April 14, 2003

Silent Spring & Unsafe At Any Speed versus today's "intellectual property" warriors

I just read about the cease and desist order sent to folks at the InterzOne 2 gathering to prevent a presentation on the weakness of a credit card system.

The thought occurred to me - had today's climate of intellectual property uber alles been around during the 1960's would Rachel Carson have been able to publish Silent Spring?  Would Ralph Nader have been able to publish Unsafe At Any Speed?

Many people are alive today because of those books.  The world is a better place because of those books.

It seems to me that as a society we are paying a terrible price simply to placate the whining of an industry that is increasingly failing to live up to its obligation to promote the progress of science and useful arts.

Posted by karl at April 14, 2003 9:34 PM