Why Is Our Money Copyrighted?

I was looking at a bill the other day, and I noticed the following very small text at the bottom of a $10 bill: ©2005 BANK OF CANADA.

Why on earth do we need a copyright notice on our money? After all, it's a banknote and there is already a whole regime of law devoted to punishing those who make illegal copies of it. What possible benefit does a copyright notice convey? Perhaps its a little joke.

So, if I were to make some counterfeit money, would I be charged with copyright violation in addition to the funny-money crime? Maybe they're copyrighting the artwork and images on the money. But why? It's not like the Bank of Canada is a commercial interest that makes money (so to speak) from these images, so why do they need copyright protection?

I'm just curious, that's all.

Recent Stuff

Things keeping me busy, interested, and entertained these past few weeks and months.

• Tiki Bar TV. It's sad how much I'm enjoying this little podcast, but it just keeps getting better. This is exactly the sort of thing that I'd be doing if I had free time, talented friends and any creative spark at all. Sadly, I don't. Thankfully, some folks do.
  
  


• Philosophy. For awhile now I've had a goal to sit down and try and articulate my own philosophy of life. To that end I've been doing a little reading about philosophy and listening to Todd Mohr's excellent Philosophy podcast. I was lucky enough to find the podcast on iTunes just shortly after he started doing it, and I've been following along with each new episode (weekly). I haven't made much progress on my own philosophical theories, but I do enjoy soaking up the history and some of the context of the subject matter by listening to Todd. He recently expanded the podcast to include a blog and, just today, a group chat via iChat. That's probably another reason I like Todd: he's got a dot Mac email account. :-)
  
  


• The Bible. No, not actually reading it. Bob Price is a biblical scholar who examines the history of the bible (and other religious texts), and he has the most perplexingly interesting radio show/podcast where he answers people's questions about the history and context of the bible. Although I'm not religious and certainly not a Christian, I do find myself eagerly anticipating each new episode of this show.