Blizzard tests the reach of copyright law

Posted May 8, 2008 5:05 UTC (Thu) by pflugstad (subscriber, #224) [Link]

I wonder if I'll soon need to pay Neil Gaiman 750 bucks every time I copy American Gods from the book to my brain.

Clearly the music industry (and to a lesser extent movie industry) would like just this kind of model - they would be ecstatic to get paid every time you listen/view their their content. They've been trying to push laws that way for a long time now, as soon as it became clear that such was technically feasible with current technology.

It would not stretch imagination for some writers to start trying to do the same thing with the advent of the ebook readers and so on, where such a restriction is technically feasible.

Posted May 8, 2008 15:33 UTC (Thu) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link]

It was Hillary Rosen, president of the RIAA, who made a speech about the evils of libraries
letting people read books without paying for the privilege.  I read it when it happened, but
have tried a couple of times to google for it, and my google-fu is just too weak.  Probably in
a few years I won't believe myself anymore!