World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech

by Franklin Foer

Mark Twain saw through this hokum. He became a leading champion of tightening the screws on American copyright. When he pressed the case, he unknowingly nodded to Kipling’s protests. “This country is being flooded with the best of English literature at prices which make a package of water closet paper seem an ‘edition de luxe’ in comparison.” Publishers came to see the wisdom in his critique. Or more to the point, they were caught in a very ungentlemanly price war. Upstart firms flooded the market with cut-rate editions. After so many decades of seeing copyright legislation as inimical, publishers came to view it as a raft that would carry them back to the shores of profitability. In 1891, Congress heeded the plans of publishers and extended copyright to foreign works. The law set in place a new economics, which transformed American writing from hobby to profession. This is the structure that the tech companies want to overturn.