The Copier Wars: Fair Use’s Rude Awakening
10th August 2025
In a world where copying and pasting is as easy as moving a cursor from one place to another, it’s easy to underestimate the importance of the photocopier as a disruptive force.
After all, it wasn’t like we didn’t have ways to copy materials from one page to another previously. Just ask anyone who’s ever held a quiz created from the chemicals of a ditto machine
But the 1942 invention of xerography, the dry-photocopying technique that made it possible to easily reprint documents, had a strange effect on society. It made the reproduction of printed material not only easy, but cost-effective—particularly in offices.
And for businesses that relied on the scarcity of information as a business model, the photocopier was bad news—and, in many ways, it showed cracks in the copyright system.
So-called ‘intellectual property’ was an artificial monopoly easy to enforce when copying it took time and effort. The electron has removed the Clever Plastic Disguise from the whole scam.
Look, the essence of ‘property’ is that when I am using it, you can’t use it. That’s why it’s always a protected category of Stuff–fighting over who gets the use of Stuff that can only be used by one person at a time is one of the fundamental Bad Things that governments exist to prevent.
The fundamental myth of ‘intellectual property’ is that ideas and information are somehow entitled to that same level of protection. In economics, protecting the right to use something that could not be so protected without the coercive might of the government is called ‘rent-seeking’, and anybody other than a Crustian socialist who depends on such rent-seeking for what they say or what they write recognizes this as a Bad Thing. (The Crustian socialist is all about re-distributing YOUR property but would scream like a wounded water buffalo if you suggest re-distributing HIS/HER ‘intellectual property’. Try it on the next socialist you see. Wear ear plugs.)