{"id":2790,"date":"2015-03-12T06:17:38","date_gmt":"2015-03-12T04:17:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/?p=2790"},"modified":"2015-03-12T06:18:17","modified_gmt":"2015-03-12T04:18:17","slug":"spider-visionary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/?p=2790","title":{"rendered":"Spider, visionary"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1982, Spider Robinson wrote a short story<\/a> about copyright law in the future.<\/p>\n

Copyright ceases to exist fifty years after the death of the copyright holder. \u00a0 But the size of the human race has increased drastically since the l900s–and so has the average human lifespan. \u00a0 Most people in developed nations now expect to live to be a hundred and twenty; you yourself are considerably older. \u00a0 And so, naturally, S. ‘896 now seeks to extend copyright into perpetuity<\/a>.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But<\/p>\n

“There are eighty-eight notes. \u00a0 One hundred and seventy-six, if your ear is good enough to pick out quarter tones. \u00a0 Add in rests and so forth, different time signatures. \u00a0 Pick a figure for maximum number of notes a melody can contain.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And one has to conclude that<\/p>\n

“Artists have been deluding themselves for centuries with the notion that they create. \u00a0 In fact they do nothing of the sort. \u00a0 They discover. \u00a0 Inherent in the nature of reality are a number of combinations of musical tones that will be perceived as pleasing by a human central nervous system. \u00a0 For millennia we have been discovering them, implicit in the universe–and telling ourselves that we ‘created’ them. \u00a0 To create implies infinite possibility, to discover implies finite possibility.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Have you ever seen a cheerful elephant?<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 

In 1982, Spider Robinson wrote a short story about copyright law in the future. Copyright ceases to exist fifty years after the death of the copyright holder. \u00a0 But the size of the human race has increased drastically since the l900s–and so has the average human lifespan. \u00a0 Most people in developed nations now expect to live to be a hundred and twenty; you yourself are considerably older. \u00a0 And so, naturally, S. ‘896 now seeks to extend copyright into perpetuity.” But “There are eighty-eight notes. \u00a0 One hundred and seventy-six, if your ear is good enough to pick out...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2790"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2793,"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2790\/revisions\/2793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}