Well, I've seen this sort of thing come up time and time again, and in the hopes of contributing something that will keep the discussion informed and to the point, I'm just going to shoot a couple of things down right now, and raise a few more:
1. Google is NOT doing something new and revolutionary, they are instead extending what is already a good idea and already extant. Sample chapters have been up on the 'net for years. The ability to search for millions of books in dozens of different libraries at once by particular keywords has existed in university libraries for at least a decade, if not longer. Project Gutenberg (sp?) has been digitizing out-of-print public domain books for years as well. Google is extending this general idea, but they did not invent it. And, if they are stopped by these lawsuits, it will NOT bring the world to a halt, damage authors or the publishing industry, damage readers, create some weird heirarchy of those who have information and those who don't, or anything of the sort (in fact, we already have an overload of information in modern society).
2. The argument that what was in the first draft of the U.S. Constitution is exactly what copyright should be is extremely flawed, both historically and logically. It is flawed logically because the argument revolves around the U.S. Constitution, which has little or nothing to do with international law and the Berne Convention (and the libraries in question have books by authors from around the world). It is historically flawed because the first draft of the U.S. Constitution was an 18th century document written by 18th century people for an 18th century world, and society, including the situation of authors, has changed since then. There's a good reason why Jeffersonian democracy hasn't existed since about the 1830s. Copyright may require some tweaking to function properly in this new age of the Internet, but regressing two centuries is not the answer at all.
3. The main issue here revolves around whether Google asked for permission from the copyright holders before scanning. And, both morally and legally speaking, they should have. And, the fact is that if they had asked first, they quite possibly would have had the publishers and authors bending over backwards to help, because it IS a good idea. However, the ends do not justify the means, and quite frankly, I don't think they ever have.
Now, those issues aside, there are some good issues to raise - how do you protect copyright in this digital world? At what point is something no longer fair use when you're dealing with credited electronic excerpts? How does copyright need to change in order to balance the needs and rights of the author with the needs and rights of the reader?
Thank you for posting that. I have a feeling it will be very interesting reading.
When it comes to my own work, I don't think I'm going to worry too much about somebody downloading it. I may as well worry about libraries if I do that. But, I will worry about somebody scanning in the text and passing it off as a legitimate copy. There are authors who died in poverty while illegal copies of their books were being sold like gangbusters in other countries, without them gaining so much as a cent for the work.
But, I will repeat the sentiment - I really wish somebody would shut the RIAA down already. Quite frankly, I think the amount of harm they are doing to those of us who actually want to see the issues involved dealt with properly is quite massive.
First, and most important, it's measurable. Second, money being paid gives the illusion of legitimacy, and people who would not otherwise download or purchase (if we're talking about, say, a bootleg DVD).
But, mainly, when money changes hand, it's easier to quantify the damage.
It's an interesting point you raise (about the third scenario), but there are a couple of issues with it. First of all, providing a sample is often done by the publisher anyway (and quite a few are doing it now). Second, it requires somebody to commit, as Terry Pratchett once called it, an "anti-crime". I don't think I've ever seen or heard of anybody posting a sampler except through legitimate channels.
Hey, who knows though? Somebody might do it. And if it's properly credited and the chapter is short enough, it might even count under fair use too. However, I think it also might be about as likely as somebody committing a break-and-tidy-the-place-up.
"First you claim that you have no idea how many of those 1000 would sell. Then in the same paragraph claim that all 1000 would have sold if not downloaded."
To clarify the clarification, the scenario talks about copies that actually end up in the hands of a reader, not copies that may or may not end up in the hands of the reader. When I talk about 1,000 copies distributed through legitimate channels, I'm referring to 1,000 copies sold through legitimate channels, not 1,000 copies looking nice in a bookstore that may or may not be sold.
I apologize for being unclear in my clarification, and I hope that this clarification clarifies everything.
(Sorry, couldn't resist the play on words)
To clarify an issue or two...
on
RIAA Sues a Child
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· Score: 4, Insightful
First of all, I really wish somebody would file a class-action suit against those RIAA nitwits and end it all once and for all. Really, this is not acceptable. The technology of the 21st century does bring up issues regarding intellectual rights, and I do believe that an appropriate balance will eventually be struck, but a bunch of people acting like thugs simply don't help matters.
Second, there seems to be a lot of confusion about how copyright infringement hurts authors and creators. It does hurt them, but not in the way that most people have posted here, and not in the way that the RIAA is contending. Here's how it works:
I'm an author (this is true). Now, let's say that Tor Books buys the manuscript that I've had on one of the editor's desks. At this point in time, I sign a contract with them. The contract states that Tor has exclusive rights to publish the book for a certain period of time, at which point the publication rights revert back to me. In return, Tor will give me an advance on royalties, and a royalty for each copy they sell.
So, the book goes into print. Now, let's say that somebody with far too much time on their hands and a piratical disposition scans the entire novel into their computer and uploads it onto their site for people to download. And let's say that 1,000 people download it (it's a nice round number). Well, those people may or may not have bought the book on their own if it wasn't available for download - they may or may not buy the book because of the download. But, the fact remains that there are now 1,000 unsanctioned copies floating around. Odds are that the lion's share of the people who downloaded won't actually buy the thing (hell, they might not even finish reading it). But, those 1,000 copies (and we're only talking about the electronic copies here), had they been distributed through legimate channels, would have generated royalties for the author, making it easier for me to buy food and keep a roof over my head, and making it easier for me to write my next book.
The size of the damage is very difficult to estimate, simply because no money is actually changing hands. Yes, people who would have bought the book won't now that they have a free copy. But, other people who might not have bought the book otherwise might just use the download as a sample, and decide that they really want the book on their shelf. Well, some damage is probably done - but it's also probably fairly minimal. Until somebody actually does some solid academic research into the numbers, nobody will be able to tell. And, to make matters even more cloudy, not that many people actually have the technological know-how to download the thing anyway - the majority of readers will just go to the bookstore. That's a similar situation to what the RIAA is looking at.
Now, let's change the scenario a bit. The book comes out, and somebody with a piratical disposition scans the book into his computer, and then posts it on the Internet. But, this time, he charges $3.00 per download. And let's say that there are 1,000 copies downloaded. So now you've got money changing hands, just like a book sale. And, not only is the publisher that I actually gave the rights to print the book being cut out of the deal (and basically being competed against using its own product), no royalties are coming my way for any of these books that are sold. THAT is where the serious damage is done, and from the news I've read, it's done by criminal organizations and groups in third world countries.
Now, who is actually the pirate here? Well, it's not the people who downloaded, truth be told, even if they paid for it. It's unfortunate that they aren't downloading/buying a legitimate copy, but that also raises the question of how they can tell if a copy is legitimate or not. Let's face it - most people don't have that great an understanding of the Berne Convention, and if a copyright notice appears somewhere, they might assume that it is legitimate, even if there are signs it
This reminds me of something I read a long time ago about an experiment by the American army in World War II (can't for the life of me track it down now, though). At one point, the Americans tried to save lives by making these little tanks, about half a foot tall or so. The idea was that the tanks would have a small, gas powered engine, would drive up to the Germans, and either explode or shoot at them with this little gun.
It didn't actually work, but I do remember vividly pictures of some very amused Germans standing beside this little tank, which they apparently thought was quite cute...
"Copyright guarentees as monopoly on your product. If I want to buy the latest white-stripes album I can only buy it from one label: V2 Records."
It's a bit more complicated than that. Copyright doesn't give you a monopoly on your product. If you want to call songs, movies, and books a product, when you hold the publication rights to that product (who owns the copyright itself depends on the industry), you are the only person who can publish that product. But it's not a monopoly, because in the artistic world there are a lot of other people who are creating a very similar product, and your rights to distribute the music of, say, Heavy Metal Band A has absolutely no bearing on what Heavy Metal Band B is doing with another label.
Now, if you had the power to declare that heavy metal band A is the ONLY heavy metal allowed in the market, THEN you've got a monopoly.
You know, if the Interlibrary loan system of the university libraries and Project Gutenberg hadn't gotten there first, you might have had a point. Unfortunately, they did, and you don't.
First of all, I never said it was a bad idea. However, and I must stress this - THE ENDS DO NOT JUSTIFY THE MEANS. That is an ethical issue, and I honestly wish that ethics were taught in school outside of limited philosophy courses. There'd probably be a lot less of this silliness.
Second of all, contacting the authors is possible, as publishers are required under most contracts to provide them with regular information on sales figures, and royalties, if any are due. You are showing very little knowledge of publishing.
Third of all, those three "hacks" who launched the suit happen to include one award winning author and a former Poet Laureate of the United States. They are standing up for their rights. Amazing how when you're in the middle of stomping on somebody's rights it is terribly unjust for them to speak up, but God help anybody who steps on your rights.
Finally, do me a favour and never buy one of my books. I don't think I could stand the thought that I might get royalty money from somebody who considers me a worthless hack, and any actions on my part to ensure that I'm treated fairly as disgraceful. I only hope that one day you meet somebody who treats your rights the way you propose to treat mine, so that you can finally understand how it feels.
I don't think I've ever seen a comment quite like this. Authors actually standing up for their rights and demanding to be asked first is being compared to the slaughter of millions, at least from what I could understand of it. I'm still trying to figure out what "Let them know you are not going to buy read or acknowledge their existance because they have contributed the smallest drop of knowledge to humanity so I don't think we will miss them" is supposed to mean.
Honestly, look around you, and for God's sake, learn some grammar skills. We live in a society that is innundated with information. Requiring that Google actually ask the author of a work before scanning that work into their database doesn't deprive anybody of anything that isn't already available, albeit in less comprehensive form. In fact, Google's database will be considerably SMALLER than the database that university libraries already have access to (from one university library, you can look up and borrow books from any other - that's access to HUNDREDS of millions of books). Claiming that authors protecting their rights is "holding the world's knowledge hostage" is rather like claiming that you don't have enough saltwater while stranded in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Google has committed a massive faux pas. That is what has happened here. What saddens me is that it is a worthy project, but they may have lost the goodwill of the very people who they needed to make it work, and who would have probably bent over backwards to help it if they had just been asked first. And, instead of admitting the mistake like a responsible adult, apologizing, and asking permission, Google is fighting it, and claiming that authors are standing in the way of progress. I don't know about my fellow authors, but I do know that if Google approached me about one of my future books (the two books I have out were works for hire), explained the project, and asked permission, not only would I probably say yes right away, but I would provide them with a preferred text for their database, saving them the time and effort of scanning it in. And you know what? Most of the authors I know are the sort of people who would probably do something similar.
But, you have to ask first, not just take. I just hope Google wises up soon, because with the support of the authors, their project could really soar.
Oh, and by the way, I have family who suffered during the Holocaust. Claiming that a copyright case is even close to that is not only ignorant, it's insulting to the victims who died in the horrors that are true crimes against humanity.
I am not a member of the Author's Guild, but I do support their actions in this case, and I think that some of your points should be answered. You have raised an interesting argument, but I'm afraid that you are misinformed in quite a few places.
First, Google's "Library" program is not a bold move to make information searchable. When I started my first degree in 1995, from my own university library I could search for books by keyword from any university library on the continent, and borrow them through inter-library loan. Google's program would be a bit more comprehensive, but it is still more of the same. As for making older books available, the Gutenberg Project was the pioneer, not Google. Google is basically doing something similar, but with more money, and less tactfully.
Second, the library system doesn't quite work as you seem to believe it works. Libraries loan books out, but they do not publish them or distribute them. The closest they come is to sell off some of their older copies. And, when you take out a book from a library, a small royalty is paid to the author. There is a large line between loaning a book out and making hundreds of photocopies of that book without permission, and libraries do not cross it, although you are suggesting in this letter that they do.
Third, you are using technology issues to obscure the actual issue. The fact that Google is a profit making company is irrelevant to the complaint. The size of the database is irrelevant to the complaint. The complaint revolves around the fact that before copying material still in copyright, Google did not ask for permission. Besides being a matter of common courtesy, it would have been a simple matter to send a form letter explaining the project, and so long as the terms are not unreasonable, most of the authors I know, including myself, would actually support such a thing. However, as a matter of principle, you have to ask first.
Fourth, you are suggesting that authors and publishers are in some conspiracy to hide books from the general public. Besides being completely illogical (it would require that publishers deliberately shoot themselves in the foot sales-wise), it is also quite silly. Why would anybody want to create a society like this, particularly when all it would do is limit markets and create injustice? Most books are not state secrets. Sometimes a suit for copyright infringement is just a suit for copyright infringement.
Finally, and related to this odd conspiracy theory, you have conveniently forgotten that artists, musicians, and writers are often the most socially active people around. Harlan Ellison marched in the Civil Rights march around Alabama in the late '60s. A number of well known writers drove ambulances in World War II. The first thing any tyranny does once it takes control, from Stalin to Hitler, is put controls on the artistic professions. Quite frankly, your letter is a slap in all of our collective faces. We've fought against injustice around the world, and some of us have even been imprisoned, forced to flee our homes, or murdered for it. Our writing helps drive social progress. Many of us use our pens to stand up for YOUR rights, but what happens when we stand up for ours? We get accused of holding the world back, and in your letter, being part of some conspiracy to create what amounts to a tyranny. Perhaps you should actually read the Berne Convention, and try to understand just what rights we claim. You'll find that they are quite reasonable.
But regardless of this slap in the face, we will continue to fight against injustice with our pens. We will continue to drive society forward. We will continue to fight for YOUR rights in the best ways we know how. All we ask is that when we shed our metaphorical blood, sweat, and tears on your behalf, that you respect us for it, and respect our wishes regarding what we create. And if you can't give us that, I only have two words to say to you.
The second is "you". The first begins with "F". I think you can figure it out on your own.
Pal, no offense, but you've really got to read some books on social history. Yes, that's the first US copyright law. But it's an 18th century copyright law, based on 18th century morals and society, not a 21st copyright law based on 21st century morals and society. Even though it isn't strictly speaking fully a social history book, I'd recommend the first few chapters of Battle Cry for Freedom by James McPherson to a get a sense of the social forces shaping society between the 1840s and the Civil War, and how Jeffersonian Democracy became obsolete.
If you want to talk original morals, all the blacks in the US are covered under property rights and considered subhuman, and all of the women are brainless dolls who shouldn't be forced to work their minds, because they can't take that, and it's unreasonable to force it on them. There's a reason the United States doesn't have Jeffersonian Democracy anymore - for its day it was revolutionary, but from the perspective of the here and now it would be worse than Apartheid.
Seriously, get some historical perspective on what's happened in society over the last 220 years, and start looking to the future rather than the past.
I honestly wouldn't say that it would count as a dumb idea, because the basic concept isn't too bad when it comes down to it. The big problem is that the implementation is just piss-poor right now.
As somebody already pointed out, the concept of DRM can be used quite nicely for securing a computer against a possible attacker. The problem is that in a panic over what to do with this new "Internet" thing, a few publishers, most of the labels, and most of the film studios have gone to ridiculous lengths to try to protect intellectual rights with content.
The concept of protecting intellectual rights isn't a bad one. Speaking as an author, if somebody told me that some unseen force is going to dictate to me what I'm allowed to do with anything I write, my first reaction would be to give them the finger and tell them where to stick it. If I want to sell the publication rights to a New York publisher, that's my decision. If I want to make it public domain and publish it on my website, that's my decision too. It's reasonable, and quite frankly moral, for my wishes regarding my work to be respected.
Unfortunately, there really isn't a good way to implement copyright protections in digital media yet. The United States came up with the DMCA, but that will probably change soon enough - it's one of those laws that will probably be a work in progress, written when the technology wasn't truly understood. All DRM essentially does when applied to content is dictate to the consumer what they can do with what they have just bought. It's like buying a lamp and then having the lampmaker tell you when you can turn it on.
Balancing it all is the big problem. The idea behind DRM with content is to protect the rights and wishes of the creator, but the only implentations of it right now do so by stripping away the rights of the consumer. I honestly think it would be a lot easier to just stick with the Berne Convention and trust the people who buy your work to be honest about what they do with it (and take reasonable, and I stress "reasonable", actions when you can prove they are not). I have a funny feeling the technology and its issues will sort themselves out given enough time.
There's a bit more to those things as well. I've always been amazed at how much history is shaped by human beings buggering up, rather than plans going smoothly.
In the case of Pearl Harbour, it was never meant by the Japanese to be a surprise attack. It was supposed to begin half an hour after the declaration of war was delivered to the United States. Unfortunately, the actual declaration was classified to a point where only the highest level diplomats could be allowed to decode and translate it - and they couldn't type. So, by the time the declaration of war was actually ready to be delivered, the attack had been going on for half an hour.
Then there's 9/11 - imagine what would have happened if the CIA and the FBI hadn't been in the middle of a proverbial pissing match at the time, and the information about the upcoming attack had been passed on. Actually, it gets even worse - there is a bit of legislation that actually forbids the FBI and the CIA from working closely with one another, to prevent the two from launching a coup (I don't remember under which President that was - I think it might have been Ford).
The problem is that it's very poorly implemented in most cases. In some cases, it's positively idiotic. Anybody remember the article about the software in Windows Vista checking to see if your monitor has DRM built into it, and downgrading media files if it doesn't?
I think the reason for this is that technology has a tendency of moving faster than human understanding of it. Copyright is a good idea - it boils down to a creative artist being able to decide how their work is to be distributed, and under what terms. That's all it really amounts to. It gives intellectual property a sort of protection that physical property enjoys.
However, we are living in a new world, and the Internet as used by the public is less than 15 years old (the 'Net itself is much older, but it was only made available to the public in 1992 or so). The best adaptation of the technology to the intellectual rights issues I've seen so far has come from the Open Source movement with the GPL. Even it probably has some ways to go.
DRM is right now an attempt to preserve copyright protections, which is something pretty vital. But it's also something very problematic with the new technology.
Let's use an original ebook as an example. It's a PDF file, but it's also somebody's blood, sweat, and tears, and is basically an electronic novel. Now, what needs to be protected? Well, you don't want somebody to buy the book, post it on their website, and sell it for a lower price, undercutting the publisher and depriving the author of royalties (assuming that it has been released through a publisher - there are those who self publish). And somebody can do that - after all it's a file, and disk space is the only limit to how many times it can be copied. That's basic piracy I've just described, and that's what you're trying to stop.
But how do you do that? Think for a moment about how a print book is treated. There are libraries, where you can borrow them and then return them. They can be loaned to friends. All of this is legimate use. The copying issue isn't as big as it would be with an electronic file, because if you do it the conventional way, at 5 cents per page, copying a novel becomes pretty expensive pretty quickly. Even scanning it into a computer takes a prohibitive amount of time. But with a file, all you have to do is press the copy button or download it. It takes almost no time, and no money.
So, you have to protect the rights of the author, but you also have to protect the rights of the reader. Let's say that the reader is replacing their computer - well, the file is going to have to be copied or moved. But it's the same physical operation on the disk that occurs in piracy. How do you get the file itself to distinguish between somebody copyign the file for very legitimate reasons and somebody who is about to do something illegal?
There aren't really any good answers to that question yet. It's at the point where any measures that protect the author do quite a lot towards tying the hands of the reader in unreasonable ways, but on the other hand leaving the file unprotected violates due diligence on the side of the publisher.
Given about ten more years, I think that DRM will evolve to the point where there is a resonable solution that protects the rights both of the creative artist and the user. But we're not there yet, and quite frankly, we're not even close. And until we are, DRM is a pretty bad thing all round.
And, as always, it comes back to this. Somebody with a bit of knowledge of history brings out this argument that if the founding fathers intended it, it must therefore be right. A good 18th century argument.
Unfortunately for you, it's the 21st century. The Jeffersonian democracy created in the Constitution hasn't existed since before the Civil War - something more modern took its place.
Have you ever actually taken a close look at what Jeffersonian democracy was like? Why don't we do that? Well, first of all, right at the beginning, all men are created equal.
Oh, are you black by chance? Because if you are, under Jeffersonian democracy, you're not a man. You're a subrace. If you're lucky, you might have been able to join one of the communities of free blacks in the north or one of the smaller communities in the south. But, as a subrace, you're not really human, and if you're a slave, well, the right to own you is guaranteed under the Constitution - property rights, and all that lot.
It's not quite as bad if you're Asian, but it's pretty close. You're still a subrace, not really human at all. Oh, and if you're a woman, you're a porceline doll. You see, the MEN get to vote, and take part in running the country. Women are cut out, but that's okay. Everybody knows that women don't have the mental capacity to understand large issues, much less make important decisions. Better keep them out of the process entirely.
Isn't all that equitable, is it? In fact, by today's standards, that sort of democracy is positively oppressive. But, for the 18th century, it was absolutely revolutionary. Imagine a government that is responsible not to the monarch, but to the people! Imagine a place where every citizen (not counting those pesky women and subraces) has rights! Imagine a place where your status in society is based on MERIT, not birth!
For the 18th century, it was a huge, revolutionary step. The founding fathers meant well - they wanted to make things better. But they were also 18th century people. The Constitution was amended and new laws were passed because the world changed, and as far as one's rights go, got better. The United States stopped looking at different races as being genetically inferior, and women got the vote.
And for copyright, that changed too. When the Constitution was written, what might have been considered copyright of the day protected publishers, not authors. The idea of actually conceding that an author could control what they wrote, and that their wishes were worth respecting honestly didn't exist at that point (and for that matter, it wasn't until the 1950s or so that the United States really started acknowledging international copyrights, and it still hasn't signed the Berne Convention). It was a much needed step, but it was only a first step in the right direction. There were more improvements that were to be made. As society progressed, the needs of society changed, and the laws changed with it.
What you are saying is that we need to regress in this matter - to take back all of the progress and social change that has happened in the last 250 years or so. That argument doesn't fly. It does, however, bear a remarkable resemblence to an excuse to allow you to do whatever you want and whatever is convenient to you, without regard to how it will affect others.
The Internet is relatively new technology, and it brings new issues to the fore. However, the key to coming to grips with these issues is to move forward, not regress backwards. The DMCA is a first attempt at that. It has its flaws, but as we as a society come to grips with the issues, it will be replaced with something more suitable.
You accused me of holding my hands over my ears and shouting opposing arguments out. Seems to me that you're the one guilty of that, not me. You're the one who is looking 250 years backwards, instead of looking to the future. You're the one who has twisted my arguments, not the other way around.
It was a bit more than that. You see, when Diablo came out, multiplayer gaming had been around for quite a while (around twenty years, in fact), and people who were playing multiplayer CRPGs were playing them on services like Compuserve - where you dialed directly into the server itself.
The Internet was released to the public around 1992/3, and the first thing that companies like Compuserve did was ignore it. Sad but true. It took the small ISPs making money hand over fist to actually make the larger servers take note and offer online access. So, when Diablo was released, the Internet was just coming into the public consciousness in a way.
Now, gaming companies had caught on around 1993 or 1994 that the Internet could be a good place to plant a game. However, nobody had tried it yet outside of a couple of MUDs, and those were very small scale. Origin was working on Ultima Online, and Verant started working on EverQuest a bit later, but nobody really knew how the games would be received.
With Diablo, Blizzard launched Battle.net, which was based on the Internet, and thousands upon thousands of people clamoured on and played. Diablo, put simply, was the test case that showed that Internet RPG gaming would work on the scale that would make a massively multiplayer effort worthwhile.
And that's why it's so important, and one of the reasons everybody keeps coming back to it, I think.
I hadn't read that - it really is an interesting article.
You notice, though, that he alludes to something that really does need to be expressed directly. Specifically, that people who download are not the serious pirates.
Quite frankly, he's right - it amounts to a sort of online radio for the people who are downloading. Amazon.com has a similar idea. When they sell a CD, you can listen to a 30 second sample of several of the tracks. Samples tend to be a very good idea, and can help with exposure.
The people who are the problem, and the people who are the real pirates, are the ones who are uploading, and the ones who encourage them. That's why Napster go hit so hard - it wasn't that the technology was for filesharing, it was that they were encouraging people to illegally upload music. It's one thing for a publisher to make a song or demo available, but quite another for somebody to upload the entire game/album/movie.
That's why it drives me crazy when the RIAA brags about how it caught some kid downloading. Ask yourself this - how many of us traded illegal copies of computer games between our friends when we were kids, but grew out of it? Hell, I did it, and I grew out of it by the age of 16. They're not the ones to worry about - the ones who are uploading the files and making phony CDs to sell are.
Maybe you should try actually looking at the books, rather than just reading the titles. The Diablo book launched the entire Blizzard fiction line with a dark fantasy story that made liberal use of a part of the world that nobody had developed. The EverQuest book was a heavily researched non-fiction book about the history of the game, the community around it, and the social issues.
And fanfiction may be a very good training ground, but it is a training ground. You're right - there are people who will write Diablo stories for free, whereas I wrote a single novella for money (while trying to sell an original novel). But my novella was a hell of a lot better written than most of the fanfic out there - that's why I warranted getting paid. And as for non-fiction, I've got over 200 professional publication credits now.
And by the way, in his day, Shakespeare was considered something of a hack. The person who was the great playwrite in Shakespeare's day was Christopher Marlow.
Nice examples, but I'm afraid they don't fit the challenge.
Example number one, the remixing, occupies a similar IP space as fanfiction. You're not taking a theme you hear elsewhere and creating a unique and original theme inspired by it - you're taking somebody's theme and playing with it directly. In software terms, that's like taking the MS Office source code and directly reworking it without permission. Sorry, but that doesn't stifle innovation - that forces people to come up with their own music rather than ripping off somebody else's, and therefore enforces innovation.
Example number two, the Internet radio stations, again, doesn't stifle innovation. It's not preventing the people from expanding the technology - it's requiring them to actually pay for their content. Unfortunately, it looks like it's another case of the RIAA abusing copyright law (and we're talking about legitimate usage of the law here, not the abuses of it), but in and of itself it's not stifling innovation.
Example number three isn't a case of stifling innovation either. Bittorrent itself can be used to pirate IP, but it can just as often be used for legimate purposes, and often is. What happened is that Bram Cohen wrote a manifesto in 1999 stating that he specifically wrote programs to break the law, and after that manifesto was discovered, it has been reflected onto Bittorrent, which was developed two years later. It's the case of somebody putting their foot into their mouth and it coming back to haunt them, not copyright law being bad.
Example number four is the closest you come, but it still doesn't make the cut. It's a case of researchers being uncertain as to the application of a new law - but that happens more often than you'd think. I was working in social housing, writing policy among other things, when the new Canadian privacy legislation (PIPEDA) was brought into force. Everybody I talked to figured that it would take around five years to learn what was required by the act, and to modify policy accordingly. When I left to go after my second degree, they were still working out what it all meant. It doesn't mean that the research hasn't been done, it doesn't mean that the research can't be done (in fact, the article quotes a section of the DMCA that specifically allows that sort of research) - it just means that the terms under which it can be done are still in the process of being understood.
I think one of the problems here is that people are confusing legimate use of a law with abuse of a law. The RIAA abuses copyright law like a bunch of bandits, in my opinion. If I have to fight a legitimate battle, I think they'd probably hurt my case in the end just because of the tactics they use. Copyright law does NOT allow a corporation to create phony warrants and seize a store's merchandise (and I still can't believe that the RIAA wasn't hit with criminal charges for that). For that matter, strictly speaking, I don't even think that an infringement lawsuit can be made to stick against somebody for downloading music (uploading or broadcasting music, certainly, but downloading, quite possibly not).
That one may be close, but no cigar I'm afraid. First of all, characters like Cinderella are public domain, and have been used in productions such as "Into the Woods" without reprecussions as far as I know. So long as you don't use the Disney version word for word (and the original one published by the Brothers Grimm is very much removed from that), you're fine.
Second, you haven't actually proven a stifling of innovation. The animators you mentioned may be not be able to use Mickey Mouse, but that just means that they have to create their own character. That's actually forcing innovation.
You do have a very good point regarding Rudyard Kipling, though, and indeed, there are quite a few cases where foreign copyrights were not respected across the international border, particularly in the United States up to about 1960 (the bootleg edition of Lord of the Rings by Ace, for example).
You want to present an opposing viewpoint, fine, but I'm afraid you've just misrepresented my book rather badly. In fact, even just looking it up on Amazon.com would have told you that it isn't a strategy guide.
It is, however, one of the few books that traces MMORPGs to their roots in the 1960s. It is the ONLY place in print where the real story of the suicide of Shawn Woolley is covered (and I am very grateful to his mother for checking the chapter to make certain that I had the chain of events right).
And, in fact, all of my sources are credited in the bibliography, and those who contributed some material were compensated.
Perhaps the statement is a logical fallacy when it comes down to it, but my experience has been that most people who go through the trial by fire to become bona fide authors are pretty firm when it comes to intellectual rights. In fact, I don't think I've met a single pro author who isn't. For that matter, part of being a professional author is understanding that you make your living through your royalties, and it is therefore very important to protect them.
It is an odd world, but it is true. You can be a successful writer without great talent, but you can't be one without business saavy. No noble patrons out there anymore to help us along the way.
I am so sick of this argument, it makes me see red.
Give me just ONE example of where COPYRIGHT (NOT trademarks, and NOT patents) prevents innovation. Just one. In fact, I'll settle for a conceptual model. You see, I've heard this argument again and again, and I've never seen anybody actually manage to justify that statement about copyright stifling innovation.
In fact, it's COPYRIGHT that protects the open source movement from being downright raped by corporations like Microsoft! For that matter, do you even know what copyright is? Do you know what you can and can't copyright?
Don't bother to reply unless you can actually put your money where your mouth is. Either provide some concrete evidence, or can it!
(And by the way, you may be a software author, but the general term of "author" is earned when you publish your first book.)
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I've seen this sort of thing come up time and time again, and in the hopes of contributing something that will keep the discussion informed and to the point, I'm just going to shoot a couple of things down right now, and raise a few more:
1. Google is NOT doing something new and revolutionary, they are instead extending what is already a good idea and already extant. Sample chapters have been up on the 'net for years. The ability to search for millions of books in dozens of different libraries at once by particular keywords has existed in university libraries for at least a decade, if not longer. Project Gutenberg (sp?) has been digitizing out-of-print public domain books for years as well. Google is extending this general idea, but they did not invent it. And, if they are stopped by these lawsuits, it will NOT bring the world to a halt, damage authors or the publishing industry, damage readers, create some weird heirarchy of those who have information and those who don't, or anything of the sort (in fact, we already have an overload of information in modern society).
2. The argument that what was in the first draft of the U.S. Constitution is exactly what copyright should be is extremely flawed, both historically and logically. It is flawed logically because the argument revolves around the U.S. Constitution, which has little or nothing to do with international law and the Berne Convention (and the libraries in question have books by authors from around the world). It is historically flawed because the first draft of the U.S. Constitution was an 18th century document written by 18th century people for an 18th century world, and society, including the situation of authors, has changed since then. There's a good reason why Jeffersonian democracy hasn't existed since about the 1830s. Copyright may require some tweaking to function properly in this new age of the Internet, but regressing two centuries is not the answer at all.
3. The main issue here revolves around whether Google asked for permission from the copyright holders before scanning. And, both morally and legally speaking, they should have. And, the fact is that if they had asked first, they quite possibly would have had the publishers and authors bending over backwards to help, because it IS a good idea. However, the ends do not justify the means, and quite frankly, I don't think they ever have.
Now, those issues aside, there are some good issues to raise - how do you protect copyright in this digital world? At what point is something no longer fair use when you're dealing with credited electronic excerpts? How does copyright need to change in order to balance the needs and rights of the author with the needs and rights of the reader?
Thank you for posting that. I have a feeling it will be very interesting reading.
When it comes to my own work, I don't think I'm going to worry too much about somebody downloading it. I may as well worry about libraries if I do that. But, I will worry about somebody scanning in the text and passing it off as a legitimate copy. There are authors who died in poverty while illegal copies of their books were being sold like gangbusters in other countries, without them gaining so much as a cent for the work.
But, I will repeat the sentiment - I really wish somebody would shut the RIAA down already. Quite frankly, I think the amount of harm they are doing to those of us who actually want to see the issues involved dealt with properly is quite massive.
Well, the way I figure it, it's twofold.
First, and most important, it's measurable. Second, money being paid gives the illusion of legitimacy, and people who would not otherwise download or purchase (if we're talking about, say, a bootleg DVD).
But, mainly, when money changes hand, it's easier to quantify the damage.
It's an interesting point you raise (about the third scenario), but there are a couple of issues with it. First of all, providing a sample is often done by the publisher anyway (and quite a few are doing it now). Second, it requires somebody to commit, as Terry Pratchett once called it, an "anti-crime". I don't think I've ever seen or heard of anybody posting a sampler except through legitimate channels.
Hey, who knows though? Somebody might do it. And if it's properly credited and the chapter is short enough, it might even count under fair use too. However, I think it also might be about as likely as somebody committing a break-and-tidy-the-place-up.
"First you claim that you have no idea how many of those 1000 would sell. Then in the same paragraph claim that all 1000 would have sold if not downloaded."
To clarify the clarification, the scenario talks about copies that actually end up in the hands of a reader, not copies that may or may not end up in the hands of the reader. When I talk about 1,000 copies distributed through legitimate channels, I'm referring to 1,000 copies sold through legitimate channels, not 1,000 copies looking nice in a bookstore that may or may not be sold.
I apologize for being unclear in my clarification, and I hope that this clarification clarifies everything.
(Sorry, couldn't resist the play on words)
First of all, I really wish somebody would file a class-action suit against those RIAA nitwits and end it all once and for all. Really, this is not acceptable. The technology of the 21st century does bring up issues regarding intellectual rights, and I do believe that an appropriate balance will eventually be struck, but a bunch of people acting like thugs simply don't help matters.
Second, there seems to be a lot of confusion about how copyright infringement hurts authors and creators. It does hurt them, but not in the way that most people have posted here, and not in the way that the RIAA is contending. Here's how it works:
I'm an author (this is true). Now, let's say that Tor Books buys the manuscript that I've had on one of the editor's desks. At this point in time, I sign a contract with them. The contract states that Tor has exclusive rights to publish the book for a certain period of time, at which point the publication rights revert back to me. In return, Tor will give me an advance on royalties, and a royalty for each copy they sell.
So, the book goes into print. Now, let's say that somebody with far too much time on their hands and a piratical disposition scans the entire novel into their computer and uploads it onto their site for people to download. And let's say that 1,000 people download it (it's a nice round number). Well, those people may or may not have bought the book on their own if it wasn't available for download - they may or may not buy the book because of the download. But, the fact remains that there are now 1,000 unsanctioned copies floating around. Odds are that the lion's share of the people who downloaded won't actually buy the thing (hell, they might not even finish reading it). But, those 1,000 copies (and we're only talking about the electronic copies here), had they been distributed through legimate channels, would have generated royalties for the author, making it easier for me to buy food and keep a roof over my head, and making it easier for me to write my next book.
The size of the damage is very difficult to estimate, simply because no money is actually changing hands. Yes, people who would have bought the book won't now that they have a free copy. But, other people who might not have bought the book otherwise might just use the download as a sample, and decide that they really want the book on their shelf. Well, some damage is probably done - but it's also probably fairly minimal. Until somebody actually does some solid academic research into the numbers, nobody will be able to tell. And, to make matters even more cloudy, not that many people actually have the technological know-how to download the thing anyway - the majority of readers will just go to the bookstore. That's a similar situation to what the RIAA is looking at.
Now, let's change the scenario a bit. The book comes out, and somebody with a piratical disposition scans the book into his computer, and then posts it on the Internet. But, this time, he charges $3.00 per download. And let's say that there are 1,000 copies downloaded. So now you've got money changing hands, just like a book sale. And, not only is the publisher that I actually gave the rights to print the book being cut out of the deal (and basically being competed against using its own product), no royalties are coming my way for any of these books that are sold. THAT is where the serious damage is done, and from the news I've read, it's done by criminal organizations and groups in third world countries.
Now, who is actually the pirate here? Well, it's not the people who downloaded, truth be told, even if they paid for it. It's unfortunate that they aren't downloading/buying a legitimate copy, but that also raises the question of how they can tell if a copy is legitimate or not. Let's face it - most people don't have that great an understanding of the Berne Convention, and if a copyright notice appears somewhere, they might assume that it is legitimate, even if there are signs it
This reminds me of something I read a long time ago about an experiment by the American army in World War II (can't for the life of me track it down now, though). At one point, the Americans tried to save lives by making these little tanks, about half a foot tall or so. The idea was that the tanks would have a small, gas powered engine, would drive up to the Germans, and either explode or shoot at them with this little gun.
It didn't actually work, but I do remember vividly pictures of some very amused Germans standing beside this little tank, which they apparently thought was quite cute...
(Can anybody track this one down?)
"Copyright guarentees as monopoly on your product. If I want to buy the latest white-stripes album I can only buy it from one label: V2 Records."
It's a bit more complicated than that. Copyright doesn't give you a monopoly on your product. If you want to call songs, movies, and books a product, when you hold the publication rights to that product (who owns the copyright itself depends on the industry), you are the only person who can publish that product. But it's not a monopoly, because in the artistic world there are a lot of other people who are creating a very similar product, and your rights to distribute the music of, say, Heavy Metal Band A has absolutely no bearing on what Heavy Metal Band B is doing with another label.
Now, if you had the power to declare that heavy metal band A is the ONLY heavy metal allowed in the market, THEN you've got a monopoly.
You know, if the Interlibrary loan system of the university libraries and Project Gutenberg hadn't gotten there first, you might have had a point. Unfortunately, they did, and you don't.
First of all, I never said it was a bad idea. However, and I must stress this - THE ENDS DO NOT JUSTIFY THE MEANS. That is an ethical issue, and I honestly wish that ethics were taught in school outside of limited philosophy courses. There'd probably be a lot less of this silliness.
Second of all, contacting the authors is possible, as publishers are required under most contracts to provide them with regular information on sales figures, and royalties, if any are due. You are showing very little knowledge of publishing.
Third of all, those three "hacks" who launched the suit happen to include one award winning author and a former Poet Laureate of the United States. They are standing up for their rights. Amazing how when you're in the middle of stomping on somebody's rights it is terribly unjust for them to speak up, but God help anybody who steps on your rights.
Finally, do me a favour and never buy one of my books. I don't think I could stand the thought that I might get royalty money from somebody who considers me a worthless hack, and any actions on my part to ensure that I'm treated fairly as disgraceful. I only hope that one day you meet somebody who treats your rights the way you propose to treat mine, so that you can finally understand how it feels.
Wow.
I don't think I've ever seen a comment quite like this. Authors actually standing up for their rights and demanding to be asked first is being compared to the slaughter of millions, at least from what I could understand of it. I'm still trying to figure out what "Let them know you are not going to buy read or acknowledge their existance because they have contributed the smallest drop of knowledge to humanity so I don't think we will miss them" is supposed to mean.
Honestly, look around you, and for God's sake, learn some grammar skills. We live in a society that is innundated with information. Requiring that Google actually ask the author of a work before scanning that work into their database doesn't deprive anybody of anything that isn't already available, albeit in less comprehensive form. In fact, Google's database will be considerably SMALLER than the database that university libraries already have access to (from one university library, you can look up and borrow books from any other - that's access to HUNDREDS of millions of books). Claiming that authors protecting their rights is "holding the world's knowledge hostage" is rather like claiming that you don't have enough saltwater while stranded in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Google has committed a massive faux pas. That is what has happened here. What saddens me is that it is a worthy project, but they may have lost the goodwill of the very people who they needed to make it work, and who would have probably bent over backwards to help it if they had just been asked first. And, instead of admitting the mistake like a responsible adult, apologizing, and asking permission, Google is fighting it, and claiming that authors are standing in the way of progress. I don't know about my fellow authors, but I do know that if Google approached me about one of my future books (the two books I have out were works for hire), explained the project, and asked permission, not only would I probably say yes right away, but I would provide them with a preferred text for their database, saving them the time and effort of scanning it in. And you know what? Most of the authors I know are the sort of people who would probably do something similar.
But, you have to ask first, not just take. I just hope Google wises up soon, because with the support of the authors, their project could really soar.
Oh, and by the way, I have family who suffered during the Holocaust. Claiming that a copyright case is even close to that is not only ignorant, it's insulting to the victims who died in the horrors that are true crimes against humanity.
I am not a member of the Author's Guild, but I do support their actions in this case, and I think that some of your points should be answered. You have raised an interesting argument, but I'm afraid that you are misinformed in quite a few places.
First, Google's "Library" program is not a bold move to make information searchable. When I started my first degree in 1995, from my own university library I could search for books by keyword from any university library on the continent, and borrow them through inter-library loan. Google's program would be a bit more comprehensive, but it is still more of the same. As for making older books available, the Gutenberg Project was the pioneer, not Google. Google is basically doing something similar, but with more money, and less tactfully.
Second, the library system doesn't quite work as you seem to believe it works. Libraries loan books out, but they do not publish them or distribute them. The closest they come is to sell off some of their older copies. And, when you take out a book from a library, a small royalty is paid to the author. There is a large line between loaning a book out and making hundreds of photocopies of that book without permission, and libraries do not cross it, although you are suggesting in this letter that they do.
Third, you are using technology issues to obscure the actual issue. The fact that Google is a profit making company is irrelevant to the complaint. The size of the database is irrelevant to the complaint. The complaint revolves around the fact that before copying material still in copyright, Google did not ask for permission. Besides being a matter of common courtesy, it would have been a simple matter to send a form letter explaining the project, and so long as the terms are not unreasonable, most of the authors I know, including myself, would actually support such a thing. However, as a matter of principle, you have to ask first.
Fourth, you are suggesting that authors and publishers are in some conspiracy to hide books from the general public. Besides being completely illogical (it would require that publishers deliberately shoot themselves in the foot sales-wise), it is also quite silly. Why would anybody want to create a society like this, particularly when all it would do is limit markets and create injustice? Most books are not state secrets. Sometimes a suit for copyright infringement is just a suit for copyright infringement.
Finally, and related to this odd conspiracy theory, you have conveniently forgotten that artists, musicians, and writers are often the most socially active people around. Harlan Ellison marched in the Civil Rights march around Alabama in the late '60s. A number of well known writers drove ambulances in World War II. The first thing any tyranny does once it takes control, from Stalin to Hitler, is put controls on the artistic professions. Quite frankly, your letter is a slap in all of our collective faces. We've fought against injustice around the world, and some of us have even been imprisoned, forced to flee our homes, or murdered for it. Our writing helps drive social progress. Many of us use our pens to stand up for YOUR rights, but what happens when we stand up for ours? We get accused of holding the world back, and in your letter, being part of some conspiracy to create what amounts to a tyranny. Perhaps you should actually read the Berne Convention, and try to understand just what rights we claim. You'll find that they are quite reasonable.
But regardless of this slap in the face, we will continue to fight against injustice with our pens. We will continue to drive society forward. We will continue to fight for YOUR rights in the best ways we know how. All we ask is that when we shed our metaphorical blood, sweat, and tears on your behalf, that you respect us for it, and respect our wishes regarding what we create. And if you can't give us that, I only have two words to say to you.
The second is "you". The first begins with "F". I think you can figure it out on your own.
Pal, no offense, but you've really got to read some books on social history. Yes, that's the first US copyright law. But it's an 18th century copyright law, based on 18th century morals and society, not a 21st copyright law based on 21st century morals and society. Even though it isn't strictly speaking fully a social history book, I'd recommend the first few chapters of Battle Cry for Freedom by James McPherson to a get a sense of the social forces shaping society between the 1840s and the Civil War, and how Jeffersonian Democracy became obsolete.
If you want to talk original morals, all the blacks in the US are covered under property rights and considered subhuman, and all of the women are brainless dolls who shouldn't be forced to work their minds, because they can't take that, and it's unreasonable to force it on them. There's a reason the United States doesn't have Jeffersonian Democracy anymore - for its day it was revolutionary, but from the perspective of the here and now it would be worse than Apartheid.
Seriously, get some historical perspective on what's happened in society over the last 220 years, and start looking to the future rather than the past.
I honestly wouldn't say that it would count as a dumb idea, because the basic concept isn't too bad when it comes down to it. The big problem is that the implementation is just piss-poor right now.
As somebody already pointed out, the concept of DRM can be used quite nicely for securing a computer against a possible attacker. The problem is that in a panic over what to do with this new "Internet" thing, a few publishers, most of the labels, and most of the film studios have gone to ridiculous lengths to try to protect intellectual rights with content.
The concept of protecting intellectual rights isn't a bad one. Speaking as an author, if somebody told me that some unseen force is going to dictate to me what I'm allowed to do with anything I write, my first reaction would be to give them the finger and tell them where to stick it. If I want to sell the publication rights to a New York publisher, that's my decision. If I want to make it public domain and publish it on my website, that's my decision too. It's reasonable, and quite frankly moral, for my wishes regarding my work to be respected.
Unfortunately, there really isn't a good way to implement copyright protections in digital media yet. The United States came up with the DMCA, but that will probably change soon enough - it's one of those laws that will probably be a work in progress, written when the technology wasn't truly understood. All DRM essentially does when applied to content is dictate to the consumer what they can do with what they have just bought. It's like buying a lamp and then having the lampmaker tell you when you can turn it on.
Balancing it all is the big problem. The idea behind DRM with content is to protect the rights and wishes of the creator, but the only implentations of it right now do so by stripping away the rights of the consumer. I honestly think it would be a lot easier to just stick with the Berne Convention and trust the people who buy your work to be honest about what they do with it (and take reasonable, and I stress "reasonable", actions when you can prove they are not). I have a funny feeling the technology and its issues will sort themselves out given enough time.
There's a bit more to those things as well. I've always been amazed at how much history is shaped by human beings buggering up, rather than plans going smoothly.
In the case of Pearl Harbour, it was never meant by the Japanese to be a surprise attack. It was supposed to begin half an hour after the declaration of war was delivered to the United States. Unfortunately, the actual declaration was classified to a point where only the highest level diplomats could be allowed to decode and translate it - and they couldn't type. So, by the time the declaration of war was actually ready to be delivered, the attack had been going on for half an hour.
Then there's 9/11 - imagine what would have happened if the CIA and the FBI hadn't been in the middle of a proverbial pissing match at the time, and the information about the upcoming attack had been passed on. Actually, it gets even worse - there is a bit of legislation that actually forbids the FBI and the CIA from working closely with one another, to prevent the two from launching a coup (I don't remember under which President that was - I think it might have been Ford).
Gotta love human error, eh?
The problem is that it's very poorly implemented in most cases. In some cases, it's positively idiotic. Anybody remember the article about the software in Windows Vista checking to see if your monitor has DRM built into it, and downgrading media files if it doesn't?
I think the reason for this is that technology has a tendency of moving faster than human understanding of it. Copyright is a good idea - it boils down to a creative artist being able to decide how their work is to be distributed, and under what terms. That's all it really amounts to. It gives intellectual property a sort of protection that physical property enjoys.
However, we are living in a new world, and the Internet as used by the public is less than 15 years old (the 'Net itself is much older, but it was only made available to the public in 1992 or so). The best adaptation of the technology to the intellectual rights issues I've seen so far has come from the Open Source movement with the GPL. Even it probably has some ways to go.
DRM is right now an attempt to preserve copyright protections, which is something pretty vital. But it's also something very problematic with the new technology.
Let's use an original ebook as an example. It's a PDF file, but it's also somebody's blood, sweat, and tears, and is basically an electronic novel. Now, what needs to be protected? Well, you don't want somebody to buy the book, post it on their website, and sell it for a lower price, undercutting the publisher and depriving the author of royalties (assuming that it has been released through a publisher - there are those who self publish). And somebody can do that - after all it's a file, and disk space is the only limit to how many times it can be copied. That's basic piracy I've just described, and that's what you're trying to stop.
But how do you do that? Think for a moment about how a print book is treated. There are libraries, where you can borrow them and then return them. They can be loaned to friends. All of this is legimate use. The copying issue isn't as big as it would be with an electronic file, because if you do it the conventional way, at 5 cents per page, copying a novel becomes pretty expensive pretty quickly. Even scanning it into a computer takes a prohibitive amount of time. But with a file, all you have to do is press the copy button or download it. It takes almost no time, and no money.
So, you have to protect the rights of the author, but you also have to protect the rights of the reader. Let's say that the reader is replacing their computer - well, the file is going to have to be copied or moved. But it's the same physical operation on the disk that occurs in piracy. How do you get the file itself to distinguish between somebody copyign the file for very legitimate reasons and somebody who is about to do something illegal?
There aren't really any good answers to that question yet. It's at the point where any measures that protect the author do quite a lot towards tying the hands of the reader in unreasonable ways, but on the other hand leaving the file unprotected violates due diligence on the side of the publisher.
Given about ten more years, I think that DRM will evolve to the point where there is a resonable solution that protects the rights both of the creative artist and the user. But we're not there yet, and quite frankly, we're not even close. And until we are, DRM is a pretty bad thing all round.
Is this some new way of killing a server? Suicide by Slashdot?
I guess it would be a bit like suicide by cop...
And, as always, it comes back to this. Somebody with a bit of knowledge of history brings out this argument that if the founding fathers intended it, it must therefore be right. A good 18th century argument.
Unfortunately for you, it's the 21st century. The Jeffersonian democracy created in the Constitution hasn't existed since before the Civil War - something more modern took its place.
Have you ever actually taken a close look at what Jeffersonian democracy was like? Why don't we do that? Well, first of all, right at the beginning, all men are created equal.
Oh, are you black by chance? Because if you are, under Jeffersonian democracy, you're not a man. You're a subrace. If you're lucky, you might have been able to join one of the communities of free blacks in the north or one of the smaller communities in the south. But, as a subrace, you're not really human, and if you're a slave, well, the right to own you is guaranteed under the Constitution - property rights, and all that lot.
It's not quite as bad if you're Asian, but it's pretty close. You're still a subrace, not really human at all. Oh, and if you're a woman, you're a porceline doll. You see, the MEN get to vote, and take part in running the country. Women are cut out, but that's okay. Everybody knows that women don't have the mental capacity to understand large issues, much less make important decisions. Better keep them out of the process entirely.
Isn't all that equitable, is it? In fact, by today's standards, that sort of democracy is positively oppressive. But, for the 18th century, it was absolutely revolutionary. Imagine a government that is responsible not to the monarch, but to the people! Imagine a place where every citizen (not counting those pesky women and subraces) has rights! Imagine a place where your status in society is based on MERIT, not birth!
For the 18th century, it was a huge, revolutionary step. The founding fathers meant well - they wanted to make things better. But they were also 18th century people. The Constitution was amended and new laws were passed because the world changed, and as far as one's rights go, got better. The United States stopped looking at different races as being genetically inferior, and women got the vote.
And for copyright, that changed too. When the Constitution was written, what might have been considered copyright of the day protected publishers, not authors. The idea of actually conceding that an author could control what they wrote, and that their wishes were worth respecting honestly didn't exist at that point (and for that matter, it wasn't until the 1950s or so that the United States really started acknowledging international copyrights, and it still hasn't signed the Berne Convention). It was a much needed step, but it was only a first step in the right direction. There were more improvements that were to be made. As society progressed, the needs of society changed, and the laws changed with it.
What you are saying is that we need to regress in this matter - to take back all of the progress and social change that has happened in the last 250 years or so. That argument doesn't fly. It does, however, bear a remarkable resemblence to an excuse to allow you to do whatever you want and whatever is convenient to you, without regard to how it will affect others.
The Internet is relatively new technology, and it brings new issues to the fore. However, the key to coming to grips with these issues is to move forward, not regress backwards. The DMCA is a first attempt at that. It has its flaws, but as we as a society come to grips with the issues, it will be replaced with something more suitable.
You accused me of holding my hands over my ears and shouting opposing arguments out. Seems to me that you're the one guilty of that, not me. You're the one who is looking 250 years backwards, instead of looking to the future. You're the one who has twisted my arguments, not the other way around.
It was a bit more than that. You see, when Diablo came out, multiplayer gaming had been around for quite a while (around twenty years, in fact), and people who were playing multiplayer CRPGs were playing them on services like Compuserve - where you dialed directly into the server itself.
The Internet was released to the public around 1992/3, and the first thing that companies like Compuserve did was ignore it. Sad but true. It took the small ISPs making money hand over fist to actually make the larger servers take note and offer online access. So, when Diablo was released, the Internet was just coming into the public consciousness in a way.
Now, gaming companies had caught on around 1993 or 1994 that the Internet could be a good place to plant a game. However, nobody had tried it yet outside of a couple of MUDs, and those were very small scale. Origin was working on Ultima Online, and Verant started working on EverQuest a bit later, but nobody really knew how the games would be received.
With Diablo, Blizzard launched Battle.net, which was based on the Internet, and thousands upon thousands of people clamoured on and played. Diablo, put simply, was the test case that showed that Internet RPG gaming would work on the scale that would make a massively multiplayer effort worthwhile.
And that's why it's so important, and one of the reasons everybody keeps coming back to it, I think.
I hadn't read that - it really is an interesting article.
You notice, though, that he alludes to something that really does need to be expressed directly. Specifically, that people who download are not the serious pirates.
Quite frankly, he's right - it amounts to a sort of online radio for the people who are downloading. Amazon.com has a similar idea. When they sell a CD, you can listen to a 30 second sample of several of the tracks. Samples tend to be a very good idea, and can help with exposure.
The people who are the problem, and the people who are the real pirates, are the ones who are uploading, and the ones who encourage them. That's why Napster go hit so hard - it wasn't that the technology was for filesharing, it was that they were encouraging people to illegally upload music. It's one thing for a publisher to make a song or demo available, but quite another for somebody to upload the entire game/album/movie.
That's why it drives me crazy when the RIAA brags about how it caught some kid downloading. Ask yourself this - how many of us traded illegal copies of computer games between our friends when we were kids, but grew out of it? Hell, I did it, and I grew out of it by the age of 16. They're not the ones to worry about - the ones who are uploading the files and making phony CDs to sell are.
Maybe you should try actually looking at the books, rather than just reading the titles. The Diablo book launched the entire Blizzard fiction line with a dark fantasy story that made liberal use of a part of the world that nobody had developed. The EverQuest book was a heavily researched non-fiction book about the history of the game, the community around it, and the social issues.
And fanfiction may be a very good training ground, but it is a training ground. You're right - there are people who will write Diablo stories for free, whereas I wrote a single novella for money (while trying to sell an original novel). But my novella was a hell of a lot better written than most of the fanfic out there - that's why I warranted getting paid. And as for non-fiction, I've got over 200 professional publication credits now.
And by the way, in his day, Shakespeare was considered something of a hack. The person who was the great playwrite in Shakespeare's day was Christopher Marlow.
Nice examples, but I'm afraid they don't fit the challenge.
Example number one, the remixing, occupies a similar IP space as fanfiction. You're not taking a theme you hear elsewhere and creating a unique and original theme inspired by it - you're taking somebody's theme and playing with it directly. In software terms, that's like taking the MS Office source code and directly reworking it without permission. Sorry, but that doesn't stifle innovation - that forces people to come up with their own music rather than ripping off somebody else's, and therefore enforces innovation.
Example number two, the Internet radio stations, again, doesn't stifle innovation. It's not preventing the people from expanding the technology - it's requiring them to actually pay for their content. Unfortunately, it looks like it's another case of the RIAA abusing copyright law (and we're talking about legitimate usage of the law here, not the abuses of it), but in and of itself it's not stifling innovation.
Example number three isn't a case of stifling innovation either. Bittorrent itself can be used to pirate IP, but it can just as often be used for legimate purposes, and often is. What happened is that Bram Cohen wrote a manifesto in 1999 stating that he specifically wrote programs to break the law, and after that manifesto was discovered, it has been reflected onto Bittorrent, which was developed two years later. It's the case of somebody putting their foot into their mouth and it coming back to haunt them, not copyright law being bad.
Example number four is the closest you come, but it still doesn't make the cut. It's a case of researchers being uncertain as to the application of a new law - but that happens more often than you'd think. I was working in social housing, writing policy among other things, when the new Canadian privacy legislation (PIPEDA) was brought into force. Everybody I talked to figured that it would take around five years to learn what was required by the act, and to modify policy accordingly. When I left to go after my second degree, they were still working out what it all meant. It doesn't mean that the research hasn't been done, it doesn't mean that the research can't be done (in fact, the article quotes a section of the DMCA that specifically allows that sort of research) - it just means that the terms under which it can be done are still in the process of being understood.
I think one of the problems here is that people are confusing legimate use of a law with abuse of a law. The RIAA abuses copyright law like a bunch of bandits, in my opinion. If I have to fight a legitimate battle, I think they'd probably hurt my case in the end just because of the tactics they use. Copyright law does NOT allow a corporation to create phony warrants and seize a store's merchandise (and I still can't believe that the RIAA wasn't hit with criminal charges for that). For that matter, strictly speaking, I don't even think that an infringement lawsuit can be made to stick against somebody for downloading music (uploading or broadcasting music, certainly, but downloading, quite possibly not).
So, sorry, your examples don't work.
That one may be close, but no cigar I'm afraid. First of all, characters like Cinderella are public domain, and have been used in productions such as "Into the Woods" without reprecussions as far as I know. So long as you don't use the Disney version word for word (and the original one published by the Brothers Grimm is very much removed from that), you're fine.
Second, you haven't actually proven a stifling of innovation. The animators you mentioned may be not be able to use Mickey Mouse, but that just means that they have to create their own character. That's actually forcing innovation.
You do have a very good point regarding Rudyard Kipling, though, and indeed, there are quite a few cases where foreign copyrights were not respected across the international border, particularly in the United States up to about 1960 (the bootleg edition of Lord of the Rings by Ace, for example).
You want to present an opposing viewpoint, fine, but I'm afraid you've just misrepresented my book rather badly. In fact, even just looking it up on Amazon.com would have told you that it isn't a strategy guide.
It is, however, one of the few books that traces MMORPGs to their roots in the 1960s. It is the ONLY place in print where the real story of the suicide of Shawn Woolley is covered (and I am very grateful to his mother for checking the chapter to make certain that I had the chain of events right).
And, in fact, all of my sources are credited in the bibliography, and those who contributed some material were compensated.
Perhaps the statement is a logical fallacy when it comes down to it, but my experience has been that most people who go through the trial by fire to become bona fide authors are pretty firm when it comes to intellectual rights. In fact, I don't think I've met a single pro author who isn't. For that matter, part of being a professional author is understanding that you make your living through your royalties, and it is therefore very important to protect them.
It is an odd world, but it is true. You can be a successful writer without great talent, but you can't be one without business saavy. No noble patrons out there anymore to help us along the way.
I am so sick of this argument, it makes me see red.
Give me just ONE example of where COPYRIGHT (NOT trademarks, and NOT patents) prevents innovation. Just one. In fact, I'll settle for a conceptual model. You see, I've heard this argument again and again, and I've never seen anybody actually manage to justify that statement about copyright stifling innovation.
In fact, it's COPYRIGHT that protects the open source movement from being downright raped by corporations like Microsoft! For that matter, do you even know what copyright is? Do you know what you can and can't copyright?
Don't bother to reply unless you can actually put your money where your mouth is. Either provide some concrete evidence, or can it!
(And by the way, you may be a software author, but the general term of "author" is earned when you publish your first book.)