driven 
books' proces high, so very few people bought them and they were luxury 
(as jewelry and oil paintings) rather than source of knowledge (sure, they 
could be read, too).

There were also some other interesting outcomes.

"The German proliferation of knowledge created a curious situation that 
hardly anyone is likely to have noticed at the time. Sigismund 
Hermbstädt, for example, a chemistry and pharmacy professor in Berlin, 
who has long since disappeared into the oblivion of history, earned more 
royalties for his "Principles of Leather Tanning" published in 1806 than 
British author Mary Shelley did for her horror novel "Frankenstein," which 
is still famous today."

Commenters add their own views on this.

Very interesting for me. I have always felt something very fishy with 
this push for more and harder copyrights, that I see and read about so 
frequently.

Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **