MORE THAN two centuries ago the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had recurrent copyright problems when his work was published. Within days pirate versions would appear on the streets, often marked as 'revised and improved'.
It annoyed him but it never stopped him when the next great piano concerto was forming itself in his mind. Back he went to his billiard table each time, scratching down the latest composition with one hand while rolling a billiard ball with the other. Copyright considerations were never a barrier to his creative genius.
It came to mind the other day when I heard a disk jockey on air announcing the latest super blockbuster Michael Jackson hit. What followed was four minutes of the dreariest tedium, all copyright protected by as many lawyers and enforcement agents as the entire population of Vienna in Mozart's day. Now let's hear that line again about how copyright protection goes hand in hand with great art and music.
Okay, I was raised on Mozart (and the Rolling Stones) but if the music industry bills Michael Jackson as a triumph then, in my view, the only people really to be cheated when kids illegally copy his offerings from the Web are those kids themselves. I certainly cannot find it in me to be upset that Michael Jackson gets less money.
Much the same applies to Microsoft chairman Bill Gates who was in Shanghai last week proclaiming that the uphill struggle against software piracy in China is at last showing signs of becoming easier: 'We do see signs of increasing respect for software licensing . . . [piracy] will decrease significantly in the coming years'.
A few paragraphs further along in this report on how the tide is turning in copyright enforcement we read that the Business Software Alliance says 94 per cent of software installed in China last year was counterfeit, up from 91 per cent a year earlier.
And this is meant to be a sign of increasing respect for software licensing? Pardon me, but I think this actually looks like a universal defiance of software copyright in China and once again I find it difficult to generate much sympathy for the world's richest man.