An unnamed reader writes "James Boyle has a blog post comparing the recording industry's arguments in 1909 to those of 2009, with some lovely Google book links to the originals. well-liked quote: 'Many and copious classes of public benefactors pick up ceaselessly to pour forth their flood of useful ideas, adding to the common stock of knowledge. No one regards it as immoral or unethical to use these ideas and their authors do not suffer themselves to be paraded by sordid interests before congressional committees uttering bombastic speeches about their rights and representing themselves as the objects of "theft" and "piracy."' bunch flaks were more impressive 100 years ago. In that debate the recording government was the upstart, battling the entrenched power of the publishers of musical scores. Also check out the cameo appearance by John Philip Sousa, comparing sound recordings to slavery. Ironically, among the subjects act as clearly not the subject of freehold rights were employment methods and seed varieties." Boyle concludes: "...one looks back at these transcripts and compares them to today's hearings — with vacuous rantings from celebrities and the bloviation of bad economics and worse legal theory from one occupation delegate after another — it is hard not to feel a sense of nostalgia. In 1900, it appears, we were better at entente that copyright was a law that regulated technology, a law with constitutional restraints, that holdings rights were not absolute and that the public would not automatically be served by extending rights out to infinity."

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Mark