LISNews: Librarian News

The National Post up in Canada has a rather interesting Story on the death of intellectual property. They touch on music and words, and how things are changing because of the web.

\"In the case of the written word, book writers can make livings, even fortunes, because the market is global and literacy is higher than ever in history. \"In addition, authors benefit from mass media that publicizes their works, giving them the biggest audiences in history.

Meanwhile, it\'s impossible to collect royalties from cultural products transmitted over the Internet. The telephone lines that the Internet uses are captive and telecoms are licensed by local governments. But these telephone monopolies cannot be held responsible for paying royalties on cultural transmissions because they have no control over users. Telephone franchises are small and local. Internet transmission crosses national and telecoms borders because it is global.

So, while intellectual property rights as we know them may not die altogether, we are definitely starting to see the beginning of the end. Stay tuned.