"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." ~ H.L. Mencken
History of Copyright, Part 1: Black Death
"The Catholic Church, which had previously controlled all information (and particularly held a cornered market on the scarcity of information), went on a rampage. They could no longer control what information would be reproduced, could no longer control what people knew, and lobbied kings across Europe for a ban on this technology which wrestled control of the populace from them."
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Worth glancing through all the parts to the piece. Most of us know this, but the essay outlines the history of the incestuous yoke of governmentalists and religionists from the beginning of written history. The control of how the minds of the proletariat are shaped and controlled has been the obsession of all agents of both state and religion.
Copyright encapsulates that joining-at-the-hip. Sam
It is funny, Sam, how the church DID want obedient followers yet at the same time DID NOT want people to know how to read. Otherwise the "sheep" may come across something like this:
For wisdom is a defence, and money is a defence: but the excellency of knowledge is, that wisdom giveth life to them that have it. ~Ecclesiastes 7:12 KJV
or better yet, this verse is very pertinent to the evils of copyrighting:
The wisdom of the prudent is to understand his way: but the folly of fools is deceit. ~Proverbs 14:8 KJV
I know not what others may believe, nor am I attempting to evangelize. But as far as I can tell, God wants us to read unhindered so we can decide for ourselves what to like and dislike, and to believe or not believe.
Exactly, jd-in-georgia,
I don't, for one moment, believe that the so-called BIBLE is "The Word of God"; but I refuse, as so many do, to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are still pearls in those books, even after the CHURCH thought that they had "sanitized" it enough for the commoners.
The best things in life are free... especially ideas. Imagine if everyone could think for themselves? As long as there is a manipulative monopoly on information dissemination, real progress will always be flowing with the rapidity of a glacier.