It is a truth universally acknowledged that I lead a boring life. In keeping with this truth I have been reading about historical and conceptual issues of copyright beginning in 1709 with the Statute of Anne and the remarkable case of Donaldson v Beckett (1774) 4 Burr 2408, 98 Eng Rep 257 and finding it very interesting.
I did of course study intellectual property as part of my law degree but study however was often a matter of cramming my head with as much information and understanding as possible in order to pass exams. I was denied a leisurely and personal reflection on many aspects of the law. I did from time to time stop and reflect, much more often than the other students, but much less than I should have.
I won't do the law the injustice of attempting to summarise my pondering at this point.
Pressing my intellect against the stone face of the law out of mere curiousity poses a new problem. I have been here before and knelt and wept at the tiny printed summed up and stitched through idol of human reasoning. I have stood at the bottom of it all and thrown year after year until half a decade later I came to, still at the bottom, wearing a mortar board and gown. I don't what the law is and this worries me. It is system of rules certainly but it is great and terrible and capable of filling the whole sky. It is interwoven through all meaning and thought. I will chase it.
I did of course study intellectual property as part of my law degree but study however was often a matter of cramming my head with as much information and understanding as possible in order to pass exams. I was denied a leisurely and personal reflection on many aspects of the law. I did from time to time stop and reflect, much more often than the other students, but much less than I should have.
I won't do the law the injustice of attempting to summarise my pondering at this point.
Pressing my intellect against the stone face of the law out of mere curiousity poses a new problem. I have been here before and knelt and wept at the tiny printed summed up and stitched through idol of human reasoning. I have stood at the bottom of it all and thrown year after year until half a decade later I came to, still at the bottom, wearing a mortar board and gown. I don't what the law is and this worries me. It is system of rules certainly but it is great and terrible and capable of filling the whole sky. It is interwoven through all meaning and thought. I will chase it.
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