A Homeopathic Remedy for Copyright Infringement
By Lincoln D. Stein
A long time ago, while I was still in elementary school, I ran a summer business out of my mother's kitchen. I would spend each morning baking ten loaves of bread, and then in the afternoon I'd sit in the center of our small village square selling them for a $1.50 each.
Despite its picturesque qualities, this business was actually profitable, and by the end of one summer I had amassed several hundred dollarsquite a lot for a child of my age. And my proudest acquisition was a $50 silver certificate that some tourist had asked me to change.
Silver and gold certificates, you might recall, were phased out when the USA went off the gold standard in 1933. While the standard was in effect, the government backed all its paper money with precious metals. You could, at least in theory, go to a Federal Reserve bank, give them a $50 silver certificate, and get a $50 ingot of silver in return.
I'm not that old. Silver certificates had long since lost their special significance by the time I got mine in return for a loaf of home made bread and $48.50 in change. Nevertheless it was a neat historical artifact, and probably worth more than its face value to a collector. So I took the $50 bill to our village bank (a small ivy-covered brick building with an impressive steel vault in the back) and deposited it, along with the rest of my earnings, in my savings account.
Imagine my horror then, when several months later I withdrew $50 and didn't get my silver certificate back! I'd thought that my money went into that big vault in the back where it was kept safe for me until I needed it.
