It was not for gain that Bacon, Newton, Milton, Locke instructed and delighted the world; it would be unworthy such men to traffic with a dirty bookseller for so much a sheet of a letter-press … Knowledge and science are not things to be bound in such cobweb chains; when once the bird is out of the cage … volat irrevocabile—Ireland, Scotland, America, will afford her shelter.
—Lord Camden arguing against perpetuity in the House of Lords on the question of Literary Property on Feb. 22, 1774
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18 March 2010 at 9:07 pm
hot news, hot analyst « Stilltitled
[…] Judge Cote raised at least two considerations for further review. First, she said that it would not be fair for the decision to only apply to Fly on the Wall, suggesting that the door had been left open for similar injunctions to larger entities. Cote asked, ”Why should an injunction issue against a small business, a start-up, a small entrepreneur, when Goliath is permitted to do the same thing. If an injunction issues against Fly, and one year from now Bloomberg or Thomson or Reuters is doing the same thing, why is that fair?” Second, though seemingly ruling with it, she seemed to question the underlying viability of the hot news doctrine: “can the plaintiffs really effectively prevent their headlines from emerging into the marketplace and being publicly widespread?” […]