Digging for gold

• The AP profiles a guy with the best job ever: “Literary prospector.”

Having spent a large part of my youth whiling away hours upon hours in libraries and bookstores, this sounds like a great way to get paid for it, too. But it’s kind of a double-edged sword; I’m repeating myself, but with free access to online archives now many times larger than the Library of Alexandria, the market for this kind of thing is just going to get slimmer. Public domain laws only offer the artist limited protection, and it’s at least worth asking if the laws serve the artist, or those who think they’re entitled to a slice of the pie. Ah... I love the smell of capitalism in the morning.