Publishing in the Age of Openness

OpenBusiness has an interesting interview with one of the Economist's technology corresponents. He has some sensible things to say, for example on copyright:

What is needed is balance, and clearly we need to redraw the scales in favor of encouraging the new creativity that technology enables — with an open-business approach in mind. Only a fool would stand against the crashing tides. It’s hard to see the protections granted to incumbent content industries as anything other than anachronistic privileges and economic protectionism. It certainly doesn’t help matters that they’re suing everyone and lobbying legislatures to strengthen their rights, even though it holds back incredible public creativity.

and on peer production:

Online, with no physical space constraints, entries can expand indefinitely. Take that, and add to it that peer-production tends to be cumulative, and the result is there is a tendency for things to grow, but little editing function to condense it into a more useful form. There is a great value not just in completeness but being concise — maps are drawn at scale rather than actual size for a reason.

Self, note: be concise.