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Defective By Design

and

Copyrights Must Expire

and

Copyright Timeline

Just to give you a start...

He's talking about the original u.s. copyright which came much later.

http://www.arl.org/focus-areas...

...are like? Authors distribute their work through publishers, and each publisher and each is different (see http://beckerinfo.net/scp/2008/02/11/what-to-look-for-in-publisher-copyright-agreement-forms/ to get an idea). In fact, many "highly-regarded" journals have draconian agreements: http://www.arl.org/sparc/author/addendum.shtml If you wonder why legal fees are so high, these guys are one of the two big culprits (the other being the law schools)..

Nicholson Baker's erroneous argument that libraries are gleefully destroying newspapers and other older documents has been refuted again and again.

Here are some organizations that have been working to provide alternatives to authors and libraries, the rapid success of PLOS: Biology has certainly demonstrated that the traditional publishing models can be changed

SPARC - Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition Group affiliated with the American Research Libraries organization
http://www.arl.org/sparc/

Highwire Press A major non-profit publishing initiative linked to Stanford University
http://highwire.stanford.edu/

Create Change Organization working to inform authors/researchers about their options in publishing
http://www.createchange.org/

The point of copyright is to encourage individuals or corporations to share with society

No: "...The main object to be desired in expanding copyright protection accorded to music has been to give the composer an adequate return for the value of his composition."
U.S. Copyright Act 1909

The point being: think of your favorite movie. Now, imagine that that film cast and crew were told, "You can write, shoot, act, edit that movie if you want to; but nobody will here will get paid for any of their work."

Do you really think that all 350 people would all say, "Yeah! I don't mind working for the next 8 months for nothing! I don't have to worry about food or rent or anything!" ?

Kinda doubt it.

So they would all wander off and get paying jobs - and you would not have that great movie to enjoy.

Actually, libraries are also in support of expanding access to orphaned works for their own use.

If you meant to say that capitalism cannot exist without an interventionist government, i think i'd have to disagree with you. Capitalism worked just dandy prior to copyrights in the US, which was one of the first instances of artificial or intellectual property coming into existance.

The U.S. passed the its first Copyright Act in 1790, just two years after the Constitution was ratified. "Intellectual property" has been a constant in American law. (And I certainly would have to question any claim that the American economy worked just dandy any time prior to about 1865; I can't see any economy using slave labor being described as "dandy".)

But artificial property is hardly limited to "intellectual property". All land and natural resource deeds that are not based on simply occupancy and use are artificial property; every claim on land - and thus every claim of physical property, which is made of things that came from the land - is ultimately based on a government claim. Corporations are certainly artificial property.

If you want to talk about reducing government interference in the marketplace, start by eliminating all corporate charters (which are issued, as I'm sure your realize, by governments). Eliminate the reserve banking system, by which the state allows certain private entities to create money. Reform the system of land "ownership" based on state action, into one of land stewardship, based on recognizing the actions of ordinary people on the land. Eliminate copyrights and patents, or perhaps replace them with a strictly limited right to royalties on for-profit use (certain software patents must go); and reform trademark law back to its intended use as a consumer protection.

Only then, when we've eliminated the roots of a system that puts control of economic resources into the hands of few, when we have no more corporations large enough to thrive not by competing in markets but by controlling them; no more landlords; no more absentee ownership of capital, no corporate veil, but a system economic system based and rewarding useful work rather than control of capital; only then should we talk about eliminating the few small governors we've placed on that system of capitalism. Until then, I'll be thoroughly in favor of minimum wage and other worker protection laws, that serve to slightly slow down the juggernaught of state action in favor of wealth concentration.

"- mandatory copyright registration. No-reg was efficient when outlets were few. Now that billions are publishing on the web, it's impossible (read: costly) to track down rightholders and licenses. *Very* inefficient. But registering and searching can now be done very cheaply, thanks to th web."

Copyright registration requirements wasn't cut out due to few outlets but to comply with the Berne Convention requirements.

See "1886: Berne Convention" and "1976: Revision of the U.S. Copyright Act "

on

http://www.arl.org/info/frn/copy/timeline.html

In short, it is a result of the fighting over copyright terms between Europe and the US that is continuing today in the form of WIPO.

"- exponential renewal costs. If the heirs of Elvis, or Disney, want to keep something copyright protected for 100 years, fine with me, as long as they pay for to compensate for the impairment it causes to artists who are creating *now* and consumers who are paying 100* cost for a CD."

This one just went right over my head...The term extensions were enacted to comply with treaties agreed upon by nations around the globe. It is part of what I like to refer to as the Copyright Cold War. It works like this:

Europe sees the US doing something that is making them gobs of money and hinders them from making the same gobs. We can't have that so we propose a treaty to make things "uniform". Now Europe is making the same gobs of money and the US can't have that. Software patents in Europe is the latest thing the US is pushing for ...Wash, rinse, and repeat.

The weapon in all this is trade sanctions. Any nation that doesn't enforce those treaties is immediately demonized and trade sanctions are used to force compliance. It is happening today to China. The US is proposing trade sanctions against China unless it tightens up its "intellectual property" laws.

B.

If they had a clean design, then even the tough problems are solvable.

But your point is a good one: they may not have a clean design on which to build.

In which case, the whole 'we need to add new features' idea is A Round-Trip To Abilene.

"Is that the word "piracy" is loaded, and that by using it, any writer immediately not only shows bias or misunderstanding of the issues, but also becomes a puppet in big corporations' propaganda show. It's much like the use of the word "war" in reference to the illegal invasion of iraq."

Ah yes, the "the term 'piracy' was invented by the big corporations" meme.

Back when I was a kid and we pirated software for the Apple II, nobody had a problem with the word. We pirated games, we played them, and everybody was happy, unless they were in the business of selling games for the Apple II.

The "please don't call it piracy, call it copyright infringement" movement is, per my best estimate, about ten years old. In 1841, Justice William Story used the word piracy in Folsom v. Marsh, and anybody who goes to a university can use thier library's copy of the OED to confirm that its use as a synonym for unauthorized copying goes back much longer than that. Anybody who doubts its existence in modern dictionary can simply open Firefox (we do all use Firefox, don't we?) and typing "dict piracy" into the address bar. So what if it's a homonym? We're not confused by "bark" or "desert."

Good luck with the "please use 'copyright infringement instead'" efforts, but "bias" and "misunderstanding" are not terms that you would be correct to apply to somebody simply because they use a word according to a definition that goes back some three hundred years.

The "copyright should be returned to the original 14 year period just like the framers of the constitution intended it" crowd probably believe that things started going to hell in 1831.

"But one thing is sure, with the great improvment of the communication and logistics, that time is much lower than it was when those '50/70 year' laws were created."

Well, let's see -
http://www.arl.org/info/frn/copy/timeline.html

CTEA (2002) retrospectively extended copyright protection of existing works by 20 years, from the life of the author plus 50 years (as mandated in the 1976 Copyright Act) to life of the author plus 70 years.

So, four years ago is your limit?

"Today, when the time to recover that mental investment is much lower, it majorly protects copyrights administration, that's much less concerned in inovation and diversity than in imposing to the society a specific work they hold copyrights."

This sentence reflects perfectly your understanding of copyright.

Then you end with a quote supporting copyright. It appears your only difficulty with the concept is you want someone's creative output for your free use sooner.

U.S. copyright was extended to 28 years in 1831 and the option to renew extended to 28 years in 1909.

Film conservation in the U.S. begins with New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1935. Iris Barry: American Film Archive Pioneer "It is estimated that 75% of all silent films and 50% of all sound films made before 1950 are lost." (1992)

In 1942 the only safe and (marginally) practical means for home distribution was 8 and 16 mm projection. A steep step downward from a 35 mm nitrate master. Those of you who remember Blackhawk Films will know the cost of building a significant collection.

Statute of Anne, 1710, 14 years, renewable for 14, the author still living. The model for the first U.S. copyright law in 1790.

In 1831, U.S. copyright was extended to 28 years, renewable for 14, again following the European standard.

The Berne Convention of 1886, as revised in 1908, established the modern formula of life plus X years, where X equals 50 years or more. Copyright Timeline

That said, I'm not letting the Clinton administration off the hook for the DMCA (see this) which is about keeping citizens from owning information, or the Bono Copyright Extension Act which extends copyright so far as to keep certain works from ever being in the public domain.

I guess I'm surprised that anyone actually thought the Supreme Court would rule otherwise with the overarching reach that corporations have in government these days. :-(

Thanks for chiming in, Orrin. Here's the latest amendment to the DMCA for you to peruse.

Its only ten pages, so you should be able to wade through it in about two days.

By the way, the Annals of Physics, referred to above, has an institutional subscription price of $2100 per year, a rough cost of $19.51 per 1000 characters. http://www.arl.org/create/resources/Table_Pages/TA BLE_most-c1000-phys.html Of course, Nuclear Physics B has an annual sub. cost of... wait for it... $11,453

buy.

You keep using that word, but I do not think it means what you think it means.

Now if you said "lend" or "lease" I wouldn't feel like you were trying to trick someone.

Maybe Sen. Hatch should watch the tech companies that are using techs to train their replacments so they can send the jobs overseas if he wants to protect American innovation and economic growth.

In a statement, Hatch declared that the panel would have an "aggressive agenda" and highlighted the issue of patent reform, saying, "We need strong patent protection to give incentives for innovation and economic growth."

Senator Hatch Introduces Bill to Burn People's Eyes Out Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) today introduced legislation authorizing the use of high-powered microwave lasers to burn out the eyes of non-paying viewers of copyrighted material. "If we could develop technology which just burned out the parts of their brains where the illegal memories are stored, that'd be fine with me--but we can burn their eyes out right now!" said Hatch, while introducing the Hatch/Hollywood Eyeball Evisceration Act.

Bookburning on the Internet If you say "If you must smoke marijuana, filter the smoke with a water pipe and don't even think of driving afterwards." or "...don't use dirty needles. Clean them with bleach or find a syringe exchange program."

I think these statements are good advice. But if U.S. Senators Orrin Hatch and Dianne Feinstein have their way, it will soon be a felony to publish these statements in any book, newspaper, magazine, web site, or even to utter them or link to a web site containing them. The Hatch/Feinstein Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act of 1999 makes these statements illegal because they "pertain" to an act that violates federal controlled-substance laws

Nobel Laureates Denounce Hatch's Patent Bill

Orrin Hatch's Glass House Has Bin Laden's Name on It Indeed, to this day, those involved in the decision to give the Afghan rebels access to a fortune in covert funding and top-level combat weaponry continue to defend that move in the context of the Cold War. Sen. Orrin Hatch told Robert Windrem that he would make the same call again today even knowing what bin Laden would do subsequently. It was worth it, he said.

Hatch support for converting our interstate highways into toll roads.

Collections of Information Antipiracy Act This bill makes it legal to get the goods on you.
American database providers render an invaluable service by collecting, organizing, and disseminating billions of bits of information from myriad sources of every possible sector of our economy.

I could do a bit more research on the good Senator, but then I'd be post 387 and no one would ever read this.

Where? That is the intent of Copyright law, but not the requirement.

Copyright Law Timeline

The interesting part is the 1976 revision, which shows why this must also be covered as a trade secret to protect it in the event that it is stolen. Otherwise, you could steal the code and copy it around for "learning purposes."

You missed his point. It's not a case about stealing either. It's a case about copyright infringment.

in fact, the copyright governing library information costs all libraries, public and private, many thousands of dollars every year in subscription fees. The problems inherent in current copyright laws are well summarized in a piece written by Duane Webster, Executive Director of the Association of Research Libraries. Though it is written from a librarian's point of view, the analysis of the impact of the extension of copyright by the Sonny Bono Act is applicable to anyone interested in fair use and matters of public domain and privacy.

Fortunately there is a middle way between traditional academic publishers and author self-publication on the web: online academic journals run by the scientists themselves. A good example in my field is the Journal of Machine Learning Research which was formed when the entire editorial board resigned from the overpriced Machine Learning Journal. Online access is free, while a low-price is published to satisfy the legacy requirements of libraries, copyright law, tenure review committees, and the like. Speaking of copyright: in contrast to traditional publishers, authors do not have to sign away their copyright when they publish in JMLR.

The result? Three years after its inception, JMLR is the highest-impact journal in Artificial Intelligence. This is by no means an isolated case, but part of a sea change in academic publishing. More and more such journals are being setup, often in direct competition to overpriced conventional publications, and with support from academic libraries.

The "author pays" model is a last-ditch effort by traditional academic publishers to wring profits from scientific communication, an activity that in essence has always been free (as in -dom). Apparently they haven't noticed yet that all the scarcities that their business model depended on - from trees to typesetting to transport - have simply been removed by technology. Given the free volunteer labor that scientists routinely provide, and the existing host infrastructure at the institutions where they work, the cost of running an online scientific journal is, for all practical purposes, zero.

Fortunately there is a middle way between traditional academic publishers and author self-publication on the web: online academic journals run by the scientists themselves. A good example in my field is the Journal of Machine Learning Research which was formed when the entire editorial board resigned from the overpriced Machine Learning Journal. Online access is free, while a low-price is published to satisfy the legacy requirements of libraries, copyright law, tenure review committees, and the like. Speaking of copyright: in contrast to traditional publishers, authors do not have to sign away their copyright when they publish in JMLR.

The result? Three years after its inception, JMLR is the highest-impact journal in Artificial Intelligence. This is by no means an isolated case, but part of a sea change in academic publishing. More and more such journals are being setup, often in direct competition to overpriced conventional publications, and with support from academic libraries.

The "author pays" model is a last-ditch effort by traditional academic publishers to wring profits from scientific communication, an activity that in essence has always been free (as in -dom). Apparently they haven't noticed yet that all the scarcities that their business model depended on - from trees to typesetting to transport - have simply been removed by technology. Given the free volunteer labor that scientists routinely provide, and the existing host infrastructure at the institutions where they work, the cost of running an online scientific journal is, for all practical purposes, zero.

You don't think Kerry is ``rich people''? You don't think he would say something like `I would therefore urge you to move forward with the passage of "The Digital Millenium Copyright Act"' ? Oh well, someone beat me to this, but at least I've got a link here.

I think what you might be trying to say is that a small, but vocal, minority of businesses are trying to prevent the progress of science and useful arts.

Everyone here is aware, I'm sure, that there is really no such thing as "free" in publishing. Many people and hundreds of institutions are contributing their time, resources and money trying to break the stranglehold of the entrenched publishing industry.

The only way open access can ever really succeed is if authors choose to publish in these journals instead of the established journals. When careers and prestige are on the line, how many faculty and researchers will choose to publish their latest medical discovery in one of these free journals instead of established journals like "New England Journal of Medicine" and "Science"?

As all of the SPARC institutions know, creating the journals is just the first step in a very long and difficult struggle. Read them, publish in them, promote them to others. And thank your librarians for providing the seedbed for all these open access journals to flourish.

"#6. Where is the public domain?

The public domain is not a place. A work of authorship is in the "public domain" if it is no longer under copyright protection or if it failed to meet the requirements for copyright protection. Works in the public domain may be used freely without the permission of the former copyright owner." (emphasis mine)

The United States became a Berne signatory in 1988. The major changes for the U.S. copyright system as a result of Berne were: greater protection for proprietors, new copyright relationships with twenty-four countries, and elimination of the requirement of copyright notice for copyright protection.

Check out this site and skip down to 1993.

1993: Playboy Enterprises Inc. v. Frena
The Florida Northern District Court held that Frena, an electronic bulletin board operator, had violated Playboy's copyright when one of their photographs was digitized and placed on the bulletin board system by one subscriber and downloaded by another subscriber. According to the decision, "it does not matter that Defendant Frena may have been unaware of the copyright infringement. Intent to infringe is not needed to find copyright infringement. Intent or knowledge is not an element of infringement, and thus even an innocent infringer is liable for infringement; rather innocence is significant to a trial court when it fixes statutory damages, which is a remedy equitable in nature."

Actually, up until 1891 : "American publishers continued to regard the work of a foreign (i. e., non-resident) author as unprotected 'common' property.". So the US basically inherited the works of western civilization copyright-free.

Slightly unrelated, but you may also want to check out this site for a history of American copyright law.

In order for a paper covering to generate enough acid to damage anything, you'd have to keep your CDs tightly stacked for months, maybe years. And even then, damage to the paper would be noticable long before damage to the CDs.

Spencer Bachus, my representative, is also cosponsoring the bill. This is a real turnaround for him, as he has usually voted for whichever side of the issue is commercial. We've had several e- and snail mail arguments about electronic freedom issues, and his cosponsorship of this bill demonstrates that he is doing just what his job title indicates - representing.

A big attaboy to my man Bachus for pitching in on this! Let this be an inspiration to anyone else out there who believes that getting involved is hopeless - if you speak, they will listen.

1. it violates many library confidentiality laws that exist at the state level, it's extra-legal unecessarily
2. it completely destroys the bond of trust that exists between a librarian and a patron. it's no one's business what you read and many libraries ensure patron confidentiality by not saving checkout records once a book had been returned [let's see Blockbuster do that!]. Many libraries are aggressively stepping this up post-PATRIOT
3. in cases of proven threat, or with due cause and due process, this information on known suspects has been available via a subpoena. This is just a random way to spy on everyone, cast a wide net and look like you're being tough on crime.
4. Hear the one about the guy brought in by the feds for looking at info on batteries?!

The impact of scientific journals are ranked by the science citation index, which boils down to who and how many people cite you. Tenure decisions for scientists are strongly affected by the overall impact of their research - which means how many papers you have in how many prestigious journals.

Journals maintain those impacts by publishing papers that they think will be cited. The result is that there is pressure on journals to not just validate, but also to figure out what is going to be cited.

For more on how this system works and why, I highly recommend reading In Oldenburg's Long Shadow.

until you read In Oldenburg's Long Shadow (For those who miss the reference, Henry Oldenburg is the man created the first peer reviewed journal.)

It is long, but it leads through how the Science Citation index has been used as a tool by unscrupulous publishers to first create a locked in academic market, and then milk it for all the revenue that they can get. It also discusses possible alternatives, and various approaches that are being tried to break free of this stranglehold.

Oh right. And if you want to see what online peer reviewed journals might look like, look at First Monday. Be warned that you may spend some time browsing through past articles.

SPARC is a library-led effort to introduce competition into the peer-reviewed journal marketplace. Because of the outlandish rise in peer-reviewed journal prices, libraries and their acquisitions budgets are now not able to afford all of the content their users need. So libraries are now moving into the realm of publishing. Some call this a socialist approach, but I view it as capitalism at its best....

The *essence* of copyright is that all the people got together and said 'Let's curtail our rights, let's say that if any of us wants to copy something that someone else wrote, they have to pay for it, for a limited period of time'.

From A History of Copyright in The U.S.:
1790: US Constitution Copyright law in the US is derived from English copyright law (Statute of Anne) and common law. The framers of the U.S. Constitution made copyright law purely federal: "The Congress shall have power . . . to promote the progress of science and useful arts . . . by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive rights to their respective writings and discoveries." Congress subsequently enacted the Copyright Act of 1790 and major revisions to it in 1831, 1870, 1909, and 1976.

After 1976, of course, revisions started piling up to accomodate technologies. But in essence it seems to me that it was there to protect ideas so others would innovate. Innovation in regards to mass media is not something we're seeing a whole lot of (I would go so far to say that it's discouraged by the mainstream). I agree that there's nothing gained by copyright now in mass media cases because all we're subjected to is the same ol rehashed junk. Why does Britney Spears even need a copyright on her songs when Christina Aguilera is just singing basically the same things?

But the point is, the moment the public mandate for copyright is gone, there can be **no** justification for copyright. It's not a moral right. It's not a natural right.

Definitely not a moral or natural right, but it is a protected right. Copyright doesn't exist completely without backing. Besides, I'd say if you look outside of the scope of movies and music, you could find some justification for copyrights (at least in the fields of science and technology).

The main object to be desired in expanding copyright protection accorded to music has been to give the composer an adequate return for the value of his composition, and it has been a serious and difficult task to combine the protection of the composer with the protection of the public, and to so frame an act that it would accomplish the double purpose of securing to the composer an adequate return for all use made of his composition and at the same time prevent the formation of oppressive monopolies [emphasis mine], which might be founded upon the very rights granted to the composer for the purpose of protecting his interests.

Without the EULA, I am free to use my software within the bounds of copyright law.

See, for example, the comments about the MAI Systems decsion in this paper:

Title III was proposed in response to the decision in MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc.53 MAI involved the limitation on the exclusive rights in computer programs contained in 17 U.S.C. 117, which allows the "owner" of a program to load the program into the machine's random access memory, or "RAM." In MAI, an independent service organization (ISO) serviced a computer which used software licensed to, but not owned by, the customer. The court held that the ISO infringed the copyright in the program by loading the copyrighted software into the RAM of the customer's computer, thereby making a "reproduction" of the copy under 17 U.S.C. - 106. The MAI court ruled that Section 117 only exempted "owners" of software and not "licensees." Title III amends Section 117 to effectively overrule MAI by allowing the owner or lessee of a machine to make or authorize the making of a copy of a computer program under certain conditions for the purpose of repair or maintenance of the computer hardware.

Specifically, the making of the copy is allowed (1) if the copy is made "solely by virtue of the activation of a machine that lawfully contains an authorized copy of the computer program, for purposes only of maintenance or repair of that machine," (2) if the new copy is used for no other purpose and is destroyed upon completion of the maintenance or repair, and (3) if "any computer program ... that is not necessary for that machine to be activated ... is not accessed or used other than to make such new copy by virtue of the activation of the machine." Significantly, the exception applies only to RAM copies made during the course of hardware maintenance, not software maintenance.

Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)

But with digital content and the Internet, a home computer user can share a perfect copy of any content with potentially millions of other people, with minimal time and effort. Doesn't that pose an immediate danger to copyright holders?

Ah! An interesting point. Let's explore it.

copyright historical timeline

New technology does necessitate the advent of new rules. Easy reproduction of printed material in the 1700's, and the abuse of that power, caused the first copyright laws to be enacted (statute of Anne). It is quite important to note that nearly all copyright laws, starting with this one, intend to protect the author of the work, not the producer of the work.

At the time, the author of a book contracted with a printer to print the book. Today's entertainment industry in the US has turned that on its head: the artist is nearly forced to give up entirely their copy rights to their work in order to get someone to publish it.

Today, the power now rests with those who control the distribution rather than with those who create the product. The proposed legislation wrests even more control from the creator, handing it over to the distributors.

Now we can branch this line of thought into a few different directions:

1. "creator" is now a vague term: Who is the real "creator" of a Britney Spears song or video? She couldn't do that on her own. Someone wrote the song, the musicians performed it. Britney Spears is not truly the artist so much as a brand name attached to an entire conglomeration of products from various creators. Yet, only the song and the video are actually copyrighted--the performance can not be copy protected, and someone else is free to perform their own version (they're just not allowed to record and sell it because it would be a derivative work). Thus, perhaps it's not the digital nature of the recording but the muddyness of branding, artist, producer, distributor, performance, etc.
2. digital technology makes copying easier than ever before: So what? If you're caught, there's a penalty. Printing presses and photocopiers do not include technology to restrict reprinting of copyrighted materials. No legislation demands that they include such technology. The government has not decided that the photocopier industry needs a "kick start" to protect the copy rights of Random House and Houghton Mifflin and Viking etc. HP and Epson printers do not check to see whether the text you're printing is copyrighted by Disney or the Washington Post or Playboy. Imagine what would have happened to the computer industry if the government had mandated such technology!
3. who does this bill protect? This bill is not about artists getting a fair shake from their creations. It is about forcing one industry to do something to protect the profit margins of another industry. If it were about consumers or artists, it would have stemmed from grass roots and would have happened in the industry organically, as virus protection has. Instead, it comes from the leaders of a single industry's largest companies, who are complaining about potential revenues lost rather than actual damages done. Some of this money may make it to the artists, but most will likely go to overhead costs of production and distribution and enforcement and shareholders.

This content could not exist without the new digital technology that they say threatens it so soundly. It is exactly because copies are so easy to make and distribute that Hollywood has their panties in a bunch about piracy. Piracy is a blip. They are more worried about losing control of the channel, losing control of the audience, losing control of distribution. Instead of clinging to their buggy-whip distribution mechanisms, they should remake themselves into more modern companies utilizing the new technologies. If this were the cretaceous age, Congress would be trying to outlaw mammals because they posed a threat to the existing life forms. These companies must evolve or get out of the way for the next generation.

I mostly wrote this as I thought it through, but I am now even more opposed to the theory and practice of this legislation than ever before. I certainly will vote against any supporter of this bill (or anyone they endorse) in upcoming elections.

It absolutely is not, and none of your references even suggest otherwise. I'll just assert that flat out, because I doubt that most readers will bother reading either of our references, and it bothers me to see this fantasy reenforced here yet again, because it gives a false sense of security, that our personal activities are protected and sacrosanct.

• So it could be argued that limited copying for personal use provides negligible impact on the overall market, and is therefore fair use

Look, I'll spell it out again, shall I? There is no clause in fair use, there never has been one, that allows fair use for anything other than: (1) criticism and comment, (2) parody and satire, (3) scholarship and research, (4) news reporting and (5) teaching. To qualify for consideration under the fair use defence, your use must fall into these categories. You don't even get to argue the "negligible impact" until you've shown that you qualify. There is no case zero. There is no case six. Personal/friends/family use is not one of the five cases.

• A reasonable discussion of Fair Use, with considerably more thought and insight than the parent post is available here

Betting nobody would read it, huh? This is a very brief document that deals with protection of existing library fair use, which is firmly in the realm of "scholarship and research" and/or "teaching". But enough from me, let's quote verbatim from your reference, with no editing:

• "The fair use provision of the Copyright Act allows reproduction and other uses of copyrighted works under certain conditions for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching(including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship or research. Additional provisions of the law allow uses specifically permitted by Congress to further educational and library activities"

OK, thanks for making my point. No mention of personal use. Personal use, friends and family copies, this is fiction, not fact.

If you're going to argue legalities, you have to learn to quote case law. I'm going to help you out a bit by posting a synopsis of the Supreme Court decision in Sony v. Universal Studios 464 U.S. 417 (1984), a.k.a. "the Betamax case" aka the "Sony Decision" judgement. Note that it contradicts my black and white stance a little, but note also that it qualifies that very carefully, and that it references earlier case law:

• "The respondents and Sony both conducted surveys of the way the Betamax machine was used by several hundred owners during a sample period in 1978. Although there were some differences in the surveys, they both showed that the primary use of the machine for most owners was "time-shifting" -- the practice of recording a program to view it once at a later time, and thereafter erasing it. [...] The District Court concluded that noncommercial home use recording of material broadcast over the public airwaves was a fair use of copyrighted works and did not constitute copyright infringement. It emphasized the fact that the material was broadcast free to the public at large, the noncommercial character of the use, and the private character of the activity conducted entirely within the home. Moreover, the court found that the purpose of this use served the public interest in increasing access to television programming, an interest that "is consistent with the First Amendment policy of providing the fullest possible access to information through the public airwaves. Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. v. Democratic National Committee, 412 U.S. 94, 102." "

OK, your turn. Find a case that extends the defence of a single and temporary copy, entirely within the home, to make it even remotely relevant to making permanent copies for the use of friends and family, or even for personal use. You can't, because no such source exists, no matter how hard you wish for it, and however hard you wish that future judgements are going to be based on the wish list of libraries, the fact is that future judgements will be based on past judgements. Find the case law that supports making permanent copies of non-broadcast material for yourself, or for friends or family.

Incidentally, this is very much On Topic. If it comes to the crunch, Gnutella - rather Gnutella developers - are just as boned as Kazaa, because neither of them can (I contend) show that they even qualify for consideration for fair use protection. The financial argument is irrelevant, because they won't be able to show grounds for even making it.

It may not be fair use, but it may also not be copyright infringement. In fact, it's a grey area. According to ChillingEffect.org, deciding whether something is fair use or not involves (among other things):

the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work

And if it is copyright infringement, the owner of the copyright may not be entitled to any remuneration:

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/504.html

A reasonable discussion of Fair Use, with considerably more thought and insight than the parent post is available here:

http://www.arl.org/scomm/copyright/uses.html

If the cost-of-entry was really greatly reduced by e-publishing, you'd expect to see a number of "alternative professional societies" competing on basis of greatly reduced cost.

Several mathematics journals, such as 'Annals of Mathematics' and 'Geometry & Topology' are now 'overlays' of the ArXiv preprints archive -- which means that all of their articles are freely available over the internet.

'Geometry & Topology' is a member of SPARC - the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition. As their website says, "SPARC influences the marketplace positively by encouraging publishers to enter areas where the prices are highest and competition is needed most -- primarily in the science, technical, and medical (STM) fields"... in other words, it is an initiative to replace the old for-profit journals.

So there are the beginnings of a decently sized movement rebelling against conglomerates like Elsevier.

Press Release on the Journal of Machine Learning Research site gives a partial answer to the question how they will finance this. In addition of getting money from printed version and paid electronic edition (with additional features) on the CatchWord, SPARC helps them. SPARC is an alliance of universities and research libraries that supports increased competition in scientific journal
publishing.

Get a copy of this magnificient comic by Steve Darnall (of "Empty Love Stories" fame). A cynical and eye-opening exploration of the US of A, it takes us on a disturbing ride, from its inception on ideals of freedom and equality, to the present day where corporations have the government and the law in their hands.

Its relevance is all the more strong with the advent of lopsided laws such as the DMCA and the UCITA.

Expect to see this publication banned in the near future.

Given that Elsevier is charging an obscene $1893 a year to nearly every major academic library in the world for the Journal of Econometrics, why doesn't someone come in and undercut them? Well, it's not so easy. Journals have reputations that are developed over many years, and for researchers, it matters that your article gets published in a "good" journal. That's really the whole point of a journal: it acts as a kind of stamp of quality. If you start a new journal, besides all the usual costs associated with starting a print magazine, there is a chicken and egg problem with developing a reputation: in order to get a high standing in the field, you need to get the best quality articles submitted to you; but no one wants to submit a good article to a new journal without a good reputation. In economic terms, it's not a classical market where many suppliers can produce identical commodities. Instead there is a lot of product differentiation, and associated with the product differentiation are major barriers to entry.

Also, the market can only sustain a few journals in any specialized area. There have been some big mergers in the academic publishing industry lately, and some people argue that the industry is now so concentrated that the DOJ should consider antitrust action; see here for instance.

Academic publishers are really just middlemen, and with the possibility of publishing directly on the web, it makes sense to try to cut out the middleman altogether while maintaining the peer-review and archival properties of traditional journals. The key is figuring out how to overcome the reputation problem, but given how dissatisfied people are with journal these days, that really should be doable. If I were Elsevier or one of the other major publishers, I would be (a) making a lot of money, but (b) worried about what the internet will eventually do to my business.

Stratospheric Processes And their Role in Climate
Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition
Space Physics and Astronomy Research Collaboratory
South Pembrokeshire Action with Rural Communities
Social Planning And Research Council of British Columbia
Student Partners in Amphibian and Reptile Conservation
Statewide Pennsylvania Rights Coalition
Scalable Processor ARChitechture

Here's how University Libraries (which are the really the one's being targeted in the article, not Public Libraries) usually deal with electronic material.

Purchasing: We buy access to electronic journals for a yearly fee (usually 10% above what we would pay for the print). This grants us access to the current issues as well as whatever backfiles the publisher makes available. Some publishers have a scale of fees to determine how much of the backfile we get access to. If, for some reason, we have to cancel our online subscription, we lose all access, including for years that we paid for (there are a few publishers, usually scholarly societies that promise perpetual access for years paid for, but they are the exception.)

This access is controlled by an ip based authenication scheme on the publisher side. Anybody can come into the library and get access and members of the University community can get acces off-campus through our proxy servers. In general there are no limits on number of simultaneous users.

So far the model for electronic books is similar. There are several e-book services available: Books 24/7, ITKnowledge, NetLibrary, etc. Books 24/7 and ITKnowledge work like electronic journals - we buy access and our ptarons can use it whenever and for however long they need to. NetLibrary requires use of a non-browser based reader and requires books be 'checked out' for periods ranging from 2-6 hours or so. The length of time a book can be checked out is negotiated for in the contract and the library pays more for a longer check out period.

Document Delivery/Inter-Library Loan: Whether or not we can provide copies of an article to another library depends on the license terms of our access contract. In general it is allowed. However we are not allowed to provide an electronic copy. We must print off the article then fax or mail it to the requesting institution.

For e-books, ILL is pretty much straight out, except for providing a few pages or a chapter.

In either case the requesting library has to pay two fees: they pay us for our labor/costs and they pay the publisher the copyright fee for the copy. Typical document delivery costs are 25-50 $US per article. Some publisher forbid document delivery of copies even from print journals and other s charge copyright fees in excess of 100 $US.

Indexing: Just having electronic access to journals is useless unless our patrons have the ability to search for articles. This entails the library purchasing access to electronic databases that index a particular discipline for an additional yearly fee.

So if we consider the case a mid-sized American public research university and look at what we pay yearly for the Computer Science field:

Print books: ~5000 $US
Electronic books: ~6000 $US
Print Journals: ~36000 $US
Electronic access to journals: ~20000 US$
Electronic indexes: ~50000 $US
Total: ~117000 $US

Now publishing in the computer science field is dominated by two scholary associations: the IEEE and the ACM, which explains why these costs are relatively low.

Biology, by contrast, tends to be dominated by the large commerical publishers like Elsevier, Gordon and Breech, Springer-Verlag, Kluwer Academic etc. The yearly costs in biology would probably be approximately 3-5 times those in computer science.

Quite frankly, the commercial publisher do have a problem in so far as most libraries have inflation limited budgets while commerical publishers tend to increase the costs of their journals by about 10-25% per year. This leads to libraries having to engage in 'cancellation projects' every 3 years or so in order to stay on budget. This lowers the publisher's profits and forces them to raise prices while simultaneously forcing more libraries to rely on document delivery for access to the research literature being produced by the faculty at their own University.

Librarians are most assuredly not taking this sitting down. We have our own political attack dog, the American Library Association (whose views I can't say I always agree with, but I am a member and do support their lobbying efforts.) Also library's are funding projects like SPARC: Scholarly Publications and Academic Resources.

Hopefully this has been more or less on topic.

Stephen W. Fairfield
Engineering/Mathematics/Statistics Librarian