i don't 'get' free papers. i don't trust anything that the media wants you to know for 'free'. someone's making some money here, and if not from you, then from somebody else.
however, i often have a disparaging nosey over someone's shoulder on the tram, and i spotted a headline that made me have to pick up the metro and write it, sic, here for you now:
"ARMS FIRM 'LINKED TO HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSE'".
i can only laugh and say 'like, duh'.
and then on the same page another classic pulp story. it concerns the davinci code in court over copyright theft, an argument from the defence lawyers presented as gospel: that the authors of 'the holy blood and holy grail' didn't own copyright over their own work, since it was in the public domain. well, it is now, anyway, since they published it now hang on doesn't that have serious implications for any one who claims to own copyright over anything. imagine if you'd made a documentry about something, and then someone came and spliced footage of harrison ford into it and made millions. you'd be furious.
using their same argument, i could go down to waterstone's, buy the davinci code , photocopy it and release it under a new name, since obviously what they mean by 'public domain' is 'available to the public'. the dicks.
i've redone my myspac. i'm a musician now. i still hate it but at least i don't have three of the sad fuckers now.
1 comment:
someone is making money here - yes the newspaper. Your freebies will have re-hased copy from other sources, so no real effort involved there - and you sell advertising space. It saves companies having to organise themselves to stitch their flyers together and it has a crossword. As for copyright - it is a complicated area of law, especially 'ideas'. The key element is presentation - but i'm a little hazy on this and can't be arsed to consult and reproduce vast chunks of my Essential Law for Journalists. (Even for the irony value).
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