Collaborating the Humanities: An Idea Whose Time Has Come
(i
mage links to Amazon's page for the Norton Anthology of English Literature)
Low tide here at the IP ADR Blog. We seem to have entered a time in which America follows Europe and the U.K. by simply shutting operations down between Christmas and the New Year.
And high time too! No one gets any work done other than the poor store clerks anyway. So say! Have a little patience with them this holiday season and carry a few lagniappes in your pocket to bestow true holiday cheer upon the hard working temps, two of whom were completely flustered yesterday when their cash registers broke down over at the Grove shopping center (yeah, that's me -- bad cash register karma).
Anyone Read Beowulf Lately
But there is something relevant to intellectual property this morning -- a good article over at Concurring Opinions by Frank Pasquale, Humanities Hobbled by Copyright Law. "While scientists are pioneering exciting new modes of cooperation," writes Pasquale,
humanities scholars are increasingly tripped up by an archaic copyright system. Great schools of the recent past may be doomed to an ownership pattern fractionated enough to frustrate even the most persistent assembler.
May I suggest that the problem described in much greater detail in Pasquale's post be resolved neither by the compromised process of legislation nor by the adversarial mode of dispute resolution, but by a grass-roots coalition of publishers and academics working toward a solution that satisfies the greatest number of the true needs of all stakeholders.
Collaboration. The by-word of 2008.
Cheers!
