Top all-time · #14796
Virginica
Personal blog · virginica.substack.comwritingphilosophyeconomics
Virginica is a personal blog at virginica.substack.com about writing, philosophy and economics. Since 2021, 5 different Hacker News readers have linked it 6 times. The last post was in 2022, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters cite this Substack's posts on copyright, DRM and the printing press. They link it as a source for the history of how early printing made new manuscripts valuable before copyright existed.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
What Hacker News says?
Yeah reality is weird. I often find myself thinking copyright and DRM should obviously be advantageous to the authors only to subsequently recall that before the printing press predictably made copyright a thing there was a much greater demand for new manuscripts as they would quickly lose their value once in circulation [1]. [1]: https://virginica.substack.com/p/the-printing-press-nfts-and... (it also talks about N…
Comment linking /p/the-printing-press-nfts-and-the-end
on “The purpose of DRM is not to prevent copyright violations (2013)”Submitted Stoicism Is Not a Philosophy as a story · 20 points
HN discussionA point I've always found interesting is how the advent of the printing press was initially a massive boon to writers in the absence of copyright as books didn't keep their value for long so publishers need quite a large supply of new books to make a profit (some details listed in [1], ignore the NFT crap). I suppose this may no longer hold in a world where illegal copies can now spread in a matter of hours, if not…
Comment linking /p/the-printing-press-nfts-and-the-end
on “Do We Need Copyright?”Submitted A tax on university endowments sends an important message to wealthy schools as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Progress Studies in Mathematics as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Vaccines for the Next Pandemic as a story · 1 points
HN discussion