ARTICLE: Every AZ student to get Microsoft Office

At 10:06 PM 8/29/01 -0700, Nathan England wrote:
>Seriously, anyone up for missing a day of work to protest under the nice
>arizona sun? We could even bring flyers about DS and the whole DMCA
>case. Tell them they better enjoy the computers because their libraries
>are going away...
>
>Hmm, that just gave me a question. I'm sure most of you have heard the
>junk about the copyright owners and pro DMCA people looking to getting
>rid of libraries, I don't recall where I've heard this, I think it was
>on slashdot, but if they actually (I can't foresee this happening, but I
>never saw this either) got rid of libraries, what would be next, video
>stores? Would we be arrested for entering bookman's and looking at
>books, but not purchasing? Maybe we're stealing intellectual property?
>How far could it go?

It is no secret that the movie, record, and publishing industry have a
history of claiming that new technologies will bankrupt them. They're now
complaining about paper books, too. In the September 18, 2000 issue of U.S.
News and World Report, p. 55, an article titled "The empire strikes back"
states the following:

A typical book, for example--the old-fashioned kind--finds its way to five
or six readers beyond the original purchaser, according to Laurence
Kirshbaum, CEO of Time Warner's trade-publishing arm. "One of the
attractions of electronic publishing," he says, is the ability to "cut down
on this pass-along."

This "loaning," as its practitioners call it, is indeed most subversive.
There are even institutions, called "libraries," which carry on this sort
of thing in a wholesale fashion. This was started by a very dangerous
individual named Franklin; maybe Mr. Kirshbaum should sue him.

jas