The Internet Bookmobile and Copyright Protection


One of the talks I didn't get to go to, but wanted to was on the Internet Bookmobile. This is a real vehicle (see the pictures on the link) that drives around printing books on demand. The books are all in the public domain (which lots of classics are). The bookmobile doesn't keep them on a harddrive, it downloads them as needed. The printer in the bookmobile can print and bind a book in two minutes, producing one every 30 seconds (pipelined). Cost is about $1. We could probably use one of these in Utah. This is a great example of society benefiting from material in the public domain after the author has enjoyed their monopoly. Congress is keep lots of good material out of the public domain by continuing to push out the copyright period everytime it comes up for a vote. Your grandchildren will suffer so that Sonny Bono's estate can accumulate more wealth. Great societal tradeoff, huh?


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Last modified: Thu Oct 10 12:47:20 2019.