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<p class="storytitle">Het is te triest om waar te zijn(van techdirt)<br>
</p>
<p class="storytitle"><br>
<a
href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121016/17553220724/sad-75-year-old-explanation-why-copyrights-are-bad-locked-up-behind-paywall.shtml">Sad:
75 Year Old Explanation For Why Copyrights Are Bad... Locked Up
Behind Paywall</a> (<i>Copyright</i>)</p>
<p class="byline"> by <b>Mike Masnick</b> from the <i>too-bad</i>
dept on Friday, October 19th, 2012 @ 5:37PM</p>
<p>A few weeks ago, we wrote about famed economist Gary Becker
(along with his colleague Judge Richard Posner) discussing <a
href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121001/03062420554/becker-posner-time-to-minimize-patent-copyright-law.shtml">problems</a>
with the patent and copyright system, and pondering if the laws on
both needed to change. Becker's <a
href="http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2012/09/reforming-the-patent-system-toward-a-minimalist-system-becker.html"
target="_blank">thoughts</a> were particularly interesting,
because he actually brought up some writings on the topic that I
was unfamiliar with:
</p>
<blockquote><i>
The various harmful effects of the patent and copyright systems
encouraged Arnold Plant, an English economist, to publish over
75 years ago two influential articles on why England and other
countries would be better off without patents and copyrights.
</i></blockquote>
While I've seen a number of historical arguments along those lines
(Fritz Machlup's <a
href="http://mises.org/document/1182/An-Economic-Review-of-the-Patent-System"
target="_blank">economic review of the patent system</a> comes to
mind), I had not heard of Plant's two articles. So I went in search
of them... and discovered that they're locked up behind a paywall.
Plant's key paper, entitled "The Economic Theory Concerning Patents
for Inventions" can <a
href="http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2548573?uid=3739560&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21101158381333"
target="_blank">be found on JSTOR</a>, where they want... $43 for
the 21 page article. Yes, it's more than $2 <i>per page</i>. For a
78 (almost 79) year old document. Then there's his other key
article, "The Economic Aspects of Copyright in Books." It, too, <a
href="http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2548748?uid=3739560&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21101152%0A%20120823"
target="_blank">can be found on JSTOR</a> for $43, though this one
is 28 pages, so you get a per-page price of slightly under $2 this
time... which still seems crazy.
<br>
<br>
It's not just ridiculous that these two publications, both published
in 1934, are not in the public domain -- considering they argue that
such locking up of information and ideas is bad for society, it's
particularly ironic that they are so hard to get and and that JSTOR
charges such ridiculous fees for them. Though, I guess if you want
to keep such prices high so you can act as a gatekeeper, what better
way than to effectively hide these works by pricing them out of the
market?
<p><br>
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