Digital LIbraries

The Library of Congress has promised to make available a digital archive of thousands of newspapers from 1836 until 1922. These historical documents end in 1922 because of changes in copyright law. Despite the historical significance, the New York Times will continue to charge $2.99 an article for the next 150 years.

Thanks to big businesses like Disney interfering with Copyrights, published copyrights now have a shelf life greater than a twinkie. Steamboat Willy in 1928 of course is partially to blame, since he is the earliest rendition of famous Disney Characters. [We've talked about this before].

Meanwhile, Wired is reporting about the grossest manipulation of copyright just yet. So much for Tivo, recordable DVD players, or VCR's. Fast forwarding through commercials may soon be illegal and punishable by death if this new legislation passes.

If the bill passes, also prohibited will be any digital distribution of copyrighted materials. This could apply to Project Gutenberg [some copyrighted works are not copyrighted outside the United States, and so are offered to non-US users]. Clearly the target is P2P networks, but apparently the language is vague enough to include the legal i-Tunes.

And just never you mind that before the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, all of these things were legal just as long as you weren't charging money.

This same week marks the initiation of the Movie Association suing downloaders of their movies. Again, this would have been perfectly legal before the DMCA was passed. Of Course, if we had $10 billion dollars to throw at Easily Corrupted politicians, we probably wouldn't want to fast forward through television commercials anyway.