"This whole fiasco is a demonstration of why Wikipedia is NOT reliable."
That is a beautiful straw man you have got there. Did it come with a free caps lock key? Kudos to you for demonstrating that you know how to use it.
You probably did not mean "reliable" though. Wikipedia is very reliable for its purpose, namely to be a starting point for further exploration. You see, Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia.
As for whether the "facts" in Wikipedia are "true", for any sensible meaning of that word, no-one can tell, of course.
Having some form of quality control has been tried. Nupedia was actually a predecessor of Wikipedia, and the last one to leave it turned the light out. The problem as they described it was that they weren't getting enough contributions, but I think they had a much bigger problem; their articles were easily worse than the corresponding entries in Wikipedia.
At one point, information from the Nupedia article on the BASIC programming language got merged on Wikipedia with the local entry. Within weeks the Wikipedia article had become bigger, better and badder. For the same thing to have happened to the Nupedia article, the whole review process would have had to be started up again.
There are indeed problems with Wikipedia if you wish to see the thing as an impartial ressource. One that has been mentioned is that some subjects get less attention than others. Another that has been mentioned is that if an urban legend has ten believers and one debunker, the believers have a louder voice than the debunker. A further problem is that it is easy to write down what you believe to be true in the hope that some fact-checker will come along to prove you wrong; this leads to sloppy editing.
However, these problems need to be attacked one by one and on their own merits. Installing an authority, whose verdict can be trusted, invites much bigger problems; authorities' verdicts cannot be trusted. The reason we have authorities, is because we can trace and verify the process that lead to their verdicts. However, people tend to trust authorities no matter what, which leads to sloppy encyclopaedias.
Wikipedia is a third tier source. It condenses reports on observations. No third tier source, including all other encyclopaedias, should ever be trusted.
To the contrary, it is you who is having trouble reading.
"Is there anywhere in my post where I said I was defining the word copyright?"
No. Is there anywhere in my original reply that said you were defining the word copyright?
I said you were defining the goal of copyright.
"The ultimate goal of copyright law"
=
"to allow people to create their works without having to worry about others republishing or taking claim of the creation"
Looks pretty much like a definition to me.
"The post is quite clear that I am trying to find layman's terms to express the goals and effects of laws."
Now I may not be a native speaker of English, and miss out on some of the subtleties of your language, but I am pretty sure that if you had wanted to express that you were trying to find terms instead of defining them, you would have used words like "may", "could", "perhaps", et cetera. See? It's even a trick I can use: "I am pretty sure". Meaning I am not entirely sure. Unlike: "the goal of X is Y".
Today's free ebook is The Wizard of Oz, by Frank L. Baum. That's two public domain books that the buyer could have gotten for free anyway.
Perhaps I should start a fitness center that offers free one-hour work-outs. Then when somebody takes me up my offer, I tell them to leave the building and go and run for an hour.
Also one of my favorites: bars that have a sign that says: "Tomorrow free beer".
Any business that treats their customers like that deserves exactly the kind of customers that will treat them similarly in return.
Re:Choice versus freedom-Pining for Patronage.
on
Upbeat on E-books
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· Score: 1
"Don't forget that trademarks, and patents are also part of what made your computer possible. Patronage most likely wouldn't have."
Speak for yourself. The two most important recent events in the development of my computers were that IBM and Xerox decided _not_ to enforce their cpt. That gave us the GUI and the PC architecture.
Re:Choice versus freedom-Pining for Patronage.
on
Upbeat on E-books
·
· Score: 1
"History has shown that present copyright has been more an asset than a hinderance."
Is it something in the weather? This is at least the third broad, unsubstantiated claim about copyright I have seen in this thread. Please, show us some evidence. (And yes, I am aware that you are not capable of showing that evidence for lack of parallel worlds.)
History suggests that in the years between the invention of the Gutenberg press and the invention of the digital copy, some reasonable copyright has been benificial to the production of works.
BTW, granting monopolies are not the only government instrument for counteracting market failure. In chapter six of his book Promises to Keep (parts of it available online), William Fisher outlines three of these alternatives: government can supply works themselves (think public television), governments can pay private parties to supply works, and governments can issue prizes/awards for works.
Of course, authors have other incentives besides what the government can offer. From what I hear, magazines that publish short stories offer the same per-word price to authors as they did thirty years ago, even though inflation has made all other goods twice as expensive. It is pretty safe to conclude from that, that authors aren't merely writing for money.
There's nothing odd about public domain works to be sold. To the contrary, it is the nature of the public domain that anything can be used in any way you like.
That, however, has little to do with format conversion. AC, what development work does it take to dump the ASCII file from Gutenberg onto the Palm sevice? That is something I do on a regular basis, and all it takes is the minute I need to start and run Pyrite Publisher.
Perhaps you are talking about adding value to the text (prettifying, adding commentary, adding in links, et cetera), but a trained person can do that in a few hours.
Case in point: Distributed Proofreaders, main supplier of Project Gutenberg, now submits over 70% of its etexts both in ASCII and HTML format. Having the HTML file available cuts tremendously on making nice-looking PDFs or other formats, and allows us to retain much of the original lay-out of a work. This is all done by volunteers, many of whom had no experience with HTML whatsoever before they started working with us. The learning curve seems to steep, but after a few books most people seem to be comfortable producing great HTML editions. (And for every one of the few volunteers who just do not get the hang of it, there are several volunteers who are glad to do nothing but HTML editions.)
Re:Choice versus freedom-BS Artist-II
on
Upbeat on E-books
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· Score: 1
"The exclusive rights supported are"
Note: supported by copyright law, not by the constitution.
""However, during that time the writer is still borrowing the work from the public."
Neither clause supports this statement."
Truth be told, I did make an assumption; namely, that the constitution makes sense, and that it does not describe token rights that nobody has use of.
It only makes sense for the constitution to allow congress to grant an author exclusive rights to his work if the author did not already have those rights. From that, and the assumption that the US constitution is not a non-sensical document, I conclude that authors do not automatically have these rights.
What's more, if the constitution had not mentioned copyrights at all, congress would have been free to invent them and make them as bad as they could. This, to me, clearly means that the Founding Fathers meant copyrights and patents to be a very limited thing, something that should be applied with caution.
If your print run is sufficiently large, the per book costs will be low. Ask printers for prices. Take pre-orders from customers. If you have enough orders for books, get them printed.
"But that's not going to sustain any market. For mass appeal there needs to be the latest novels from the biggest names."
I once read that the classics outsell the latest novels from the biggest names, except perhaps at the point where these latest novels have just been released.
Not that that contradicts what you are saying (although it would suggest that there is a market large enough for classics alone), I just thought it an interesting observation, assuming it is true. (Unfortunately, I can no longer find the article that discussed this.)
(And then there is The Long Tail.)
Re:Choice versus freedom-BS Artist.
on
Upbeat on E-books
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· Score: 1
"Um... excuse me, but the constitution says no such thing. It doesn't even imply it."
Clause 1: The Congress shall have Power
Clause 8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
Though I don't disagree with you, I think you overlook one thing; new technology often also has some advantages besides it disadvantages. Ebooks bring things to the table that paper books cannot. (For examples see rest of the comments.)
The displacement, I can tell from experience, only happens when you are not fully focused. On the tiny screen of my Palm Pilot, I am often a couple of 'pages' along when I realize I haven't really been reading for a while.
With a paper book it is often trivial to skip back to the point where I lost focus. Of course, this is just a matter of form factor. If Philips ever decides to license its e-ink technology to a reading device manufacturer who is not going to behave like a prick, just because it is living by the crack of the whip of its publishing department, we will not only have ebooks that adhere to all your demands, but that also have the right physical size.
Until then, current technology is batting three out of four for your list.
"The ultimate goal of copyright law is to allow people to create their works without having to worry about others republishing or taking claim of the creation."
I have been reading a lot about copyright, but this definition is new to me. Pray tell, where does it say that this is the ultimate goal of copyright? Please make it good, because I have countless documents that say otherwise, among which the US constitution.
"The end result of strong copyright (and widespread respect for copyrights) is that publishers can present their works in simpler, universal formats."
That is a contradiction. If there were respect for copyright, law makers would not feel the need to make copyright stronger.
As it is, strong copyright allows publishers to do whatever they want, which in practice means a myriad of formats that no-one and nothing but the reading device of the publisher understands (or even is allowed to understand).
"In theory, the OSS, GNU, etc., are built on the tradition of copyright."
The first true thing you managed to say in four paragraphs. However, I doubt you meant it in the way it is correct.
Richard Stallman, founder of GNU, does not want copyright for software. Since he is not going to get his wish in the foreseeable future, he made a license that in his opinion counteracts the evil effects of copyright. In other words, he uses copyright law against itself, to cancel out copyright law.
"Companies are more willing to produce source for clients when they do not fear that their source will be stolen by a competitor."
It is not called theft, it is called infringement. Theft is when I take something away so that you can no longer use it. This is not the case with works. What is more, if I infringe your copyright, I can then give your work to others, so that they benefit too. This is called sharing. Sharing was once considered a good value.
"There's nothing in the constitution that takes away the writer's right to market his work."
There's nothing in the constitution that says the writer owns his work. To the contrary; the US constitution (I presume that's the constitution you are talking about) is based on the assumption that the people own the work.
The constitution then allows the US congress to make copyright laws, that allow a writer to exploit a work for a limited time. However, during that time the writer is still borrowing the work from the public.
Is this medical advice from a qualified physician, or are you just talking bull? AFAIK, our eyes are perfectly capable of reading ebooks.
Re:I know this is an oft repeated point but
on
Upbeat on E-books
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· Score: 1
"I don't see ebooks catching on unless there's a sensible way to read them. Reading from a screen just isn't conducive to enjoyment of a book."
Well, the great thing about ebooks, or rather one of the great things about ebooks, is that unlike paper books they are not bound to a physical medium.
If you want to read an ebook by touching it, you can. If you want to read an ebook by tasting it, you can (why is that Stephen King tastes like dead flies?). If you want to read an ebook by listening to it, you can.
I love etexts for every situation where I have to wait, even in the queue at the supermarket. Although most of the time, I read Wired or the paper on my Palm when waiting.
Re:I know this is an oft repeated point but
on
Upbeat on E-books
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· Score: 1
"Yes, it appears everyime, because its correct."
Ah well, I guess I should quit reading ebooks then.
Slashdot Mirror
"This whole fiasco is a demonstration of why Wikipedia is NOT reliable."
That is a beautiful straw man you have got there. Did it come with a free caps lock key? Kudos to you for demonstrating that you know how to use it.
You probably did not mean "reliable" though. Wikipedia is very reliable for its purpose, namely to be a starting point for further exploration. You see, Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia.
As for whether the "facts" in Wikipedia are "true", for any sensible meaning of that word, no-one can tell, of course.
"And of course, that's bullcrap."
Ah, and the belief in the theory of objective reality is not? Sure...
Having some form of quality control has been tried. Nupedia was actually a predecessor of Wikipedia, and the last one to leave it turned the light out. The problem as they described it was that they weren't getting enough contributions, but I think they had a much bigger problem; their articles were easily worse than the corresponding entries in Wikipedia.
At one point, information from the Nupedia article on the BASIC programming language got merged on Wikipedia with the local entry. Within weeks the Wikipedia article had become bigger, better and badder. For the same thing to have happened to the Nupedia article, the whole review process would have had to be started up again.
There are indeed problems with Wikipedia if you wish to see the thing as an impartial ressource. One that has been mentioned is that some subjects get less attention than others. Another that has been mentioned is that if an urban legend has ten believers and one debunker, the believers have a louder voice than the debunker. A further problem is that it is easy to write down what you believe to be true in the hope that some fact-checker will come along to prove you wrong; this leads to sloppy editing.
However, these problems need to be attacked one by one and on their own merits. Installing an authority, whose verdict can be trusted, invites much bigger problems; authorities' verdicts cannot be trusted. The reason we have authorities, is because we can trace and verify the process that lead to their verdicts. However, people tend to trust authorities no matter what, which leads to sloppy encyclopaedias.
Wikipedia is a third tier source. It condenses reports on observations. No third tier source, including all other encyclopaedias, should ever be trusted.
Choosing an operating system requires training?
If I had a haemorrhoid that big, I wouldn't keep walking about with it.
"Thank you for not reading the post."
To the contrary, it is you who is having trouble reading.
"Is there anywhere in my post where I said I was defining the word copyright?"
No. Is there anywhere in my original reply that said you were defining the word copyright?
I said you were defining the goal of copyright.
"The ultimate goal of copyright law"
=
"to allow people to create their works without having to worry about others republishing or taking claim of the creation"
Looks pretty much like a definition to me.
"The post is quite clear that I am trying to find layman's terms to express the goals and effects of laws."
Now I may not be a native speaker of English, and miss out on some of the subtleties of your language, but I am pretty sure that if you had wanted to express that you were trying to find terms instead of defining them, you would have used words like "may", "could", "perhaps", et cetera. See? It's even a trick I can use: "I am pretty sure". Meaning I am not entirely sure. Unlike: "the goal of X is Y".
Today's free ebook is The Wizard of Oz, by Frank L. Baum. That's two public domain books that the buyer could have gotten for free anyway.
Perhaps I should start a fitness center that offers free one-hour work-outs. Then when somebody takes me up my offer, I tell them to leave the building and go and run for an hour.
Also one of my favorites: bars that have a sign that says: "Tomorrow free beer".
Any business that treats their customers like that deserves exactly the kind of customers that will treat them similarly in return.
"Don't forget that trademarks, and patents are also part of what made your computer possible. Patronage most likely wouldn't have."
Speak for yourself. The two most important recent events in the development of my computers were that IBM and Xerox decided _not_ to enforce their cpt. That gave us the GUI and the PC architecture.
"History has shown that present copyright has been more an asset than a hinderance."
Is it something in the weather? This is at least the third broad, unsubstantiated claim about copyright I have seen in this thread. Please, show us some evidence. (And yes, I am aware that you are not capable of showing that evidence for lack of parallel worlds.)
History suggests that in the years between the invention of the Gutenberg press and the invention of the digital copy, some reasonable copyright has been benificial to the production of works.
BTW, granting monopolies are not the only government instrument for counteracting market failure. In chapter six of his book Promises to Keep (parts of it available online), William Fisher outlines three of these alternatives: government can supply works themselves (think public television), governments can pay private parties to supply works, and governments can issue prizes/awards for works.
Of course, authors have other incentives besides what the government can offer. From what I hear, magazines that publish short stories offer the same per-word price to authors as they did thirty years ago, even though inflation has made all other goods twice as expensive. It is pretty safe to conclude from that, that authors aren't merely writing for money.
There's nothing odd about public domain works to be sold. To the contrary, it is the nature of the public domain that anything can be used in any way you like.
That, however, has little to do with format conversion. AC, what development work does it take to dump the ASCII file from Gutenberg onto the Palm sevice? That is something I do on a regular basis, and all it takes is the minute I need to start and run Pyrite Publisher.
Perhaps you are talking about adding value to the text (prettifying, adding commentary, adding in links, et cetera), but a trained person can do that in a few hours.
Case in point: Distributed Proofreaders, main supplier of Project Gutenberg, now submits over 70% of its etexts both in ASCII and HTML format. Having the HTML file available cuts tremendously on making nice-looking PDFs or other formats, and allows us to retain much of the original lay-out of a work. This is all done by volunteers, many of whom had no experience with HTML whatsoever before they started working with us. The learning curve seems to steep, but after a few books most people seem to be comfortable producing great HTML editions. (And for every one of the few volunteers who just do not get the hang of it, there are several volunteers who are glad to do nothing but HTML editions.)
"The exclusive rights supported are"
Note: supported by copyright law, not by the constitution.
""However, during that time the writer is still borrowing the work from the public."
Neither clause supports this statement."
Truth be told, I did make an assumption; namely, that the constitution makes sense, and that it does not describe token rights that nobody has use of.
It only makes sense for the constitution to allow congress to grant an author exclusive rights to his work if the author did not already have those rights. From that, and the assumption that the US constitution is not a non-sensical document, I conclude that authors do not automatically have these rights.
What's more, if the constitution had not mentioned copyrights at all, congress would have been free to invent them and make them as bad as they could. This, to me, clearly means that the Founding Fathers meant copyrights and patents to be a very limited thing, something that should be applied with caution.
Do you make your own PDFs? The only Project Gutenberg PDFs I have seen so far are mathematical works.
.txts, just holler.)
(If you need help creating PDFs out of PG
If your print run is sufficiently large, the per book costs will be low. Ask printers for prices. Take pre-orders from customers. If you have enough orders for books, get them printed.
"But that's not going to sustain any market. For mass appeal there needs to be the latest novels from the biggest names."
I once read that the classics outsell the latest novels from the biggest names, except perhaps at the point where these latest novels have just been released.
Not that that contradicts what you are saying (although it would suggest that there is a market large enough for classics alone), I just thought it an interesting observation, assuming it is true. (Unfortunately, I can no longer find the article that discussed this.)
(And then there is The Long Tail.)
"Um... excuse me, but the constitution says no such thing. It doesn't even imply it."
Clause 1: The Congress shall have Power
Clause 8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
"I agree about the spatial sense part.
Thats why i dont understand those "we hate pdf, because thats only for printing" idiots."
Thank you, I love you too.
"I WANT to read at page 25, 2nd article. Not somewhere in the middle of an endless html file..."
That's funny, I want to read chapter IV, The Monster from the Lake. Or remember that handy list. Or start reading again at that famous quote.
The last thing I want is to read at some arbitrary point of which the origin lies in how the book would have looked if it had been printed!
Please, do yourself a favour and embrace the technology rather than fighting it.
Though I don't disagree with you, I think you overlook one thing; new technology often also has some advantages besides it disadvantages. Ebooks bring things to the table that paper books cannot. (For examples see rest of the comments.)
The displacement, I can tell from experience, only happens when you are not fully focused. On the tiny screen of my Palm Pilot, I am often a couple of 'pages' along when I realize I haven't really been reading for a while.
With a paper book it is often trivial to skip back to the point where I lost focus. Of course, this is just a matter of form factor. If Philips ever decides to license its e-ink technology to a reading device manufacturer who is not going to behave like a prick, just because it is living by the crack of the whip of its publishing department, we will not only have ebooks that adhere to all your demands, but that also have the right physical size.
Until then, current technology is batting three out of four for your list.
You are aware that LotR contains maps, timelines, commentaries and so forth?
"The ultimate goal of copyright law is to allow people to create their works without having to worry about others republishing or taking claim of the creation."
I have been reading a lot about copyright, but this definition is new to me. Pray tell, where does it say that this is the ultimate goal of copyright? Please make it good, because I have countless documents that say otherwise, among which the US constitution.
"The end result of strong copyright (and widespread respect for copyrights) is that publishers can present their works in simpler, universal formats."
That is a contradiction. If there were respect for copyright, law makers would not feel the need to make copyright stronger.
As it is, strong copyright allows publishers to do whatever they want, which in practice means a myriad of formats that no-one and nothing but the reading device of the publisher understands (or even is allowed to understand).
"In theory, the OSS, GNU, etc., are built on the tradition of copyright."
The first true thing you managed to say in four paragraphs. However, I doubt you meant it in the way it is correct.
Richard Stallman, founder of GNU, does not want copyright for software. Since he is not going to get his wish in the foreseeable future, he made a license that in his opinion counteracts the evil effects of copyright. In other words, he uses copyright law against itself, to cancel out copyright law.
"Companies are more willing to produce source for clients when they do not fear that their source will be stolen by a competitor."
It is not called theft, it is called infringement. Theft is when I take something away so that you can no longer use it. This is not the case with works. What is more, if I infringe your copyright, I can then give your work to others, so that they benefit too. This is called sharing. Sharing was once considered a good value.
"There's nothing in the constitution that takes away the writer's right to market his work."
There's nothing in the constitution that says the writer owns his work. To the contrary; the US constitution (I presume that's the constitution you are talking about) is based on the assumption that the people own the work.
The constitution then allows the US congress to make copyright laws, that allow a writer to exploit a work for a limited time. However, during that time the writer is still borrowing the work from the public.
Should you choose a Palm Pilot, I have set up a small web page on getting and reading free ebooks on your Palm.
Is this medical advice from a qualified physician, or are you just talking bull? AFAIK, our eyes are perfectly capable of reading ebooks.
"I don't see ebooks catching on unless there's a sensible way to read them. Reading from a screen just isn't conducive to enjoyment of a book."
Well, the great thing about ebooks, or rather one of the great things about ebooks, is that unlike paper books they are not bound to a physical medium.
If you want to read an ebook by touching it, you can. If you want to read an ebook by tasting it, you can (why is that Stephen King tastes like dead flies?). If you want to read an ebook by listening to it, you can.
I love etexts for every situation where I have to wait, even in the queue at the supermarket. Although most of the time, I read Wired or the paper on my Palm when waiting.
"Yes, it appears everyime, because its correct."
Ah well, I guess I should quit reading ebooks then.