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Supremes Hear Case of Publisher Piracy
tuiterwyk writes "According to this article on CNN.com, the US Supreme court is considering whether print publishers who have paid a free-lance writer for an article or story are able to include that work in their on-line or CD versions without the permission of the original author or without being required to pay additional compensation. The impact on on-line searches and newspaper sites could be dramatic." See the New York Times story as well. Publishers such as AOL/Time Warner have no problem pirating the work of freelance writers to sell for a profit - when it's their profit. Note: I have not been able to find any article by any major publisher that describes what the publishers are doing (distributing copyrighted works without permission, for money) as "piracy", please post a comment with a link if you know of one.
Why should the matter of storage make a difference? Whether it's delivered on a paper, viewed on microfiche, or viewed over a network shouldn't make a different.
Win the battle, lose the war. Only now winning the battle is all free lancers have left. The publishing industry has learned its lesson and is moving away from free lance style article licensing big time. Instead, authors have to sign over _all_ rights to their creations as works for hire and assign copyright to the people publishing it. Ultimately, I think you'll find they lose more than they gain out of this, no matter what happens.
Not if you actually read the instructions, that started with the phrase "in vi...."
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
There was an interesting piece on Marketplace last night (radio show on NPR) where they were talking about just this.
It seems that the New York Times has an interesting position here - while they have regularly posted rants in the editorial column against napster and what they refer to as the "looting" of other people's intellectual property, they're firmly in favor of being able to use freelance material without paying for it again. The New York Times has a high percentage of freelance stuff in its pages, and it would be quite a financial blow if they were to have to pay writers for the second go around.
The point is moot in some cases, since many freelance writers sign contracts before they turn their stuff over that says that the company can do whatever they want with it in perpetuity. Of course that's a shit deal, but if you're starving and you've got something to sell (like a freelance article) you take whatever terms will put money in your pocket.
Whether or not that's a fair application of the law is of course an entirely different debate.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
John, you are very naive. Why the hell don't you just sell first serial rights? If the publisher presents you with an all rights contract, you don't have to sign it. Renegogiate! Why shouldn't the publisher give you a cut every time they use an opportunity to make some more money out of your article? Your attitude is rather like being in a regular job, getting paid a salary for (say) 40 hours a week, and putting in an extra 10 or 20 hours unpaid -- oh, wait, there are people who do that...
Publishers have a history of being rather unconcerned with compensating writers. This is most obvious on college campuses. When professors put together a course packet for students to buy at the local copy store, the copy store is legally obligated to pay the publisher of the works. (Some copy stores may simply ignore this, but it isn't uncommon for pubishers to threaten copy stores with lawsuits.) However, the publisher does necessarily own the work! Even if the copyright is held by the author, the writer will never see a dime.
One of my professors organised the photocopying of a large course packet so her students could avoid the $80 fee. Whenever she includes her own work, she must battle the copy stores to NOT send money to the publishers of her own work.
Who will win? Publishers have lots of lawyers. Authors have few.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
I had to sign something.
I didn't get paid but at least I knew about it.
If I hadn't signed, they would have had to run the CD with only a stub of my article. (They would have had to write an abstract which would then have been their own to print.)
This stuff on reprints and "collections" gets tough.
If the publisher paid for an article, it depends on the contract between publisher and author as to whether the contract was restrictive to a single medium and it was specified.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Now, I'm all in favor of applying the inflammatory "privacy" epithet to this case (way to go, Michael!), but there are a few things which you should clear up:
Assume a paper (call it "Paper"), has purchased a story from a freelancer.
The Paper obtains right to publish it as part of an issue of the paper. They also obtain the right to include the work in online or CD versions of the paper. There is absolutely no debate about this. These are considered alternate versions of the paper (akin to a morning and evening edition).
The current case does not test that at all.
What is in dispute is the Paper's ability to sell that article to an online database (read: Lexis/Nexis), where it will be collated with thousands of other articles, and become searchable by author, by subject, etc.
The freelancers claim that this is not simply an "alternate version" of the original newspaper issue, but is in fact an entirely new product.
I believe they make a reasonable argument.
BTW, the publishers are trying to scare the court into denying the freelancer's their copyrights by claiming that, if the decision goes against the publishers, they will be forced to remove huge amounts of material from the online archives, which will cause grave damages to scholarship. This seems like absolute hooey to me -- if there is a market for those articles, a means will be found to sell them, and for the profits to go to the authors.
-Dan
I have written a truly remarkable operating system which this sig is too small to contain.
I don't know where you're buying CDs and DVDs, but at the local stores around here we don't have to sign any sort of contract or license to buy them, which means the customer retains the full rights of Fair Use and First Sale. I have the right to do anything with my new DVD, whether it's playing it on a DVD player, ripping it off and watching it as an MPEG, or using it as an expensive coaster. I haven't bought rights to redistribute copies of it, of course, but everything else is fair game.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I actually didn't negotiate the deal...it was their standard policy, but it seems to me that as a freelance writer, it's not too terribly unseemly to consider including that kind of language in the contract.
Oh yeah...contract. You ought to have something in writing. If you can't negotiate what you want, at least make sure that you understand what they are offering.
-h-
Use. When I dub a CD onto a cassette to play in the car, it's for my use only. The publishers aren't converting the articles for their own use, they're converting them to make and sell copies in a format not covered by the original contract. They weren't given the right under those contracts to sell copies in electronic form, so they've no more right to do it than I have to distribute copies of their CD.
Superb, after all the vanity and hubris of "artistic control" and the dog-in-manger whinging about someone else making money off their efforts, and honest workman in the creative area.
Ditch diggers and road builders don't get paid per use of what their muscles build, what is so special about writing or other mental creative effort that deludes those who choose it into thinking they deserve a "slice of the pie" or a "cut of the action" and a life long, or life plus 75 years of payment for their endeavours?
I also agree with this poster that the hypocrisy is in the "pay once/charge often" approach of publishers.
It simply seems an intellectual snobbery to suggest that "work for hire" like the rest of us grunts, is beneath the dignity of "creatives."
It would be nice if people like that could get over themselves and stop being so perfectly precious.
It really depends on the context. If a publisher has explicitely paid for a writer to write a particular document, then that is considered "Work for Hire", and the publisher retains all rights on that work. Ie, they can do what they want with it, and the original author can do nothing.
:)
If the author wants to restrict what the publisher can do with the works, then that needs to be written into the contract. If there's no contract, then the "Work for Hire" rule becomes the default.
Really, there's nothing evil or subversive about this. Standard practise. Authors (and other artists) just need to know the rules
Thus the debate is whether restructuring data is a "performance" and the stages of intermediate production. For example, in music, there is mechanical rights (access to raw material), synchronisation license (in conjunction with other media), public performance, excerption (embedding in other works). Abstract text data (and given XML, ultimately all data/schema can be represented in text)can be massaged in even more complication ways ranging from abstracts, quotations, reordered, structured, citations, mining, etc.
So who's right? Given the fact that Hollywood writers are striking (maybe the quality will go up when they import some Indian scriptwriters :-)), it shows that the issues are complicated and the power is on the side with the longest memory and biggest lawyers. Given that there's probably a backlog of (OK crappy but when did that stop Hollywood) scripts, it comes down who can blink first or is willing to eat. The traditional forms of dispute resolution (e.g. strikes) are less effectual in the case of mental activities as there are many substitutes.
The issue is a real conundrum. Publications gravitate towards the "star" system as the prospect of a few highly paid stars encourages a wide pool of low-level submissions creating a broad base but very narrow peak, effectively a trickle up effect as the interns are brow-beaten and compete among themselves (depressing their short-term value/cost) to subsidise the celebrities at the top. On the other hand studios hate the star system as they are dependent on limited resources (if they retire, switch employors, throw tantrum and quit) which is probably one reason why Disney views cartoons characters as inherently less risky (provide they can get their copyright control legally extended infinitely). This is one stituation where market forces are limited as despite logic, people can't resist the equivalent of a career lottery. If you accept that the media is driven by fads with a narrow window of earning opportunities (a la sport heros), then the loss of future revenue royalties is a significant factor. Think of the equivalent of contract professional programmer with highly specialised skills. If a company can distribute your ideas ad-infinum, then you are likely to be a very short-lived professional.
While the observation that corporations want to reduce contracts to employees and employees to slaves is probably unwarrented, ultimately increasing profits (which is what CEOs are promising Wall Street) have to come out of somewhere. If there is a fixed market (and it is defined by the total spare time people have for absorbing/reading material ... (witness the moaning about pop-up ads while browsing) then the only source is to embrace, extend, then extinguish the source (ie promise great career, work them to death for creative sweat, then drop them before the real profits start coming in from mass market penetration and merchandising). Note that CEOs don't exactly offer to sacrifice their salaries when the market rejects the recycled sequels they foster. Alternatively dilute the offerings with only including a small gem among the general dross (Pokemon, single track/album) as they don't want to risk a "bad" selection (and you wonder why people are flocking to Napster).
In summary, the issues are complicated and it will take the wisdom of Solomon, the patience of Job and some serious head-knocking before people are happy. If you really want to make money, don't invest in the sharemarket but buy legal firms.
LL
Objoke ... definition of lawyer ... imagine cartoon with one person pulling on the head and another the tail ... and the lawyer underneath milking the udder.
Fundamentally, the arguements in this come down to: does a different media require a different contract or fee? Selling the screenplay version of a popular book, apart from the print rights is one side. An encylopedia article, which appears in the print version, on CD and even on the website would represent the other side.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
In that light it sounds like the Napster user's defense; "I have the right to make a copy, therefore I have the right to give anyone access to the copy." He's right as far as internal databases are concerned. It's collecting money from third parties for access to the database that is the theft.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
Oh please, oh please, oh please, let the claim that it's fair use. Please, I just wanna see AOL Time Warner claiming that this is fair use of something that they already paid for. PLEASE have them open up that pandora's box.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
For balance, here's the link to the National Writers Union's page about the Supreme Court appeal, including background, the actual briefs filed, etc. (did you know that Ken Burns submitted an amicus brief on the side of the publishers? or that the American Library Association and the US Copyright Office sided with the writers?)
There's also a nice piece on "The Hypocrisy of the NY Times" that explains how the Times (and other publishers) have been trying since 1995 to make their theft legal through "all rights" or "work-for-hire" contracts (which were not the norm before). Here's an excerpt:
Round about '96 - '97 Cigar Aficianado magazine decided to put the content of their back issues up on their website.
A while prior my father, Joe Harkins, had written an article for them on the history of pool. He noticed they put his article online and got a bit bent out of shape as he'd never agreed they could publish the article online. He sent them a few nastygrams and, I believe, got in touch with a lawyer.
CA backed down and removed the article so he let it drop. This sounds pretty similar to what's happened here.
If you want to contact him for more details, hit his website at travelthe.net for an e-mail address, I don't remember it offhand. Oh, and beware- he's pretty cantankerous.
Unrelated comment first - You're looking for comments from a major publisher where they admit to pirating the works of freelancers? That would be like getting Shawn Fanning to admit that Napster exists primarily to pirate copyrighted music. Not going to happen...
Anyway, I've done some freelance writing in the past few years, and most of the time the contract I've worked from has been a flat, per page payment. If I write 4 pages of publicity material, I get $400. Pretty simple stuff. However, one thing I've seen often is as part of the payment agreement, I've had to agree to surrender my right to future payment for republication in other media. In other words, they pay me the money as a flat, one time deal. After that, I still get credited as the author, but I don't recieve any future payment. It's not something that (at least in my experience) is snuck past the author by a sneaky publisher, it's a part of the deal, and if you don't like it, don't sell them the work.
OTOH, I do get a little annoyed whenever I see something I've written reused, and I never was told. It is an artistic creation of ine, and when it is republished, sometimes resulting in thousands of dollars for the company I feel shafted that I only got a few hundred dollars for my work. But hey, next time I write for them, I bring that up in the price negotiation and usually I get better paid the second time around.
Bottom line, pay attention to what you're signing away in the contract, just like any other legal document (be it an employment contract, and waier, etc.).
-Jason
If I could only live my life with my threshold at 4...
Isn't it possible, even likely, that the people cracking the game copy protection and distributing the games referred to themselves as pirates before the Industry did?
-----
As I read somewhere yesterday, this is basically a squabble about if electronic publication rights were implicit or not in freelance contracts, for a short period where they were not explicitly mentioned.
So no, you're not going to find publishers calling it piracy, because they do believe they have every right to be doing this.
Hi!
I've been a freelance writer for years--and I'm surprised that the Supreme Court regards this case as being worth the trouble to even review. Every publisher I've ever dealt with has paid me for "all rights" to an article--whether in the next issue of the magazine, in a reprint they sell to a vendor, or if (fat chance) they turn my article into a movie script. I've had articles reprinted in other languages, reprinted on CD-ROM, and published on websites. All I ever got paid for was the initial article.
Did I get ripped off? No--because that was the bargain. I write 3000 words on a given topic, I get paid a few bucks, and that's that. If the magazine publisher can figure out a way to distribute the article in a different form, and they can make a few extra bucks, that only gives them that much more incentive to ask me to write the next article.
Is this hypocrisy by the big media companies?
For the most part, I don't think so. When I sell an article I'm selling all rights to it--so the publisher can reproduce that content "in any form or by any means" (quote from actual contract) without paying me any additional compensation.
So what's the big deal? Frankly, I'd be positively floored if any publisher didn't essentially have the same contract--they buy all rights. I've written for half a dozen programming magazines, for "popular" magazines, and for a major children's magazine--every single one of them bought all rights. If my name were John Grisham or Stephen King my agent might be able to negotiate a better deal--but I'd be really, really surprised if better than 1% of freelance articles are bought on anything other than "all rights" terms.
Is this hypocrisy?
No--this isn't. When I buy a DVD or a music CD, I'm not buying all rights--I'm just buying the right to play the content on the DVD or CD. The media companies could (yeah, right) offer "any media" versions of the same content at a different price. Then if you wanted to convert the content to MPEG or some other format you could.
On the other hand...
What is blatantly hypocritical is the coming fight in Hollywood over residuals. Every time a TV episode, or a movie, or a commercial airs, the writers and the performers get paid a fee. For many actors residuals become a lifelong source of income--minor players in the 1970s mega-hit "M*A*S*H" continue to earn substantial income from reruns. The studios cry poor--they want to end residuals and pay on an "all rights" or "work-for-hire" basis. In other words, they want to buy creative content on an "all rights" basis; they want to sell that same creative content on a per-use basis. (They will not, for instance, sell "all rights" to, say, ER to your local TV station.) That's hypocrisy.
"You do not have permission to publish this comment on your website."
Hrm, do I have permission to quote your comment in my post?
First off, IANAL...
This all depends on how they put this forum up for use. Do they say somewhere when you are using it, that any and all comments may be used in the publication that sponsors the site? If they did, then they can use your comments with or without the coffee mug (however, you might get a coffee mug out of it, since they valued your opinion and might actually want more). If they didn't put that up there, then I really have no idea what the legal ramifications would be. You could view it as a donation to the community, but I'm not sure that would do much to protect you. As I have no idea where to go with this I'll just leave it.
It really all depends on the purpose of the web page... if the company is using it to get more stuff to print in their dead-tree form, then they could use their stuff. However, without that, I'm pretty sure you are perfectly legal in asking for your coffee mug (and maybe even some coffee to fill it with).
The Supremes are hearing this case? Dear me, what is our nation coming to when MoTown legends start making legal decisions. Soon they'll be interviewing Jennifer Lopez and Puff Daddy to get their opinions on DeCSS.
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
Many publication freelancer contracts, like the one I signed for my work, state that the publisher has the right to reproduce the article in full online, on CD-ROM, or on any future medium not yet invented or discovered.
This case won't affect all freelance work, especially recent work in the tech industry.
I work for a small publishing company, and we specialize in custom publishing. For most of our long-term clients, we have online versions of the custom publications. Most of the writing is done by freelance writers. The editors will usually specify up-front that they may put the writing online for the online version of the publication. For the most part, the witers agree, since it gets them more publicity. There are a few who charge a token amount, much less than the fee for the original piece, to have their work posted online. It works similarly for the free-lance photography we use to accompany the stories. Most photographers have a clause in their contract to allow for unlimited online use for a small fee, and a few allow it free. Occaisionally a photographer will try to charge twice the original amount if we ask for the rights to use their work online, and we usually refuse and find a substition.
OOOOOpppppssss...this isn't an MPAA/DeCSS article?
It now has the publisher on the otherside of the DMCA, doesn't it.
Fight Spammers!
Unrelated comment first - You're looking for comments from a major publisher where they admit to pirating the works of freelancers? That would be like getting Shawn Fanning to admit that Napster exists primarily to pirate copyrighted music. Not going to happen...
That's not unrelated at all. It's the whole reason it's going to be next to impossible to find decent coverage on this issue. Media outlets, like any other business, will do what they must to remain in business. In this age of giant conglomerates, they'll do what they must to keep their parent companies and their parent companies' other companies in business.
By way of example, notice how the definition of the word "stealing" has suddenly been changed by the mainstream media? Since when is making an unauthorized copy stealing? It's piracy, sure, but when I copy something, I'm not taking anything from the original owner. There's the specious argument, "you would have GIVEN them something otherwise", but of course that's generally false-- people who pirate hundreds of games or CDs weren't planning on buying all of them. But once major media started tossing the word "stealing" into their reports on Napster et. al., it went by almost unnoticed, until it had seeped its way into the standard discourse. Napster isn't stealing. It's piracy.
More blatantly obvious is this article, about a major case where Fox was sued by its reporters when they were fired for refusing to distort a story. The reporters were awarded $425,000. Sound familiar? Probably not, because few people reported on it. But it sure was a big story to me. But perhaps this quote from Fox's defense team will shed some light on the subject: "There is no law, rule or regulation against slanting the news."
They tell you what they want you to hear, and they just ignore what they'd rather you didn't know. As long as you keep that in mind, you can usually dig through all the bullshit and find out the real story.
The lawyer for TimeWarnerAOL said:
"He said electronic databases were simply revised versions of the original publications and additional payments were not required for including an article in a database."
Interesting that users have to pay for a media change. Want a CD on your MP3 player? Another CD? On a harddrive?
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
I'd like to know what the constitutional issue is that is allowing this to be brought before the Supreme Court. I'm guessing it's the Patent/Copyright clause, but I'm not sure.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
If the writer signs a contract with the publisher, then the contract controls what the publisher can and cannot do with the writer's work. If the writer doesn't sign a contract, then a particular clause in the federal copyright statute controls.
This clause was written over ten years ago for the specfic purpose of settling disputes like the one before the court. However, it predates the web, and it isn't quite clear how it should be applied to works that are republished online. Since the lower courts don't agree, the Supreme Court gets to decide.
The significance of this going forward is minimal. Once the court decides how to interpret the law, then writers and publishers will know what they are agreeing to when they do business without a contract; if they don't like those terms, then they will write contracts with terms that they do like.
BTW
Much as I'd like to see the big publishers get their wings clipped, I wouldn't call their behavior piracy. When a question of law is close enough to get to the Supreme Court, I think both sides are entitled to a presumption of good faith.
If the Supreme Court ruled in the publishers' favor on "fair use" grounds (or ruled against them based on the DMCA). Since content owners of all stripes have been trying to destroy fair use using the DMCA I'd like to see their own sword turned on them (one way or another).
Would this tie in with mathworld? The site had to be shut down because a clause in the contract somehow gave CRC press rights to the website and not just a current snapshot of the site. More information is available on the site, especially in the faq.
Humorless sig goes here.
How often in history have we heard:
We have to have some practical way to allow X, even if this does trample some (people's) rights.
Replace X with many things -- the theft of land from indigenous peoples, or the killing of union workers, or the bombing of civilian populations, or whatever -- and you'll see what it means in reality.
In the view you espouse, you have no problem taking away someone else's rights, so long as you benefit in some way. You want to preserve old SF stories, so you are willing to "trample some of the authors (sic) rights?"
Ah, what a slippery slope you find yourself on -- for someday, someone is going to take away your rights, because doing so is good for them.
--
Scott Robert Ladd
Master of Complexity
Destroyer of Order and Chaos
All about me
I suggest that you read the Berne Copyright Convention, among other applicable laws, to understand that, indeed, authors do have property rights to their works.
--
Scott Robert Ladd
Master of Complexity
Destroyer of Order and Chaos
All about me
First, my personal take on the Supreme Court case:
I spent 12 years as a full-time writer, and I can't count the ways in which publishers ripped me off. Yes, I've had my work published on CD-ROM by publications who couldn't care less about the contracts they signed with me; no, it wasn't worth fighting about. Of course, the publishing industry has many problems, so I quit writing programming books and found other venues for my coding talents.
The U.S. legal system is managed by corporate-financed politicians for the benefit of (surprise, surprise!) the corporations. The problem isn't copyrights, or the DMCA, or any of these other laws and concepts that Slashdot readers focus on -- what's wrong with intellectual property is the way Corporations use it to rape the artists/writers and the public.
Hell, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Capitalist -- but that means I believe people should be compensated for what they do, not what they can steal. In today's environment, Corporations grow bigger (AOL-Time-Warner, anyone?), controlling more aspects of our lives, using their media to manipulate public opinion and their financial power to crush any opposition. An author like me can't afford to sue an international conglomerate over a violation of a contract or copyright -- and so the Corporation wins by default.
Copyright is not a "bad" thing; just like patents and other forms of intellectual property, the underlying principle is sound. The implementation of IP, however, has been seriously perverted. See, it isn't the writers, or the artists, or the musicians who are the problem with IP -- the evil lies in a culture of greedy megacorporations, who control content by stealing from both creators and consumers.
Publishing online would work fine and dandy if consumers actually *paid* for what they download -- but I know many an author who's traveled the "web publishing" road, only to end up broke at the end. Beyond the rare moral individual, most people will take what they can, while they can -- and then those same people moan and whine when corporations exhibit the same lack of ethics! Folks, what comes around goes around -- stealing an MP3 is no better than a Corporation stealing a writer's article. It's all part of the same stinky kettle of fish...
To end the corporate domination of media and knowledge, you need to support people who take an independent path. You get what you pay for, quite literally.
--
Scott Robert Ladd
Master of Complexity
Destroyer of Order and Chaos
All about me
Sincerely
grammar nazi
Keeping
In one of my classes, the class was divided up into groups. Each group is reponsible for taking a week's worth of notes and writing them up in a manner similar to a chapter of a book. The professor teaching the class intends to edit the submissions and string them together into a textbook. This textbook will be submitted to publishers for possible publication.
Now, no formal contract was signed between the professor and the students. As far as I know, no student will receive proceeds from the book, although the professor will. He does intend to credit all the original writers on a credits page.
Given that the work was done for a course that students *paid* to attend, is he allowed to simply take our work and walk away with it? There is no rights assignment policy at our University that I am aware of.
The free-lance writers only want more money for republishing their works, no matter what the content. Who can blame them? They see the RIAA complaining about mp3's and hearing about new CD's that don't allow copying. If you want another copy of that song you need to pay up!
The MPAA is harassing people over the DeCSS case, just because someone wanted to watch a DVD on their linux box. They don't want Europe to get a hold of a DVD before it is released now do they. Need to control those dollars!
Even the Book Publishers are screaming at Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com for selling used books. Why? Their not getting any extra royalties.
So why wouldn't the freelance writers be next?
Wouldn't you be a little upset? I would. The freelance writers aren't complaining about making a backup of the info (much like making a copy of your DVD or CD), That's not the issue here. The issue is having the freelance writer bullied into signing their life away. Simply put their being told to either sign this contract that is retroactive to all of your work or you can not work for us ever again. Oh, and by the way, we're going to reproduce your work for profit. That's right more profit that the freelance writer is not benefiting from. This isn't making a copy for the library or for personal use. This is a big bullying company trying to make more profit off of the individual.
Just because I get the paper at home doesn't mean I'm entitled to automatically get the online version too. I've got to pay for that also. Why shouldn't the freelancers get paid twice also?
www.slightlycrewed.com - Because aren't we all?
Artists are finally catching on. Pay to play is the future. Hollywood screenwriters are going on strike because they want to get paid for every DVD sold or any time a movie is played on cable. Now journalists are getting in on the action. Soon artists will start charging a per viewing fee to see their paintings. I wonder what will happen in 10 years when 100Mbps or higher speed lines in the home will be the norm?
I wrote a story for an online video-game web page and it got a lot of positive feedback. This same web page is loosely affiliated with a quite-large dead-tree video game review rag. The story I wrote for them I did as a volunteer but I told the editor that if my story ever sees action on a printing press I wanted something in return. I only asked for a coffee mug but the priniciple remains. I see my online article as a contribution to the community. If they turned around and printed it, they are making a tangible profit off my work and I'd want a piece of that action. Would I be legally entitled to anything? Probably not. But I think they would be morally responsible to repay me for my contribution.
BOSTON SUCKS!
Note: I have not been able to find any article by any major publisher that describes what the publishers are doing (distributing copyrighted works without permission, for money) as "piracy", please post a comment with a link if you know of one.
EVERYone knows consumers are the pirates, thieving from the honest, hardworking company presidents that need to put bread in their hungry children's mouths.
On a more serious note, I really doubt this to happen. Publishers, recording industry or no, seem to have gotten this notion that their customers are "the enemy", or out to despoil them or rip them off, so obviously they have to rip the customers off FIRST... to protect their profits. I will be quite surprised if any publishing group, no matter HOW small, describes themselves or for that matter any other publishing group as pirates. They seem to be presenting a unified front on this one.
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
Maybe what the recording industries and publishing industries fear so much is that the technology of the internet has made them obsolete. File sharing and cheap digital recording and publishing tools, like mod makers and players, means everyone can be his own musician, and there can be a true democracy of art appreciation - vote with your dollars, and the best artists will make the most money. This is probably scaring the marketing and advertising guys shitless.
/. crowd wants them to and "go with the flow" of modern technology, their jobs will vanish like smoke.
We no longer need middlemen. So why should they still be in jobs? They're fighting for their survival here. Now that I think of it, if they do what the
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
Why are Diana Ross et al involved?
Magazines and newspapers are different in that generally their contracts gave them reprint rights without royalties owed to the authors (although the authors retained copyright), while with books there is a per-copy royalty. And it sounds like your standard contracts specify what you owe the authors for certain derivative works; the periodicals' contracts didn't cover anything they'd have to pay for later. (This is about freelancers who retain their copyright, not staff writers who generally came under "work for hire" rules and so never owned the copyrights.) As a book publisher, you have to keep track of authors or their agents and heirs as long as there is any chance of selling one more book -- you've got to know where to send the money. The periodicals probably deal with many more authors, pay them at time of publication, and have no reason to keep track of those who are no longer sending in publishable work. So if putting a periodical into an electronic database requires a new contract with all the authors, it's probably not going to happen -- they can't find all the authors, and probably couldn't afford the royalties demanded if they did find them.
Besides that, the publishers did NOT buy the articles originally. They just bought the right to print them, and to re-print without revisions. The authors still own the basic copyrights. The issue is, for contracts written before the publishers were aware of the possibilities on the internet, that the contracts don't define whether putting it on-line is "re-printing" or not.
This was asked for some time back on their web site and the publisher replied that it was almost impossible to do this. Every writer and illustrator would have to be contacted; after 20 -30 -70 years many are dead or impossible to find any more. Even if you could find them the cost and time of arranging all the rights and paying them and arguing with their agents and so one is too high.
And then I suppose there would be gaps where the writer refused to let his article be published again.
And then what would you pay for this CD collection? Like National Geographic, probably no more than $100.
You see the problem?? If we are fair to the writers and their estates then things become so tangled in a mass of rights and payments and documentation that I will never see my CD of Analog.
And if I have to wait until 50 years after they are all dead - for copyright to expire - does this mean that you have to track the age of every writer or wait for 150 years after publication to be sure they are dead?
How long will all these Analogs - decaying swiftly on old sulphite pulp - survive? Is the legacy of copyright that it is too complicated to preserve the past, that we must let everything rot away and be forgotten?
We have to have some practical way to allow magazine articles to be displayed on the internet, even if this does trample some of the authors rights.