Generally, I think laws can be enforced only if the subject population is willing to abide by those laws.
And legally there are no "copyright police". That is, a copyright is useful only if the author is
willing and able to enforce that right.
But
this NY Times article may show a barometer saying the future will be different... when/if the next generation believes copyright does not apply directly to them, whether it be music, images, or text.
Quote:
Ms. Brookover, who works at the campus library, has pondered the differences between researching in the stacks and online. “Because you’re not walking into a library, you’re not physically holding the article, which takes you closer to ‘this doesn’t belong to me,’*” she said. Online, “everything can belong to you really easily.”
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<snip>
Quote:
“You’re not coming up with new ideas if you’re grabbing and mixing and matching,” said Ms. Wilensky, who took aim at Ms. Hegemann in a column in her student newspaper headlined “Generation Plagiarism.”
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