"Nope, not very. There is an interesting story on Ars about the rise and fall and rise again [arstechnica.com] of eBooks."
The Ars Technica article doesn't really get it right, though. I was there for the beginning of the first e-book "revolution," and while it is interesting to read what was going on at PeanutPress, that article doesn't cast the net far enough back.
Publishers did look into the e-book quite a bit, but the big experiment, if you want to call it that, wasn't in 2002 - it was in 2000-2001. During that time, Pocket Books, along with a couple of other publishers, started up e-book pilot programs, trying to figure out what the best way to make this new format work actually was. Everybody else watched them very carefully.
Put bluntly, the e-books tanked (I know - mine was supposed to be one of the major ones). Even Stephen King tried to make it work with his own test project, and he failed. By 2002, the time this article starts, the experiment was pretty much over, and the e-book had been more or less written off as a waste of time until the technology had matured.
So, around 2002, PeanutPress was fighting an uphill struggle - they were trying to convince publishers to support a format that had already been tested and found wanting.
"Now, the logical position is to remain on the fence while doing whatever we can to mitigate risk without creating an excessive socioeconomic burden. Pity no one actually wants to do that."
Amen to that. It drives me crazy too.
Here's an idea. Let's get all the extremists, give them giant Q-tips, toss them into an arena, and have them fight it out. If we sell the tickets at $19.95 a pop, we could make a fortune...
"OOC, why is it you continue to parrot McKitrick's opinions as though they're gospel, while flat out ignoring anyone else? It's classic cherrypicking, and I'm surprised you don't see that. I mean, jebus, big shocker, McKitrick likes the (highly politicized, heavily criticized, non-peer-reviewed) report that vindicates his results. Surprise surprise!
Got a third-party, actually independent source? (BTW, I strongly suspect the answer to that is 'no')."
Besides Wegman, and perhaps a couple of solar activity scientists, no. But then again, finding an independent source on this matter is tricky in any event. One of the things Wegman commented on was that Mann was central to a lot of the work done on this matter, and most of the articles published regarding the "hockey stick" were co-written with Mann or a member of his team.
Come to think of it, it seems to me that the divide is between Mann and his team and MM. I have little doubt that there are many articles discussing and debating this - I know there was a series called "The Deniers" that dealt with this, and listed a number of people. There was also a very famous public letter by something like 500 scientists arguing against the current state of climatology. But you asked me a question, and a worthy one - why do I trust McKitrick, and not Mann? I am prepared to answer that.
My training is as a historian, and I've never really left that focus. I have a degree in Medieval Studies, a degree in English Literature, and right now I'm working on a Master of Arts in War Studies, studying cavalry in the First World War. So, I tend to look at things through what is called "abductive reasoning" - I collect as much evidence as possible before coming to a conclusion, and I put off theorizing as late as possible.
One of the things is that historical research tends to have biases, and so part of my training is getting beyond those biases. So, part of whether I trust a source or not is not based on the conclusion that they come to, but how they handle the evidence that leads them to this conclusion, as well as how they discuss the implications - and handle criticism - of that conclusion.
To cut a long story short (I know - too late), McIntyre and McKitrick impressed me on all counts, and I found their work - as far as I understand it - to be logical and well reasoned. They also exposed what I consider serious flaws in the way Mann and his team operated - including cutting out evidence and cherry picking data. I can't begin to understand most of the math on either side, but MM made their case in a convincing way.
Mann has impressed me considerably less. As I said, the cutting out of the Medieval Warm Period by censoring the data is a very poor methodology, but I also pay attention to how they handle challenges to their theories. Reading the Realclimate explanation of how CO2 levels can instigate a temperature rise while they actually rise after the temperature goes up left me bemused as Realclimate twisted itself into a pretzel to try to discount it. Compare that to a researcher in Scotland named Chris Merchant who put together a wonderful presentation where he provided a counter-argument to "The Great Global Warming Swindle" ( http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/homes/chris ) - he came across as a credible scientist, not an extremist, and most important of all, he didn't twist himself into a pretzel to make his point.
Now, I have accused Mann of being an academic fraud, and I stand by that. I don't think he represents the sum total of climatologists - I think Chris Merchant is far more representative - but I look at what I've seen of Mann and his team, and I am very far from impressed. He made a case based on cherry picked data from sources that lowered the temperature of the Medieval Warm Period and raised the modern temperature, and even his model may be suspect. It is the cherry picking of data and trying to remove the Medieval Warm Period that makes me level the accusation of h
"Run? He's one of twelve different contributors. Here's what they had to say about Wegman's analysis [realclimate.org], by the way. I'll just post the most important parts here:"
Why don't you try actually reading some material on Wegman and his analysis, rather than just parroting Mann and his cronies.
1. There were two congressional panels, not one. The one done by the statistics experts that upheld MM's findings was headed by Edward Wegman - its report can be found here: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/WegmanReport.pdf
From what I understand, you have to read this one carefully - apparently the report and the media spin are in opposition. An op-ed discussing this can be found here: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/NAS.op-ed.pdf
Now, you talk about the "denialists" (which isn't a real word - trust me on this, I write and edit for a living - the word you want is "deniers"...a "denialist" would be somebody who studies or specializes in denial) as though they are either a conspiracy nut or part of a conspiracy themselves. It's not the case with scientists in the field - why would it be the case with commentators inside and outside of it?
For example, I'm a writer, editor, publisher, and grad student. I got into this as an interested party with a critical mind, and the more I looked at the field, the less it made sense. The more I looked at both sides, the more I saw the deniers using critical thinking and attacking the results and methodologies, and people like Mann and Al Gore launching character assassinations in response. One of these "refuted arguments" is the Medieval Warm Period being warmer than today, but the evidence is so overwhelming in favour of it that Mann put that data into a folder with the word "CENSORED" in it for his own analysis. You can't disprove the existence of the Roman Empire in Europe by stating that the Mayans of the time didn't encounter Romans, but Mann attempted to do something similar with his own work.
Are all climatologists fraudsters? I very much doubt it. But Mann did commit what amounts to an academic fraud that changed his field, and in the process undermined a lot of the research in it and relating to it. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and in order to understand its relation to the greenhouse effect, accurate temperature over time measurements are necessary. But Mann skewed his data and created inaccurate temperature over time results - so any analysis based on that "hockey stick" is using inaccurate information, and is in error. This goes outside of the field - a lot of work is being done to determine the role of solar activity in climatology, but if a researcher is using Mann's results, he's not going to be able to make an accurate analysis.
The analysis from the entire field of climatology since Mann's "hockey stick" is now on very shaky ground, and a lot of work has to be redone before the data is trustworthy again. Mann has become a scientific superstar, but the damage that has been done to our understanding of climate is incredibly high.
You mean Realclimate, the website run by, um, Michael Mann...the man who created the "hockey stick" graph in the first place?
And, while McIntyre may not be a mathematician, Wegman was a professor of statistics, and his panel - which verified MM's findings - were also experts in statistics and statistical analysis. They were able to verify and reproduce MM's work, and not Mann's, and they were using Mann's data and methodologies.
Also, while McIntyre may not be a mathematician, Ross McKitrick, the other side of the MM team, is a professor of environmental economics - and economists spend a lot of time dealing with mathematical models.
Oh, I have a bias...never suggested otherwise. I do want to point a couple of things out:
1. It wasn't just MM disputing the "hockey stick" - a independent panel of statistics experts reporting to Congress examined it, Mann's work, and found that MM were the ones in the right.
2. The "hockey stick" was found to be the result of faulty mathematics...by people who specialize in mathematics. That makes them experts in their fields.
3. If Mann is so right, why doesn't his model stand up to scrutiny? Why did it CENSOR the data from the Medieval Warm Period? Why does it produce a "hockey stick" shape out of red noise around 99% of the time? Why does it rely on only one source for modern temperature figures, and that source itself is notoriously unreliable as a climate indicator?
Let me put it this way - Mann and company are hiding and misrepresenting data and methodologies, and asking us to just take their word for it. MM are pointing out there is a problem, making all of their work publicly available, and have received independent verification that their math is correct from experts in statistics and statistical analysis.
You might want to look at the source there. Realclimate is a website operated by Michael Mann, who created the "hockey stick" graph in the first place - and who also shocked the Wegman panel by citing his own papers as "independent verification."
"They get called deniers because that is exactly what they are: in the face of overwhelming evidence, they continue to deny, using logic that is identical to 9/11 wonks, moon hoax nutters and, yes, even Holocaust deniers."
And what about proven scientific fraud?
A couple of years ago, two Canadians named Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick (aka MM) decided to try to recreate the famous "Hockey Stick." As I recall, one was an economist, the other a mathematician - their work was just to reproduce the results Mann had published using Mann's own model and technique.
They couldn't do it.
In fact, they found two things:
First, Mann and his team had cherry picked their data. They took only the lowest samples from the Medieval Warm Period, and only the highest samples for the modern period. In the case of the former, quite a lot of data was collected and then withheld, data which placed the Medieval Warm Period as considerably hotter than today. This is the equivalent of a historian trying to erase the Roman Empire from history.
Second, Mann's model itself would generate a "hockey stick" out of any data that was fed into it. MM fed a number of samples that were actually random noise into the model, and every single one came out a hockey stick.
Once MM corrected the graph and collected more representative data, what they found was a Medieval Warm Period quite higher than temperatures today, followed by a dip in temperature, and a rise in temperature in the last few years, but NOT one that was out of the ordinary in terms of size or scale.
The paper in which this was published ( http://www.climateaudit.org/pdf/mcintyre.mckitrick.2003.pdf ) raised enough questions that in 2006 it was put before a committee led by a statistics professor named Edward Wegman, which performed an independent review of both Mann and his team's "hockey stick," as well as MM's work on debunking it. Not only did they find and report to Congress that the "hockey stick" could not be reproduced, but also that the entire paleoclimate field had become isolated and often unwilling to share important data, or clarify their methodologies - in some cases claiming that a bad methodology was fine because the answer was correct anyway. MM's work was upheld, and the "hockey stick" was debunked.
This is very far from "logic that is identical to 9/11 wonks, moon hoax nutters and, yes, even Holocaust deniers" - it is, however, a damning observation that the emperor is wearing no clothes.
"And last time I checked if you can access a site, you can access it. A site owner can no more say "you can only access this site if" any more than a book publisher can tell you you can't resell the book or rip off the cover (which publishers have tried to do)."
In point of fact, that's not how publishers work. What a publisher can, and sometimes will, do is state that if you want to return a book, you cannot rip off the cover, destroy the rest of the book, and return just the cover for a refund. In short, some publishers, like myself, will only honor refunds when the product is returned undamaged. You can rip off the cover all you like - but don't expect me to give you your money back for doing it.
"If you don't want your work seen, don't put it on the internet. It's up to the owner to decide what to post, NOT how I may or may not access it."
Within reason, they can. Some information or documents are confidential, and placed into a password-protected part of a site. That does not give you license to break into the site and look at it if the site owner doesn't want you to. Also, some sites restrict access to members or subscribers only - that's the website owner's decision, not yours.
The website owner cannot impose unreasonable restrictions on how you access the site's content, but s/he can impose reasonable ones.
Unfortunately, e-books aren't doing enough business to be worth it right now as anything other than free advertising.
Sorry, but the figures just came in for November 2008 from the Association of American Publishers - e-books brought in all of 0.69% of the book market.
Well, as the owner of a small publishing company, I can put in a couple of cents worth on this one...
The Internet can be very effectively used as a sort of radio for getting exposure for a book. When it comes to my company, the first 50 pages or so of each new release is made available as a free PDF and placed in a couple of spots where it can be freely shared - for public domain reprints, the entire book is made freely available online.
I do it this way for a couple of reasons (besides my company being brand-new and therefore having dick-all of an advertising budget). A large part of it is that people will download just about anything that catches their eye that is free, even if it is something they'll only ever glance at once and then forget it. This means that the average net surfer's "ferret brain," if you want to call it that, can be used for marketing purposes. That being said, most people do not want to read books on a computer or an e-book reader.
(If you don't believe me, check out the Association of American Publishers - they put out American domestic book sales figures, and they just released the figures for the month of November, 2008. The total net book sales were $743 million, with the e-book taking $5.1 million of that. This means that the e-book for November represented 0.69% of the total domestic American book market. Source: http://www.publishers.org/main/IndustryStats/IndStats/2008/Nov08stats.htm )
People tend to use computers and electronic readers for quick and easy consumption - hence the large number of newspapers that are being forced to expand online to survive. When it comes to books (which are not consumed quickly), as far as I can tell a reader will decide if they want to buy it within about 20 pages or so - so even 50 pages is more than strictly necessary for marketing purposes. Essentially, I go with whatever will get the reader far enough into the book that if they can get hooked, they will.
You don't ever want to act like you're holding something back unnecessarily, though. I do something different for the public domain reprints, as I said. The main reason is that those tend to be available off something like Project Gutenberg anyway, and holding back on the rest of the book can only make you look greedy - sort of a "who do you think you're kidding, publisher boy?" situation.
When it comes down to it, a free online sample on a file sharing service just can't hurt you. It doesn't take long to put together a PDF, and since people don't tend to consume full books online anyway, you don't have to worry about piracy taking away your sales in any great way - if somebody likes your book enough to read it all the way through, odds are they'll buy a paper copy so long as the price is reasonable. Aside from which, people who otherwise wouldn't have had your book cross their radar will now become aware of it, and that will raise your sales.
Sorry Bruce, but as somebody who runs a publishing company, and was an e-book author back in 2000 with what was at the time a high-profile e-book, I have to disagree with this statement: "Folks, dead-tree publishing is hardly the wave of the future." Dead-tree books are going to be the standard for the foreseeable future.
I've been tracking this for some time. While there is a downturn in book sales - which is hardly surprising, considering the economy - e-books are not making any serious headway in the market. The AAP (Association of American Publishers) recently published the statistics for domestic book sales in the United States for October 2008 (they track it on a monthly basis, and there is around a two-three month lag on results), and had the following numbers (all numbers are net sales):
Total book sales for the month: $644 million E-book sales for the month: $5.2 million Audiobook sales for the month: $18.4 million
E-book sales are about as high as I've ever seen them, but after eight years, they have only achieved 0.8% of the book market. Compare that to audiobooks, which are sitting at 2.9% of the book market.
Now, I'm not saying that the market hasn't shifted when it comes to computer reference books - indeed, I think your observations about how people are dealing with troubleshooting issues and computer reference materials are spot-on. It is far easier to google a specific problem than to buy a compendium for reference purposes. But, a shift there does not translate into a shift across the board, and at the rate e-book sales are climbing we are probably looking at around twenty to thirty years before they occupy any respectable share of the book market.
For that matter, considering the technical issues involved with e-books compared to the ease with which one can deal with a printed book, even if the e-book does manage to get 30% of the book market in about 30 years, I can't really see a way for it to supplant the printed book.
"You are not only wrong, you are also an idiot. 'Rights' have nothing to do with this and people who use the word 'rights' in discussions like this need their rights stripped away for improper use of the word to garner a reaction. While is great that you pay for your internet connection and you own your computer, I'd be willing to bet you think every website should give you service for free with nothing in return. I guess I don't have to bet, you certainly feel that way from your post."
I didn't read his post that way - in fact, he used the word "right" quite properly. And he does have the right to control his own property, including what goes onto his computer - that's basic property rights, written into the American Constitution at the very least.
I'm truly amazed by how many people think that the right to free speech includes the right to an audience. It never has. And that includes advertising too. You can advertise something all you like - you have that right - but nobody has an obligation to listen. And they have the right to tune it out, or block it, if they so choose. There is nothing arrogant or stupid about pointing that out - it's just the plain and simple truth.
(And by the way, there are plenty of ways for a website to support itself outside of advertising - an online store or a subscription service, or even a request for donations all come to mind.)
"Our culture is built upon the works of previous cultures and their intellectual works. To impose copyright and similar intellectual protection for generations would ultimately have the effect of tying up our current and future popular culture and make it impossible to build upon it in the same way that previous generations have."
You may not be a knee-jerk anti-IPer, but you're very far from understanding the basics of how copyright works. Copyright is already built so that it preserves the ability for creative artists to draw upon what has come before them. You cannot copyright an idea. You can only copyright the exact implementation of one.
The problem may be that you're drawing on Lessig here - and Lessig does not understand the difference between creativity and plagiarism, to put it bluntly. Modern copyright is designed to prevent plagiarism, but protect creativity. That's why a key clause in the Berne Convention reads "Translations, adaptations, arrangements of music and other alterations of a literary or artistic work shall be protected as original works without prejudice to the copyright in the original work." The term "without prejudice" here can be translated as "without loss or waiving rights," as far as I can tell. So, if story A is adapted into story B, story B is protected as an original work, but the author of story A does not lose any of the rights to story A as a result of story B being written.
What you are concerned about is the transmission and use of ideas, which is a right that is carefully protected in copyright law. Anybody is allowed to draw on and modify ideas - stopping somebody from using an idea requires that you prove actual plagiarism has occurred. For example, there was at one point a lawsuit between White Wolf and the producers of Underworld - White Wolf had to be able to prove that Underworld was a copy on a point-by-point basis. Essentially, they had to prove that no original thought had taken place.
So, in fact, people are still able to draw upon and build on the culture that has come before. What they aren't allowed to do is directly plagiarize it. And creativity doesn't work through plagiarization. It is an evolutionary process, where a previous idea comes in and goes out as something new. In fact, in general, if you give the exact same idea to two different writers and have them write a story, you'll get two very different stories.
So, the argument that the basic ideas creative artists need to be able to access to create and build on previous culture is being locked away by copyright doesn't really hold any water. In order for it to do so, copyright would have to work like patents, and happily, it doesn't.
"I still don't see anyone giving any good reason why these monopolies should be granted for such ridiculous amounts of time."
I'm not going to bother arguing with you on that - there are very good arguments out there, from ensuring that the work has a champion to improve its chances of survival to giving creative artists a legacy to leave to their descendants, but you strike me as one of the people here who are too interested in reinforcing their own sense of entitlement to actually listen to anything that contradicts your beliefs.
If I'm wrong about that, and I hope I am, and you are actually wanting to become more informed about the issue, you will want to read this paper published in a peer-reviewed law journal: http://llr.lls.edu/volumes/v36-issue1/martin-original1.pdf
(Ironically, he's writing more about the constitutional issues, but he still covers the arguments you're wanting to learn about quite well.)
"And why was Disney able to create its classics? Because those fairy tales weren't copyrighted, so Disney just did what they wanted with them, with no restrictions or payment needed. That doesn't hold true for practically anything created in the last 70 years or so."
You mean besides a large number of the works by Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft?
You're holding up basic math as the problem here. The term in the United States is now lifetime plus seventy years. Of course a lot of work will fall into that - but not all. Because of the way that copyright in the United States has lagged behind the rest of the world, the actual issue of what is in the public domain is far more complicated. Here is the actual chart that shows copyright terms:
I am going to point out a couple of things. First of all, not all of the work in the last century in the United States receives a term of lifetime + 70 years. In fact, only those works created after 1978 receive that term. For that matter, anything published between 1978 and March 1, 1989 without copyright notice or registration is now in the public domain in the United States.
Additionally, the longest copyright term for anything published from 1923-1977 is, in fact, 95 years from date of publication, and that's only if the copyright was renewed - and according to footnote 8, as of 1961 less than 15% of total works were, and less than 7% of books were. So, far from the whole of culture in the United States from 1923 onwards being locked away behind copyright law, odds are that 85% of cultural works between 1923 and 1963 at the very least are in the public domain right now, and 93% of books published by American authors in that time are now public domain.
So, the idea that nothing has entered the public domain in the last 70 years because of copyright term extensions is blatantly wrong. For that matter, the Sonny Bono extension act stripped a number of works that had previously enjoyed perpetual copyright due to a form of common law of their copyright protection, and placed them in the public domain.
So, before you make any more claims about how culture is being locked away, or how nothing in the last 70 years is entering the public domain, you might really want to do some basic research and get your facts right.
"The government shouldn't be handing out monopolies as it does now because they are not benefiting the public, but they are certainly restricting people from building upon the ideas that have come before."
That's a gross misunderstanding of how both copyright and creativity work. You cannot copyright an idea - in fact, it is very specifically written into the Berne Convention that only specific implementations of an idea can be copyrighted. Don't take my word for that, though - look it up yourself. You'll find it laid out in Article 2, with subsection 3 containing a statement protecting the rights of others to create derivative works: http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/berne/trtdocs_wo001.html#P85_10661
"Disney being the classic example of a company that made its fortune on the work of those who came before, and then proceeded to ensure that none would come after."
Disney may be very protective of its trademarks, but there are plenty of other adaptations of fairy tales out there. So that doesn't actually hold true.
One of the problems with the entire copyright debate is that there are a lot of misconceptions on a very basic level about how it works, and what it does. I'm just happy to have been able to give you some good information on it.
And most of all, don't take my word for any of this - go to the sources yourself, get as close as you can to the primary sources, and make up your own mind. There's plenty of material out there to find...
(I'd say watch out for Lessig, though - he's a good enough writer, but he tends to make some truly head-scratching leaps of logic - that's what's kept me from ever getting past the first chapter or two of Free Culture.)
This is my last post in this discussion - you can get the last word in if you want, but as far as I'm concerned you're one of those people who is in their own little bubble, and no amount of information will change your opinion - no confusing you with facts, I guess.
I think this sums up your argument to a "t":
"I'd love if it I the job I had in my twenties was still paying my great-great-great-grandchildren a portion of my salary. But it won't be, and my argument that "artists" shouldn't be granted a more beneficial position than me just because they're artists, remains the same."
So, because you don't have it, nobody else should. Everybody has to be at your level. But what makes your level right? Tell me, what do you produce? Do you produce anything people will care about acquiring ten years after the fact? What about twenty? Why should somebody who produces something that will generate ongoing sales for decades be forced to be at the level of somebody who doesn't?
Try this one on for size - perhaps the very few artists who don't have to keep day jobs and put away money just like everybody else (which, by the way, is what just about everybody in the creative arts community has to do anyway) get that position because they produce something that people do care about long after their death. And if somebody can do that, well, they should be allowed to rise as far as they are able.
Part of a free society is that people are free to do better than you are doing. If you don't like that, there are communist governments in Cuba and China that I'm sure would welcome you as a citizen, although China has been moving towards the free market for some time now.
So, all I have left to say to you is this - if you are so offended by people profiting from their work decades after they've completed it because you don't get to, perhaps you should get off your ass, change jobs, and produce something that people will actually care about buying decades after you produce it. There are plenty of ways to do that - you can start a business, you can become a creative artist in any number of fields, you can found and spearhead an independent programming project. Where do you think Red Hat Linux came from?
But quit whining and complaining about those who actually do produce something they can profit off of for the long term, because you don't. The only thing stopping you in this society from rising higher is yourself.
"Perhaps, then, you can offer some justification for the incredibly generous privileges that benefit those on the copyright gravy train?"
You mean like poverty and working your ass off for what eventually works out to less than minimum wage? In Canada, the average income of artists is less than $25,000 per year. In the United States, the average income for a creative artist is $34,800 per year (http://en.artron.net/news/news.php?newid=52152&column_id=61). If a writer is lucky, around his or her third or fourth book the money s/he receives will break through to equating to the minimum wage. Somebody like Stephen King is the vast exception - most creative artists struggle to keep a roof over their heads and food on their table. So, want to tell me why those generous privileges don't include a professional-level income?
"Perhaps you can explain why you deserve to continue receiving income in perpetuity from work you have already completed?"
That's a straw man argument. Creative artists DON'T have that right. They have the right to try to make money from their work for their lifetimes plus 50 or 70 years, depending on the country. "Try" is the operative word. Almost none succeed. For that matter, the average lifespan of a book tends to be less than 10 years.
Copyright is not a form of creative welfare. If you want to make money as a creative artist in your old age, you frequently get to keep working while everybody else has retired, or die in poverty. You'd better love the work you do, because you're doing it until the day you die.
Oh yes, by the way, there is something that does allow people to make money for the rest of their lives for work they've already done - it's called a pension. Most creative artists don't get those.
"Perhaps you can give a reason why your family (and their families, and likely their families' families) should receive compensation for work they didn't do?"
Perhaps you can justify inheritance law to me, then. After all, why should your children and grandchildren receive benefits after you've died for the work you've done? They didn't do that work. Or are you about to say that it's not the same thing because it's a book manuscript instead of a house?
"Maybe you can even explain how a system designed to still be paying your descendants 3-4 generations after you've died could possibly offer any incentive to work more ?"
Maybe you can learn how to count. Lifetime +50 to 70 is children and grandchildren. That's two - not three or four.
This may come as a shock to you, but knowing that I can leave my family a literary legacy when I die IS something that motivates me to make it the best legacy I can leave. People are concerned about what happens to their families after they're gone.
"The only people who need "re-education" are the ones who think they should be freeloading off the rest of society for 150 years."
As opposed to those who just want to freeload off of a segment of society while damning them for being greedy bastards even though they generally live in poverty?
First of all, if Steamboat Willie goes into the public domain, there are still decades of Mickey Mouse cartoons that are under copyright.
Second, if you try to use Mickey Mouse Disney might tack on copyright issues, but the suit they'll hit you with is the trademark suit. Aside from which, how would you use Mickey Mouse, a character so associated with Disney it is next only to the Disney castle, without causing brand confusion?
Believe me, Disney has nothing to fear from Steamboat Willie going out of copyright protection. They DO, however, have something to fear if Europe views the United States as being behind the times on copyright law - that impacts international trade and even their talent base.
And that, by the way, was the reason for the Sonny Bono law. European copyright was the major issue, not Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse was the issue that Lawrence Lessig latched onto, but what I've read in what few peer-reviewed law journals regarding the case suggests that Lessig was off his rocker and got defeated due to not arriving in court with a proper case. This article is long, but it is peer-reviewed, and it does cover the case, as well as why Lessig was defeated: http://llr.lls.edu/volumes/v36-issue1/martin-original1.pdf
"I'm curious to know if you apply that to patents as well as copyright. In some cases, talking about "intellectual property" can make the discussion easier but many time it obfuscates the issue. In my opinion if patents were granted for the length of you suggest the cost of technology would skyrocket and technological progress would slow to a crawl. Should we really have to pay for the use of ideas developed in the late 1800s/early 1900s? I don't think so. On the other hand I can see no real problem with trademarks being perpetual or for a very long time. I take it we are really talking about copyrights, not the more broad "intellectual property""
To answer your question, no, I don't consider it to apply to patents the same as copyrights. The copyright system has certain measures built-in to protect ideas from being monopolized - you can copyright the exact implementation of an idea, but the idea itself can be used and reused by whoever wants to. And that's very much how creativity works - ideas are drawn upon, and something new comes out.
Patents, though...I would actually say those are very badly broken.
As for your opinion on copyright terms, I must disagree, and I think that intellectual piracy had very little to do with American industrial power, but I'm not an expert on that part of American history. Second, I think you are undervaluing the impact of economics and the free market on availability of creative materials - it has far more impact than copyright terms do. But that's a different discussion, for a different time...
"Yeah right. Steamboat Willie will never go out of copyright as long as Congress keeps bowing to pressure from Disney. Who do you think is behind all those extensions, anyway?"
Harmonization with European copyright, actually. They went to life +70 first, and declared that they would consider copyrights to last the length of copyright in the original country - to avoid losing 20 years of protection, and to keep American IP competitive in the European market, the United States harmonized.
Slashdot Mirror
"Nope, not very. There is an interesting story on Ars about the rise and fall and rise again [arstechnica.com] of eBooks."
The Ars Technica article doesn't really get it right, though. I was there for the beginning of the first e-book "revolution," and while it is interesting to read what was going on at PeanutPress, that article doesn't cast the net far enough back.
Publishers did look into the e-book quite a bit, but the big experiment, if you want to call it that, wasn't in 2002 - it was in 2000-2001. During that time, Pocket Books, along with a couple of other publishers, started up e-book pilot programs, trying to figure out what the best way to make this new format work actually was. Everybody else watched them very carefully.
Put bluntly, the e-books tanked (I know - mine was supposed to be one of the major ones). Even Stephen King tried to make it work with his own test project, and he failed. By 2002, the time this article starts, the experiment was pretty much over, and the e-book had been more or less written off as a waste of time until the technology had matured.
So, around 2002, PeanutPress was fighting an uphill struggle - they were trying to convince publishers to support a format that had already been tested and found wanting.
"Now, the logical position is to remain on the fence while doing whatever we can to mitigate risk without creating an excessive socioeconomic burden. Pity no one actually wants to do that."
Amen to that. It drives me crazy too.
Here's an idea. Let's get all the extremists, give them giant Q-tips, toss them into an arena, and have them fight it out. If we sell the tickets at $19.95 a pop, we could make a fortune...
"OOC, why is it you continue to parrot McKitrick's opinions as though they're gospel, while flat out ignoring anyone else? It's classic cherrypicking, and I'm surprised you don't see that. I mean, jebus, big shocker, McKitrick likes the (highly politicized, heavily criticized, non-peer-reviewed) report that vindicates his results. Surprise surprise!
Got a third-party, actually independent source? (BTW, I strongly suspect the answer to that is 'no')."
Besides Wegman, and perhaps a couple of solar activity scientists, no. But then again, finding an independent source on this matter is tricky in any event. One of the things Wegman commented on was that Mann was central to a lot of the work done on this matter, and most of the articles published regarding the "hockey stick" were co-written with Mann or a member of his team.
Come to think of it, it seems to me that the divide is between Mann and his team and MM. I have little doubt that there are many articles discussing and debating this - I know there was a series called "The Deniers" that dealt with this, and listed a number of people. There was also a very famous public letter by something like 500 scientists arguing against the current state of climatology. But you asked me a question, and a worthy one - why do I trust McKitrick, and not Mann? I am prepared to answer that.
My training is as a historian, and I've never really left that focus. I have a degree in Medieval Studies, a degree in English Literature, and right now I'm working on a Master of Arts in War Studies, studying cavalry in the First World War. So, I tend to look at things through what is called "abductive reasoning" - I collect as much evidence as possible before coming to a conclusion, and I put off theorizing as late as possible.
One of the things is that historical research tends to have biases, and so part of my training is getting beyond those biases. So, part of whether I trust a source or not is not based on the conclusion that they come to, but how they handle the evidence that leads them to this conclusion, as well as how they discuss the implications - and handle criticism - of that conclusion.
To cut a long story short (I know - too late), McIntyre and McKitrick impressed me on all counts, and I found their work - as far as I understand it - to be logical and well reasoned. They also exposed what I consider serious flaws in the way Mann and his team operated - including cutting out evidence and cherry picking data. I can't begin to understand most of the math on either side, but MM made their case in a convincing way.
Mann has impressed me considerably less. As I said, the cutting out of the Medieval Warm Period by censoring the data is a very poor methodology, but I also pay attention to how they handle challenges to their theories. Reading the Realclimate explanation of how CO2 levels can instigate a temperature rise while they actually rise after the temperature goes up left me bemused as Realclimate twisted itself into a pretzel to try to discount it. Compare that to a researcher in Scotland named Chris Merchant who put together a wonderful presentation where he provided a counter-argument to "The Great Global Warming Swindle" ( http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/homes/chris ) - he came across as a credible scientist, not an extremist, and most important of all, he didn't twist himself into a pretzel to make his point.
Now, I have accused Mann of being an academic fraud, and I stand by that. I don't think he represents the sum total of climatologists - I think Chris Merchant is far more representative - but I look at what I've seen of Mann and his team, and I am very far from impressed. He made a case based on cherry picked data from sources that lowered the temperature of the Medieval Warm Period and raised the modern temperature, and even his model may be suspect. It is the cherry picking of data and trying to remove the Medieval Warm Period that makes me level the accusation of h
"Run? He's one of twelve different contributors. Here's what they had to say about Wegman's analysis [realclimate.org], by the way. I'll just post the most important parts here:"
Why don't you try actually reading some material on Wegman and his analysis, rather than just parroting Mann and his cronies.
The Wegman report: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/WegmanReport.pdf
If you read nothing else, I would suggest you read the Findings section on page 3.
Commentary on Wegman: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/WegmanOp-Ed.pdf
Ask and you shall receive:
1. There were two congressional panels, not one. The one done by the statistics experts that upheld MM's findings was headed by Edward Wegman - its report can be found here: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/WegmanReport.pdf
A commentary by McKitrick explaining the report can be found here: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/WegmanOp-Ed.pdf
2. The National Research Council report can be found here: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/NRCreport.pdf
From what I understand, you have to read this one carefully - apparently the report and the media spin are in opposition. An op-ed discussing this can be found here: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/NAS.op-ed.pdf
Documentation of the dishonest approach used to get the "hockey stick" into the IPCC report can be found here: http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html
Additionally, you will also find these links of interest:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?page_id=354
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/McKitrick-hockeystick.pdf
Now, you talk about the "denialists" (which isn't a real word - trust me on this, I write and edit for a living - the word you want is "deniers"...a "denialist" would be somebody who studies or specializes in denial) as though they are either a conspiracy nut or part of a conspiracy themselves. It's not the case with scientists in the field - why would it be the case with commentators inside and outside of it?
For example, I'm a writer, editor, publisher, and grad student. I got into this as an interested party with a critical mind, and the more I looked at the field, the less it made sense. The more I looked at both sides, the more I saw the deniers using critical thinking and attacking the results and methodologies, and people like Mann and Al Gore launching character assassinations in response. One of these "refuted arguments" is the Medieval Warm Period being warmer than today, but the evidence is so overwhelming in favour of it that Mann put that data into a folder with the word "CENSORED" in it for his own analysis. You can't disprove the existence of the Roman Empire in Europe by stating that the Mayans of the time didn't encounter Romans, but Mann attempted to do something similar with his own work.
Are all climatologists fraudsters? I very much doubt it. But Mann did commit what amounts to an academic fraud that changed his field, and in the process undermined a lot of the research in it and relating to it. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and in order to understand its relation to the greenhouse effect, accurate temperature over time measurements are necessary. But Mann skewed his data and created inaccurate temperature over time results - so any analysis based on that "hockey stick" is using inaccurate information, and is in error. This goes outside of the field - a lot of work is being done to determine the role of solar activity in climatology, but if a researcher is using Mann's results, he's not going to be able to make an accurate analysis.
The analysis from the entire field of climatology since Mann's "hockey stick" is now on very shaky ground, and a lot of work has to be redone before the data is trustworthy again. Mann has become a scientific superstar, but the damage that has been done to our understanding of climate is incredibly high.
You mean Realclimate, the website run by, um, Michael Mann...the man who created the "hockey stick" graph in the first place?
And, while McIntyre may not be a mathematician, Wegman was a professor of statistics, and his panel - which verified MM's findings - were also experts in statistics and statistical analysis. They were able to verify and reproduce MM's work, and not Mann's, and they were using Mann's data and methodologies.
Also, while McIntyre may not be a mathematician, Ross McKitrick, the other side of the MM team, is a professor of environmental economics - and economists spend a lot of time dealing with mathematical models.
Oh, I have a bias...never suggested otherwise. I do want to point a couple of things out:
1. It wasn't just MM disputing the "hockey stick" - a independent panel of statistics experts reporting to Congress examined it, Mann's work, and found that MM were the ones in the right.
2. The "hockey stick" was found to be the result of faulty mathematics...by people who specialize in mathematics. That makes them experts in their fields.
3. If Mann is so right, why doesn't his model stand up to scrutiny? Why did it CENSOR the data from the Medieval Warm Period? Why does it produce a "hockey stick" shape out of red noise around 99% of the time? Why does it rely on only one source for modern temperature figures, and that source itself is notoriously unreliable as a climate indicator?
Let me put it this way - Mann and company are hiding and misrepresenting data and methodologies, and asking us to just take their word for it. MM are pointing out there is a problem, making all of their work publicly available, and have received independent verification that their math is correct from experts in statistics and statistical analysis.
Who do you find more trustworthy?
You might want to look at the source there. Realclimate is a website operated by Michael Mann, who created the "hockey stick" graph in the first place - and who also shocked the Wegman panel by citing his own papers as "independent verification."
If you want some more detailed information on this, you should read this: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/McKitrick-hockeystick.pdf - it discusses the way MM found climatology circles to work, as well as discussing the censored data and why it's important.
"They get called deniers because that is exactly what they are: in the face of overwhelming evidence, they continue to deny, using logic that is identical to 9/11 wonks, moon hoax nutters and, yes, even Holocaust deniers."
And what about proven scientific fraud?
A couple of years ago, two Canadians named Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick (aka MM) decided to try to recreate the famous "Hockey Stick." As I recall, one was an economist, the other a mathematician - their work was just to reproduce the results Mann had published using Mann's own model and technique.
They couldn't do it.
In fact, they found two things:
First, Mann and his team had cherry picked their data. They took only the lowest samples from the Medieval Warm Period, and only the highest samples for the modern period. In the case of the former, quite a lot of data was collected and then withheld, data which placed the Medieval Warm Period as considerably hotter than today. This is the equivalent of a historian trying to erase the Roman Empire from history.
Second, Mann's model itself would generate a "hockey stick" out of any data that was fed into it. MM fed a number of samples that were actually random noise into the model, and every single one came out a hockey stick.
Once MM corrected the graph and collected more representative data, what they found was a Medieval Warm Period quite higher than temperatures today, followed by a dip in temperature, and a rise in temperature in the last few years, but NOT one that was out of the ordinary in terms of size or scale.
The paper in which this was published ( http://www.climateaudit.org/pdf/mcintyre.mckitrick.2003.pdf ) raised enough questions that in 2006 it was put before a committee led by a statistics professor named Edward Wegman, which performed an independent review of both Mann and his team's "hockey stick," as well as MM's work on debunking it. Not only did they find and report to Congress that the "hockey stick" could not be reproduced, but also that the entire paleoclimate field had become isolated and often unwilling to share important data, or clarify their methodologies - in some cases claiming that a bad methodology was fine because the answer was correct anyway. MM's work was upheld, and the "hockey stick" was debunked.
Sources so far:
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/WegmanOp-Ed.pdf
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/trc.html
http://www.climateaudit.org/?page_id=354
When it comes to the IPCC report, the committee broke its own rules to use Mann's "hockey stick." This is documented here: http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html
This is very far from "logic that is identical to 9/11 wonks, moon hoax nutters and, yes, even Holocaust deniers" - it is, however, a damning observation that the emperor is wearing no clothes.
"And last time I checked if you can access a site, you can access it. A site owner can no more say "you can only access this site if" any more than a book publisher can tell you you can't resell the book or rip off the cover (which publishers have tried to do)."
In point of fact, that's not how publishers work. What a publisher can, and sometimes will, do is state that if you want to return a book, you cannot rip off the cover, destroy the rest of the book, and return just the cover for a refund. In short, some publishers, like myself, will only honor refunds when the product is returned undamaged. You can rip off the cover all you like - but don't expect me to give you your money back for doing it.
"If you don't want your work seen, don't put it on the internet. It's up to the owner to decide what to post, NOT how I may or may not access it."
Within reason, they can. Some information or documents are confidential, and placed into a password-protected part of a site. That does not give you license to break into the site and look at it if the site owner doesn't want you to. Also, some sites restrict access to members or subscribers only - that's the website owner's decision, not yours.
The website owner cannot impose unreasonable restrictions on how you access the site's content, but s/he can impose reasonable ones.
Unfortunately, e-books aren't doing enough business to be worth it right now as anything other than free advertising.
Sorry, but the figures just came in for November 2008 from the Association of American Publishers - e-books brought in all of 0.69% of the book market.
(Source: http://www.publishers.org/main/IndustryStats/IndStats/2008/Nov08stats.htm )
Well, as the owner of a small publishing company, I can put in a couple of cents worth on this one...
The Internet can be very effectively used as a sort of radio for getting exposure for a book. When it comes to my company, the first 50 pages or so of each new release is made available as a free PDF and placed in a couple of spots where it can be freely shared - for public domain reprints, the entire book is made freely available online.
I do it this way for a couple of reasons (besides my company being brand-new and therefore having dick-all of an advertising budget). A large part of it is that people will download just about anything that catches their eye that is free, even if it is something they'll only ever glance at once and then forget it. This means that the average net surfer's "ferret brain," if you want to call it that, can be used for marketing purposes. That being said, most people do not want to read books on a computer or an e-book reader.
(If you don't believe me, check out the Association of American Publishers - they put out American domestic book sales figures, and they just released the figures for the month of November, 2008. The total net book sales were $743 million, with the e-book taking $5.1 million of that. This means that the e-book for November represented 0.69% of the total domestic American book market. Source: http://www.publishers.org/main/IndustryStats/IndStats/2008/Nov08stats.htm )
People tend to use computers and electronic readers for quick and easy consumption - hence the large number of newspapers that are being forced to expand online to survive. When it comes to books (which are not consumed quickly), as far as I can tell a reader will decide if they want to buy it within about 20 pages or so - so even 50 pages is more than strictly necessary for marketing purposes. Essentially, I go with whatever will get the reader far enough into the book that if they can get hooked, they will.
You don't ever want to act like you're holding something back unnecessarily, though. I do something different for the public domain reprints, as I said. The main reason is that those tend to be available off something like Project Gutenberg anyway, and holding back on the rest of the book can only make you look greedy - sort of a "who do you think you're kidding, publisher boy?" situation.
When it comes down to it, a free online sample on a file sharing service just can't hurt you. It doesn't take long to put together a PDF, and since people don't tend to consume full books online anyway, you don't have to worry about piracy taking away your sales in any great way - if somebody likes your book enough to read it all the way through, odds are they'll buy a paper copy so long as the price is reasonable. Aside from which, people who otherwise wouldn't have had your book cross their radar will now become aware of it, and that will raise your sales.
Sorry Bruce, but as somebody who runs a publishing company, and was an e-book author back in 2000 with what was at the time a high-profile e-book, I have to disagree with this statement: "Folks, dead-tree publishing is hardly the wave of the future." Dead-tree books are going to be the standard for the foreseeable future.
I've been tracking this for some time. While there is a downturn in book sales - which is hardly surprising, considering the economy - e-books are not making any serious headway in the market. The AAP (Association of American Publishers) recently published the statistics for domestic book sales in the United States for October 2008 (they track it on a monthly basis, and there is around a two-three month lag on results), and had the following numbers (all numbers are net sales):
Total book sales for the month: $644 million
E-book sales for the month: $5.2 million
Audiobook sales for the month: $18.4 million
(Source: http://www.publishers.org/main/PressCenter/Archicves/2008_December/StatsOct08.htm )
E-book sales are about as high as I've ever seen them, but after eight years, they have only achieved 0.8% of the book market. Compare that to audiobooks, which are sitting at 2.9% of the book market.
Now, I'm not saying that the market hasn't shifted when it comes to computer reference books - indeed, I think your observations about how people are dealing with troubleshooting issues and computer reference materials are spot-on. It is far easier to google a specific problem than to buy a compendium for reference purposes. But, a shift there does not translate into a shift across the board, and at the rate e-book sales are climbing we are probably looking at around twenty to thirty years before they occupy any respectable share of the book market.
For that matter, considering the technical issues involved with e-books compared to the ease with which one can deal with a printed book, even if the e-book does manage to get 30% of the book market in about 30 years, I can't really see a way for it to supplant the printed book.
"You are not only wrong, you are also an idiot. 'Rights' have nothing to do with this and people who use the word 'rights' in discussions like this need their rights stripped away for improper use of the word to garner a reaction. While is great that you pay for your internet connection and you own your computer, I'd be willing to bet you think every website should give you service for free with nothing in return. I guess I don't have to bet, you certainly feel that way from your post."
I didn't read his post that way - in fact, he used the word "right" quite properly. And he does have the right to control his own property, including what goes onto his computer - that's basic property rights, written into the American Constitution at the very least.
I'm truly amazed by how many people think that the right to free speech includes the right to an audience. It never has. And that includes advertising too. You can advertise something all you like - you have that right - but nobody has an obligation to listen. And they have the right to tune it out, or block it, if they so choose. There is nothing arrogant or stupid about pointing that out - it's just the plain and simple truth.
(And by the way, there are plenty of ways for a website to support itself outside of advertising - an online store or a subscription service, or even a request for donations all come to mind.)
"Our culture is built upon the works of previous cultures and their intellectual works. To impose copyright and similar intellectual protection for generations would ultimately have the effect of tying up our current and future popular culture and make it impossible to build upon it in the same way that previous generations have."
You may not be a knee-jerk anti-IPer, but you're very far from understanding the basics of how copyright works. Copyright is already built so that it preserves the ability for creative artists to draw upon what has come before them. You cannot copyright an idea. You can only copyright the exact implementation of one.
The problem may be that you're drawing on Lessig here - and Lessig does not understand the difference between creativity and plagiarism, to put it bluntly. Modern copyright is designed to prevent plagiarism, but protect creativity. That's why a key clause in the Berne Convention reads "Translations, adaptations, arrangements of music and other alterations of a literary or artistic work shall be protected as original works without prejudice to the copyright in the original work." The term "without prejudice" here can be translated as "without loss or waiving rights," as far as I can tell. So, if story A is adapted into story B, story B is protected as an original work, but the author of story A does not lose any of the rights to story A as a result of story B being written.
What you are concerned about is the transmission and use of ideas, which is a right that is carefully protected in copyright law. Anybody is allowed to draw on and modify ideas - stopping somebody from using an idea requires that you prove actual plagiarism has occurred. For example, there was at one point a lawsuit between White Wolf and the producers of Underworld - White Wolf had to be able to prove that Underworld was a copy on a point-by-point basis. Essentially, they had to prove that no original thought had taken place.
So, in fact, people are still able to draw upon and build on the culture that has come before. What they aren't allowed to do is directly plagiarize it. And creativity doesn't work through plagiarization. It is an evolutionary process, where a previous idea comes in and goes out as something new. In fact, in general, if you give the exact same idea to two different writers and have them write a story, you'll get two very different stories.
So, the argument that the basic ideas creative artists need to be able to access to create and build on previous culture is being locked away by copyright doesn't really hold any water. In order for it to do so, copyright would have to work like patents, and happily, it doesn't.
"I still don't see anyone giving any good reason why these monopolies should be granted for such ridiculous amounts of time."
I'm not going to bother arguing with you on that - there are very good arguments out there, from ensuring that the work has a champion to improve its chances of survival to giving creative artists a legacy to leave to their descendants, but you strike me as one of the people here who are too interested in reinforcing their own sense of entitlement to actually listen to anything that contradicts your beliefs.
If I'm wrong about that, and I hope I am, and you are actually wanting to become more informed about the issue, you will want to read this paper published in a peer-reviewed law journal: http://llr.lls.edu/volumes/v36-issue1/martin-original1.pdf
(Ironically, he's writing more about the constitutional issues, but he still covers the arguments you're wanting to learn about quite well.)
"And why was Disney able to create its classics? Because those fairy tales weren't copyrighted, so Disney just did what they wanted with them, with no restrictions or payment needed. That doesn't hold true for practically anything created in the last 70 years or so."
You mean besides a large number of the works by Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft?
You're holding up basic math as the problem here. The term in the United States is now lifetime plus seventy years. Of course a lot of work will fall into that - but not all. Because of the way that copyright in the United States has lagged behind the rest of the world, the actual issue of what is in the public domain is far more complicated. Here is the actual chart that shows copyright terms:
http://www.copyright.cornell.edu/public_domain/
I am going to point out a couple of things. First of all, not all of the work in the last century in the United States receives a term of lifetime + 70 years. In fact, only those works created after 1978 receive that term. For that matter, anything published between 1978 and March 1, 1989 without copyright notice or registration is now in the public domain in the United States.
Additionally, the longest copyright term for anything published from 1923-1977 is, in fact, 95 years from date of publication, and that's only if the copyright was renewed - and according to footnote 8, as of 1961 less than 15% of total works were, and less than 7% of books were. So, far from the whole of culture in the United States from 1923 onwards being locked away behind copyright law, odds are that 85% of cultural works between 1923 and 1963 at the very least are in the public domain right now, and 93% of books published by American authors in that time are now public domain.
So, the idea that nothing has entered the public domain in the last 70 years because of copyright term extensions is blatantly wrong. For that matter, the Sonny Bono extension act stripped a number of works that had previously enjoyed perpetual copyright due to a form of common law of their copyright protection, and placed them in the public domain.
So, before you make any more claims about how culture is being locked away, or how nothing in the last 70 years is entering the public domain, you might really want to do some basic research and get your facts right.
"The government shouldn't be handing out monopolies as it does now because they are not benefiting the public, but they are certainly restricting people from building upon the ideas that have come before."
That's a gross misunderstanding of how both copyright and creativity work. You cannot copyright an idea - in fact, it is very specifically written into the Berne Convention that only specific implementations of an idea can be copyrighted. Don't take my word for that, though - look it up yourself. You'll find it laid out in Article 2, with subsection 3 containing a statement protecting the rights of others to create derivative works: http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/berne/trtdocs_wo001.html#P85_10661
"Disney being the classic example of a company that made its fortune on the work of those who came before, and then proceeded to ensure that none would come after."
Disney may be very protective of its trademarks, but there are plenty of other adaptations of fairy tales out there. So that doesn't actually hold true.
Oh, you're welcome - it was my pleasure.
One of the problems with the entire copyright debate is that there are a lot of misconceptions on a very basic level about how it works, and what it does. I'm just happy to have been able to give you some good information on it.
And most of all, don't take my word for any of this - go to the sources yourself, get as close as you can to the primary sources, and make up your own mind. There's plenty of material out there to find...
(I'd say watch out for Lessig, though - he's a good enough writer, but he tends to make some truly head-scratching leaps of logic - that's what's kept me from ever getting past the first chapter or two of Free Culture.)
This is my last post in this discussion - you can get the last word in if you want, but as far as I'm concerned you're one of those people who is in their own little bubble, and no amount of information will change your opinion - no confusing you with facts, I guess.
I think this sums up your argument to a "t":
"I'd love if it I the job I had in my twenties was still paying my great-great-great-grandchildren a portion of my salary. But it won't be, and my argument that "artists" shouldn't be granted a more beneficial position than me just because they're artists, remains the same."
So, because you don't have it, nobody else should. Everybody has to be at your level. But what makes your level right? Tell me, what do you produce? Do you produce anything people will care about acquiring ten years after the fact? What about twenty? Why should somebody who produces something that will generate ongoing sales for decades be forced to be at the level of somebody who doesn't?
Try this one on for size - perhaps the very few artists who don't have to keep day jobs and put away money just like everybody else (which, by the way, is what just about everybody in the creative arts community has to do anyway) get that position because they produce something that people do care about long after their death. And if somebody can do that, well, they should be allowed to rise as far as they are able.
Part of a free society is that people are free to do better than you are doing. If you don't like that, there are communist governments in Cuba and China that I'm sure would welcome you as a citizen, although China has been moving towards the free market for some time now.
So, all I have left to say to you is this - if you are so offended by people profiting from their work decades after they've completed it because you don't get to, perhaps you should get off your ass, change jobs, and produce something that people will actually care about buying decades after you produce it. There are plenty of ways to do that - you can start a business, you can become a creative artist in any number of fields, you can found and spearhead an independent programming project. Where do you think Red Hat Linux came from?
But quit whining and complaining about those who actually do produce something they can profit off of for the long term, because you don't. The only thing stopping you in this society from rising higher is yourself.
That's it - I'm calling bullshit here.
"Perhaps, then, you can offer some justification for the incredibly generous privileges that benefit those on the copyright gravy train?"
You mean like poverty and working your ass off for what eventually works out to less than minimum wage? In Canada, the average income of artists is less than $25,000 per year. In the United States, the average income for a creative artist is $34,800 per year (http://en.artron.net/news/news.php?newid=52152&column_id=61). If a writer is lucky, around his or her third or fourth book the money s/he receives will break through to equating to the minimum wage. Somebody like Stephen King is the vast exception - most creative artists struggle to keep a roof over their heads and food on their table. So, want to tell me why those generous privileges don't include a professional-level income?
"Perhaps you can explain why you deserve to continue receiving income in perpetuity from work you have already completed?"
That's a straw man argument. Creative artists DON'T have that right. They have the right to try to make money from their work for their lifetimes plus 50 or 70 years, depending on the country. "Try" is the operative word. Almost none succeed. For that matter, the average lifespan of a book tends to be less than 10 years.
Copyright is not a form of creative welfare. If you want to make money as a creative artist in your old age, you frequently get to keep working while everybody else has retired, or die in poverty. You'd better love the work you do, because you're doing it until the day you die.
Oh yes, by the way, there is something that does allow people to make money for the rest of their lives for work they've already done - it's called a pension. Most creative artists don't get those.
"Perhaps you can give a reason why your family (and their families, and likely their families' families) should receive compensation for work they didn't do?"
Perhaps you can justify inheritance law to me, then. After all, why should your children and grandchildren receive benefits after you've died for the work you've done? They didn't do that work. Or are you about to say that it's not the same thing because it's a book manuscript instead of a house?
"Maybe you can even explain how a system designed to still be paying your descendants 3-4 generations after you've died could possibly offer any incentive to work more ?"
Maybe you can learn how to count. Lifetime +50 to 70 is children and grandchildren. That's two - not three or four.
This may come as a shock to you, but knowing that I can leave my family a literary legacy when I die IS something that motivates me to make it the best legacy I can leave. People are concerned about what happens to their families after they're gone.
"The only people who need "re-education" are the ones who think they should be freeloading off the rest of society for 150 years."
As opposed to those who just want to freeload off of a segment of society while damning them for being greedy bastards even though they generally live in poverty?
You're twisting things terribly there.
First of all, if Steamboat Willie goes into the public domain, there are still decades of Mickey Mouse cartoons that are under copyright.
Second, if you try to use Mickey Mouse Disney might tack on copyright issues, but the suit they'll hit you with is the trademark suit. Aside from which, how would you use Mickey Mouse, a character so associated with Disney it is next only to the Disney castle, without causing brand confusion?
Believe me, Disney has nothing to fear from Steamboat Willie going out of copyright protection. They DO, however, have something to fear if Europe views the United States as being behind the times on copyright law - that impacts international trade and even their talent base.
And that, by the way, was the reason for the Sonny Bono law. European copyright was the major issue, not Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse was the issue that Lawrence Lessig latched onto, but what I've read in what few peer-reviewed law journals regarding the case suggests that Lessig was off his rocker and got defeated due to not arriving in court with a proper case. This article is long, but it is peer-reviewed, and it does cover the case, as well as why Lessig was defeated: http://llr.lls.edu/volumes/v36-issue1/martin-original1.pdf
True enough. But when Steamboat Willie goes into the public domain, Mickey Mouse won't follow - the trademark will remain.
"I don't know. When is Mickey Mouse scheduled to go into the public domain?"
It's not - Mickey Mouse is protected under trademark, not copyright. So long as Disney wishes to maintain it, the trademark is theirs.
"I'm curious to know if you apply that to patents as well as copyright. In some cases, talking about "intellectual property" can make the discussion easier but many time it obfuscates the issue. In my opinion if patents were granted for the length of you suggest the cost of technology would skyrocket and technological progress would slow to a crawl. Should we really have to pay for the use of ideas developed in the late 1800s/early 1900s? I don't think so. On the other hand I can see no real problem with trademarks being perpetual or for a very long time. I take it we are really talking about copyrights, not the more broad "intellectual property""
To answer your question, no, I don't consider it to apply to patents the same as copyrights. The copyright system has certain measures built-in to protect ideas from being monopolized - you can copyright the exact implementation of an idea, but the idea itself can be used and reused by whoever wants to. And that's very much how creativity works - ideas are drawn upon, and something new comes out.
Patents, though...I would actually say those are very badly broken.
As for your opinion on copyright terms, I must disagree, and I think that intellectual piracy had very little to do with American industrial power, but I'm not an expert on that part of American history. Second, I think you are undervaluing the impact of economics and the free market on availability of creative materials - it has far more impact than copyright terms do. But that's a different discussion, for a different time...
"Yeah right. Steamboat Willie will never go out of copyright as long as Congress keeps bowing to pressure from Disney. Who do you think is behind all those extensions, anyway?"
Harmonization with European copyright, actually. They went to life +70 first, and declared that they would consider copyrights to last the length of copyright in the original country - to avoid losing 20 years of protection, and to keep American IP competitive in the European market, the United States harmonized.
If you want to learn more about the reasons and process for the 20 year extension, read this: http://llr.lls.edu/volumes/v36-issue1/martin-original1.pdf