Well, time for somebody who has actually done some serious research on this to show up. First of all, my background - I wrote a book titled "The EverQuest Companion" for Osborne/McGraw-Hill (NOT a strategy guide), and one of the chapters was on game addiction and its issues. The research for this chapter was around 450 pages, including several psychology papers, and interviews with people like David Greenfield and Nicholas Yee, who had done the most statistical work on the subject.
First of all, there IS such a thing as computer game addiction. It does exist, and it is not a case of poor parenting. It is also not something simple, there is no single cause of computer game addiction, and I recall the research showing that about 10% of players on online MMORPGs are addicts (based on Nicholas Yee's research, although I may have the number wrong - it's been about three years since I did this research).
The addiction is a cycle, and this is how it works. If you want to try to simplify it, it's a coping mechanism gone horribly wrong, but even there it is complicated.
First of all, there is a trigger of some sort. This can be something big (like a major family crisis), or it can be something small (like an overdue school assignment) - it depends on the person, and what puts them under pressure. Rather than deal with the problem, the addict runs away into the game for a few hours.
At this point, when the addict comes back out, the issue that drove him/her in is still there, and probably worse, so they go back into the game. And this is the basic cycle. Everybody's trigger is different, but the actual manifestation becomes devastating. The more the addict plays the game, the more s/he leaves his/her life on hold - the game becomes the way that the addict deals with life, to the exclusion of everything else, including family, friends, school, and work. And, because the life is neglected, it gets emptier and emptier, causing the addict to go farther and farther into the game, since the game is now the sole coping mechanism the addict has.
It's a psychological addiction, and it can have tragic consequences. It's also, unfortunately, not something generally researched and studied - when I wrote my chapter, you could count the number of people in North America who actually worked in earnest on this on two hands - and Shawn Woolley (the person who famously committed suicide while playing EverQuest) had been turned away from clinic after clinic as his family tried to get him help over the course of over a year (that's one of those things you don't find out from the news stories - I had to interview Liz Woolley to get that tidbit).
It is a question of balance, though. Simply running into a game for a bit to get away from the world doesn't an addiction trigger make - after all, we all do it sometimes. Having a game make you lose track of time because it has you gripped does not mean it's addictive. It's when the game starts to unbalance and eat your life and you come to rely on it just to cope that you've got a problem. And once you've got that problem, it can't be solved just by good parenting - it's an addiction, a real addiction. Just because it's psychological doesn't mean that it is any less severe than an addiction to heroin.
Quite frankly, I'm very glad that somebody out there is finally taking this seriously enough to open a proper clinic for it. There are tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people who well and truly need the help.
I understand what you're saying, but you seem to have some facts wrong. I've been using or helping troubleshoot people using MS Windows from 3.1 to Windows ME, and I personally have used Windows NT 3.51, 4.0, and XP, along with Windows 3.0, 3.1, 3.11, 95, and ME, and my recollections are very different from yours.
I don't remember MS Word ever being bundled with the OS - it was always a separate program (and an expensive one) used to compete with WordPerfect. There was a small word processor called Wordpad that showed up in every version of Windows I've ever seen or used - it was under the accessories.
As for taking IE out of the OS, the reason it was incorporated into the OS in the first place was to give it an edge against Netscape, and the big stink in the court case was that Microsoft claimed that IE was an essential part of Windows, and therefore couldn't be removed without crippling the operating system, and therefore the user couldn't be allowed to have a version of Windows that didn't have IE installed (again, more important because of competing against Netscape at the time than anything else). Now, a huge number of the security holes in Windows exist because IE is incorporated into the operating system, and it now has to be removed for safety more than anything else.
As far as not being able to open up documents from Windows 95, Microsoft has a tendency of changing the Word document file with each new version of office, so older documents aren't necessarily compatible with newer versions of Office - a key reason why there's such a focus on open standards for documents right now.
Microsoft may not force you to install their products, but they do abuse their monopoly. They just do it more or less invisibly. They force vendors to put Windows on every new computer (or have the price for the OS jacked up on them), they modify the way IE views code so that pages will render differently on IE than they will on other browsers, they keep changing the nature of MS Word files so that you have to upgrade to a new version of Office - the abuse is there. And, my own feeling is that with the DRM material in Vista, Vista will have some other stuff we haven't been told about that is very frightening.
(Let's just say I'm waiting with bated breath for the next version of Xandros so I can finish my migration to Linux at last.)
Quite frankly, when I look at the Microsoft monopoly, I see a monopoly that's actually in very poor health. It isn't going to fall over soon, but it isn't going to last too many more years either.
As far as I can see, Microsoft has two core products:
1. Windows - it's a good product to have as a cornerstone, because everybody will need to keep it updated to be current. However, it's a product that is under siege. Every malware writer out there has it in their sights. And, they've fallen very badly behind with Vista, while Linux and Mac OS X have been proving themselves more current and stable. But, even more to the point, when was the last time you saw a big line-up for a Windows release a la Windows 95? People aren't using the product because they want to, they're using it because they need to, and that means that once they think there's a viable alternative, they'll switch. And, as you pointed out, Microsoft knows that.
2. Office - here the problem is just as you said - Office 97 was good enough for a lot of people. It's a solid product, and not one that really needs to be updated, and so the business for each new version runs the risk of getting smaller and smaller.
It's hardly a surprise that Microsoft is trying to diversify a la IBM - quite frankly, it's probably their best chance for survival, and I think they know it...
The earliest copyright-type of protection I know of is the Stationer's Log, which was used in England in Shakespeare's day, and it existed to protect publishers against other publishers. A publisher would buy a manuscript from a writer, and then register it in the Log, so that another publisher couldn't then publish their own version of it. The author had pretty much no rights whatsoever, but there was protections for the author in other ways. This was a time where most authors, poets, etc. were supported by wealthy patrons.
Around the time of the American Revolution there seems to be a change in the way copyright-style protections are being considered - the focus moves to the artist or creator, rather than the publisher. If you look at the American Constitution, there's a section that has the original version of this in the United States (I'm not sure how it manifests itself in Britain and Europe), and it's a limited span. This is very progressive for its day, as there's still patronage going on. The important thing in my mind is the recognition of the creator's rights to their work, something taken for granted in other industries.
Now, as time goes on and patronage disappears, the copyright span becomes longer, and this is logical, if you think about it. Without patronage, all that is left to support the artist is the artist's work. Controversy over copyright span after death aside, if you look at the Berne Convention just as a document outlining creator's rights, it really is quite logical and adaptive, and suitable to the here and now.
(Please note, I'm not talking about the DMCA here. The Berne Convention is quite old and fine-tuned, and it shows. It's a very elegant and logical document. The DMCA is brand new, trying to deal with new technologies that the legislators are still coming to grips with, and it shows too. Given time, I think it may develop into a very good piece of legislation that fits the technology, but it's not there yet by a long way.)
In my mind, the big problem right now isn't the creator's rights, but how they have been co-opted. It's not so big an issue in print publication, but look at who actually owns the rights to music and film. The film studios and record labels have basically co-opted the creator's rights by getting the artists to sign their rights away, and then exploiting those rights, cutting out the creators in the process. In many ways, it's a situation where what should be a just and fair system has been co-opted and abused beyond belief.
I'm not surprised EverQuest is there at all. In all honesty, it deserves it in spades. The thing is, we're now talking in the light of games like WoW, which is a new generation of MMORPG. You have to look at the game from a historical perspective now to see its impact.
So, why EQ deserves its place...
1. While Diablo was the proof that lots of people will play games on the Internet, and Ultima Online proved that an MMORPG format can work on the 'net, it's EverQuest that nailed it all down and made the biggest splash in North America. And, just about every MMORPG since has been influenced by design decisions in EQ one way or another (including "we're avoiding doing this"), while the same cannot really be said about Ultima Online, as far as I know.
(For the record, the first non-MUD MMORPG was Islands of Kesmai, launched in 1985 on CompuServe.)
2. EverQuest has had a huge cultural impact, particularly in the area of addiction studies. While there was work being done on video game addiction, nothing brought it to the fore quite like EverQuest did. Also, as far as I know, the first serious online game addiction survey was done on EverQuest players.
3. EverQuest became a cultural phenomenon. There have been EQ comic books, tabletop RPGs, and even conventions. Words like "w00t" became popularized by the game (the word existed before, but EQ turned it into a household word on the 'net). When a game is able to have a linguistic impact on a culture, it is worthy of note.
Now, in the here and now, the original EverQuest isn't as relevant as it was back in 1998 or 2002. But, it was a giant, and there are many games, World of Warcraft included, that are today standing on its shoulders.
There are people who honestly have a neurological imbalance that causes them to have difficulty completing tasks, and in these cases drugs like Ritalin are a godsend, allowing them to normalize their routines. I know one or two people who have that, and without their medicine, they can make a ferret look like the paragon of focus and concentration.
On the other hand, ADD and ADHD make for a wonderful scapegoat for when children are acting up. Bright children being bored out of their skull in class? Must be ADD. I know from personal experience on this one - when I was a kid I was misdiagnosed with it, and I thank God that I had parents who knew enough to ask for a second opinion. It turned out that I was bored in class and reacting to food additives. Once I got into a gifted program in school and I stopped eating food I was reacting to, I settled right down.
It really does drive me nuts. Back in the 1980s when I was misdiagnosed, the misdiagnosis happened because ADD was "fashionable." Now it's an excuse. Pump kids full of sugar and chemicals and of course they're going to be hyperactive. Make them sit still in a classroom doing boring things and of course they're going to get restless. I just wish more medical professionals would rule out the obvious causes first before doping the kids up for having AD(H)D that they might not actually have.
"The unions in Hollywood are notorious for continuing their blacklist and favoritism controls -- keeping costs high and quality low. In order to distribute a movie in the States, you have to be part of the union's preferred cartels. If you attempt to make a movie outside of their control, you'll generally not see wide distribution. Copyright at its finest, here."
Um...
Sorry, but this paragraph has absolutely nothing to do with copyright. When a copyright holder asks a distributer to distribute a film, and the distributer says "no," it's not copyright law being evil and standing in the creator's way. In fact, the copyright holder is the one being turned down.
Does this show unfair control over distribution channels that favour certain kinds of movies? Yes. Does this show copyright flaws? No.
This is a pretty good article. I'm a bit surprised that they didn't cover Dr. David Greenfield's research, though - he's dealing with online addiction with a sampling of around 15,000. Also, Nicholas Yu (I think I got that name right) dealt with MMORPG addiction with a sampling around 4,000. Both of their research would be helpful, and probably easily found using Google (I'm just back from class and a long walk home, so I'm not looking anything up right now). I found the work of both of these people invaluable when I was writing the addiction chapter in my EverQuest book.
Regardless, the official document gives us sixty days to write in with an objection about it. So, if we are paying it now, perhaps we can get it scrapped if enough of us write in to complain about its flaws.
Looking closely at the material, this is still in the proposal stage, and there is time to object to it (I just sent in my objection). The actual proposal and the contact information for writing in to object can be found here: http://www.cb-cda.gc.ca/tariffs/proposed/c25022006 -b.pdf
Speaking as somebody who has dealt with proposals in the public sector before, when you object, make certain that you make a reasoned argument. Point out the flaws in the assumptions behind the levy (such as the fact that not everybody is going to use the media they're taxing for copying music, etc.), and how it makes the levy unfair. Whatever you do, don't make statements about good and evil, or corruption - it's a surefire way to get ignored. Just point out the flaws in the proposal, give concrete examples if you can when you do, and give your name, city, and province/territory.
Okay, first of all, we were dependent on SOE for interview access to the developers and permission to publish the screenshots. Without it, it would have been a much thinner book.
Second, you speak a bit too easily about my endorsement of the man. If you look at my posts on Slashdot alone, or my Garwulf's Corner column on Diabloii.net, you'll find that I'm not exactly easy on people who I think are full of bullshit. But I sat in the man's office, asked him difficult questions while looking into his eyes, and got direct and honest answers, even about some of SOEs most ridiculous blunders. He treated me on the level. He could easily have given us a PR spin, and he didn't. And so, yes, he won my respect.
Now, unless you've actually met the man on a one-on-one basis, I somehow doubt you're able to get anything even close to the read on him that I have. And, before you question the credentials that book gives me, I suggest you read it (assuming you haven't).
When I wrote my book about EverQuest (which, despite its title, is NOT a strategy guide), one of the things I had to do was interview John Smedley.
It was an absolutely critical interview, partly because we needed Sony's support behind the book to get the material we needed, and if Smedley didn't like it, the book was sunk. To make matters more interesting, this was not a book that was going to be a PR release for Sony - my editor and I were walking in with a book that was going to deal with both the good and the bad of EverQuest. And I was going to be asking him for comments on the record on things like eBay sales of characters, intellectual property, privacy issues, and online addiction. Let's just say that both my editor and I were pretty nervous.
Walking into the interview, we were there on sufferance. SOE could have pulled our support at any time, and we knew it. When we explained what we were going to do to Smedley, and asked him some of those hard questions, THEN we got SOE's full support. The company literally bent over backwards to make sure we got everything we needed. And, from talking to him, I honestly don't think we would have gotten the support we needed if we had been doing a spin job making SOE look like the second coming.
So, I have a lot of respect for the man. He could have been a petty spin doctor, but he wasn't. He was absolutely straight-up with me. So, perhaps he does have to do some PR work in these interviews, but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Unless a lot has changed between now and then, he's still an honest man.
It's a thought provoking question, that's for certain. It seems to me (having taken a high school law course way back when), that any such class would have to take a partially historical perspective on it, and also keep to the letter of the law (rather than a vague "filesharing is bad" type of deal).
I mean, there are some things that keep cropping up again and again just on Slashdot that make my head spin, and if I had to teach a class I'd make certain I covered the following:
1. The history of copyright law on an international level. I'm not talking about starting with the U.S. Constitution, because that's not where it starts. I'm talking about starting with stuff like the Stationer's Log in Shakespeare's day, and how the idea of intellectual rights and their purposes developed (and there was an ongoing development - intellectual rights in the 17th century existed to protect publishers from being undercut by other publishers, sort of as a "being fair to the other guy" sort of thing, and there was NO protection for the actual authors at all).
2. The difference between American intellectual property law and international intellectual property law. Again, there are some big differences. The Berne Convention, which represents the international standard, is NOT the DMCA. And this is very important when dealing with the Internet, as it is a medium that crosses international borders (and, as an example, as a Canadian writer on a day-to-day level I honestly don't care too much about the US Constitution or US copyright law, but I am very keen on the Berne Convention).
3. The difference between copyright (including fair use), trademark, and the patent office. If you create something that you want to protect, where do you take it? And if you're a programmer who wants to do a check to make sure something isn't already covered in IP, where do you look?
4. Where the Internet fits in. What's the legal difference between uploading and downloading, and when is it legal to do either? Where do you go to check if you're not sure? If you do break the law, what are the consequences, and what are the legal considerations?
5. The difference between proper use of copyright law (such as an author protecting the world s/he created in their fantasy novel, or selling first publication rights, or putting some code under the GPL), and abuse of copyright law (such as the RIAA using the law to extort money from random people by threatening lawsuits).
6. How to protect yourself under copyright law, and how the technology fits into it. How do you protect that code you just wrote from being stolen (or, for example, the code you write in your spare time at home from being claimed by the corporation you work for as their own)? How do you protect yourself from something like a lawsuit by the RIAA? How do you keep others from using you to break the law (and, for that matter, I've often wondered just how many people got an RIAA lawsuit tossed at them when their only crime was not password protecting their wireless LAN connections)?
Thank you for commenting - it always is good to get input from somebody "on the ground floor" as it were. However, you are very mistaken about my sources. My information about Eastern spirituality came from "The Masks of God" by Joseph Campbell, and I made the link from spirituality to suicide based on a documentary about the Kamikaze pilots of World War II, and the rituals they used to prepare themselves for death, and what they believed would happen after they died.
However, my own first-hand experience with Japanese culture came at the hands of a Japanese exchange student and fellow writer who is still a very good friend of mine, and it amazed me just how gentle and courteous the man was - and how much honour and saving face meant to him. To a degree, we Westerners wear our emotions on our sleeves compared to the Japanese, and it would be very dangerous to say that we know what is under the surface (after all, remember the surprising brutality that appeared in World War II and the Japanese Empire, which would seem entirely out of character for such a polite and courteous society).
There's also a large number of suicides that are attempts at auto-erotic asphyxia gone wrong, from what I've heard - they get classified as a suicide because "suicide" is a lot less embarassing than the truth.
(And if you don't know what auto-erotic asphyxia is, you probably don't want to. Trust me on that. Really.)
Certainly I think you raise a very good point, but there is a fundamental difference between east and west that nobody so far has touched upon, and it is important. We have a large stigma against suicide - in Japan that doesn't really exist, from what I understand. And there is a reason for that difference.
Put simply, Western spirituality is about how human beings relate to a divine being (God, Allah, etc.), but there is an assumption that human beings are not themselves divine. Eastern spirituality is about understanding how human beings are divine - they have part of the divine in them. So, ending your life in Western spirituality is a source of judgement and damnation at the hands of the divine, whereas ending your life in Eastern spirituality is in part setting the divine part of you free - hence, no ill spiritual aftereffects, and no stigma.
Okay - I can see where this is helpful if you're 35 years old and dying of incurable cancer. You just get frozen until they can cure it. No problem.
But, um, what happens if you die at the age of 95 of old age? In all seriousness, what is the point of being frozen if that happens? If it works and you're revived, doesn't this just mean that now you get to live in the nursing home of the future for another couple of years before you die again?
I am getting very tired of this. As much as I'd like to strangle the RIAA for what is amounting to racketeering, I wish somebody would put this misconception to rest in giant letters written on the moon:
Copyright is NOT a monopoly.
Let's make this clear - you cannot copyright an idea, only the implementation of that idea. You cannot use copyright to prevent others from taking the idea and implementing it in their own way. But, you can use it to protect yourself from somebody stealing your IMPLEMENTATION of that idea.
If it was a monopoly, you would be able to say that nobody can use your idea period, and prevent people from doing it. That's what the patent office covers. Please note, there IS a difference.
Seriously, get the concept right. Protecting your intellectual property does not make you a monopolist. What the RIAA is doing, on the other hand, is an abuse of that intellectual property, and is stretching copyright far beyond the spirit or letter of the law. To use the RIAA's actions to say that copyright is a monopoly, however, is like using Microsoft to say that trying to sell software in any way is monopolistic.
I hate to point this out, but there are no such things as "natural rights." There are certainly rights that are morally positive to maintain and fight for, but none of them are "natural."
Quite frankly, the only rights you have are the ones you earn by fighting for them - a lot of people have died to preserve these rights for those of us in democratic countries, but that's the way it has to be. If history teaches us one thing, it is that rights are very easily taken away from those who don't stand up and fight for them.
Just wanted to make certain that the distinction was drawn.
I'm afraid your information is a bit off here about the Scopes Monkey Trial. It may indeed have galvanized science, but it was also quite possibly one of the biggest scams to ever hit the American court system.
Basically, the law that caused it all came down, and just about everybody thought the thing was idiotic - the science teachers, the locals of Dayton, and for that matter, the court in question. The problem was that any previous attempts to challenge the law had been quashed at the legislative level, and the only way to actually get rid of the thing was to have it declared unconstitutional, and that meant a court challenge.
So, some of the people in the town of Dayton decided that they would challenge the law, but for that they needed somebody to be charged for breaking it. Now, in order for the law to actually get struck down as unconstitutional, it had to happen in the court of appeal, since the district court didn't have the authority to do so. Therefore, the defense actually WANTED a guilty verdict, as that way it could get up to an appeal, and the law could get quashed. Even the judge knew this was a test case, and the publicity was key.
At the same time, the town was in dire need of publicity, so they welcomed it. Dayton became a tourist town, for all intents and purposes. There wasn't any of the bigotry and violence suggested in "Inherit the Wind" - it was more like going to a carnival, and even Scopes was late for a trial session at one point because he had been swimming with friends.
Ironically, while it did go to the court of appeal, the idea failed - the charge was quashed, but on a technicality rather than constitutional grounds.
It took me a bit of time after reading this article to figure out how to put this, but I think I know now what I'm going to say. I don't buy the idea that DVDs or discs of some sort will be replaced by hard disk space, regardless of what happened to music and iPods.
Back when my ebook was published, there was a lot of talk about how ebooks were going to supplant the print book. It hasn't happened, and there's a few reasons for that. A book that is bound with a spine is called a codex, and there really isn't a way to improve on it as a format. A codex doesn't require electricity, it is portable, and you can do just about anything you want with the book itself. It is completely self contained - the only equipment it is truly linked to in order to function are the eyes of the reader (and something with which to turn pages). An ebook, on the other hand, has copy protection issues to deal with, requires electricity of some sort to use, and if the electronic reader breaks down, the ebook becomes inaccessible, or possibly even lost. Is it any surprise that the numbers that constitute a bestseller for an ebook are a fraction of the what is required for a print book?
Now, take a DVD. So far, I think it's become about as close to what the codex is for books as is possible for movies (although it could be a bit smaller and contain more information). It has no moving parts, it's portable, and while it requires a player to watch the movie, the player breaking down will not damage the movie, or prevent me from taking it to another player.
If it becomes just a download onto a hard drive, a lot of these merits are lost. The movie is attached to the player, if the player goes down the movie can be lost, and there are a bunch of new digital rights issues to deal with (and let's face it, we're not doing that well with figuring out how to deal with digital rights right now). Also, once the movies are being stored on a hard drive, it becomes difficult to deal with them individually - let's say I want to loan one to a friend, or to take one with me when I travel out of town. In order to do that, I'd have to loan or take the entire hard disk.
No, I don't buy the idea of a format like the DVD being supplanted. It has always seemed to me that the most lasting technologies are those that offer the most utility in the simplest way. And, when it comes down to it, DVDs are pretty simple. They can certainly still be improved, but I honestly can't see a portable medium like the DVD being replaced by a medium like the hard disk.
First of all, I'm not against the idea of what Google is trying to do. Frankly, I think it's a very good idea. I'm against the fact that they didn't bother to ask permission before scanning. It's the method I object to, not the end result. Please keep that in mind.
Second, it is called the Berne Convention For The Protection Of Literary And Artistic Works, and I have read the pertinent parts of it. And no, what Google is doing is NOT legal under Article 10, which covers fair use. The specific violation is in subsection 1: (1) It shall be permissible to make quotations from a work which has already been lawfully made available to the public, provided that their making is compatible with fair practice, and their extent does not exceed that justified by the purpose, including quotations from newspaper articles and periodicals in the form of press summaries. Scanning in an ENTIRE book is not compatible with fair practice. An argument can be made in regards to how that work is presented, but since the entire book is basically made available even that is a tenuous argument.
(Important point, though - I am a writer, not a lawyer. Better minds than mine are already working on this issue in this case.)
Third, this is not a typical FUD attack. Google is honestly in the wrong in regards to its methodology.
Fourth, you have the history of the Berne Convention wrong. The text most often used is the Paris 1971 text, but the original convention was ratified in Paris on September 9, 1886, and most recently revised in Stockholm in 1967, and amended in 1979. The United States became a signatory on March 1, 1989, and the original copyright legislation in the United States was, as is frequently pointed out on this forum in the original draft of the U.S. Constitution. My country, Canada, became a signatory in 1928.
I heartily recommend that you read Battle Cry for Freedom, by James McPherson. The first few chapters deal very specifically with how Jeffersonian democracy became obsolete. Yes, banking and credit was involved. But so was slavery, industrialization and its issues, the urbanization of the population, and issues over state rights. It very much comes down to Jeffersonian democracy becoming obsolete in the 19th century.
(And by the way, you might really want to make sure there's actually an article on the website you reference when you post it here.)
What a spiteful comment. And where to begin? Well, I'll deal with your points numerically.
1. In what country are you referring? In England it starts with the Register's Log, which provided some protection to publishers in Shakespeare's day. In the United States, it starts with the copyright clause of the Constitution. Up here in Canada, we are based on British tradition and use the Berne Convention.
Aside from which: "Not to mention originally, the opt-in system required reference copies to preserve works for posterity, whereas now works are destroyed forever on a daily basis." What in the hell are you talking about here? As far as I know, every work published in the United States has to be registered with the Library of Congress, and a copy provided. Project Gutenburg is bending over backwards to get old books published online, and publishers like Penguin and Everyman make their bread and butter on classic books. Far from works being destroyed, we have more access to literature in the here and now than has ever been possible before.
2. "Have you ever heard of the fair-use doctrine?" Considering I raised that exact issue at the end of my post, I imagine I am. However, fair use does not extend to the scanning and reproduction of entire books online, and a book is not an image.
"Morally speaking I don't see any problem with kicking members of these big publishing houses in the shins or torching their cars. They are a blight upon society and are erasing our literary heritage for profit. Great works are erased from public consciousness, locked away in warehouses to crumble away all for the sake of a very small amount of money. The behavior of these publishing houses is so sickening that I don't think they have any moral grounds for complaint about anything anyone does with regard to their copyrights."
You know, this reminds me of the rhetoric in Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler. You've taken half-truths and spun them out of control and used them to justify the injustifiable. Great works are NOT erased from the public consciousness by publishers - in fact, they tend to be published and republished again and again. A good chunk of Penguin Putnam's line is great literature. Locked away in warehouses? The only time that happens is when bookstores don't bother ordering the books. This may come as a shock, but publishers make their money by selling books, not printing them and locking them away. If bookstores don't order the books and put them on their shelves, that isn't the publisher's fault.
3. "You are ignorant and naive. First the right's holders for most copyrighted works cannot be found, so there is no way to ask them and the cost of tracking down the right's holder for every single work would cost more money than anyone, and I do me an anyone has. Second, while most authors are happy to have Google index their works, most copyrights holders for books are large publishers whose business model (market and distribution lock-in contracts) are threatened by Google's work. Hell they specifically are trying to force Google to an opt-in scheme so their works don't have to compete on equal footing with the large percentage of works that are not in print (but still copyrighted) and are otherwise unavailable to most people. Basically, they want most copyrighted works to be unavailable to most people and that is ethically unconscionable and diametrically opposed to the intention of copyright law and the good of the people."
Well, no, I'm not ignorant or naive. You, however, are appearing ignorant and vicious. Number one, if you want to contact the original copyright holder of a book for permission, you write a letter to the publisher, and the publisher takes care of the rest. Contacting the copyright holder costs nothing more than postage. Number two, there is a pretty even spred of copyrights held by individuals and by organizations. Third, publishers want to prevent other people from publishing copyrighted works when they hold the publication rights -
Slashdot Mirror
I honestly don't remember - the research was done between 2002-2003, and I've since moved on to other projects.
(I could tell you a great deal about ancient Greek and Roman humour, though...)
Well, time for somebody who has actually done some serious research on this to show up. First of all, my background - I wrote a book titled "The EverQuest Companion" for Osborne/McGraw-Hill (NOT a strategy guide), and one of the chapters was on game addiction and its issues. The research for this chapter was around 450 pages, including several psychology papers, and interviews with people like David Greenfield and Nicholas Yee, who had done the most statistical work on the subject.
First of all, there IS such a thing as computer game addiction. It does exist, and it is not a case of poor parenting. It is also not something simple, there is no single cause of computer game addiction, and I recall the research showing that about 10% of players on online MMORPGs are addicts (based on Nicholas Yee's research, although I may have the number wrong - it's been about three years since I did this research).
The addiction is a cycle, and this is how it works. If you want to try to simplify it, it's a coping mechanism gone horribly wrong, but even there it is complicated.
First of all, there is a trigger of some sort. This can be something big (like a major family crisis), or it can be something small (like an overdue school assignment) - it depends on the person, and what puts them under pressure. Rather than deal with the problem, the addict runs away into the game for a few hours.
At this point, when the addict comes back out, the issue that drove him/her in is still there, and probably worse, so they go back into the game. And this is the basic cycle. Everybody's trigger is different, but the actual manifestation becomes devastating. The more the addict plays the game, the more s/he leaves his/her life on hold - the game becomes the way that the addict deals with life, to the exclusion of everything else, including family, friends, school, and work. And, because the life is neglected, it gets emptier and emptier, causing the addict to go farther and farther into the game, since the game is now the sole coping mechanism the addict has.
It's a psychological addiction, and it can have tragic consequences. It's also, unfortunately, not something generally researched and studied - when I wrote my chapter, you could count the number of people in North America who actually worked in earnest on this on two hands - and Shawn Woolley (the person who famously committed suicide while playing EverQuest) had been turned away from clinic after clinic as his family tried to get him help over the course of over a year (that's one of those things you don't find out from the news stories - I had to interview Liz Woolley to get that tidbit).
It is a question of balance, though. Simply running into a game for a bit to get away from the world doesn't an addiction trigger make - after all, we all do it sometimes. Having a game make you lose track of time because it has you gripped does not mean it's addictive. It's when the game starts to unbalance and eat your life and you come to rely on it just to cope that you've got a problem. And once you've got that problem, it can't be solved just by good parenting - it's an addiction, a real addiction. Just because it's psychological doesn't mean that it is any less severe than an addiction to heroin.
Quite frankly, I'm very glad that somebody out there is finally taking this seriously enough to open a proper clinic for it. There are tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people who well and truly need the help.
I understand what you're saying, but you seem to have some facts wrong. I've been using or helping troubleshoot people using MS Windows from 3.1 to Windows ME, and I personally have used Windows NT 3.51, 4.0, and XP, along with Windows 3.0, 3.1, 3.11, 95, and ME, and my recollections are very different from yours.
I don't remember MS Word ever being bundled with the OS - it was always a separate program (and an expensive one) used to compete with WordPerfect. There was a small word processor called Wordpad that showed up in every version of Windows I've ever seen or used - it was under the accessories.
As for taking IE out of the OS, the reason it was incorporated into the OS in the first place was to give it an edge against Netscape, and the big stink in the court case was that Microsoft claimed that IE was an essential part of Windows, and therefore couldn't be removed without crippling the operating system, and therefore the user couldn't be allowed to have a version of Windows that didn't have IE installed (again, more important because of competing against Netscape at the time than anything else). Now, a huge number of the security holes in Windows exist because IE is incorporated into the operating system, and it now has to be removed for safety more than anything else.
As far as not being able to open up documents from Windows 95, Microsoft has a tendency of changing the Word document file with each new version of office, so older documents aren't necessarily compatible with newer versions of Office - a key reason why there's such a focus on open standards for documents right now.
Microsoft may not force you to install their products, but they do abuse their monopoly. They just do it more or less invisibly. They force vendors to put Windows on every new computer (or have the price for the OS jacked up on them), they modify the way IE views code so that pages will render differently on IE than they will on other browsers, they keep changing the nature of MS Word files so that you have to upgrade to a new version of Office - the abuse is there. And, my own feeling is that with the DRM material in Vista, Vista will have some other stuff we haven't been told about that is very frightening.
(Let's just say I'm waiting with bated breath for the next version of Xandros so I can finish my migration to Linux at last.)
I think this puts it almost perfectly.
Quite frankly, when I look at the Microsoft monopoly, I see a monopoly that's actually in very poor health. It isn't going to fall over soon, but it isn't going to last too many more years either.
As far as I can see, Microsoft has two core products:
1. Windows - it's a good product to have as a cornerstone, because everybody will need to keep it updated to be current. However, it's a product that is under siege. Every malware writer out there has it in their sights. And, they've fallen very badly behind with Vista, while Linux and Mac OS X have been proving themselves more current and stable. But, even more to the point, when was the last time you saw a big line-up for a Windows release a la Windows 95? People aren't using the product because they want to, they're using it because they need to, and that means that once they think there's a viable alternative, they'll switch. And, as you pointed out, Microsoft knows that.
2. Office - here the problem is just as you said - Office 97 was good enough for a lot of people. It's a solid product, and not one that really needs to be updated, and so the business for each new version runs the risk of getting smaller and smaller.
It's hardly a surprise that Microsoft is trying to diversify a la IBM - quite frankly, it's probably their best chance for survival, and I think they know it...
Um, not quite, but close.
The earliest copyright-type of protection I know of is the Stationer's Log, which was used in England in Shakespeare's day, and it existed to protect publishers against other publishers. A publisher would buy a manuscript from a writer, and then register it in the Log, so that another publisher couldn't then publish their own version of it. The author had pretty much no rights whatsoever, but there was protections for the author in other ways. This was a time where most authors, poets, etc. were supported by wealthy patrons.
Around the time of the American Revolution there seems to be a change in the way copyright-style protections are being considered - the focus moves to the artist or creator, rather than the publisher. If you look at the American Constitution, there's a section that has the original version of this in the United States (I'm not sure how it manifests itself in Britain and Europe), and it's a limited span. This is very progressive for its day, as there's still patronage going on. The important thing in my mind is the recognition of the creator's rights to their work, something taken for granted in other industries.
Now, as time goes on and patronage disappears, the copyright span becomes longer, and this is logical, if you think about it. Without patronage, all that is left to support the artist is the artist's work. Controversy over copyright span after death aside, if you look at the Berne Convention just as a document outlining creator's rights, it really is quite logical and adaptive, and suitable to the here and now.
(Please note, I'm not talking about the DMCA here. The Berne Convention is quite old and fine-tuned, and it shows. It's a very elegant and logical document. The DMCA is brand new, trying to deal with new technologies that the legislators are still coming to grips with, and it shows too. Given time, I think it may develop into a very good piece of legislation that fits the technology, but it's not there yet by a long way.)
In my mind, the big problem right now isn't the creator's rights, but how they have been co-opted. It's not so big an issue in print publication, but look at who actually owns the rights to music and film. The film studios and record labels have basically co-opted the creator's rights by getting the artists to sign their rights away, and then exploiting those rights, cutting out the creators in the process. In many ways, it's a situation where what should be a just and fair system has been co-opted and abused beyond belief.
I'm not surprised EverQuest is there at all. In all honesty, it deserves it in spades. The thing is, we're now talking in the light of games like WoW, which is a new generation of MMORPG. You have to look at the game from a historical perspective now to see its impact.
So, why EQ deserves its place...
1. While Diablo was the proof that lots of people will play games on the Internet, and Ultima Online proved that an MMORPG format can work on the 'net, it's EverQuest that nailed it all down and made the biggest splash in North America. And, just about every MMORPG since has been influenced by design decisions in EQ one way or another (including "we're avoiding doing this"), while the same cannot really be said about Ultima Online, as far as I know.
(For the record, the first non-MUD MMORPG was Islands of Kesmai, launched in 1985 on CompuServe.)
2. EverQuest has had a huge cultural impact, particularly in the area of addiction studies. While there was work being done on video game addiction, nothing brought it to the fore quite like EverQuest did. Also, as far as I know, the first serious online game addiction survey was done on EverQuest players.
3. EverQuest became a cultural phenomenon. There have been EQ comic books, tabletop RPGs, and even conventions. Words like "w00t" became popularized by the game (the word existed before, but EQ turned it into a household word on the 'net). When a game is able to have a linguistic impact on a culture, it is worthy of note.
Now, in the here and now, the original EverQuest isn't as relevant as it was back in 1998 or 2002. But, it was a giant, and there are many games, World of Warcraft included, that are today standing on its shoulders.
It's definitely both.
There are people who honestly have a neurological imbalance that causes them to have difficulty completing tasks, and in these cases drugs like Ritalin are a godsend, allowing them to normalize their routines. I know one or two people who have that, and without their medicine, they can make a ferret look like the paragon of focus and concentration.
On the other hand, ADD and ADHD make for a wonderful scapegoat for when children are acting up. Bright children being bored out of their skull in class? Must be ADD. I know from personal experience on this one - when I was a kid I was misdiagnosed with it, and I thank God that I had parents who knew enough to ask for a second opinion. It turned out that I was bored in class and reacting to food additives. Once I got into a gifted program in school and I stopped eating food I was reacting to, I settled right down.
It really does drive me nuts. Back in the 1980s when I was misdiagnosed, the misdiagnosis happened because ADD was "fashionable." Now it's an excuse. Pump kids full of sugar and chemicals and of course they're going to be hyperactive. Make them sit still in a classroom doing boring things and of course they're going to get restless. I just wish more medical professionals would rule out the obvious causes first before doping the kids up for having AD(H)D that they might not actually have.
"The unions in Hollywood are notorious for continuing their blacklist and favoritism controls -- keeping costs high and quality low. In order to distribute a movie in the States, you have to be part of the union's preferred cartels. If you attempt to make a movie outside of their control, you'll generally not see wide distribution. Copyright at its finest, here."
Um...
Sorry, but this paragraph has absolutely nothing to do with copyright. When a copyright holder asks a distributer to distribute a film, and the distributer says "no," it's not copyright law being evil and standing in the creator's way. In fact, the copyright holder is the one being turned down.
Does this show unfair control over distribution channels that favour certain kinds of movies? Yes. Does this show copyright flaws? No.
This is a pretty good article. I'm a bit surprised that they didn't cover Dr. David Greenfield's research, though - he's dealing with online addiction with a sampling of around 15,000. Also, Nicholas Yu (I think I got that name right) dealt with MMORPG addiction with a sampling around 4,000. Both of their research would be helpful, and probably easily found using Google (I'm just back from class and a long walk home, so I'm not looking anything up right now). I found the work of both of these people invaluable when I was writing the addiction chapter in my EverQuest book.
Regardless, the official document gives us sixty days to write in with an objection about it. So, if we are paying it now, perhaps we can get it scrapped if enough of us write in to complain about its flaws.
Looking closely at the material, this is still in the proposal stage, and there is time to object to it (I just sent in my objection). The actual proposal and the contact information for writing in to object can be found here: http://www.cb-cda.gc.ca/tariffs/proposed/c25022006 -b.pdf
Speaking as somebody who has dealt with proposals in the public sector before, when you object, make certain that you make a reasoned argument. Point out the flaws in the assumptions behind the levy (such as the fact that not everybody is going to use the media they're taxing for copying music, etc.), and how it makes the levy unfair. Whatever you do, don't make statements about good and evil, or corruption - it's a surefire way to get ignored. Just point out the flaws in the proposal, give concrete examples if you can when you do, and give your name, city, and province/territory.
Okay, first of all, we were dependent on SOE for interview access to the developers and permission to publish the screenshots. Without it, it would have been a much thinner book.
Second, you speak a bit too easily about my endorsement of the man. If you look at my posts on Slashdot alone, or my Garwulf's Corner column on Diabloii.net, you'll find that I'm not exactly easy on people who I think are full of bullshit. But I sat in the man's office, asked him difficult questions while looking into his eyes, and got direct and honest answers, even about some of SOEs most ridiculous blunders. He treated me on the level. He could easily have given us a PR spin, and he didn't. And so, yes, he won my respect.
Now, unless you've actually met the man on a one-on-one basis, I somehow doubt you're able to get anything even close to the read on him that I have. And, before you question the credentials that book gives me, I suggest you read it (assuming you haven't).
When I wrote my book about EverQuest (which, despite its title, is NOT a strategy guide), one of the things I had to do was interview John Smedley.
It was an absolutely critical interview, partly because we needed Sony's support behind the book to get the material we needed, and if Smedley didn't like it, the book was sunk. To make matters more interesting, this was not a book that was going to be a PR release for Sony - my editor and I were walking in with a book that was going to deal with both the good and the bad of EverQuest. And I was going to be asking him for comments on the record on things like eBay sales of characters, intellectual property, privacy issues, and online addiction. Let's just say that both my editor and I were pretty nervous.
Walking into the interview, we were there on sufferance. SOE could have pulled our support at any time, and we knew it. When we explained what we were going to do to Smedley, and asked him some of those hard questions, THEN we got SOE's full support. The company literally bent over backwards to make sure we got everything we needed. And, from talking to him, I honestly don't think we would have gotten the support we needed if we had been doing a spin job making SOE look like the second coming.
So, I have a lot of respect for the man. He could have been a petty spin doctor, but he wasn't. He was absolutely straight-up with me. So, perhaps he does have to do some PR work in these interviews, but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Unless a lot has changed between now and then, he's still an honest man.
It's a thought provoking question, that's for certain. It seems to me (having taken a high school law course way back when), that any such class would have to take a partially historical perspective on it, and also keep to the letter of the law (rather than a vague "filesharing is bad" type of deal).
I mean, there are some things that keep cropping up again and again just on Slashdot that make my head spin, and if I had to teach a class I'd make certain I covered the following:
1. The history of copyright law on an international level. I'm not talking about starting with the U.S. Constitution, because that's not where it starts. I'm talking about starting with stuff like the Stationer's Log in Shakespeare's day, and how the idea of intellectual rights and their purposes developed (and there was an ongoing development - intellectual rights in the 17th century existed to protect publishers from being undercut by other publishers, sort of as a "being fair to the other guy" sort of thing, and there was NO protection for the actual authors at all).
2. The difference between American intellectual property law and international intellectual property law. Again, there are some big differences. The Berne Convention, which represents the international standard, is NOT the DMCA. And this is very important when dealing with the Internet, as it is a medium that crosses international borders (and, as an example, as a Canadian writer on a day-to-day level I honestly don't care too much about the US Constitution or US copyright law, but I am very keen on the Berne Convention).
3. The difference between copyright (including fair use), trademark, and the patent office. If you create something that you want to protect, where do you take it? And if you're a programmer who wants to do a check to make sure something isn't already covered in IP, where do you look?
4. Where the Internet fits in. What's the legal difference between uploading and downloading, and when is it legal to do either? Where do you go to check if you're not sure? If you do break the law, what are the consequences, and what are the legal considerations?
5. The difference between proper use of copyright law (such as an author protecting the world s/he created in their fantasy novel, or selling first publication rights, or putting some code under the GPL), and abuse of copyright law (such as the RIAA using the law to extort money from random people by threatening lawsuits).
6. How to protect yourself under copyright law, and how the technology fits into it. How do you protect that code you just wrote from being stolen (or, for example, the code you write in your spare time at home from being claimed by the corporation you work for as their own)? How do you protect yourself from something like a lawsuit by the RIAA? How do you keep others from using you to break the law (and, for that matter, I've often wondered just how many people got an RIAA lawsuit tossed at them when their only crime was not password protecting their wireless LAN connections)?
And I think that covers it...
Thank you for commenting - it always is good to get input from somebody "on the ground floor" as it were. However, you are very mistaken about my sources. My information about Eastern spirituality came from "The Masks of God" by Joseph Campbell, and I made the link from spirituality to suicide based on a documentary about the Kamikaze pilots of World War II, and the rituals they used to prepare themselves for death, and what they believed would happen after they died.
However, my own first-hand experience with Japanese culture came at the hands of a Japanese exchange student and fellow writer who is still a very good friend of mine, and it amazed me just how gentle and courteous the man was - and how much honour and saving face meant to him. To a degree, we Westerners wear our emotions on our sleeves compared to the Japanese, and it would be very dangerous to say that we know what is under the surface (after all, remember the surprising brutality that appeared in World War II and the Japanese Empire, which would seem entirely out of character for such a polite and courteous society).
There's also a large number of suicides that are attempts at auto-erotic asphyxia gone wrong, from what I've heard - they get classified as a suicide because "suicide" is a lot less embarassing than the truth.
(And if you don't know what auto-erotic asphyxia is, you probably don't want to. Trust me on that. Really.)
Certainly I think you raise a very good point, but there is a fundamental difference between east and west that nobody so far has touched upon, and it is important. We have a large stigma against suicide - in Japan that doesn't really exist, from what I understand. And there is a reason for that difference.
Put simply, Western spirituality is about how human beings relate to a divine being (God, Allah, etc.), but there is an assumption that human beings are not themselves divine. Eastern spirituality is about understanding how human beings are divine - they have part of the divine in them. So, ending your life in Western spirituality is a source of judgement and damnation at the hands of the divine, whereas ending your life in Eastern spirituality is in part setting the divine part of you free - hence, no ill spiritual aftereffects, and no stigma.
Okay - I can see where this is helpful if you're 35 years old and dying of incurable cancer. You just get frozen until they can cure it. No problem.
But, um, what happens if you die at the age of 95 of old age? In all seriousness, what is the point of being frozen if that happens? If it works and you're revived, doesn't this just mean that now you get to live in the nursing home of the future for another couple of years before you die again?
I am getting very tired of this. As much as I'd like to strangle the RIAA for what is amounting to racketeering, I wish somebody would put this misconception to rest in giant letters written on the moon:
Copyright is NOT a monopoly.
Let's make this clear - you cannot copyright an idea, only the implementation of that idea. You cannot use copyright to prevent others from taking the idea and implementing it in their own way. But, you can use it to protect yourself from somebody stealing your IMPLEMENTATION of that idea.
If it was a monopoly, you would be able to say that nobody can use your idea period, and prevent people from doing it. That's what the patent office covers. Please note, there IS a difference.
Seriously, get the concept right. Protecting your intellectual property does not make you a monopolist. What the RIAA is doing, on the other hand, is an abuse of that intellectual property, and is stretching copyright far beyond the spirit or letter of the law. To use the RIAA's actions to say that copyright is a monopoly, however, is like using Microsoft to say that trying to sell software in any way is monopolistic.
I hate to point this out, but there are no such things as "natural rights." There are certainly rights that are morally positive to maintain and fight for, but none of them are "natural."
Quite frankly, the only rights you have are the ones you earn by fighting for them - a lot of people have died to preserve these rights for those of us in democratic countries, but that's the way it has to be. If history teaches us one thing, it is that rights are very easily taken away from those who don't stand up and fight for them.
Just wanted to make certain that the distinction was drawn.
I'm afraid your information is a bit off here about the Scopes Monkey Trial. It may indeed have galvanized science, but it was also quite possibly one of the biggest scams to ever hit the American court system.
s copes/evolut.htm
Basically, the law that caused it all came down, and just about everybody thought the thing was idiotic - the science teachers, the locals of Dayton, and for that matter, the court in question. The problem was that any previous attempts to challenge the law had been quashed at the legislative level, and the only way to actually get rid of the thing was to have it declared unconstitutional, and that meant a court challenge.
So, some of the people in the town of Dayton decided that they would challenge the law, but for that they needed somebody to be charged for breaking it. Now, in order for the law to actually get struck down as unconstitutional, it had to happen in the court of appeal, since the district court didn't have the authority to do so. Therefore, the defense actually WANTED a guilty verdict, as that way it could get up to an appeal, and the law could get quashed. Even the judge knew this was a test case, and the publicity was key.
At the same time, the town was in dire need of publicity, so they welcomed it. Dayton became a tourist town, for all intents and purposes. There wasn't any of the bigotry and violence suggested in "Inherit the Wind" - it was more like going to a carnival, and even Scopes was late for a trial session at one point because he had been swimming with friends.
Ironically, while it did go to the court of appeal, the idea failed - the charge was quashed, but on a technicality rather than constitutional grounds.
Some more information is available here: http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/
It took me a bit of time after reading this article to figure out how to put this, but I think I know now what I'm going to say. I don't buy the idea that DVDs or discs of some sort will be replaced by hard disk space, regardless of what happened to music and iPods.
Back when my ebook was published, there was a lot of talk about how ebooks were going to supplant the print book. It hasn't happened, and there's a few reasons for that. A book that is bound with a spine is called a codex, and there really isn't a way to improve on it as a format. A codex doesn't require electricity, it is portable, and you can do just about anything you want with the book itself. It is completely self contained - the only equipment it is truly linked to in order to function are the eyes of the reader (and something with which to turn pages). An ebook, on the other hand, has copy protection issues to deal with, requires electricity of some sort to use, and if the electronic reader breaks down, the ebook becomes inaccessible, or possibly even lost. Is it any surprise that the numbers that constitute a bestseller for an ebook are a fraction of the what is required for a print book?
Now, take a DVD. So far, I think it's become about as close to what the codex is for books as is possible for movies (although it could be a bit smaller and contain more information). It has no moving parts, it's portable, and while it requires a player to watch the movie, the player breaking down will not damage the movie, or prevent me from taking it to another player.
If it becomes just a download onto a hard drive, a lot of these merits are lost. The movie is attached to the player, if the player goes down the movie can be lost, and there are a bunch of new digital rights issues to deal with (and let's face it, we're not doing that well with figuring out how to deal with digital rights right now). Also, once the movies are being stored on a hard drive, it becomes difficult to deal with them individually - let's say I want to loan one to a friend, or to take one with me when I travel out of town. In order to do that, I'd have to loan or take the entire hard disk.
No, I don't buy the idea of a format like the DVD being supplanted. It has always seemed to me that the most lasting technologies are those that offer the most utility in the simplest way. And, when it comes down to it, DVDs are pretty simple. They can certainly still be improved, but I honestly can't see a portable medium like the DVD being replaced by a medium like the hard disk.
I'm afraid you've got quite a bit wrong here.
First of all, I'm not against the idea of what Google is trying to do. Frankly, I think it's a very good idea. I'm against the fact that they didn't bother to ask permission before scanning. It's the method I object to, not the end result. Please keep that in mind.
Second, it is called the Berne Convention For The Protection Of Literary And Artistic Works, and I have read the pertinent parts of it. And no, what Google is doing is NOT legal under Article 10, which covers fair use. The specific violation is in subsection 1: (1) It shall be permissible to make quotations from a work which has already been lawfully made available to the public, provided that their making is compatible with fair practice, and their extent does not exceed that justified by the purpose, including quotations from newspaper articles and periodicals in the form of press summaries. Scanning in an ENTIRE book is not compatible with fair practice. An argument can be made in regards to how that work is presented, but since the entire book is basically made available even that is a tenuous argument.
(Important point, though - I am a writer, not a lawyer. Better minds than mine are already working on this issue in this case.)
Third, this is not a typical FUD attack. Google is honestly in the wrong in regards to its methodology.
Fourth, you have the history of the Berne Convention wrong. The text most often used is the Paris 1971 text, but the original convention was ratified in Paris on September 9, 1886, and most recently revised in Stockholm in 1967, and amended in 1979. The United States became a signatory on March 1, 1989, and the original copyright legislation in the United States was, as is frequently pointed out on this forum in the original draft of the U.S. Constitution. My country, Canada, became a signatory in 1928.
I heartily recommend that you read Battle Cry for Freedom, by James McPherson. The first few chapters deal very specifically with how Jeffersonian democracy became obsolete. Yes, banking and credit was involved. But so was slavery, industrialization and its issues, the urbanization of the population, and issues over state rights. It very much comes down to Jeffersonian democracy becoming obsolete in the 19th century.
(And by the way, you might really want to make sure there's actually an article on the website you reference when you post it here.)
What a spiteful comment. And where to begin? Well, I'll deal with your points numerically.
1. In what country are you referring? In England it starts with the Register's Log, which provided some protection to publishers in Shakespeare's day. In the United States, it starts with the copyright clause of the Constitution. Up here in Canada, we are based on British tradition and use the Berne Convention.
Aside from which: "Not to mention originally, the opt-in system required reference copies to preserve works for posterity, whereas now works are destroyed forever on a daily basis." What in the hell are you talking about here? As far as I know, every work published in the United States has to be registered with the Library of Congress, and a copy provided. Project Gutenburg is bending over backwards to get old books published online, and publishers like Penguin and Everyman make their bread and butter on classic books. Far from works being destroyed, we have more access to literature in the here and now than has ever been possible before.
2. "Have you ever heard of the fair-use doctrine?" Considering I raised that exact issue at the end of my post, I imagine I am. However, fair use does not extend to the scanning and reproduction of entire books online, and a book is not an image.
"Morally speaking I don't see any problem with kicking members of these big publishing houses in the shins or torching their cars. They are a blight upon society and are erasing our literary heritage for profit. Great works are erased from public consciousness, locked away in warehouses to crumble away all for the sake of a very small amount of money. The behavior of these publishing houses is so sickening that I don't think they have any moral grounds for complaint about anything anyone does with regard to their copyrights."
You know, this reminds me of the rhetoric in Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler. You've taken half-truths and spun them out of control and used them to justify the injustifiable. Great works are NOT erased from the public consciousness by publishers - in fact, they tend to be published and republished again and again. A good chunk of Penguin Putnam's line is great literature. Locked away in warehouses? The only time that happens is when bookstores don't bother ordering the books. This may come as a shock, but publishers make their money by selling books, not printing them and locking them away. If bookstores don't order the books and put them on their shelves, that isn't the publisher's fault.
3. "You are ignorant and naive. First the right's holders for most copyrighted works cannot be found, so there is no way to ask them and the cost of tracking down the right's holder for every single work would cost more money than anyone, and I do me an anyone has. Second, while most authors are happy to have Google index their works, most copyrights holders for books are large publishers whose business model (market and distribution lock-in contracts) are threatened by Google's work. Hell they specifically are trying to force Google to an opt-in scheme so their works don't have to compete on equal footing with the large percentage of works that are not in print (but still copyrighted) and are otherwise unavailable to most people. Basically, they want most copyrighted works to be unavailable to most people and that is ethically unconscionable and diametrically opposed to the intention of copyright law and the good of the people."
Well, no, I'm not ignorant or naive. You, however, are appearing ignorant and vicious. Number one, if you want to contact the original copyright holder of a book for permission, you write a letter to the publisher, and the publisher takes care of the rest. Contacting the copyright holder costs nothing more than postage. Number two, there is a pretty even spred of copyrights held by individuals and by organizations. Third, publishers want to prevent other people from publishing copyrighted works when they hold the publication rights -