If we can put a man on the moon and sequence the human genome, we should be able to devise something close to a universal digital public library.
~ Peter Singer
If We Can Put a Man on the Moon
This content has been archived. It may no longer be accurate or relevant.
Yet we are so close. Between the public library, sources like Project Gutenberg, the sources provided through my alumni access to a couple university libraries, and a few cheap professional associations, I can get almost anything I want from the web. Working on my taxes this year, I noticed that my book budget is about the same as when I was in high school 50 years ago. I remember keening for access to books then and never getting what I wanted. Today, I get most for free. That my interests are mostly in STEM and historical documents has something to do with it, but practically, copyrights don’t seem to get in my way much. Surprising.
Nope.
Juggling 5 million copyrights is a lot harder than building a rocket. The rocket only fights gravity, not human laws and whims.