Fisking of the New York Times article supporting copyright

Scott Turow, Paul Aiken and James Shapiro last week argued in the New York Times that without copyright, we would have had no Shakespeare. Or at least that’s what the framing of the article was meant to imply. Reading carefully, what they argue instead was that without money, Elizabethean writers would have had no reason to create as much cultural work than they did, that until there was a business model that rewarded performers and writers for their work, the kind of exuberant creativity we seemingly all treasure today would have been impossible. Copyright, as the authors vaguely acknowledge, came later. (You have to know that Shakespeare wrote before 1709 to fully pick up on that acknowledgement.)

via weblogs.swarthmore.edu

I’m Timothy Burke, a professor in the Department of History at Swarthmore College, fisks the latest New York Times article supporting copyrights.

Posted via email from The Indian Cow