Slashdot Mirror
Harlan Ellison on Copyright Infringement
An AC sent us this: "It seems that Harlan Ellison is hopping mad about copyright infringement regarding his works. You've seen this class of beef before, but it's, well, Harlan Ellison complaining, and man is he spitting venom. Just read the dag essay." Wow. See also the site's main page, which has some responses from other authors who don't feel quite as strongly as Ellison. Update: 03/07 10:22 PM EST by michael : Some readers say they don't know who Harlan Ellison is. Haven't any of you ever seen Twilight Zone?
The alternatives to me are either 1. a draconian system of increasingly invasive copyright enforcement as new technologies make redistribution even easier all the time, or 2. artists starve, or worse, stop making art. I'd rather pay for artists up front in my taxes (with academies as job-sites, etc.) All in all, it seems like the least oppressive, most productive solution.
What? This is a lawsuit, not an SF story? Never mind.
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What exactly are you babbling about? The man's problem is that people are taking stuff he wrote and giving his, Harlan Ellison's, stuff away for free.
This is not about people creating their own content and giving it away by choice. This is about people taking the source of what little revenue a SF writer gets and mass publishing it via the Internet without paying the author a single dime.
He's right to take a stand like this. My favorite SF author, Roger Zelazny, died of cancer while working his tail off. He was well-known and a Hugo award winner several times over yet he still wasn't making enough money just off writing to rest on his heels and relax for awhile and focus on recovery. Writers, especially the really good ones it seems, are generally not wealthy. In fact, usually they're struggling to get by.
This is not about jealousy over better writers releasing stuff for free. This is a fight for survival against people who don't think they should have to pay for the work that writers like Ellison do to provide the money for their food and housing. If you're upset that he should demand payment for services rendered, then don't buy his stuff. Go ahead. Be a leech. I'm sure that none of your other favorite authors that are still alive would approve, though. Do you think Asimov wrote the massive numbers of nonfiction articles he did just for kicks? Harlan just has the rabid tenacity and guts to take a stand against it.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Come on. I'm all for copyrights but what kinda mess will we get into if the ISP's start filtering everything????
Nope, information is absolutely ownable. Say you invent a new type of car engine that'll do 100mpg at 200mph with zero emissions. Do you want Ford to say, "Sorry, you don't own that, so we're going to take this design and not pay you a cent"? Especially if this is your life's work, and you've spent the last 20 years perfecting it? Would you like to spend the rest of your life poor while your invention lines the pockets of the corporations?
That's why there's a patent system. It's been hugely abused over the last few years, but the theory behind it, stopping ppl with bright ideas from being ripped off, remains as relevant as ever. And it's why there's a copyright system - your life's work may not be an invention, it may be a book, or a screenplay, or a piece of music.
If the author/inventor wants what they've produced to be freely distributed, then they have the choice to release it into the public domain, but only they can decide that - it's not the right of every kid in a bedroom to scan books and give copies away for free, or to do the same with music. If you're relying on your invention/music/writing to provide you with an income in retirement, as Harlan is, you're going to be pretty pissed. Wouldn't you be unhappy if you found some kid was stealing your pension fund?
As far as I can see, the only ppl saying that information isn't ownable (or "information wants to be free") are either: (a) ppl who produce new concepts but distribute them for higher motives (eg. Salk); (b) ppl who produce new concepts but distribute them free for the kudos involved (eg. much open-source, see ESR's essays); or (c) ppl who don't have the intelligence to product anything innovative themselves. And (c) far outnumbers the rest.
Grab.
Nobody is arguing that they deserve another physical copy, that the author owes them anything after the sale.
But you bought the book and the right to use the information. The book is short-lived, but there's no reason to expect that the right to use the information is linked to the paper.
That's just ridiculous. Why on earth would anyone think the author or publisher was due more money if you read your friend's book after your was ruined? And if you could go and read your friend's book, why couldn't you copy those words for yourself to read later?
What is the author/publisher doing that deserves more money? Are they sending another physical copy?
I interpret the intention of the law to be that the right to the information travels with the physical copy, OR the owner. Either I can install the software on all five of my computers and use it on either of them, OR I can lend the CD to my friends and they can use it as long as they have the CD. Either way, only one person at a time is using it. Ditto with my view of books.
Any restriction of the actual number of copies made is ridiculous. It gets into stupid issues like allowing ONE copy to be temporarily made, in RAM, to allow use/viewing. How about people with L1/L2 cache? Shall we reboot and turn off the cache just to satisfy that law? That sort of crap is ridiculous.
The only rational view of all this is that you buy the right to view the information and you can sell that right. If you do, you must turn over your copies of the work because you don't have the right to sell new rights to view, just to transfer the ones that were sold to you.
If you choose to exercise those rights by MP3ing your music, fine. If you scan and OCR your books, fine.
You may claim that the law doesn't say that, but that's irrelevant. As long as there are lawyers, the law will never definatively say anything. But as long as there are people, the law should reflect their will. The will of the people is that they aren't controlled by ridiculous laws that only help those rich enough to hire lawyers.
As long as a common sense reading of copyright law would allow backup copies and time/space shifting, those continue to be proper uses. You can't let a lawyer tell you what proper behaviour is.
Folks, this guy's been serious about copyright for a lot longer than there's been an Internet. In that essay, he describes his campaign to recover rights to a story after the publisher violates the terms of his contract (they published his story in a paperback with cigarette ad inserts - used to be quite common, in the 50s). Harlan started off as polite as he ever is, and ended up performing various acts of terrorism - read the story for details.
The all-caps thing has to be a fluke. Unless he's temporarily crippled and using some kind of alpha-talker, he knows better.
I love vegetarians - some of my favorite foods are vegetarians.
Do I steal music? Yes. Do I do it to get something for nothing? No. Do I do it to screw artists? No. Do I pay for any and all reasonably-priced software, games, music, and literature? You betcha. But I am boycotting the music / literature / entertainment monopolies that are charging me a fortune just to keep their stock prices high. If an artist falls by the wayside then I feel justified in knowing that I did it to offer freedom to 10x more artists in the future.
This is a moral stand, not a financial one.
But what you're doing isn't boycotting. A boycott is when you don't use a product for moral reasons. You are still using their product. You're not taking a real stand, you're trying to take a stand, while making sure you still get what you want. In the Montgomery Bus Boycott, they didn't boycott by trying to get on the buses for free. They avoided the buses. You can't have it both ways. Either your boycotting the music industry for moral reasons (and not using their product at all) or your just avoiding paying for the product because in your opinion it's too expensive.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Do I steal music? Yes. Do I do it to get something for nothing? No. Do I do it to screw artists? No. Do I pay for any and all reasonably-priced software, games, music, and literature? You betcha. But I am boycotting the music / literature / entertainment monopolies that are charging me a fortune just to keep their stock prices high. If an artist falls by the wayside then I feel justified in knowing that I did it to offer freedom to 10x more artists in the future.
You do realize you've claimed that by preventing 1 artist from making a living from selling his/her music you have prevented 10x that amount from doing so in the future. So if the goal of you and your cohorts is achieved and the RIAA is driven out of business leading to distributed music becoming free(which is what Napster has propagated) exactly how have you freed the artists?
Let me guess, "They are free to no longer have to worry about album sales, because there aren't any?".
It can't be copied, since that creates a new copy. The copyright holder is the only one who has the right to allow that. But what happens to the original copy is not under control of the copyright holder.
That's why libraries, second-hand book stores, literary auction houses, etc aren't violating US Copyright laws. They don't make copies, and they work after the original First Sale.
Harlan is a professional writer. He makes his living off of his writing, the royalties he earns, etc. He has a very vested interest in strong copyright protection, and he is famously vocal in his opinion. He doesn't have a problem with used book stores or libraries -- besides being legal, they are instrumental in exposing new readers to his and other authors works, which benefits him and the industry. What he doesn't like is mass-production of his works in violation of his IP rights.
As I read it, there are two issues he disapproves of:
First, that his work is being copied to Usenet without his permission, and (more importantly) without his getting paid. This is consistant with Harlan's stance on stripped and remaindered books (both of which are books the publishers couldn't sell normally, and which are being sold at steep discounts with no royalties to the author), which he also abhors because he doesn't get paid.
Second, that his work is being posted to Usenet from poor scans without proofreading. This offends his sensibilities as a writer, because he feels his work is misrepresented, making it look bad. This is also consistant with past actions.
Just my thoughts.
a distribution monopoly is forcing me to pay unreasonable prices for music
Exactly how did they force you? By playing songs on the radio, and making it known that you could purchase the CD for a price?
Hmmm... if it's possible to force people to buy things just by letting them know that they are for sale... that gives me an idea: HEY YOU!!! I HAVE SOMETHING TO SELL. YOU MUST BUY IT.
OK, while I'm waiting for everybody on Slashdot to send me money, let's see what else we have here:
Do I pay for any and all reasonably-priced software, games, music, and literature? You betcha
OK, so you get to name your own price. Wow! I never knew I could do that. Hey you! Yeah you, Mr. Mercedes dealer. I don't think that fully tricked out 4-door with the leather seats is worth $80,000. I'll give you $10,000 for it. What? That's not enough? Give me the keys. What? You don't want to give me the keys? Say what? SAY WHAT? You're telling me my old Buick is good enough? Who are you to tell me what I should drive? Well, I know how to pick the lock and hot-wire it. I found some cracks that let me disable the electronic ignition protection system and LoJack. Before that, stealing luxury autos was really hard, but thanks to the internet it's easy now, so I guess that makes it right. Hacked the DMV 'puter too. They'll never trace the VIN on this baby. All I gotta do is hop in and drive. Whaddaya say to that?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
There was a huge cry when Gutenburg invented moveable type. It put a lot of illuminating biblical scribes out of business. Now, books, music maybe movies and TV shows aren't going to be worth as much as they were in the past.
We'll either make the change, and maybe put some people out of business in the meantime, or we'll become more of a contraband society. Depending on how the laws go, we could end up with a lot of 'law breakers' and the average citizenry cowtowing to the illusion that etheric data is as real as a granite rock.
Only the unions complained about the fact that technology in the past 20 years made some occupations irrevalent. We progressed through that time and are still here! Now huge corporate media are clinging very tightly to the old ways -- and are getting a lot of government support.
Here's an old metaphisical yarn that nails it on the head:
Evil, in other words.blessings,
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
How ironic that he name-drops such authors as Heinlein, yet Heinlin wrote a nice anti-corporation short story way back in 1939 containing the following relevant text:
"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither indivudals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back." - Life-Line, 1939, Robert A. Heinein.
Now this quote was in reference to insurance companies in the face of technology that allows people to see exactly when they'd die. I don't mean to imply that Heinlein, were he alive today, would support file-sharing like this, but it does give a good insight into the situation even from 60 years ago.
about EVERYTHING. If you've ever met the man you know his emotional state has 2 levels: full-tilt and unconscious.
> Software is ideas.
Not quite. Software is implementation of ideas. The source is speech, and could be classified as an idea, in the loosest sense.
> Forbidding someone to create and share whatever software they choose is precisely like forbidding someone to write down their own thoughts on paper and share them.
NO, there IS a difference.
That code just didn't come out of nowhere - someone had to spend time writing it.
If you create something, you have the right to tell people, "please don't distrubite this without compensating me"
Ultimately, it all comes down to ideas and numbers, but until the rest of society gets over the 2-year-old mentality of "THIS IS MINE. YOU CAN'T SHARE UNLESS I SAY" and people learn how to make a living regardless, we're "stuck" respecting other people's distrubition rights (or lack of them.) If you don't like the product, pick one that gives you the freedom to share it.
Harlan Ellison is well known for spitting venom. I see why he's mad, but would understand it better if, say, people were printing copies of his books and selling them. As it is, I doubt he's being harmed any more than a music artist is harmed by bootleg tapes.
Having a searchable text is quite different from having a paper copy of the book. I massively prefer the former for quoting passages and doing research, and similarly prefer the latter for just sitting down and reading a book.
Therefore, I doubt this will effect Ellison's book sales in the slightest. And as he doesn't offer an electronic version of his books, it isn't really competing with anything, but rather providing a service to his fans that wasn't there before.
But it's his property, and he can do with it what he wants. However, until then I'll much prefer the enlightened perspective of authors like Bruce Sterling. I first read "The Hacker Crackdown" from the library, and then I downloaded the electronic version. Later, I bought the paperback. I greatly appreciate it when an author provides a reference like that to his fans; otherwise, I have to go back home and search through my books whenever I want to find a quote, and that's really troublesome.
Similarly, I have seen a lot of Douglas Adams stuff online, but I don't know if he knows about it. However, I hope he approves. (should have asked him when Slashdot had the interview) In the future, I hope more authors embrace, or at least examine, the potentials of the new media before lambasting and taking legal action against their present fan base. Ellison, are you out there? You listening?
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Copyright law is pretty twisted. Everything you're saying about music is basically correct as per the laws about it, but only because there's one line in the code that states that you only own the physical representation of that disc. (probably somewhere in Chapter 11 of Title 17)
As for what you might be able to do for backup purposes, or 'fair use', that's an entirely different nest of hornets, and everything I've read about copyright law sounds pretty twisted and contradictory. I'm glad you think it's all black and white, but let me be the first to tell you it isn't. For instance, Fair Use would let me make multiple copies for classroom use, or copies for research, which is really what an electronic copy is good for.
Also, another good question would be what constitutes a "library or archive"; I'd consider The Gutenberg Project to be an archive, but I'm guessing the law probably doesn't. However, they are non-commercial, and it'd be pretty cool if they could have copies of everything stored there for us to read. Except that, guess what, there's an expressed prohibition against distributing it in digital format unless you're on the library premises.
In fact, there are special prohibitions all through the copyright code that relate to what you can't do if something is "digital" or "a computer program" or over "a cable system"; well, isn't that nice of them. Remind me to modulate all my books onto audio tapes next time, so I can distribute them to my friends.
Another entirely different ball of wax is the moral implications of the current system, and even its constitutionality. I'd argue that today it would fail tests based in either of those criteria. But since we're just talking about the vast body of law that is Copyright, spread out amongst so many bills, many of them completely unrelated, I'll skip that.
Buying some books *does* give you a right to a copy of it in an electronic format, and I'm happy when it does. In fact, in some of those cases, even not buying the book gives you that right. That's because either the author, or the publisher, or both, is a kindly soul deserving of sainthood, like Bruce Sterling, or Bruce Eckel, or probably a few other great guys named Bruce. Not Harlan, apparently.
Also, if the book is old enough to be in the public domain, (whatever the fuck date Disney decides *that* is) then yes, you're entitled to a copy of it that way, too. That's because Bram Stoker isn't making that much off of Dracula lately, but I'm sure the movie people are. (the book is much better, guys; buy it anyhow)
Now, I don't quite understand the difference between my friend copying a book, and me copying a book. I suppose that's because it's a *legal* difference, and not an actual difference. Like, if our copies are identical, and my copy gets deleted, and I copy his, then in ACTUALITY, they're exactly the same, but LEGALLY they aren't.
Maybe that's why I went into Computer Science; they aren't about to convince me of bullshit like that, but apparently 535 old white guys were convinced by enough money and power that it's in actuality the law of the land.
However, like I mentioned, legality and actuality are two quite different things. I mean, legally, you'd get arrested for personal copyright infringement. But in actuality, almost no one cares unless someone is losing money. And that's almost impossible to track; it's like trying to track the effectiveness of advertising.
Copyright law itself stops no one from copying things; all it ensures is that no one knows if what they're doing is actually against the law. That's why the current code needs to be rewritten. Maybe if everyone knew what intellectual property was, what rights they had to it, and why, we could come to amicable solutions about these issues. But the truth is, I don't know anyone who could rationally understand how we could have this particular combination of laws in place to "promote the arts and sciences". It makes less than no sense.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
At what point did everyone start to believe "as long as I've got one legal copy, I can make as many copies of as many damn times as I want, in any format I want??
Around 1998.
Seriously, for the centuries when copying required a lot of effort, it was reasonable to have laws controlling it. When high-speed net access arrived and copying became easier than typing this sentence, those laws became unreasonable. They're not effectively enforcable and laws so flouted and floutable shouldn't be on the books. As a society, we might think about how to support artists and authors in an age where copying is unlimited. But trying to limit copying is futile.
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I see what's really going on here. Harlan is trying to generate some piggy-back publicity on the coattails of the Napster-Gnutella flap. It has nothing to do with ideas, and everything to do with creating name recognition to increase sales of his books.
When the profit motive is all you have to motivate art, you get cranks like this guy.
Bryguy
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
- A.P.
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* CmdrTaco is an idiot.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
At the same time, this is an interesting side to the argument - and one that it doesn't seem is concidered very often. The recording industry (and I use them because the case is fairly analagous) typically says that it's fighting copyright infringement on behalf of the artists. But book sales and book authors are people we haven't really heard from before, and authors typically don't have as rich a lifestyle as many recording artists do.
Does this make it fair to infringe the copyrights of music artists, but not fair to infringe the copyrights of book authors? Well, no, not really. That's the catch. It looks like this lawsuit of his - if he doesn't run out of money - will have some pretty big repercussions on the online music debate, fair use dialog, and general DMCA discussions as a whole.
Yup, just like all his other fiction books.
Look, the man is an ass, a liar, and has gone batshit at least a half dozen times in front of my eyes. One time, he was in the bar of a hotel, and picked up a stool to swing it at somebody. Two people stopped it, but it was interesting to watch.
He is a near pathological liar, constantly "misremembering" conversations to scold people for things that he "had been promised". And very often, these were people who took copious notes during each conversation, and never once screwed up in the decades I'd known them to be handling convention guests (Sure, sometimes they'd have to give people news about things being cancelled and so on, but out and out *forget* something? No. Not with the frequency that HE accused them.)
I've been snarled at him several times myself - once when I was tuning up for a filk circle in the room it was to take place in. He wandered in AFTER I (and two others) had got there, despite the sign on the door that it was a schedualed event, and told us "music rejects" to stop playing so he could get a moment to talk to the reporter. Tuning up (which is a rather quiet activity) across the room (which had been assigned to us) was a horrible thing? So I pointed out "This is the filk room, a bunch more people will be coming to to play", at which point he launched into "Shut up!... just.. just Shut Up! Do you know who I am? I am trying to do an interview here".
Much more recently (almost exactly a year ago), several friends were yelled at by him for almost the exact same thing - he was conducting an interview right near the elevators in the lobby, and they were discussing if they should eat or go see Stan Lee talk, and he yelled at them to be quiet because he was was doing an interview. I know these people, and they aren't the type to be yelling in the lobby... it was just a conversation. In the lobby, where conversations are rather expected.
The phrase "He went Harlan Ellison on his ass" would be understood by most of Fandom without explaination.
I will not say he can't write, but he is a liar and an ass.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Heh. This is patently untrue.
Works of art are unique - at least for the time being - in that they not only can be reproduced forever at very little or no cost, but that they must be reproduced in order to be used.
If you don't believe me, please check to see if these words are leaping off of your screen, walking across your desk, and hopping in your eyeballs. No? No: you are making a copy of them inside your own head just to read them.
And if you want to, you can remember them forever; I can't stop you. I can't exert the kind of control that needs to be exerted in order for something to be considered property. Define property. What conditions must something meet to be property? The best definition I know is that if it is ownable, the owner must be able to use it, control how and if it is used by others, and get rid of it. With words, I can do the first. The last two are not possible, unless you propose that authors lobotomize their readers and themselves at will.
Works belong to the public because that is their natural state of being. When you speak to me, anyone who can hear it has that speech. It's just like fire - that you give some to me does not diminish your own, and I can spread it to others myself. It is not property, because each copy is itself copied as it's used.
And you seem like a shortsighted person who's willing to give up the future for a little cash right now.
Tell me, what happens when some bright fellow invents a perfect nanotech assembler? If we don't all kill each other, it's almost guaranteed to happen. Then I can walk up to your chair, and almost magically cause an identical one to appear. It doesn't diminish your ability to treat the original as property; you've still got it. But now I've got the twin. And anyone else who wants one can have one too.
Given this power that could let anyone in the world have the best foods, and medicines, and clothing and homes that can be divised, your attitude would continue to enforce famine, sickness, nakedness, and homelessness. Because human inventiveness would have outpaced our social structure, and you are unwilling to change that structure.
Go on - tell me that your future would be good. Justify it. There's no fundemental difference. We have copyright NOT because words can be treated as property - which they're not anyway, if you actually examine the law - but as a carrot. The promise of some additional rewards is to encourage the creation of new works. And yet, that would be pointless if it wasn't for the small print that taketh away just as the large print giveth. That those rewards can only be guaranteed for a limited amount of time, and that the purpose is explicitly not to line the pockets of an author, but to promote the progress of the arts.
The arts advance as people can use that which has come before. Newton stood on the shoulders of giants. The artists of the Renissance had to have the Romans and Greeks. The authors of the Lost Generation had to have the authors of the Victorian era. Some small reward can perhaps be justified if the unrestricted work has great effect. Owning it forever stunts the effect irrepairably. That is why we do not do it. The right to speech, and the need for human advancement are infinitely more important than the sin of averice. If a little sin can do a great good, we'll cope. But don't expect that from a big sin.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
The annoyance at someone writing in all caps is imho a diversion from the real issue, which is the fact that someone's copyrighted material is alledgedly being pirated and the owner of said material is royally pissed off. Who cares if he is writing in caps? not every is savvy about the so-called and largely self-imposed net ettiqutte. I happen to think he has a valid point, and if in fact he and his lawyer are able to prove that the accused have pirated his works, they should push to have them proscecuted to the extent of the law. If you want to get free reading material of the net goto the Gutenburg project. I also have very little sympathy for Napster users who are sharing copyrighted music; if you want to share music, share free (as in beer and sometimes in speech) music. The record companies should go after individuals and sue them instead of Napster.
NO CARRIER
... at least for me. I do support increased freedom of information (<-- preaching to the choir here, I know ;-) ), as it increases the rights I think that we all have as users of that information. Fair use is not a concept developed to deprive artists of fair revenue, but rather the fundamental concept of being able to derive reasonable benefit from an economic transaction.
Still, I think that as users of information we do have the responsibility to make sure that fair use doesn't cross the line into outright piracy, for as Mr. Ellison is saying, this hurts the creators of the information. The grey areas I think pop up when middlemen try to appeal to the powers that be for increased protections in the name of the creators, when we all know that very rarely would any increased revenue end up in the hands of said creators (e.g. how many people believe that all of the blank audio media levy goes to the little bands who can't afford a stable of lawyers?)
In an ideal world there would be a simple and reliable method of direct (micro?)payment to a creator (in effect compensating them for a "viral" net-based distribution chain). In the real world, I suspect that the "free rider" problem will be a significant roadblock for some time to come ("free rider" refers to the cost of public works that are supposed to be user-supported from voluntary contributions, not everybody pays like they should).
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
For those who may not be old enough to have heard the stories of science fiction conventions gone by (let alone witnessed them firsthand), Harlan Ellison, doubtless one of the most talent writers of the 20th Century, is well known for getting, well, worked up about things.
That he has a right to be paid for his unique genius goes without saying. Just try to read the Dark Visions anthology and you will never be the same.
However, I'm not sure that authors should get that worked up about having their works put on the web. I'm not saying it isn't copyright infringement if it's done without the author's permission. But, really, when was the last time you curled up with a laptop?
Gotta have the dead tree edition; otherwise it's not a book. Put it online if you want to. If I read bits of it and I like it or think I can use it, I'll buy the book.
I was kind of expecting someone to bring up Ellison's nice little vindictive anti-Roddenberry take... you beat me to the punch on the response though. =)
Glad to see Harlan can't get away with obscuring the truth too far... Gene didn't ever deserve the way Ellison treated him. =/
Of course, I only defend Roddenberry so much because he's my hero. =)
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
This is the "fantasy propaganda" of Patents. The idea that a "little guy" can invent something, take out a patent, and become a millionaire by licensing the patent. In reality, it hardly EVER works out that way. Instead, patents are expensive legal tools used by corporations with VERY deep pockets to go to war against other corporations with VERY deep pockets.
I just saw a fascinating news segment about one of those "inventors assistance" companies. The idea behind those companies is that if you, an ordinary person, invent something useful, you then take your invention to the company. The company employs patent lawyers, who will, at your expense, write up and submit a patent application for your idea, and give you a "list" of businesses that you can then try and sell your patent to. The show was amazing. My favorite was a little old lady who come up with a clever and useful invention, spent her life savings on getting it patented, then tried to find a company to license her patent. They all laughed in her face. One of them told her, "If we wanted your idea, we'd just steal it." And they probably would have. She had no means to defend the patent. She would have had to sell her house before the case even got out of discovery. The costs of suing someone for patent infringement START at about $100,000 and go up. The idea of an independent inventor inventing such a car engine, getting a patent, and successfully defending it against the auto industry is simply preposterous. If you had an invention like that, you'd spend the next 20 years of your life and all your money defending it, and then the patent would expire. Ask Philo Farnsworth. He invented television, got a patent, and RCA spent the next 20 years bleeding him dry.
No, patents are corporate tools that require enormous amounts of money to put to use. A patent is useless outside of a courtroom, and unless you have six figures to spend, it's useless inside a courtroom as well.
Let's revisit your hypothetical inventor. Call him Joe Inventor.
Joe would be unable to build and market his engine himself, because there are tens of thousands of patents covering every aspect of automobile engine design. It is simply inconcievable that he could design a complete engine without infringing on some big automaker's patent.
Let's say he designs manufacturers, and starts selling his 100MPG, zero emission engine.
A week later, Ford brings an infringment suit against him, listing 400 Ford engine design patents that he's infringing on.
Either Joe:
1) Stops making engines, in which case his patent is worthless.
2) Enters a "cross-licensing" agreement with Ford where, in exchange for being allowed to use Ford's patents, he allows Ford to use his patent. If he does this, Joe is screwed. Sure, he has the right to use Ford's patents, but he isn't an automobile manufacturer, and even if he did try and start up a company, he'd have to deal with a visit from Chevrolet's patent lawyers.
3) Sells his patent to Ford. In which case, Joe will get a small amount of money, and Ford will make millions and millions of dollars because they do have the resources to effectively enforce patents, and they have the cross-licensing agreements in place that allow them to produce engines without being sued left and right.
The idea that patents help the "little guy" is sheer propaganda. Patents are what keep the "little guys" out of the running.
Your right to throw a punch ends when it hit's my face.
This is true for literal punches, and for metaphorical punches. The punch from artists and organized media to extend copyrights from 28 to >95 years (not to mention the DMCA) is a horrible punch toward the public. Toward the first amendment. A horrible punch which they have no right to throw and to hit.
Artistic works in the public domain benefit the public. Artistic works not in the public domain do not.
Imagine a world like only a centrury ago where copyrights had only been extended to 42 years. Star Trek (ToS) would be barely a decade from leaving copyright.. I Love Lucy would be coming up soon. Mickey Mouse would finally join his peers Santa Clause and Uncle Sam... Rudolph could join the other 8 reindeer in the public domain. (Rudolph was created about 40 years ago)
By assuming that artists have natural rights to artistic works, as compared to rights explicitly granted them under law, you do us a disservice.
Artistic works are never property. The rights granted by law to artists may be sold or transferred. The artistic work is owned by the public from it's inception.
first respect the rights of *other* authors before complaining about people infringing on his rights. Do a search on his "Last Dangerous Visions" project if you don't know about what is probably the most infamous scandal in SF. Nobody is without sin but this is just too ironic for words.
I think Mr. Ellison is a very smart guy, and I've always had a lot of respect for him. But this is sad and disappointing.
Software is ideas. Harlan Ellison is stepping beyond the issue of copyright infringement and is now arguing that we should restrict people's ability to create and share their own ideas.
Forbidding someone to create and share whatever software they choose, is precisely like forbidding someone to write down their own thoughts on paper and share them. He is attacking the very concept of free speech. As an author, he should be ashamed.
Surely you jest, right? He's one of the most prolific authors of speculative fiction there is. He's won Nebula awards, Emmys -- ever see "The City on the Edge of Forever" -- in the original Star Trek series? He's written commentary on media ("The Glass Teat"/"The Other Glass Teat"). He's written television and movie screenplays. And don't EVER call him a science fiction author, if you thought that article had a lot of venom in it!
The really sad part about all of this is the current dialog is pitting the audience against the authors where the real criminals are the middle-men; RIAA, MPAA, and, yes, even some of the technology companies (Napster and MP3.com aren't completely guiltless in all of this).
I think most people are willing to pay for their entertainment, but we don't like feeling like we are being screwed in every transaction (especially when we know the money isn't going to Ellison, Phillip K. Dick's estate, or the muscician's that the RIAA supposedly represents).
The mention of some of the other authors listed in Ellison's rant (Azimov and Heinlein) as well as your mention of PKD reminds me that, until the latest corporate inspired rewrites of the copyright law, many of these work's would be nearing enterence into the public domain. Didn't it used to be life + 20 years, I guess PKD's work would be in the public domain already if not for Disney's rewrite of the laws.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
This isn't the first time Harlan has complained about author's rights. See these two examples from the IMDB...
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I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
At least in the music business. Here's an interesting analysis by, of all people, Courtney Love, on how even the most successful musicians make almost nothing off of their sales - RIAA members pocket well over 95% of the cost.
Let's assume this holds for books too (may or may not). If Harlan Ellison will let me give him 7.5% of the cover price of his stuff at his website, I'd be happy to - he'll get more money that way. I will gladly pay a buck or two direct to the artists for an album - that's more several times more than they get now. But I'm rapidly losing interest in giving a single fucking dime to publishers and recording companies which are trying to eradicate people's fair use rights while paying their artists less than 35c on an $18 CD. If their business model requires that kind of markup, they deserve to die a revenue-hemorraghing death.
When he screams remember he can produce something like this against motherhood and apple pie -- and I think he did do one against the flag in the 70s.
Reading something into Ellison's writings is like saying Stephen King writing about the government being spooky is any more than Ellison.
Ellison is the proverbial little guy, by that I do mean short, with a chip on his shoulder. His first famous public confrontation was with Asimov at a Worldcon where Asimov suggested he stand on a chair so he could be seen.
This guy is a pro at the polemic of outrage. That said, lets look at the content.
No new content in this on the current issue. Ellison has been raving about this sort of thing since I first met him at a Worldcon in DC in the 70s -- he spoke to me for reasons I attribute to a liquid lunch. There he interrupted a panel discussion by several minor pulp magazine publishers with a speech on how they were delaying and even not paying their writers they published. I also remember a similar diatribe published in the early 80s.
This could be a rehash of that speech with the context updated. It is old material for him. At times I suspect his mother died because the publisher of his writer father didn't pay on time to buy the medicine or some equally formative childhood event.
Milinar
The closest I could figure out before I shrugged my shoulders in apathy is that some guy was posting Ellison's short stories to a newsgroup, and when his ISP was notified of the copyright infringements they cut off his account. So now Ellison is suing AOL and the owners of this guy's ISP? AOL wasn't even the poster's ISP as far as I can tell? Ellison seems to be upset about the fact that people were able to read these postings on AOL, as well as for his stuff being traded on Gnutella, and since an AOL subsidiary developed the Gnutella protocol he seems to blame them for that too. Thats as close as I can figure, anyhow.
Too bad Ellison didn't use any of his award-winning writing skills in making his arguement. Seeing this sure doesn't give me any interest in buying his works OR pirating them.
Maybe thats the ploy: Ellison raises a stink about his works being pirated, which then alerts people that they can get his stuff for free, people then download and sample his work, and finally (this is the brilliant part) buy a book so they can read it away from their computer.
And another thing, whats his deal with dragging dead authors like Asimov and Heinlein into this? I don't know what their opinions would have been on this matter, maybe they would have agreed with him, but they definately had a tendency to look at things in an unconventional way, so I think they might have embraced their works being distributed on the web, via the technology that they found so fascinating.
And then theres the whole
"WELL, WHAT IS KICK AN ACRONYM FOR?" WE RESPOND, "IT'S FOR KICK 'EM IN THE ASS!"
Great, thanks Harlan. Hey, how 'bout you look up 'acronym' in your dictionary, or just stop capitalizing the word 'Kick' in your group's name, eh?