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From: colonel@buffalo.CSNET.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.computers.laser-printers
Subject: Re: C. Bigelow on typeface protection
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Date: Tue, 15-Jul-86 14:37:33 EDT
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Posted: Tue Jul 15 14:37:33 1986
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Thanks to Dr. Bigelow for a great article.  I'd like to comment on the
media-related problems involved.

Copyright as a form of protection has existed only during the age of
print.  Before printing, manuscripts had to be copied by hand--a method
that is still available to anybody with time to kill.  Naturally, no
writers objected to this practice, since it was the only way to "publish"
their works.  And of course the copier might add valuable annotations and
commentaries, thus improving the work; he might also correspond or even
collaborate with the author.

Printing changed all this.  Works became fixed entities; the writer ceased
to be his own publisher.  Writing became less and less an avocation and
more and more a trade; it also became more and more popular.  Under the
circumstances, copyright offered a convenient system of ensuring popular
writers a livelihood.  The medieval "Net" system was replaced by a system
of production and mass consumption; copyright was a useful kluge for
marketing creative works in a market economy.

But technology has moved forward and created the Xerox (T.M.), and after
it the computer.  Copyright was reliable only when copying was difficult.
Clearly, it no longer is.  The easier it is to copy, the harder it is to
enforce copyright.  We are re-entering the Middle Ages, when to create
a work of art or letters was to bestow it on the world.  Copyright is
unreliable; soon it will be unenforceable.

This does not mean that authors must go unprotected.  Dr. Bigelow mentions
state sponsorship.  Other organizations can sponsor creative works; a good
example is Bell's sponsorship of UNIX (T.M.).  For the author or artist
who cannot or will not accept corporate sponsorship, there is a good
alternative: subscription.

Subscription was tried successfully in the 17th and 18th centuries.
There were abuses; for instance, Samuel Johnson collected subscriptions
for his edition of Shakespeare years before he got around to writing
it.  Sometimes the work did not satisfy the subscribers; many good
writers languished for want of a reputation.  But the system worked
rather well on the whole, and ought to work much better in this age of
easy communication.

By the way, there are special problems in copyrighting type faces.  I
will address these later.