Cory Doctorow: Why I Copyfight

“Copyright law valorizes copying as a rare and noteworthy event.
On the Internet, copying is automatic, massive, instantaneous,
free, and constant. Clip a Dilbert cartoon and stick it on your
office door and you’re not violating copyright. Take a picture of
your office door and put it on your homepage so that the same
co-workers can see it, and you’ve violated copyright law, and since
copyright law treats copying as such a rarified activity, it
assesses penalties that run to the hundreds of thousands of dollars
for each act of infringement.

“There’s a word for all the stuff we do with creative works
— all the conversing, retelling, singing, acting out,
drawing, and thinking: we call it culture.”

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