In 1793 legislation was initiated to restore order to publishing. These principles are now the basic elements of modern copyright law. As for the Internet, we are at a crossroads. There is a lot of material that publishers do not and will not put on the Net today because they do not want to lose copyright and income. Finally, I believe that readers would be ill served if I let some of the earlier statements of my codiscussants go completely unchallenged.
Nobody has to use trusted systems.
This is nonsense. Digital contracts admit a wide range of charging models, and publishers are discovering that different models work in different publishing niches. In automobile transportation some people choose to buy cars, others lease them, and yet others use taxi cabs. By direct analogy, we could buy indefinite use of a digital work, buy fixed periods of otherwise unlimited use, or pay by the hour. We could also choose to read only things that somebody else is willing to sponsor.