Copyright Follies

A lot can be said, and a lot has been, about the horrible issues with how the legal regimes of countries (mostly the US) with major cultural production sectors are trying to maximize copyright and kill fair use, among other things. Here are two stories, one recent and one I was recently pointed to, that shed some light on the larger picture.

One is How copyright enforcement robots killed the Hugo Awards, which is laughably horrible and all true.

The other is over at Granta, titled Life Among the Pirates, and is by Daniel Alarcón. It looks at book piracy in Peru, which is at a scale beyond what we have here in NYC for a variety of goods (like "Rolexes").