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Free Culture

Copying Is Better

I believe that being free to copy is better for culture, society and the economy than trying to turn copying into the subject of usury. This is a belief I gained at art school and that wasn’t shaken by my experience in industry. But while I can mention many examples of why I believe this to be true, in art and technology and for democracy, I’ve never had the kind of hard numbers to hand that the copyright lobby makes up, er, calculates.

Until now. Enter Newsgrist quoting TechDirt –

some researchers have started to look into it, and actually have built a model that shows society is likely better off when copying is the norm. Aaron deOliveira alerts us to the research on this,
which tries to model societies with creators and innovators, and finds
that society is served best when 30% of the population is involved in
creating new goods, while 70% is focused on copying. Now, you can read
through the full research
and quibble with the methodology, but the basic premise is sound, and
has been borne out in real life, in situations where copying was widely
allowed.

Follow the link(s) for more. Newsgrist is my favourite art and free culture blog…