Cory Doctorow at the end of this long interview about science-fiction, the future, geek rapture and his newest book:
“If there’s one thing I want the world to understand, it’s that for so long as we maintain that copyright regulates everything that copies, then all copyright policy becomes de-facto internet policy, because the internet is made of copies.
For so long as we continue to maintain this idea, that copyright regulates copying instead of regulating the entertainment industry, then you can’t make copyright policy without affecting the entire internet.
And because everything we do today involves the internet, and everything we do tomorrow will require the internet, that means that copyright policy becomes the organizing principle for everything we do in the world.
And that’s silly.
You can’t construct a meaningful set of regulations for the entertainment industry to abide by while that reaches so broadly that it can also regulate things like a skype conversation, the healthcare you receive over the internet, your distance education, and that is also so streamlined and simple that twelve year olds don’t fall foul of it.
So I think that we have failed to appreciate the gravitas of the internet, we continue to regulate it as though it’s a glorified video-on-demand service, and as we do this we put all the things we do on the internet, which is *everything*, in jeopardy.”
A message I applaud. Looking forward to reading that book.