One of the supposed justifications for the intellectual monopoly called copyright is that it drives creativity and culture. In the last few weeks alone we have had multiple demonstrations of why the opposite is true: copyright destroys culture, and not by accident, but wilfully. For example, the MTVNews.com site, along with its sister site CMT.com, …
In English, the simple present often implies a general truth, regardless of time. While the present continuous strongly implies that the statement is true for the present, and weakly implies that it was false in the past.
From your profile you apparently speak Danish, right? Note that, in Danish, this distinction is mostly handled through adverbs, so I’m not surprised that you can’t tell the difference. Easier shown with an example:
Note how English is suddenly using a different verb form for the second one.
That is a great explanation, thanks! I understand the difference now.
The title isn’t a mistake.
It’s openly stating that they believe that to be an inherent feature of at least our current legislation.
I don’t think that the title is a mistake either; I was focusing solely on what the title says, on a language level, versus what the other user (Kairos) believes to be more accurate.
With that out of the way: yup, copyright was always like this. The basic premise of copyright is to not allow you to share things under certain conditions, and yet this sharing is essential for culture.