October 14, 2001
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Copy Protection Robs The Future
Here’s an interesting article I found via Hack The Planet: http://www.bricklin.com/robfuture.htm.
The main idea here is that if someone had copy-protected the Rosetta Stone, we wouldn’t have nearly the historical understanding of ancient Egypt that document provided.
Something to consider.
Comments (6)
Hmmm. I get your point, but I don’t think that’s a legitimate parallel.
Why not?
interesting article homer. with literature and other text-based works, it’s easy enough for someone to “copy” the work and distribute it (e.g., the MIT classics archive). even if the stuff were on a copy-protected e-book, an enthusiast could figure a way to scan it in, I should think, without losing any of the inherent quality in it. how does it work with music? when all the beatles stuff become public domain (which won’t be until 75 years after all of them are dead), who gets dibs on all the master tapes?
Oh, I’m sure that the Rosetta Stone somehow escaped “copy protection” simply by surviving. What we’re talking about here is the salvation of a tool that helps us interpret the past through interpretation.
Unfortunately, the trouble is in the transcribing. There’s no way to interpret any of the pictographic languages appropriately in any Greek-based tongue. I’m sure of this. The translation will never say what the original intended.
However, I get your point.
I was pretty much going to say what goinhome just said…
i think it would just be added, with a link to “bob’s l33t house of ac31nt l@ang@uges” at the end.
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