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What Lawyers Can Learn From Manga
jedigeek links to this article from Lawrence Lessig, writing "This article explains the interesting phenomenon of dojinshi, and why dojinshi helps fuel the production of original manga. From a western-perspective, dojinshi breaks copyright laws, but, according to the article's author: 'The law is a rough-edged tool. It was not crafted by geniuses of economics.' In a time when laws like the DMCA exist and are being exploited, this is certainly food for thought."
This place is developing an echo...when are we actually gonna make a dent in the real world?
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
I dont know if I would call it an "obsession" any more than I would call the US' dependence (to one level or another) on newspapers and "obsession". Manga is more of a cultural thing.
Apparently, slash is big in japan.. except they actually have the talent to do slash with art, rather than slash with badly-spelled-web-log-entries.
*sigh*
I was given a book on how to draw Manga.. and the
"rules" of character design, etc, are very very interesting.
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
new and better ways of tentacle rape that they can then apply to their clients.
Oh, wait...
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
Lawyers do NOT want companies thinking like this article suggests. They WANT companies starting lawsuits over the smallest of violations, real or imagined.
It's how they get themselves paid.
Why would they want anything else? They coach their clients strongly to persue every available legal option by using the tried and true "scare tactic" marketing technique: "If you DON'T sue them, think what the NEXT person might do - you don't want your product to get away from you!".
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
Doujinshi is fan drawn and developed. This is not a new phenomenon as copying original work has always been viewed as flattery in Japan. It is our application of Western laws and thinking that sparks the copyright debate.
I am me...I think
"There's a lesson in this example that executives in the content industry should think about before they sign away their businesses to lawyers. The law is a rough-edged tool. It was not crafted by geniuses of economics. How it affects new and different markets is uncertain. A smart business therefore asks not whether the use of its content is "theft," but whether the use of its content will (eventually at least) benefit it. The business of business is to make business, not to purify the world of copyright violations..."
Is it just me or doues this sound like the definition of business for it's own sake? I realize the business of business is to make profit, but that statement make it sound as if the law is a secondary concern, an inconvinience that need be followed only if you're in a good mood.
And of course the law is a rough edged tool when viewed upon from a purely business stand point. That's because most laws aren't designed with only business in mind. There are these things called "people" too...
Oh, and didn't they know that purging the world of copywrite violations creates business too? Maybe they should have had somebody else write this piece...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
From the article:
Management should begin to demand a business justification for copyright litigation. How does this legal action advance the bottom line? How will it grow markets or increase consumer demand for our products? Will calling our customers criminals increase consumer loyalty?
If only more executives would ask these questions. Few businesses have realized the true power of fans and fan or user created content. Just look at the classic example of Half Life and Counter Strike. Where did these ideas that copyright law trumps the copyright holder's profits come from anyway?
Who said Freedom was Fair?
Apparently, in Japan, creating works based on someone's creations is considered flattery towards the creator. Sounds good to me - I'd be pretty happy if someone thought enough of my work to want to make works derived from it.
Bear in mind, though, that there is a very fine line between flattery and profiteering off someone elses hard work...
Dude... what is your problem? Some people enjoy anime, let them be. Personally, I enjoy anime AND I'm married. So much for your theory about pimply faced teens that can't get any action. My wife watches it with me and enjoys it just as much as I do. The story lines are facinating and MUCH more interesting than most movies with flesh and blood people in them. Of course I also enjoy porn... nuthin' wrong with that either. My wife agrees on that point too. Methinks YOU may have been the pimply faced teen with no action. Come on... admit it. You'll be a lot happier once you do and move on...
Un-news
As usual, Lessig makes some great points. Unfortunately, expecting the litigation industry to learn from dojinshi is like expecting the pharmaceutical industry to embrace naturopathic healing. As he says at the end, it's really the business leaders themselves who have to learn this lesson and put it into action, taking their companies back from their attorneys, and in the process (quite incidentally) letting us participate in our own culture rather than merely "consuming" it.
Does it occur to you guys that most of the stories worth telling have already been told? Try sitting down for 30mins and creating a short-story. Then submit it here and watch all the flames come in about how you just ripped off a, b, and c to hack together your story.
Originality is one of the rarest things around. We've all been exposed to so many different stories, movies, etc that there's really not much we haven't seen. If one in 10,000 artists actually does something original, how do you propose to build an economy off of that?
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
"To many, business is beneath the law. When a Sony lawyer threatened a fan of the company's Aibo robotic dog, who had posted a hack online to teach the dog to dance to jazz, he or she no doubt never thought to ask exactly how making the Aibo dog more valuable to customers could possibly harm Sony. Harm was not the issue, a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was: consumers should be banned from hacking Sony dogs, whether or not it was to Sony's benefit."
You know, I'm a little surprised Sony (of all places) doesn't understand this concept. It would be hard to argue that one of Quake n's most appetizing features was the mods available to it. Though ID didn't make money off the mods themselves, it helped make sure that many many MANY copies of Quake were sold. Sony, with its game division, should be eyeballing Id more carefully than that.
Is it just me or does this sound like the definition of business for it's own sake? I realize the business of business is to make profit, but that statement make it sound as if the law is a secondary concern, an inconvinience that need be followed only if you're in a good mood.
Lessig is NOT arguing that businesses should break the law, he's arguing that content holders should recognize when it is in their best interest to enforce their "legal rights" and when it's best to just let it pass.
If my rights are violated, I can CHOOSE whether or not to press charges. If I choose not to, then there's nothing stopping anyone from violating those rights, especially if I make my intentions public. If I decide that certain rights aren't worth defending, or as Lessig points out are actually more profitable to me if I allow them to be "violated," then no one else can come in and tell me I must defend myself. In general it's not a smart idea to give away your rights, but perhaps Lessig has a point here that some laws and rights don't always protect they way you want them to and in fact you'd be better off not enforcing them.
In practice this may happen more often than you think. Sometimes it's not worth the trouble hauling someone into court when you can deal with it person to person. Even the GPL itself "gives away" rights the law gives to copyright holders. In this case, such free software advocates feel the loss of traditional copyright privileges is outweighed by the gains of free-as-in-speech software.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
Still, I would rather do my own story and realize that it's already been done than downright copy someone else's world. I mean, one of the fun things about writing a comic/story is coming up with your own world and characters. The fact that other people have incredibly similar plot lines simply means you and other hacks...err... writers think the same... which can either be an ego booster or an ego crusher, you decide.
"Originality is one of the rarest things around. We've all been exposed to so many different stories, movies, etc that there's really not much we haven't seen. If one in 10,000 artists actually does something original, how do you propose to build an economy off of that?"
You mean like the entertainment economy that's doing very well today?
"Does it occur to you guys that most of the stories worth telling have already been told?"
Did it occur to you that there's a lot more to content than getting from act I to act IV?
Was the interesting part about Ghostbusters the way they defeated Zuul, or was the interesting part about it watching these 3 guys (eventually 4) start an unusual business?
I swear, people ridiculously over-value plot.
vote.
it's that simple.
really.
... change the laws to force people into it!
The original poster had it all wrong, the point is not to ignore the law to do whatever you want but rather realizing the law is a tool that you need not always apply. Just because someone copies content of yours does not *nessicarily* mean your business will suffer as a result, and a smart business that realizes that can take advantage over another that spends precious resources fighting for ill-thought governmental policy.
It's all about being a tool of the law, vs. using the law as a tool. I guess that's the short summary I was trying to arrive at before.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I doubt the RIAA or MPAA really cares that much about derivative works. You don't hear Weird Al getting sued for doing parodies of popular songs, for instance. The RIAA and MPAA are concerned about bootleg copies of their work. Examples like this are not going to convince them that p2p sharing of their material and burning copies of cds is not costing them business.
Vote for Pedro
Nor can Hilary Rosen, or Jack Valenti or any of those pinhead types. See, they probably have never heard 99.9% of the music they represent, nor seen 99.9 % of the movies. They're a perfect example of the cancer that's killing innovation (and with it, the economy) in the U.S. Today.
Here's an even better example:
E-Books:
My wife loves E-books, they're cheap and she can buy and download them online (read: Impulse buy for instant gratification). What does drive her crazy though is that she can't print most of them. She has to be tied to a computer to read them. So, she winds up buying a mix of books or goes to the library.
Enter Elcomsoft...a Russian company that can fix this...which will make my wife happy so she'll buy even MORE e-books. Another thing that Elcomsoft's product can do is open up an entire NEW MARKET..the blind book market. See, the millions of blind people in the world can't USE
E-books, but with Elcomsoft's program these books can be read on a standard text reader that many of these blind people use. Instead of JUMPING FOR JOY at this innovative product that can result in MILLIONS MORE E-books being sold, the industry sues it out of existance. Now, explain to me how THAT made any sense? Like I'm a six year old.
Before technology made that theoretically possible, having elected representatives was probably supposed to get as close to that as practically possible. Of course there would need to be VERY strong community stability controls to prevent the law swinging wildy with fads. Even something as simple as a slashdot discussion has layers of moderation and meta-moderation, and you still get a ton of junk posts just because they can. Something like the Linux kernel depends on a trusted dictator, which is works when you can have many different software implementations and ignore all but the effective ones. We can't afford to allow that with laws, we have to pick ONE right law for everyone before implementation.
Today, I think the biggest barrier to progress towards the community ideal is that in America campaign contribution money can apparently override logic via blitz advertising for votes. That effectively breaks "one man, one vote". I'm not an American nor do I live in America so I can't directly participate in that process, but it still affects me at home because those policies are exported via political pressure on other countries.
DMCA-like policy is only one of a number of unpopular policies that are being pushed on legislatures worldwide by corporate lobbying. In most countries corporations don't have as much influence over politics, so more and more internationally we are seeing government-to-government pressure from American politicians who are apparently legally allowed to owe big contributors big favors.
Maybe American campaign finance reform is the way to break that barrier down, make American individuals votes count more than dollars again, and other individuals in their own countries too.
Where I live, political campaigning by individual politicians is limited to 6 weeks before the election and must stop the day before the election. Individual electorate politicians have a campaign budget limited to merely thousands of dollars, enough for volunteers to put up posters and local some local media advertising but not enough to blitz the mass media. Penalties for exceeding this spending limit go beyond removal of that individual from office. The budgets for political parties are not as limited, but any party that can prove signed up membership of more than a certain number of people can get government contribution towards equal TV advertising time. This means that campaign money is not essential to a party getting a message publicised. No guarantee people will watch, but still a better chance.
Not having to listen to a two-year run-up to every four-yearly election is one of the minor benefits of fairer campaign finance, the major one is that people's votes would count for more in making the law.
...correlation does not equal causation. Theories like these are always applied to more popular intellectual property when they should be applied to the most mundane of intellectual property. Just because some more popular things benefit from this blind consent does not mean that everything will magically benefit from this consent. In the end, it should be left up to the owner of the intellectual property to make this decision.
Lawyers should be placed on the Arc B together with telephone sanitizers, advertising account executives, hairdressers, insurance salesmen and management consultants, then sent on a direct course towards a nice distant and solid planet to save them from being eaten alive by the mutant star goat.
Arc B should of course be sent ahead of the other arcs --- there's nothing nicer than a nice clean telephone to welcome home the producers and achievers.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
This is what I know about doujinshi. I'm sure that I might be missing some small details, but it is an interesting contrast to the concepts of Intellectual Property that we have in the US.
As the article states, doujinshi are "fan comics" created mainly by amatures that are based on existing works by professional manga artists.
Doujin varies greatly in quality and content. Lots of it is complete crap, while some of it is actually very good, arguably better than the work it is derived from. Additionally, a lot of doujin is pornographic in nature, though not all of it is.
It is similar to fanfiction, except there is one huge difference between fanfiction in the US and doujin in Japan. Doujin artists actually SELL their work for profit. There are even stores deticated just to doujin in Japan, not to mention
many very large conventions centered around doujin.
In the US, the owners of the original work would no doubt sue the pants off of anyone who tried this. If I were to make an "X-Men" fan comic and try to sell it, I could expect a big fat lawsuit from Marvel comics. However, in Japan, doujin artists are very rarely prosecuted.
The only time I can think of a doujin artist being sued is when Nintendo took legal action against a female doujin artist for making a Pokemon-based comic where Pikachu is raped by Satoshi (Ash).
I can't really blame them for that one...
Most of the time pro manga artists see the doujinshi based on their works as homage. Infact, many major manga artists (such as Akamatsu Ken, creator of Love Hina) got their start doing doujin.
Doujinshi have been around for a LONG time. Obviously, the presence of these fan comics have done little to no harm to the professional manga and anime industries. Those who produce doujin are typically the most hard core and loyal fans of the professional works, after all.
I think doujinshi is an excellent example that derivitive works really do not dilute trademarks, or any such nonsense, and that these works actually help to promote fandom of the original work. If only our friends in the RIAA and MPAA could understand that... but I guess it is pointless, after all.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Not too long ago you could have said "The person exists to get food. That is his/her sole purpose in life." And it even would have been true, for a very long time. But you know what? Somewhere along the way, we grew up a little. We saw that there is more to life than grabbing the next, or the biggest, meal. There's a whole Universe of things above, beyond, and immament in the purely material.
Maybe it's time for corporations to grow up, too. Maybe it's time for us to demand that they do, to remove the legal justifications for ones that don't, and to provide the legal framework that allows ones that do. The courts have recognized that, in certain ways, a corporation is a "person". With those rights come certain responsibilities too -- an ethics that can trascend the pure profit motive.
Not that I'm holding my breath.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
As an English-speaking lawyer for Matushita who spends six months of every year in Tokyo on business, I feel qualified to point out that Lessig's argument is complete rubbish
Congratulations, you just proved his point.
Lawyers don't get it.
About a year and a half ago or so, an Everquest player had his game account banned and was asked to remove some fan fiction from a website by Sony (and I believe there was a threat of legal action if he did not). That fiction involved a 14-year-old dark elf female being raped.
But, as was frequently pointed out in the resulting furor (the player in question apologized and took it like a man, but some players want any reason to bitch), the general policy on EQ fan sites is to let them be, and even throw them bones now and then. People post screenshots, walk-throughs, fan fics, and all kinds of other game-related content all over the web. And apparently Sony Online Entertainment and/or Verant Interactive realize that this is a *good* thing, so long as it doesn't hurt their image. They also realize that if they decide a particular work is hurting them more than helping them (as they decided with the depiction of child rape), they have the right to enforce their copyright selectively.
It seems that perhaps copyright law needs a proof of damage clause attached to it, similar to slander and libel. This could be used to expand the doctrine of Fair Use, for example. In many cases such a clause wouldn't be appropriate; you could, if it were done badly, end up with situations where someone loses their copyright because "they weren't using it." (Of course, that happens now, too... see the Darwin fish. But anyway.)
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
Mr. Lessig's day job: Teaching "Constitutional Law" and "Law and Virtual Worlds" courses at Stanford University.
What we see here is a relationship between a law professor, the law, the Constitution, and virtual worlds. Since the law, the Constitution, and virtual worlds all came into existence, and are perpetuated, independently of Mr. Lessig, it seems clear that the purpose of Mr. Lessig as a law professor can only be understood in terms of its relationship to these things, and that he is not autotelic at all.
I could argue that perhaps Mr. Lessig has created the field of "Law and Virtual Worlds" specifically in order to perpetuate his own existence as a law professor, but I'd have to disregard the fact that virtual worlds, the law, and the intersection of the two, exists independently of his own existence as a law professor. Even if Lessig is one of the first to enter this field, we already have a word for that: pioneer. And when the pioneer has created the field which he then enters, we often use the term "genius". If Lessig is truly autotelic (which seems unlikely), then he is in good company, along with Jonas Salk, Neils Bohr, and Alan Turing, among others.
And why shouldn't he teach law? Study of the law does not make one an IP parasite. Teaching the law does not make one a greedy hypocrite. Teaching the law during the week, and applying one's knowledge of the law on weekends to promote justice and uphold fair play seems rather more laudable than the pursuits of the stereotypical lawyer.
Perhaps the Troll would care to offer some counter-examples that distinguish Mr. Lessig as a greedy hypocrite, rather than the admirable figure the documented evidence seems to present?
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
If that's the kind of writing we're producing in college classes, then I see no reason to preserve the earth for for anybody who's in school right now, let alone future generations who will undoubtedly be even more repulsive.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
As an anime fan since the late 80s, I had been aware of doujinshi, but it was not until my trips to Tokyo that I truly began to comprehend it. What I observed was:
1) Doujinshi is not allways "copycat". There are some small
fan-run books that are called doujinshi (and sold at Comic Market) that are totally original.
2) A lot of it is about porn. And about seeing your favorite anime character violated, often by tenticles. Yes, there are some original "fanfic" type stories...but there is also a lot of Sailor Moon meets Urotsukudoji. I couldn't believe the things they were doing to poor [I am a dumbass]!
3) The Japanese are a lot more liberal about their hand-drawn porn than we are. The yaoi (boy-boy) stuff is right there with the girl-girl stuff. Women in Japan appear to be as open about liking boy-boy as men are about girl-girl. Porn is just porn.
4) Doujinshi is where folks seem to start. First you make a doujinshi of a magical girls series you like. Then you make your own magical girl. Then you decide if you really want to be a [I am a dumbass] and start trying to make a name for yourself. If you get lucky you might get in one of the anthologies - the collections put out weekly or monthly the size of small phonebooks.
Shopping for this stuff in Japan is quite fun. My best friend came with me on one of my business trips, and I came back to the hotel after the first day and he'd already scored. In fact he got me a doujinshi of my favorite [I am a dumbass] getting violated several ways.
If [I am a dumbass] for porn.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Auto manufacturers have tried to get Congress to allow copyright protection on auto sheet metal, but so far, Congress hasn't given in.
But the DMCA angle is a real issue in the automotive area. Ordinarily, you can't copyright a functional part. But you can add a hardware interlock to a functional part and use the DMCA to prevent attempts to break the "protection mechanism", as the printer-cartridge industry does.
As more components of vehicles are on the vehicle LAN, this may become an issue. For example, the aftermarket radio industry may be killed off.
You said short story - this is not comics, but here goes:
.3 carats, small but noticeable, and definitely not little chips surrounded by a lot of setting the way so many of them are. Clicking on the photos to enlarge them is important in order to catch this detail. If a photo is too blurry and doesn't provide a detailed description of the carat weight, it's not worth looking at. To win this one, Mark had three separate browsers open, each with small increments in price. He had learned that a modem, even at 56k, could only go so fast. So Marked prepped his browsers, and then when the auction began nearing the last minute he would Submit, Submit, Submit. He came within 20 seconds of the end of the auction. The bidder before him came in at 25, losing by just 5 seconds. Yes, I was being educated on the intricacies of eBay on a daily basis now. :)
I think my husband is addicted to eBay
It all started one day when I noticed my husband, Mark, was spending a little more time than usual checking his email. I wandered into the office to see what he was up to. "What're you doing Honey?"
"I'm just surfing on eBay."
"For anything in particular?"
"Sticks. Pool sticks. Mickey found a good deal on a Huebler, so now I'm trying to find one." That's my hubby: like the matching pea in a pod, whatever his best friend Mickey had, Mark would soon possess, and vice versa.
"How much?"
"Mickey got his for $175.00. Then he found a Meucci for Carol. Some models retail for twice that."
I shook my head a little, gave him a kiss on the cheek and said, "Ok, have fun."
Just a couple of days later he was at it again. "What are you looking for now?" I quizzed.
"Sticks."
"But, I thought you found one the other night."
"I did. Now I'm looking for one for you." He looked up at me with a pleading glance, "You want your own pool stick, Honey?"
"But, I don't play pool often enough to own my own stick."
"I can get you a purple one!" he beamed as he tried to appeal his case to me.
"Honey, I don't need a stick. I hardly ever go out when you shoot pool. I can just borrow yours when I do."
The next night he was at it again. "Honey! I want to show you something!" He shouted from upstairs. Once upstairs Mark proudly turned the monitor toward me so he could display his new find.
"Look Honey, a purple one!"
He clicked the Back arrow, and then clicked on a web link he had saved. "And here's a green one. You like green, don't you?" I could already tell that I was going to be the proud owner of a Huebler whether I wanted one or not.
"I found a neat trick. Look." he said as he pointed to the monitor. "A lot of people spell Huebler wrong. So if you search for the stick using the misspelling, you'll find a bunch that hardly anyone is bidding on, because most people are searching for the real name. See, the purple one is spelled 'Hubler'. It's only up to $75.00, and there's only three people bidding on it." He clicked another link, "And here's a Meucci, but it's spelled 'Meuchie', so the search function can't find it."
"You're already bidding on the stick? But I told you I didn't want one."
"But it's a great stick. Trust me honey. Now we can all have our own."
"You can have two if you really want them, but I don't need one. And, by the way, what are all of those boxes that keep showing up in the mail?"
He flashed a big, proud grin, "Car parts."
"You're buying car parts online? Isn't that a little expensive? Can't you just go to the junkyard like you usually do?"
"But you can't find the kind of parts I need in a junkyard. I ordered ashtrays for my Monte Carlo. You can't get '87 ashtrays from any of the junkyards around here. And I found door locks for it too. They're the kind with the knobs on the end instead of the straight ones."
"How much for new door locks?" I asked.
"Fourteen bucks, plus shipping."
I rolled my eyes. "Whatever! I'm going back downstairs."
A few days later Mark called for me to come upstairs again.
"Don't tell me, eBay. What did you find now?"
"Just because I love you so much, and you're the most wonderful wife in the world..." he bribed as he turned the monitor toward me. There on the display was an enlarged photo of a diamond ring. "Do you like it?"
"Honey", I pronounced the syllables distinctly putting a little emphasis on the 'eee' part, "That's very sweet of you, but I don't need another ring." I held up my ring finger to him, presenting a seven-diamond marquee band, "You just bought me this one a few months ago, and I love it. You know I don't wear a lot of jewelry."
"But, I would get it for you if you wanted it. You know, most wives would be happy that their husband wanted to buy them a new ring."
"I leaned down to kiss him, "Then you should be glad I'm not like most wives. Please, no ring. Ok?"
"Ok. Your loss."
Over the next few weeks there were more rings for him to show me. Mark had moved onto gemstones, prodding with, "You want a birthstone don't you?" I finally caved on the birthstone, if he could get it for under $50.00, which he did. It was surprisingly nice for the money. Apparently the woman selling it forgot to put in a reserve price on the item. This meant that she would have to sell it at whatever the final bid was.
Then there was the pretty sapphire with a triangle shaped diamond on either side for $175.87. The diamonds were
I had to admit I was happy with some of his little finds for me. But the small packages were starting to show up daily. I had long lost count over the past few months. I had given up on asking about car parts and paintball guns, and had insisted on no more jewelry. Since we were the proud owner of two new (used) Hueblers, I felt safe there would be no more of those.
I was wrong. Even though each pool cue came with it's own case, Mark claimed he needed to buy a special case that could carry two sticks. Ok, I reasoned; that made some sense. But what were we going to do with the two empty single cases? Then he needed a stick just for breaking. I tried to argue that one down by pointing out that a bar cue was quite sufficient for the task, but lost to his enthusiastic and passionate energy.
After a few months and I don't know how much money, I got paged upstairs again. "Your Mom likes these, doesn't she?" he asked, as he pointed to a listing of Caroling dolls, better known as 'suffocating people' around here. That's my clever Honey's nickname for them because he says when you put them in a glass display case, they all look like they're gasping for air.
Putting his generous spirit aside, my hands were on my hips now. I had had enough. "Honey! You're buying for my mother now? Don't you think you're taking this eBay stuff a little too far?" I glared at him in a way that only an angry wife can, "Honey, I think you are addicted to eBay. You haven't stopped since you started. You've run out of things to buy (thank God!), so now your shopping for other people. You need to stop. You know I love you, but you need to stop. I don't want to see another package come into this house!"
A dark cloud seemed to settle on the house for the next couple of days. Mark moped about. He shopped, but didn't bid. I swear he was going through withdrawal. I felt guilty, but we had a deal as husband and wife. We gave each other a lot of leeway with our lives; we trusted each other completely to always do the right thing for the marriage. But if one of us decided the other was starting to cross from the gray into the black, and was called up on it, they would stop whatever the offending thing was. End of story; no arguments. Sulking, yes. Arguing, no.
Finally, I couldn't take his misery anymore. "Honey, listen: you can't possibly need anything else from eBay. You've bought it all already." He just scowled, and mumbled something I probably didn't want to hear anyway. "Why don't you look for things that you can sell, instead of trying to buy everything? Maybe you can sell the pool cases you have left over?"
A seed planted; I left.
After a few days, I noticed Mark was digging through our closets and rummaging up in the attic. He had managed to dig out a couple of items that might sell on eBay. Digital camera in hand, he photographed his items and dutifully posted them to the site. Not a bad beginning, but now he was on a new quest. If we weren't using it anymore and it contained even a nominal value, he was selling it.
He had in the garage some of his own car parts, left over from cars long gone, that he posted. Amazingly everything sold and sold quickly. I guess you need to know your automobiles, but there are some models of cars that are harder to find parts for than others. And there are silly things (to me anyway), like the fact that a 1987 Corolla was sold with small mirrors and large mirrors. Apparently the large ones are hard to find and he just happened to have a couple. He had a spare alternator from an old car that got totaled before he ever got to put it in, and it too sold quickly. Mark had only bought a couple of items for himself in the last couple of months, for which I said nothing. The tides had shifted and the balance restored. The money was coming in now instead of going out.
On one very rare day, our teenage daughter, Cherie, decided to clean her room. Two large garbage bags were placed in the garage, and I knew I would need to go through them. She had a bad habit of throwing away small items that were still perfectly good, instead of putting them in the yard sale pile. Sure enough, there were a couple of small wooden boxes stuffed in the bags along with a lot of leftover school papers and used notebooks. I pulled the boxes out and placed them on top of the trash barrels then tied the bags back up.
It wasn't too long before Mark eyed the boxes and brought them over to his workbench. Inside one of the boxes was a large plastic bag. It was filled with what looked to be pen tips, the kind that are used on old fountain pens. He asked me where they came from. I recalled Cherie was attempting to learn calligraphy at one point, so they must have come from then. But they were very old pen tips. Someone must have given them to her a long time ago.
Mark diligently went on eBay and did a little research. Lo and behold, these ???? pen tips were for sale all right, and were selling well. He found one guy who sold a dozen tips for $45.00. We had fifty tips in the bag. It turned out that they were indeed very old, and were not in production anymore.
Mark thought about this for a while. Should he sell the whole bag with all fifty tips in one fell swoop? Or should he farm them out a little at a time? If he sold them all, he might get a good price, but who would want to buy them? Possibly another dealer. But it seemed feasible to him that an ordinary person would have no use for fifty tips. His research showed that they lasted about two to three years, depending on use. So he opted to sell them in smaller quantities.
Digital photos ready, he posted his newfound treasure. He placed three separate auctions with three pen tips each. He made sure he clearly listed the name brand and model numbers, and in the photo he had one of the tips out of the box so it could be properly viewed. Wow! Who knew so many people were hot for pen tips? After seven days on auction, his top one sold for $26.00. Imagine, $26.00 for just three pen tips that were on their way out to the trash. The other two sets sold for $19.00 and $17.00. And he still had forty-one left to sell. It was nice to see the smile back.
Clearly on a different path now, Mark was always looking for something good to post. Jewelry and pool cues were no longer on his mind. The only thing he bought lately were old novels written by Norah Lofts, that his mother loved to read. Since they were written in the 70's and are very hard to find, eBay proved to be the perfect hunting ground.
One weekend we were at the closing end of a yard sale of a co-worker who was moving away. As most good yard-sellers do, they try to unload a lot of stuff at the end, or they throw it away. The man gifted Mark with a car model kit that he had never built. The box was fairly ratty, but the model kit itself was still inside its protective plastic bag. It was of a 1969 Corvette, 1/20th scale. It had all of the decals and came with real rubber wheels, which, so I am told, are supposed to be fairly rare.
Mark took his photos. He now had a large piece of wood painted a light cream color, so he would always have a clean backdrop to clearly display his items. He tried to research the Corvette model, but he couldn't find one just like it. He looked at some of the prices that other models were going for, and they auctioned for anywhere between fifteen and one hundred dollars. Mark preferred to start his auctions off with a very low bid, and let the auction take off. If he wanted $25.00 for an item, he would start it at $5 or $10 and let the bidders bring it up. He noticed if he started too high, or placed a high reserve on an item, the final sale price never really crept up. There is something about winning an auction from another person that fuels the bidding process.
A master at this now, Mark dutifully typed up the full description so it would be ready to copy and paste into the eBay auction description form. He didn't leave anything out, even describing that the original owner was into Vettes but never found the time to build the model, and that he didn't want to keep it for himself because he too, did not have the time to do it any justice. Apparently this model was also unique in that it could be built three ways: blown dragster, exciting custom and stock open 427 roadster (whatever any of that means - I just copied this stuff from his description). It also had vinyl seatbelts and floor mats, which most model makers don't bother with anymore. In addition to his detailed description, he cross-linked his advertising by mentioning to check his 'other auction' for the 1969 Corvette Model, on an old Corvette Dealer brochure that he had also picked up at the yard sale and vice versa. (Who knew old dealer brochures were collectible?)
The auction began with a starting bid of $6.00. Within one day it was up to $56.00. By the end of the third day, it had gone over the $150.00 mark. Then Mark received an email from a gentleman in Argentina. It turned out that Mark had listed that he would only ship to the United States or Canada. Mark quickly realized that it was a little silly to cut himself so short, when his auction was being viewed by the entire world. The guy from Argentina mentioned that he would like to bid on the model, but Mark said he couldn't. So, Mark quickly corrected this by sending an email back and basically saying, "Hey, if you don't mind paying the extra for foreign shipping, go ahead and bid on it." Then he posted a correction to his auction description and mentioned that he would indeed ship to a foreign country, but to please remember that it was a lot more costly to do so. And so the bidding war began.
The next day the auction heated up again and at last glance had reached $203.00. Considering the bid increments were only $1.00 each that demonstrated a fairly active day. By the end of the seventh day, Mark's new determined friend in Argentina had worked the final sale to $247.00. He was going to own that Corvette model and nothing was going to stop him. And so the story goes: a dusty little model car kit, pulled from the trash at the last minute, started out at $6.00 and ended up selling for $247.00 plus another $25.00 to ship by air.
Yes, life is good around here again. Hubby is happy. Wife is happy. Man in Argentina is happy. And the kid? Well -- we never did tell her about the pen tips.
Oh yeah, copyright 2003 by me