I recently purchased a short story from Fictionwise, which was not DRM’ed, so I could easily get it into a form where I could read it on my Sony eReader. Thanks to that short story, I was introduced to an author, and a character, which I found very engaging. When I decided to find out more about the character, I found that the author had written two additional short stories, and three additional novels many years ago, but has since stopped writing any more books involving that character. Furthermore, the novels have gone out of print, and are only available from amazon.com as used books.
Unfortunately, I travel a lot. So much so, that one of the few times that I have time to read is when I’m traveling. And I really dislike having to haul dead-tree versions of my favorite novels around; they take up far too much weight and space in my carry-on luggage. Unfortunately, these out-of-print novels were published by a Neanderthal Publishing company who hasn’t made any of the books available in ebook format, DRM’ed or no. Grumpy, I searched on Internet, and found all three novels were easily available for free download — in a pirated form, of course.
Should I download them and convert them into a form which would allow me to read them on my Sony eReader? Well, according to Russell Davis, former chair (and now president of the Science Fiction Writer’s Association) of the SFWA’s Copyright Committee, “electronic infringement is theft”. From a legal perspective, I suppose that is true. And given that as an Open Source programmer, I depend on Copyright Law to assure that my wishes as an author are upheld, it would be hypocritical for me assume that I should be able to ignore Copyright Law just because it is inconvenient.
And yet… from a moral perspective, who has really lost anything? The argument made by Russell Davis is that infringement is bad because it is “harming authors and author estates”. Jerry Pournelle has indignantly proclaimed that e-piracy goes against a “specific (and very stern) Biblical injunction against stealing from widows and orphans”. Of course, in this case, the author is still alive (and is female, although I suppose stealing from widowers would be just as bad). Also, given that the author has publically stated she doesn’t plan to write any more books involving this character (since some of her more psychotic readers sent her death threats as a result of reading said books), the publisher is highly unlikely to re-release said novels — and if I buy used dead-tree versions of said novels, the author doesn’t receive any additional royalties. So, then, where is the moral bright line?
- Should I purchase a used dead-tree copy of the novel, and lug it around, inconveniencing me, causing more CO2 emissions by shipping the book to me, and in the airplane because of its added weight, as the only way I can comply with copyright law? Furthermore, should I do this to set an example to all of the younger generations that are treating copyright law much more casually, much as essentially all drivers casually ignore the law’s dictats to not drive faster than the speed limit? (Many have argued that the current state of affairs with respect to music and etexts and copyright law is bad because it encourages people to not respect the rule of law — I guess, as the argument goes, if people don’t respect the copyright law, what’s next? Torturing prisoners in Guantanomo in violation of the law? Oh, wait… too late…)
- Should I purchase a used dead-tree copy of the novel, slice the binding off, and then run pages through a scanner and an OCR program, then spend hours reformatting it into an .LRF file so I can read it on the Sony eReader? Would that be considered fair use?
- What if I purchase a used dead-tree copy of the novel, but to save the time and effort of scanning the pages and correcting the OCR errors, download the pirated e-text, and convert it into an .LRF file and enjoy it on my Sony eReader?
- What if I don’t purchase the dead-tree copy of the book, download the pirated e-text, and send a money order (so it can’t be traced) for roughly the same amount of money as the cost of the used dead-tree version of the book to the author, with a letter explaining why she was receiving this check?
- What if I just download the pirated e-text, justifying my actions that no one is actually getting hurt my downloading the text and reading it; after all, since it is long out of print and not available from any booksellers as a new book, the author isn’t going to be getting any more royalties anyway.
Somewhere along this continuum, we’ve crossed over from the light-side to the dark-side. Setting aside the observation that the Neanderthal attitudes and business practices of the publisher involved has made it impossible for me to legitimiately follow the law, enjoy the novels, and direct money to the author via royalty payments — what do you think is the morally correct course of action? And why? And if you don’t mind saying so publically, roughly what generation are you from (i.e., Baby Boomer, Gen X, Gen Y, etc.)? I’m curious how attitudes are changing based on age, and whether folks who are currently in college might differ from those who can remember a time when the Internet didn’t exist…
Update: I’ve posted a follow-up to this post here.
Update**2: This post is starting to get more attention from writers and publishers world. For those folks, after you get tired reading through the many comments expressing the opinion that it’s “ok to just pirate it”, you may want to skip ahead to the comments around #240-#250. (Also see some of Charlie Stross’s comments — he’s a British Science Fiction Writer — at comments #180, #193, #198, #204, #206, etc.) There are some much more nuanced discussions about the nature of copyright taking place later in the comment stream, and in my first (I doubt it will be the last) follow-up post. Please jump in and participate in the discussion — and please don’t just ignore first 200 or so comments; those people are your customers, and for those who are Gen X’ers and the Millenials, they are our future. Participating in the discussion is better than pretending they don’t or shouldn’t exist, or trying to sic the lawyers on them like the RIAA and MPAA tried to do…
No related posts.
November 29th, 2008 at 1:30 am
Get the “pirate” copy and send money to the author, everyone wins.
Late model Gen X.
November 29th, 2008 at 1:59 am
I personally believe that using the pirated version and sending the author money is best. It best serves the original purpose of copyright law (that is, encouraging further works). It isn’t your fault that the law forbids doing what’s right. A little bit of civil disobedience is a good thing sometimes…
Generation Y here.
November 29th, 2008 at 2:01 am
I’m twenty-three, and I think you should choose option 3.
I used to be a staunch copyright extremist years ago, believing only option 1 is reasonable, but believing firmly in Fair Use I did certainly believe that your scanning it and reformatting it would be fair use. I still do believe the lawbreaking-is-bad argument, but it’s hard to believe that is so true that you should have to waste hours of your life to enjoy a book the way you want to.
Perhaps your choice of option 3 could be accompanied by a request to allow others to do the same. “Would you release these books on the web for free, since it’s impossible for me to pay you to read them?” Optionally under any sort of license granting those privileges.
I think bringing up the point with the author is valuable; that’s probably the only value society can extract out of the conundrum you find yourself in.
November 29th, 2008 at 2:39 am
Hm. Interesting question. My thoughts:
Generally, publishers, writers, programmers, etc want my money, therefore, they publish things. I think we can agree on that. They want my money, so they make stuff available for me to buy.
Now, we can turn this statement around: If they don’t make their $whatever (books, music, software, …) available for me to buy, then obviously, they don’t want my money. And if they don’t actually want my money, why should I give it to them? If something cannot be bought, it’s perfectly ok to obtain it using other means.
Thus, I would just pirate it.
Not sure what generation I belong to, I’m in my mid 20s
November 29th, 2008 at 3:14 am
Infringement is not theft. Theft involves depriving the rightful owner of possession of their property. If the book is no longer in print and the publisher can’t be bothered to sell an ebook edition, I say infringe away. If there is no product to buy, and you want to enjoy the book, I suspect the author would want you to enjoy the book.
1-If you buy a used copy, why not just put it on your bookshelf and download the illegitimate ebook version? Sounds like fair use to me, and I fail to see how, having bought an actual copy of the book, you could be setting a bad example for anyone. Seems to me the hard copy on your bookshelf legitimizes the ebook on your hard drive.
2-Why would you bother spending any time or effort making your own ebook out of the dead-tree edition when you could just download an existing ebook? In this hypothetical you already own a physical copy, why ruin it(slicing the binding off) by wasting your time and energy creating something that already exists?
3-Exactly.
4-Can’t argue with that approach either. And I can’t see how the author would object. You just provided her with payment for something she never expected to make money off of again, and at the same time let her know that there are people still out there reading/enjoying her work. I suspect you’d get a kind letter in response thanking you for your efforts (oh – except you indicate you’d do this anonymously – I still think the author would appreciate your efforts, even if she couldn’t let you know about it).
5-I don’t personally have any issues with this last hypothetical. If nobody’s selling it(meaning publishers, bookstores, etc, not Amazon used-product-sellers), you can’t exactly buy it now can you? If supporting the author (and/or orig. publisher) is your main interest here, this hypothetical is slightly less moral than the last, but I definitely wouldn’t call it immoral. The only way the author is going to get paid is if you go out of your way to send money you’re not actually obligated to send, directly to her. Her book isn’t on the shelves, and her publisher sees no profit in marketing her work in any way – again, if there’s no product to buy, I suspect the author would be happy to have you enjoy her work even without having paid money for the priveledge. That’s ultimately what she wrote the stories for in the first place (I would hope).
Short of downloading the ebook and actually selling copies of it to unsuspecting readers, it’s difficult to find a completely unethical course of action here. What good is the law if it allows this publisher to sit on these works indefinitely when people out there are willing to pay good money to enjoy them? If there’s no money left to be made on these works(in the publisher’s eyes), why aren’t they released into the public domain? How many works will be lost to history because of BS like this?
I’m 30 btw, maybe that makes a Gen-Xer, idk for sure.
November 29th, 2008 at 4:04 am
Ted,
My first impulse was to suggest buying a physical copy of the books and downloading/converting the e-book. But I immediately rejected that since the texts are out of print and neither the author nor the publisher would receive any money from the purchase.
Buying and scanning the book seems to add a lot of work with little or no purpose. Again, no money goes to the author or publisher.
Buying the books and downloading the e-texts seems like a reasonable approach at first, but again, what is the point of buying the book if no money goes to the author?
To me it comes down to the last two options or a possible third option. You could contact the author and she what she would like you to do.
Legally, there is little or no difference between the final two possibilities you outlined; you have no legal justification to have an electronic version of the texts. Morally, on the other hand, there is a difference. It all comes down to how you feel about victimless crimes.
I would rank these possibilities in this order of moral correctness according to my set of morals as I subscribe to no other:
1. Contact the author, abide by her wishes.
2. Download the e-texts, send the author a reasonable sum of money.
3. Buy used copies of the books and scan or download the e-texts (little or no moral difference here from my perspective.)
4. Buy used copies of the books, read them.
5. Download the e-texts, make no attempt to compensate.
However, I would rank them differently in terms of likelihood I would do them. That would probably be more like this:
1. Download the e-texts, make no attempt to compensate.
2. Buy the dead tree editions, read them. (I don’t have an e-book reader yet)
3. Download the e-texts, send the author a reasonable sum of money.
4. Contact the author, abide by her wishes.
5. Buy used copies of the books and download the e-texts.
6. Buy used copies of the books and scan into e-texts.
I’d be very interested in knowing both what you choose to do and what books you are speaking of. I’m, uhh, a Gen Xer, I guess. 41 years old.
November 29th, 2008 at 4:26 am
I favor your next-to-last option: grab the e-text, and send the author some money. Since both the author and publisher have already gotten paid for any used copy you might buy, using the pirated e-text seems to me little different ethically from checking out a book from a lending library. But rewarding the author again does have a certain appeal, and is something I would probably do in your situation.
I’m a late Boomer, long out of college. The internet didn’t exist when I was growing up; heck, *computers* barely existed in the consciousness of most people. I’m a writer and author of flee software, and am always in favor of rewarding creators. I do my best to honor the spirit of copyright, even when the letter of the law seems askew, as it does in the case you describe. Enjoy the work, acknowledge and reward the creator’s efforts, and all’s right with the universe.
November 29th, 2008 at 4:53 am
Download the pirate copy, send author money + letter. If printing letter, beware the yellow dots.
I was born in the mid ’70s.
November 29th, 2008 at 5:06 am
I would personally purchase a 2nd hand copy of the book and lug it around with me. I like physical books.
However I would have no problem in downloading the pirated e-text and sending a money order + letter to the author direct.
Born in ‘73 so I guess that makes my one of the Gen Xer’s?
November 29th, 2008 at 5:11 am
Given your description of the situation I think The Right Way would be to send some money in the order of the value you derive from reading the book to the author, including an explanation.
Not only does this settle your moral obligations by paying off the received value, but also it might encourage the author to face off the death threats.
Of course it might have to beconsidered that it is the author’s explicit desire that the books are not published anymore. In that case sending money might not have any impact on your moral obligations to the author.
November 29th, 2008 at 5:38 am
For me.. it’s an easy question…
I would consider the last two options. I say this, because I’m in a familiar situation. Consider the state of DVD’s. All main-stream DVDs sold are protected by the CSS encryption. Decrypting the DVD is only allowed with hardware or software which pays royalties to the dvd consortium.
which is not possible for FOSS software (paying per download?!).
So if I want to use Free Software to watch DVD’s, I’m forced to do it illegal.
And I don’t want to support a system forcing me to be illegal. So I’m not buying main stream DVDs.
Which hurts because I REALLY want to have some (e.g. Futurama, …).
So I’m in a familiar position. I download the movies without paying from them.
On the other hand: I’m happy to support artists on jamendo.com with my money. Because I can listen to the music the way I like and can then decide if I want to support them.
November 29th, 2008 at 5:58 am
Well written. Good expounding.
(1) To re-state what has been stated very often: copyright violation is not theft. It is copyright violation (which is still against the law and morally questionable anyway, but…). And copyright law has been skewed far too much away from public interest (in this case: if a publisher is not able to make available a work for some time, the copyright should go back to the author. Or to the public). Yadda yadda.
(2) I would go with the fourth option: download and send some money.
(3) My generation? 1956.
Regards
– tomás
November 29th, 2008 at 6:37 am
Pirate it and send the author a cheque and a stern letter.
November 29th, 2008 at 6:55 am
Do you really feel bad about buying a physical book because of CO2 emissions? That sounds a bit silly after saying that you travel a lot yourself.
Personally, I would buy the book and download the pirated digital version. In fact, I have done this with several books. (I cannot see that this is wrong with regards to copyright law, which must, as you say, be upheld.)
(Buying and scanning would also be okay. But sending money directly to the author would likely be unfair to all the others who contributed to the book — agent, publisher, editor, typographers, etc.)
An option which you didn’t mention would be to not read the book at all. Are you willing to sacrifice one selfish desire for both copyright law and the environment?
Thanks for a thoughtful and interesting blog!
Vegard (age 21)
November 29th, 2008 at 7:32 am
Agree with foo above – pirate and send money directly to the author noting that she should open a paypal account for further fan donations. The goal of the copyright system is to reward the authors (or at least the publishers brave enough to invest money in authors) if neither is possible for you then a direct check is the best way to comply with the spirit and intent of the copyright law.
You can always stop copying the book if the author or the publishers asks you to.
November 29th, 2008 at 7:45 am
Do the last one.
November 29th, 2008 at 7:50 am
This situation happens alot. If the material you are after is not pratically available to you, then I see no moral problem with copying it.
Thats all there is to it as far as i see it.
I guess 4 is the most morally correct choice, although 2 is probably the most legal choice and 5 is the most practical.
November 29th, 2008 at 7:52 am
Hello,
it’s a rather diffcult answer to give in such a situation.
Being an free-software advocate/professional i can’t just said get the pirate copy because copyright law is what protect us also. Also in real life you don’t imagine going to a shop and taking something for free.
I would rather buy i used copy. The author doesn’t want to write about it anymore, is publisher doesn’t want to print it anymore so i have no option to buy normally (meaning the author will get it’s author rights)
I’am forty one
Cheers
November 29th, 2008 at 8:04 am
+1
November 29th, 2008 at 8:21 am
In order to survive where I come from, we learn that when bureaucracy makes things impossible for you, then you have to pretend that it doesn’t exist and try to do your best. It’s not worth to waste your effort on things or people who do not deserve it.
November 29th, 2008 at 8:29 am
Take the e-text, send a check or money order, have a clean conscience. I’m between 30 and 45.
November 29th, 2008 at 8:51 am
by the way, german copyright law has a rule that you can xerocopy a book which is out of print for two years. Scanning such a book should be covered by the same rule. Copying a pirated etext file would be a very grey area.
November 29th, 2008 at 9:03 am
Hoist the jolly roger and send a check to either the author or her favorite charity (raptors, if I’ve guessed correctly) or buy one of her in-print books if you want to help sales rank but give her less money.
November 29th, 2008 at 9:48 am
I would just pirate it. If I felt guilty, I’d look around for a charity to give a donation to, rather than making unsolicited personal contact with the author. If the author had a web page and sob story up, I might paypal as recommended there, but I am sensitive to “entitled to payment for my work” vs. “I’m actually having hard times and need it” (strongly favoring the latter).
My generation: oldest edge of millennial.
November 29th, 2008 at 10:42 am
Well, you can ask the author what she think is the best you can do? even she may have a spare copy.
November 29th, 2008 at 11:54 am
Download it and donate the amount of money you would have paid for it to your local library.
I like the idea of buying the physical copy and downloading the pirated version.
However, if you can correspond with the authoress, why not tell her you would like to give her money and get an electronic copy, but there doesn’t seem to be a legal way to do that. You can say that it’s probably already out there in electronic format, for free.
Point her to the software (eReader has some that’s like $30) that will allow her to convert the book.
Basically, show her that people who want digital copies will get them, so she might as well make one available for free.
BTW, I use eReader on my iPhone and LOVE it. I’m the kind of person who is in the middle of 2-5 books at any given time.
November 29th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Hm. Interesting question. My thoughts:
Generally, publishers, writers, programmers, etc want my money, therefore, they publish things. I think we can agree on that. They want my money, so they make stuff available for me to buy.
Now, we can turn this statement around: If they don’t make their $whatever (books, music, software, …) available for me to buy, then obviously, they don’t want my money. And if they don’t actually want my money, why should I give it to them? If something cannot be bought, it’s perfectly ok to obtain it using other means.
So, I would just pirate it.
Not sure what generation I belong to, I’m in my mid 20s
November 29th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
I guess the option to dl the pirated copy and send the author a cheque is, by far, more ethical than any of other options: not only you enjoy the novel in the way you like, ALSO the author receives a larger compensation if you only bought the used dead-tree version…
I guess the editors have nothing to say here, as they won’t benefit from either option…
November 29th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Yeah, what foo said. I’m in my mid 30s. Label that if you will.
November 29th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Buy a used paper copy and leave it at home, then read the warez copy and either keep both copies or donate the paper copy to the library and delete the warez. (No, don’t pay the author for signing the one-sided contract that let the book get into this situation to begin with.)
November 29th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
The first obstacle here is obviously the law. In this case there’s a publisher who you would most likely need to satisfy. As an example a couple of decades ago, when I still had windows, I contacted a company and asked for permission to run it on two computers and got their consent.
Sending an email is preferable as it will give you a written record.
You can also go to the author and see what agreements she has with the publisher. She might be in a position to grant you a copy.
Laws are there to enforce policy. Policy is there to solve a problem.
The problem is that people often can’t be trusted to remove it after a short test time. Thus a policy that you are not allowed to install it on more than one computer, or whatever their EULA says.
As another example from windows days, I used to get a bootleg copy of a program and check it out. If I liked it I bought it, if not I removed it entirely from the computer. I established a three months rule to decide, otherwise it was too easy to just continue to use it.
If you take every reasonable action to make sure the right thing is done, and ultimately, that you feel honestly “clean” about your action, then get on with life. (Of course that action might just as well turn out to be, nothing.) You have to live with yourself, and respecting yourself and your actions is the most senior thing. At least then you can face yourself whatever happens.
-50’s
November 29th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
hi,
Your post highlights some very important issues with the current situation on copyright.
I live in France where some laws on those issues are currently being examined by the parliament.
I am a member of an advocacy group which tries to defend fair use and net neutrality in Europe and in France.
So I’d like to ask you if it could be possible to translate your post and put the translation and original on our website: http://www.laquadrature.net/
Or maybe you could license the text under a creative-commons license which would permit us to publish a translation.
Best regards
Eric
PS: you can read more about us here: http://www.laquadrature.net/en/who-are-we
November 29th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Eric, if you would like to translate my post and place it on the http://www.laquadrature.net/, you have no objection to me. I’d prefer if you link back to the original post if people want to read it and comment on it in English, if you don’t mind. Thanks!!
November 29th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
A colleague of mine who worked in biotech in the late 1980s and early 1990s (before scientific journals were widely available over the internet) had a side business copying and delivering scientific journal articles to academics in the Boston area. One of the costs included in his fee provided for payment of royalties to the copyright holder.
At that time, there were companies in the business of distribution of royalty payments that would charge a flat fee per article per copy, and would forward the appropriate royalty to the copyright holder. Every month, this colleague would send a record of the articles that he distributed (including author and publisher data) along with his payment.
I assume there are still companies that do this, but a quick Google search returned only information on digital copies of recorded music, and I didn’t take the time to refine my search accordingly.
The problem with sending the author money directly is that she undoubtedly sold the copyright to the publishing company in exchange for their publishing the book, so they would be the legitimate recipients of any royalty payments, not her. Based on their contract with the author, they would then forward the appropriate percentage back to the author.
Probably the most legally aboveboard approach would be to contact the publisher, stating that you have come into possession of an electronic copy of the text that you suspect may have been pirated, and that you want to send the appropriate royalty directly to them in exchange for the right to read the text (personal use only) in the same way that you would read a print copy of the book.
For the record, I was born in December 1964, which places me on the cusp between the baby boomers (1946-64) and generation X (1965-78).
November 29th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
You should consider the possibility that the author couldn’t (legally) accept your money for the book, I think that’s typically the case for published stuff (i.e. the author can’t make money from the licenced text outside of the publisher scope). So sending her money might put *her* in a moral dilemma of accepting the it and violate her contract or not.
Consulting the author would be definitely the right way ™ IMO. That said I would probably just download the illegal copy and recommend it to friends in a way to payback the author somehow, that way, maybe enough demand is created that the author considers to start writing again or the publisher to re-edit the books. Or, maybe, the author simply get more money for being more popular (and people buying her newer books or she getting a better contract for her new books).
FWIW, I’m 25.
November 29th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
just go to the library.
November 29th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
Option two should be fair use. Would it really take hours to do this? I work at a college and we have book scanners for this exact purpose. Remove the binding, insert book. It copies both sides.
We scan books all the time for the purpose of making them accessible to students with disabilities. (usually Kurzweil or for use with computers/devices that make the print readable to people with visual disabilities).
We are required to verify that the student brings the book in and has a receipt before making the copy. But at that point it is considered fair use.
November 29th, 2008 at 8:18 pm
I’d say either buy the book + use pirated version, or just pirate the book. I don’t know the situation with this author, but usually there is no easy way to send money to the author. Moreover, by sending the money only to the author in fact you will rob the publishers: they paid money not only for publishing (I mean producing and selling paper version of the book), but also some amount of money was spent on adverising the book, on other targets, etc. So, either be fully lawfull, or just pirate. Sending money to the author is a bit strange.
OTOH if you’d like to be more ‘lawful’, you can buy the paper book and send it to the nearest library/orphaned children house/etc (and use the e-version in the mean time). The author, the publisher, etc. will receive all necessary loyalties, but you won’t have paper tome in your luggage
November 29th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
P.S. Generation Y
November 29th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
It’s a dilemma. I’m suggesting to download e-text and buy a used copy (no need to reformatting). If you prefer to download pirated e-text because of moral issue then try to contact the author first, ask her opinion about that.
FYI: I’m 27.
November 29th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
Just download the effing book and stop beating yourself up about it, sheesh. It’s not wrong, it’s only illegal, the two are not the same. Oh, and support your local Pirate Party. http://www.piratpartiet.se/international/
Gen X I guess.
November 29th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
Pirate it, find an email address for the author and Paypal her a couple of bucks.
I think I’m supposedly a GenXer but I’ve never felt any kinship with profiles of them. I was born in ‘71 and started fooling around with the local BBS scene in the late eighties. And like a huge percentage of other artists of todal, one of my primary figure-drawing texts in school was a Xerox copy of the fabulous but out-of-print Figure Drawing for All It’s Worth.
November 29th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Generation Y.
Option 5. Pirate the book. Read it with good conscience. I don’t believe the publisher/author are entitled to anything when they are not making the book available to you anymore. I think that an artistic work that has previously been published, but has not been available from the owner in any shape or form for some time should become public domain. Works are becoming extinct because of things like this.
November 29th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
If you wanted to follow the strict bounds of the law, you probably have to go with #2, buying a used copy and scanning the book yourself. That would probably be fair use. #3 would probably technically break the law, but it’s unlikely that you would ever be prosecuted for it, unless, say you did it through a torrent and by participating in the torrent you were also helping others potentially infringe. In other words, if you buy the book used and then download a digital copy, you’d probably be breaking the law, but I would consider it still moral.
The real problem comes when you download it without buying the used copy or buying any other legitimate copy. What is the difference? When you buy a used copy, the author or publisher might not make any money, but you have removed one more book from the secondary market. You reduced the supply of books which does affect the price of other outstanding books, even if it is a very small reduction.
So #2 is fine legally and morally, #3 is fine morally but legally problematic, though I would feel justified doing it. Beyond #3, that would be wrong and an unjustifiable copyright violation.
November 29th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
Pirate the text.
Illegal? Yes.
Moral? Absolutely. Copyright has nothing to do with morals as conceived in the USA. It’s the benefit of a “bargain” with the government.
Ethical? Well, it’s a bit grey. You’re violating the law. It really comes down to whether you believe the law is fair and just and whether you really believe it to be so or if you are merely trying to justify your actions. I’d happily send money to the author for an out-of-print work I value, as others have suggested.
I think copyright has swung so incredibly and ridiculously in favor of the copyright holders (even with the exemptions) that the law itself is unethical and ought to be repealed in its current form. I don’t buy into the “property” or continental European “moral justification for copyright” arguments AT ALL.
I believe in a strong right to attribution and a very limited period of copyright protection and no more. 20 years at the most, ideally with increasing maintenance fees for the life of copyright, like patents.
Gen X/Y borderline (1981), College Grad – B.S. + doctorate
Aspiring author & musician, among other things. I’m putting my money where my mouth is.
November 29th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
Get the pirated version, then send the author a money order sounds like the most ethical thing to do. The whole reason the author won’t make any more money off the book is the publishing company’s refusal to do so. But your co2 argument is laughable, taken on a singular basis. The amazon.com seller would either send the book via USPS, who comes by their house daily anyway, or mail/ship it on their next outing. As for the plane, a 7 oz. book won’t even have an effect on its fuel mileage.
30 years old, whatever gen that makes me.
November 29th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
Buy the out of print book and read it the old fashioned way. No one owes you an eBook version. A pirated book is a pirated book. Wrong is wrong regardless. I laugh at all of you who said you would send money to the author. Right, you are going to fill out a good old time check or money order, research a mailing address for the author (if you can find one), take the time to fill out an envelope (you gen Y types know how to use one?) and then mail it snail mail to the author…LOFL!!! Sure you would. Stop rationalizing theft!
Early Model Gen X.
November 29th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
Gen. Y Here, I am 18.
I am perhaps among the few who think that illegal does not necessarily equal immoral. Think back to the 50’s: What Rosa Park’s did was illegal. No questions about it. Was it wrong? Few people now would be willing to argue that it was wrong to not give up her seat to a white person, however no one would deny that it was indeed illegal at the time. Similarly, I strongly believe it is not wrong to “pirate” information just because it is prohibited by our pathetically archaic copyright law.
If you bought the book used, who would get the money? Not the author. Not the publisher. The individual selling the book would be the only one who would benefit from you buying a used copy. The author would receive no compensation, therefore the argument of Russel Davis that you mentioned does not apply. By his reasoning, buying a used copy would be just as much “theft” as downloading the book off the internet. Think about that one for a moment. Granted, if you had downloaded the book instead of buying it from the author or the publisher, that might be a different story, as you are not actively supporting the author so they can produce more works. However, in this instance, you have actively searched for the book in a form that you can use, and have been turned down by the publisher. They have no intention of making any more profit from the book and have abandoned all claims of interest in the matter.
Information wants to be unlimited and free. It is stubborn, neolithic individuals like the publisher you mentioned above that are impeding the spread of universal knowledge, knowledge that would often possibly result in the general betterment of mankind. Download the copy of the book, and then perhaps send a few dollars to the author along with a note explaining what you did and why. Be sure to thank her for writing such a great book, and encourage more to write more like it. There’s nothing more you can do.
November 29th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
I think it is important to seperate the legal question of infringement, from the moral/ethical question. From a legal persective, #1 is the only unambigiously legal option. #2 is most likely is fair use, though some would argue form shifting is in fact infringement. #3 has a strong case for being fairuse as well, though you now have 2 copies and if you used BT, you have helped distribute the pirated copy. #4 and #5 are clearly infringment.
From the moral/ethic angle, asuming that you don’t adopt a view that any violation of law is unethical, it all depends on what you think of copyright law as a whole. I generally think the current state of copyright law is wrong. However I recognize that there needs to be a way for authors to make a living off thier works. Luckily that is no longer a problem when your dealing with an out of print book. If the author is no longer commercially exploiting the work, the rational behind copyrights is gone, and there is no problem. If our copyright laws were more sane, this wouldn’t be a problem.
As far as I’m concerned, if you can’t get it legally, in a format usable to you, and at a price that is atleast somewhat fair, there is nothing wrong with with aquiring it some other way.
November 29th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
(Ethical arguments aside) the option where you send money to the author is better than anyone who simply takes the book out of the library and reads it, or buys a used copy – when we just consider the author.
Because, when a library buys the book, doesn’t the author/whatever only get paid for one copy? (Maybe I’m wrong, but to my mind, only one book was sold.)
But anyway – if I check the book out of my public library, I’m basically a freeloader (follow my train of thought here). No one gets any of my money.
And if I buy a used book, again, the author doesn’t get anything from me. Neither does the publisher.
So if I do the download and send money, I’m a really great guy, at least to the author.
If I download it and don’t send money, I’m really no different from someone who uses the library or buys a used book. I didn’t physically steal anything.
And I mean, if I cannot buy a new copy of it because it is out of print, then is that my fault?
Here I am, a paying customer, please take my money, I want you to take my money, but you won’t sell me a book.
Perhaps this is why some of the more forward thinking authors are going to alternatives like POD and so forth.
The whole issue of copyright infringement vs. true physical theft is a tough one.
November 29th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
I guess that I’d be classed as “Generation Y”, although I’ve barely even heard the term before. I’m 19 years old though. I’m also actively interested in copyright reform and digital rights, if that counts for anything.
In my opinion, the most morally option from above would be to download the eBook version and send some money to the author, along with a letter explaining why. The amount of money should probably be about £5/$10.
Of course, another option would be to contact the author BEFORE doing anything. Write her a letter telling her that you enjoyed her work and are interested in more, but that it is out of print and explain your situation. Specifically ask her if it would be okay with her for you to download her books, and that you’d be willing to send her some money. Nine times out of ten, you’ll get a perfectly rational person who will say “Sure, download it. Don’t worry about the money – glad that you enjoy my work! Thanks for the letter.” An older, more niche author will really appreciate letter. Even if she doesn’t turn out to be as charitable as that, you’ll respect her wishes and not just do what the internet thinks. It is very unlikely that any author would essentially tell somebody not to read their works.
November 29th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Option 5, no contest and no doubts. What dark side? The situation you outline is cut and dry, no grey area at all on the moral (as opposed to the legal) side.
If you want to support the author, sure send her a cheque or buy other books of hers, but I see no moral imperative there.
I’m 32 btw.
November 29th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
One issue that has not been commented on is that reading those books/novels is not something independent of the rest of Ted’s life. It’s not like his likely choices during a plane trip are “read those books” or “sleep” — far more likely, they are “read those books” or “read other books”.
If Ted is like most other readers, then his book consumption is limited more by the available reading time than by the supply of quality books — meaning the time he spends reading a “pirated” book is time he does NOT spend reading a legit one… which he then also won’t buy, or pay for. Which, sadly, undermines the whole “nobody is losing anything” argument for just downloading those books; Someone *does* lose the sale of a properly distributed book.
There are often calls in the software world to make abandoned or superceded commercial software free to copy, with the same “nobody is making any money of it, so who could possibly get hurt?” argument. And the answer, of course, is that the makers of currently actively marketed software would get hurt, by having some of their market cannibalised by those free-to-copy oldies. Of course, those are often the very same people who wrote those oldies in the first place…
The same is true for books. Sometimes, withdrawing books from being available is the best business decision (or, in this case, it might even have been a personal decision by the author, who knows?). Copyright law gives the copyright owners the discretion to do with their works as they please; While usually this is seen as mainly encouraging the creation of works due to being able to make money from them, Ted is certainly aware that *control* is what the law provides, rather than money.
Given the reactions of her readership, the author may want that world dead and buried as far as possible; Who are we to decide that she is wrong, and that thus we are somehow justified in making copies of her work?
The publisher may have made a conscious (if maybe misguided) decision to let their back catalog become unavailable, in order to bolster sals of new releases providing higher margins. While we may tell them they are wrong, we should do so by supporting (with our purchases) publishers who behave “right”, not by simply circumventing the “wrong” publisher’s decision.
November 29th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
P.S. No idea what generation… mid 20’s
November 29th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
Sounds like Jeff @34 has got it figured out. But personally I like option #4 the best. Borderline boomer/X.
November 29th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
According to he first sale doctrine people can resell copyrighted works they legally posses (like Books and CDs) and the copyright holder is not entitled to a share of the sale. So, as far as Jerry Pournelle’s (who I’ve come to regard as a blow hard) comments about piracy being equivelent to stealing from orphans and widows, there is effectively no difference in this case. Whether you buy the used copy or pirate the e-book, neither the publisher or the author will get any benefit from your purchase. With that in mind I say pirate it.
“specific (and very stern) Biblical injunction against stealing from widows and orphans”
Copyright was setup to, “promote the progress of science and useful arts…” not as a trust fund. Copyright has been extended to ridiculous lengths largely at the behest of large copyright holders and there well funded lobbyists.
Gen Y
November 29th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
Personally, I’d buy the paper book and read it. Owning an e-book reader that was developed specifically to promote the sale of DRMed books seems ethically questionable.
November 29th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
Legally: Buy the real book second hand, leave it at home, download and read the pirated text on your eReader.
Morally: Download the pirated text, and either pay the author directly to ensure her income – OR – buy one of her current in-print books, ensuring the continuing business of her and her publishing house.
Realistically: The book is now abandonware. Download, enjoy, don’t pay anyone anything.
November 29th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
Seems simple to me. Download the pirated version and send the money to the author. That way, she is rewarded for her work – at a higher rate, I would assume, than she would if she received a royalty for your buying a new copy (which of course, is impossible) – and you get to enjoy it in the format you prefer.
Gen Y.
November 29th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
download the pirated version. if you like the book write a thank you note to the author and send it some money if you want/can.
information wants to be free.
corporate capitalism will collapse soon… good riddance.
November 29th, 2008 at 11:04 pm
Just download it – after reading it, if you feel it was worth it, then send a donation to the author.
If you’re feeling quilty _before_ downloading and reading the book, then contact the author and suggest s/he self-publish the book and make it available online; if the publisher still holds the copyright and the author can’t do that, then say “screw it” and download it. You can still send a donation to the author if you want to.
Haven’t seen “what’s a fair donation?” discussed; remember, the author _might_ have received as much as 10-20 cents per copy sold, but probably not even that much!
Born in Sep 1942 (war baby, pre-baby-boomer).
November 29th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
I would just download it. I don’t have moral issues woth copyright: books are meant to be read.
November 29th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
43, Canadian, option 3.
One point that has been missed is that purchasing the used copy contributes to the market value of the used books.
Another is that it is often difficult to get ahold of authors and even publishers years after a book has gone out of print, so option four is often a lot of work or even impossible… and harms the market for the existing, used books.
Option three seems like it aught to fall within the aegis of fair use, while simultaneously boosting the market value of the physical artifact of the author’s work.
November 29th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
I think the closest thing to following copyright law would be to buy the dead-tree version, then download it.
I’m thinking as if it were a CD. If you bought a used CD, then downloaded the music from the internet instead of the CD and *did not* share the music, then it’s perfectly legitimate to have the mp3s of a CD you own for your own personal use. I’d image the same would apply to a book, correct?
Or even better: go to library and borrow the book and download the ebook. When your borrowing of the book ends, either return book and permanently erase the ebook, or renew the borrowing and continue to read ebook. I figure as long as you have that library book it doesn’t matter what format you’re reading it in, and if everyone did this our public libraries would get more use and therefore more funding. I’m tired of seeing local libraries close due to Amazon.com and ebooks.
Gen X
November 29th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
If you were to buy a used book neither the author or the publisher get any money, so what exactly is the difference if you download the e-book? simple logic. born 1946.
November 29th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
I wouldn’t let the mob decide what is right or not. You should do what you feel is right. I wish I had time to read fiction! I’m too buys reading blogs!
I do get the feeling that the author/publisher does not want your money.
Joseph Durnal
November 29th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
#5 with a caveat.
The publisher received the money it was due when the book was purchased the first time. The author received the money *she* was due as a royalty on that purchase. Sending a check to either party would be like sending a check to NBC after watching Seinfeld in syndication.
The only commercial reason to restrict the sale of an out-of-print work is so that the book can be re-published. Even if the author doesn’t want to re-publish the book now, she may change her mind in ten years. It’s obviously better to sell the book to people who haven’t read it already, so I believe this is a fair point.
So the only way to acquire the book with a clean conscience is to download the pirated e-text now, and vow to PURCHASE a new copy of the book if it’s ever re-published. That’s actually better for the publisher and the author than buying a used copy today and then never buying another copy. (And if you die before that happens they wouldn’t have gotten your money anyway, so there’s no harm done.)
I see no problem with assuming that the publisher will agree with this plan, since the media companies all assume that you’ll try to steal from them. It all balances out.
37 years old.
November 29th, 2008 at 11:37 pm
Just download the text. The only individual being compensated for an out-of-print book is the reseller. These resellers, along with the book publishers, have just as much right as the RIAA to put together a large, hostile league of litigators to try and terrorize the public out of doing something similar, considering their being the mouthpiece of media purveyors rather than the actual artist. They haven’t done so to such an extent as the music industry, so I wouldn’t be worried.
So long as you are not personally distributing the pirated copy, you have done nothing wrong by downloading something already made public. The burden is on those making the files available to comply with copyright law–not yours. They are far more likely to be prosecuted than you would for simply downloading. If I were someone interested in protecting the rights of my works, I’d be sure to stay ahead of the curve and check the internet regularly for such copies. If a publisher isn’t doing this, it’s their own fault. It’s not hard–no one is keeping the best places to find pirated IP a secret.
In both the case of music as well as writing, the creators of the work have been compensated by the resellers and media-publishers already. Especially in the cases of out-of-print works, the compensation will only go to rather antiquated resale venues.
The problem with acting “legally” in this situation is that the law is still astoundingly muzzy around IP and the Internet. Realistically, I would say that even jurisdiction over many online activities is still up for debate. That being said, the FBI nor the NSA is interested in your possible petty theft of a ten-dollar book.
These moribund business models really don’t merit support. If they’re not keeping up with the times, they’ll die out by simply not attracting new talent. It’s the job of the artists or their fans to make sure the works are preserved in a stable medium. Paperback books just aren’t as stable or transferable as ASCII-encoded text, and they take up too much space, anyway.
I’m a 24-year-old software developer who has also been a musician and academic. I have made music, print, and code all freely available on the web.
November 29th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
1. download the pirate text
2. send the author 10 percent of the cover price (a generous amount as royalties go)
3. donate the rest to EFF
me — chronologically gen-x, philosophically gen-y
November 29th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
Hello I am a 17 year old male in answer to your question situated in Wales, Europe. I believe that the right thing to do would be to send the money to the author for the price that people are selling them second hand and download the eBook/text version. That is what I feel the most moral way in which to obtain the book however the most practical thing and what I would do is just to download the book and not pay anything. It is out of print and the author doesn’t do eBook formats so how do they expect to get anything from this?
November 29th, 2008 at 11:53 pm
I choose:
“Don’t purchase the dead-tree copy of the book, download the pirated e-text, and send a money order (so it can’t be traced) for roughly the same amount of money as the cost of the used dead-tree version of the book to the author, with a letter explaining why she was receiving this check?”
Since the publisher doesn’t want the money, but you enjoy the book, pay the author for their effort and enjoy the book. As Asimov said, “Don’t let you sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right”.
November 29th, 2008 at 11:55 pm
Check the book out of the library, download the pirated copy, read it, and delete it. If you want to read it again, check it out of the library again, download it again, etc.
While it’s true this won’t give the author money, it’ll keep her on the library’s list of popular authors and give them incentive to get more books. You’re demonstrating your interest, which is legitimate; reading the library’s copy won’t cost you anything, and neither will reading the ebook. Nobody loses.
I was born in 1988.
November 29th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
Since you know the woman’s received death threats in connection with this book of hers, for God’s sake don’t send her an anonymous check in connection with that book.
If you include your identity, then she can figure you’re still a wierdo, but not a dangerous one.
If I were her, however, I’d not cash the check or respond in any way, just to be on the safe side.
Maybe if you have to write, it could be in the form of a fan letter, casually mentioning the dilema, rather than having some overarching moral question that forces you in particular, to send her a check, or be in any way demanding of her judgement in the matter.
The legal copyright questions are interesting, but at the human level, there’s definitely something wierd about it.
If this were the first reel of a Hitchcock film, we wouldn’t know for sure who the villain (the source of the real life death threats that you happen to know about) was going to be.
Or maybe this is a hypothetical propaganda story, in which the author turns out to have very valid reasons to suppress her own work. to help justify DRM. I suspect the latter.
November 30th, 2008 at 12:02 am
Either
~Buy the used book and haul it around till you’re done reading it and either shelve it or sell it back to a used book store. The carbon footprint for this is negligible since it is so low weight. It is not all that much bother either, I usually have many books stashed with me when I travel.
or
~buy the book used and go through the bother of converting it into a format that will work with your reader.
Using a pirate just adds to their base and will support and encourage them in piracy (including things that are currently covered under royalties). Also it you buy from the thief (or get for free-to-you from the thief) you are not buying from a legitimate business.
By buying from a used book seller you are purchasing something at a fairly low price from a legitimate business that is already operating on a thin margin.
The reference above to sending a letter to the publisher and author suggesting that the stories be made available online due to lack of ebook format and general scarcity is a good idea. Baen books actually has a ‘library’ of quite a few of their books that can be read for free online (the authors pick which, if any, of theirs can go up for free to promote sales; it helps if the first book in a series is free)
November 30th, 2008 at 12:02 am
I guess this is a time in the evolution of media that we come across these questions. Is it “ok” to pirate things if (even if I send in the money order) ethically, NO because in downloading it you are supporting the site that distributes the pirated data. However if the dead-tree copy of the book is out of print due to lack of profit from its printing then a version of the same book that is weightless in data form is a better alternative, but where you can legally get a copy of out of print books is the part that causes people to illegally download data.
November 30th, 2008 at 12:06 am
I would send the author a letter and ask her these questions, though getting the pirated copies and mailing her money is pretty reasonable. I think we should obey the spirit of the law, not the letter.
I’m 49 so I guess I’m a baby boomer.
November 30th, 2008 at 12:06 am
Oops,
late 20s
November 30th, 2008 at 12:09 am
If the author/publisher isn’t interested in making the book available for consumers in a given medium, then they’re apparently not interested in making any money from that medium. I will very gladly pirate when the copyright holder does not and will not make DRM-free versions available in the format I need to use. I won’t send them money in that case. I am their customer, if they want my money, they will -make the product I want the way I want it-.
November 30th, 2008 at 12:14 am
I like the idea of directly paying the author. But it isn’t always easy, I’ve tried. I would be great if there was a national clearing house for these kinds things (authors and musicians).
BTW, I just read a little “please buy my book” notice on John Varley’s website. He points out that he gets 93 cents on each sale of a newly republished series. I didn’t really mind paying retail ($8.00) for the books, but I’d much rather have paid him like $3.00 directly for an e-book.
Boomer (old guy, dead soon).
November 30th, 2008 at 12:14 am
There are two questions here:
Legally, option 1 (buying a used copy and lugging it around) is probably your only legitimate option. Option 2 (buying a used copy, and scanning it yourself) can be seen as legitimate as format-changing audio materials — transfering your LPs to cassette, for instance — which is seen as legit by many. Option 3 (buying a used copy, downloading an electronic copy) starts to bend the the boundaries of legitimacy.
As far as giving a royalty to the author (or to the publisher) for an illegal copy, I don’t see that as reasonable. As others have pointed out, there may be problems with sending the author a royalty check, and the publishers have chosen to forgo further payments by not printing further copies of the book.
The optimal solution would be for the publisher to release an ebook version themselves. The best way to accomplish this would be to send them a physical letter asking for it, pointing out a legitimate demand for the product. It is entirely possible that they would ignore your request, or take a long time in generating it.
With that request, I see it as similar to anime fansubbing — using a pirated version in a format convenient to you until such time as a legitimate version is available. Just make sure that when the ebook is published, you buy it.
As for my age… when I started college, my high-tech college of 10,000 was connected to NSFNet (or ARPANet, I’m not sure which one) by a single 9600baud synchronous modem — fast! At age 18, I downloaded the entire compressed source (5MB) of GNU Emacs 18 onto my PC.
November 30th, 2008 at 12:14 am
There’s a fundamental mind shift that the industries that rely on copyright have yet to really truly in their hearts make. That is that in order to survive in the modern world they need to make access ubiquitous. By that I mean easy to purchase their product, in a flexible way for consumers at a reasonable price. Many industries – publishing, movies, music, currently have at their heart the idea that scarcity brings the dollars (ie. limit access – be controlling etc about how, when, where people can access their content) but the revolution at the moment shows that making it easy to purchase and give money to the copyright owners actually solves the piracy problem.
This blog post is a classic example of this – the publisher prefers to have no mechanism to earn money for a product or “right-to-use” even though the consumer is willing to provide reasonable recompense for the work. In this case the publisher could accept just money for the “right-to-use” and not actually have any cost associated with distribution as the consumer has sourced it already.
It’s insane.
The copyright doctrine should be altered so that in the case where there is refusal to supply at least a “right-to-use” for essentially a “dead work” (one that is no longer and will never be published again) should make null and void any attempt to sue the consumer for copyright infringement to encourage ubiquity of supply.
November 30th, 2008 at 12:19 am
I’d like to add another perspective to the conversation if you don’t mind. I live in a country, in the developing world as they call it, where I do not have access (because of currency control regulations) to an international credit card to pay for my online purchases, regardless of actual (and relevant) purchasing power considerations. I am effectively locked out of any legal “send her money” option, so only your last option is available to me, downloading the e-copy for free and reading it.
I simply ask the question : what moral justifications can exist to deprive part of humankind from the work of any writer because some publishing business didn’t see a lucrative investment opportunity in my area of the world ?
The missing part in current copyright law, in my opinion, is the realistic (no more than 5 years) expiration date when all literature IP works fall automatically in the public realm such as a creative common license.
I understand writers need and deserve to make a decent living out of their occupation, but I fail to understand why business decisions should rule out the availability of out-of-print books to less fortunate people that were never part of the original target market to beign with.
A question to tytso, Eric and any other french speaking reader, isn’t evey copy of every bok published in France put in the “Bibiliotheque nationale”, the national library that is freely available to anyone wishing to read it on the premises ?
Some demographic info on me: I’m 32, french and arabic native speaker, read all of my english literature online and illegally I guess. I’m trying to learn spanish these days, but again access to books is an issue.
Cheers
November 30th, 2008 at 12:27 am
When dealing with fair use and how it can be extended in the Internet era one might first look at the concept of the library. Here books are available for free access, not for purchase or rental. Books include the most recent best sellers as well as a significant percentage of out-of-print books. Libraries co-exist with bookstores harmoniously. They have not put them or book publishers (from whom they specifically purchase a single copy for the purpose of sharing with many) out of business and it does not harm writers . Most important, libraries are considered fair use under copyright law. This includes not just the delivery of print media, but film and music as well.
One could make a compelling argument that the sharing of electronic versions of books by the online community creates, in spirit, a form of library, at least when no money changes hands. With regards to out-of-print books, it arguably performs a public service by making available what is no longer available, because the pragmatic commercial lifespan of that book has passed.
Copyright law has provisions that allow for free access. The problem is copyright law has yet to clarify where and how fair use will apply to the online world (though the courts are struggling through contradicting interpretations and precedents using existing law). A publisher can call you a thief, but without the parameters of fair use defined for the Internet that statement can not truly be morally or ethically correct. Likewise, for what ever actions you decide to take.
In answer to your question, I favor the free electronic distribution of out-of-print works as they have a cultural value that goes beyond their ability to generate a buck. The argument that artists will stop creating works if they don’t get paid is a corrupt one; Kafka never saw a publisher’s check in his lifetime. Ten’s of thousands of books each year are published and no one person can buy them all. If free access to out-of-print works create fans who buy an author’s future works then that monetizes the action. Unfortunately, it doesn’t answer the question of if it is right or wrong.
But it is good business and ultimately that is the opportunity the keepers of copyright seem to be missing. Until Congress comes through or until publishers and consumer find a satisfying middle ground you will have to choose with your heart.
P.S. Baby Boomer
November 30th, 2008 at 12:33 am
Ethics? Well the publisher is using the law to force the consumer to work on their terms. They are taking advantage of the consumer. As far as I am concern they are the first to toss ethics out the door. Why should the consumer follow ethics if the publisher does not?
Generation X
November 30th, 2008 at 12:43 am
Depending on how long it’s been out of print, option 2 or 5.
An author should not receive royalties for everything they create, for eternity. This attitude only *discourages* authors from creating new works by encouraging them to rest on the laurels of their old ones.
Copyright should last as long as patents last, or less: 17 years (and only to that long if extended). Beyond that, their creation now belongs to the culture that inspired it in the first place, and should be free.
By choosing option 5, you choose to resist the insane copyright laws that are leaching our culture out from under us. (And yes, I mean leach…http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Aleach)
I’m 33.
November 30th, 2008 at 12:43 am
I’m 27 (will be 28 in 3 days). I don’t know what that makes me, but I think it’s Gen X.
I say download the book and send the money (electronically, if you can). It’s silly to get the book if you don’t need to use it.
You might consider sending some money to the publisher, too. You could send the whole cost of the book to the author, but it could be argued that the publisher had a role in making the book widely available (the pirated e-book was probably transcribed from a dead tree version) and played some role in increasing the fame and reach of the author, else you may never have heard of her.
You can also E-Mail/snail mail the author and ask what she would like. If you’re looking for a general purpose solution, though, I would say download it and send money.
November 30th, 2008 at 12:44 am
Write the author.
Buy the used book.
Pack less stuff when traveling.
Practice patience.
You don’t really need it.
Age 32
November 30th, 2008 at 12:49 am
I am wondering what the title of the book is.
November 30th, 2008 at 12:52 am
I am either a 1.o version of a Gen X or more likely a late beta version.
I look at this and wonder . . . why?
The author does not care. The publisher does not care.
No one seems to care about this book. This is why books should go into public domain after about 10 years of no publishing.
If they really wanted a published version there would be one. Oh yeah and having it on the Kindle only does not count.
November 30th, 2008 at 12:52 am
The perceived problem stems from a concern for property rights. These are rights that we as a society have ceded to the author and publisher.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright
The Copyright Clause of the United States Constitution (1787) authorized copyright legislation: “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” That is, by guaranteeing them a period of time in which they alone could profit from their works, they would be enabled and encouraged to invest the time required to create them, and this would be good for society as a whole.
Are authors “encouraged to invest the time required to create”? Clearly the answer to this question is YES.
The fly in the ointment here is “limited Times”. Most books do not have the luxury of a second or third printing. The _only_ way to get them is _used_. How is this situation “good for society as a whole.”?
I asked a college professor once what were the best books for the study of optics. He said that all the best books were long out of print. “Some ideas”, he said, “can be explained in a limited number of ways, and the best explanations have already been used.” The choice is then between plagiarism, copyright infringement, or use of a lesser work. Respect for the law gives us the latter.
The answer is simple. There is no moral dilemma. You just use the pirate version of the book on your ebook machine. You don’t worry about paying the author or the publisher. If the publisher/author thought there was a market for it the book would be in print and then the question would be a different one.
November 30th, 2008 at 12:54 am
#1 is obviously OK, as that’s the point of the book
#2 is a clear case of fair use as long as you don’t distribute it
#3 is where things start getting gray. My position is that YOU would be in the right as for you the result is the same as #2, just faster and perhaps better quality if you assume the person/group who initially released it was experienced. Obviously the releaser and those distributing it are legally in the wrong. I personally do this all the time when I get a new CD or movie. I have a fast internet connection, so for the most part it takes me longer to remove the disc from its case and rip it than it would take to download. On top of that, the internet copy tends to be higher quality than what I’d end up with since the people releasing this sort of content on the internet do it all the time. In the case of HD-DVD content it would take ages to transcode on my aging desktop and as for Blu-Ray unless something’s changed with the PS3 I don’t even have a way to back it up myself.
#4 is very gray. I don’t think I’d have any moral concerns with it, but from a legal perspective #3 was reasonably safe where #4 is clearly illegal. Given the choice if there was an easy way to do so, I’d probably choose #4 over buying the book used though. As you say, the author wins, no one loses, it seems to be a net positive.
#5 is straight out wrong both morally and legally IF the original author is reachable for option 4. If not, I say heck with it. If the copyright holder won’t publish it and the real author can’t be reached I don’t have any qualms about pirating it. I can’t say that’s ever happened to me though.
November 30th, 2008 at 1:02 am
Oh yea, 22, whatever generation that puts me in…
November 30th, 2008 at 1:05 am
If you can’t purchase it in a manner which allows the author to be compensated, then how can it be piracy. No matter how you acquire the product at this point neither the author nor the publisher is going to be getting any money from you. So I can’t see how this is piracy. However if you so enjoy the work that you would like to reward the author, then send her some money.
Personally I like dead trees, so I would find the book somewhere.
Tail end of the boomers.
November 30th, 2008 at 1:23 am
It seems to me that out-of-print should imply out-of-copyright. Once publishers have effectively orphaned their works by making them impossible to obtain, they’ve lost any possible moral argument about a lost sale.
November 30th, 2008 at 1:31 am
If your decision on ethical behavior is decided by knowing who the author/publisher is versus not, I don’t understand your concept of “ethical”. There is no ethical motive as to whether or not someone should profit from an action or information. Ethical behaviour, when speaking about US Copyrights is inherently oxymoronic. You obtain the copy in the form that is easiest for you to use or can easily convert to your preferred form.
‘Jerry Pournelle has indignantly proclaimed that e-piracy goes against a “specific (and very stern) Biblical injunction against stealing from widows and orphans”.’ is a proclamation with a specific bias, not solid reasoning. Information is not something that a specific entity has a right to dole out. This is a fact of pragmatism for humanity. Your specific feelings about what is important determine what’s ethical and moral, not a treatise on Judeo-Christian fable.
Gen X
November 30th, 2008 at 1:33 am
Just use the pirated version, the author is not missing out on something they no longer produce.
~Dan
November 30th, 2008 at 1:36 am
Get the “pirate” copy and send money to the author.
The author wins – resale of used book normally does not give another royalty to author.
The environment wins – no carbon to ship/copy used copy of book.
The reader wins – can read desired material out of print in preferred electronic format.
The publisher wins – not hassled by repeated requests for reprinting.
Society wins because the original intent of copyright is fulfilled (recognizing author work with appropriate payment) — indeed recognizes the authors work over and over without need to dead tree republish.
War Baby (born 1942)
November 30th, 2008 at 1:45 am
Personally I would just download the pirated e-book version and send the author money if I actually enjoyed the book.
I do the same thing with movies, if I really like the movie I’ll buy it or go see it with friends. This just seems the most logical to me, if I don’t enjoy it, why in the world would I want to pay for it? Trailers are misleading, book summaries are never enough, I would prefer to sample it in it’s entirety before paying instead of giving monetary support to a book/movie that I did not enjoy.
Generation Y
November 30th, 2008 at 1:53 am
If you’re considering CO2 emissions, you’re obviously considering much vaguer implications than I would. Here’s something you didn’t consider — if you buy the book, you’re helping establish a market for used books, which increases the value of a new book. I’d certainly be much more willing to buy a brand-new hardcover, knowing I can sell it again soon.
That said, I would probably just pirate it. My justification is this: Piracy involves a bit of practical risk. I might get caught, and have to pay large fines. In the case of games, I might download a trojan. In any case, there is an opportunity here for the legitimate item to be a better product, money notwithstanding.
I am willing to spend money doing the right thing. I am not, however, willing to spend time. The publisher hasn’t given you the opportunity to do things the way you want, so do it yourself. I see nothing wrong with sending her a check, but I don’t think that’s required, and if you really wanted to set it right, you’d have to write a few more checks. Although I play devil’s advocate above, I don’t think you need to buy the used book, unless you want to give it to a less ebook-friendly person as a gift.
A similar example, which I frequently am criticized for, is my stance on DRM: If a game is DRM’d to the point where it would DAMAGE MY SYSTEM to install it, I refuse to pay for the privilege of cracking it anyway (which is illegal). Occasionally, a game is good enough that I’ll pirate it anyway. Usually, I’ll just wait and spend my time (and money) on a game that gets it right, or at least close enough.
No idea where we’re drawing generational lines these days… I’m 21.
November 30th, 2008 at 1:59 am
You should certainly download a pirate copy either way. It’s frankly ridiculous to spend hours of your time converting the book you may or may not end up purchasing into the format you want, when somebody else has already done it for you.
Additionally, the way I figure it, you may as well just pirate the book outright. Used book sales ensure that nobody save for the reseller sees any monetary kickback from it. You might quite rightly ask why someone who paid good money to resell a book ought to be excluded from any profit on their investment. I would respond that purchasing anything for the express purpose of reselling it is an investment, just like the stock market, and that nobody ought to be guaranteed the return they want on any investment. You shouldn’t feel morally obliged to purchase something being resold; anyone who had any actual creative input on the item in question has already had their cut, and that’s really the only important part.
Additionally, if you buy a book you know you’re not going to use in paper form, that’s also one less book for someone who might actually want a paper book to read. This is perhaps less important, but the book’s out of print. Scarcity is an issue here. A weak argument it is, but there’s still perhaps something to be said for leaving the series out there for someone else to enjoy who’d give the paper book a good home.
Finally, if you really do like the book, and figure the author deserves some of your money for it, go ahead and send that money order. I tend to do much the same thing, whenever I pirate something I end up liking. Everybody wins that way.
Demographically, I’m Generation Y.
November 30th, 2008 at 2:05 am
Nobody is gaining anything from the used book except the person selling it and the person receiving it.
If it gives you warm fuzzies, send a check to the author, but the author wasn’t going to see any $$$ from the used book sale anyways.
I say download it and forget it. I’m beginning to think that books which go out of print should enter the public domain anyway.
21 years old, so Gen Y?
November 30th, 2008 at 2:05 am
Lots of moral posturing here. I suspect that in reality, if most of these folks were in the situation you describe they would just download the pirated text and enjoy it, knowing no one has been hurt. Also, many of the readers of the pirated text are likely to go buy something in-print if they like the author. In addition, if they like the author, they will speak about him/her and thus are also likely to give the author free publicity.
I am 69. Do I get a prize (of a pirated out of print ebook) for being the oldest responder?
November 30th, 2008 at 2:11 am
Excellently asked question and some thoughtful answers.
Let me dispose of your suggested options quickly:
(1) Dead tree only. This is the “most legal” but least satisfying path for you. Zero value to author.
(2) Dead tree and scan. Just as legal, but very labor intensive. Still Zero value to author.
(3) Dead tree and pirate. Questionable legality, but it “feels” more right than just a pirate copy. Still os zero value to author.
(4) Dead tree, pirate and money to author. Still questionable legality, good gut feel, author rewarded for providing pleasure.
(5) Pirate. Not legal, but has no affect on author one way or the other.
I’ve been in a similar position and for me personally I greatly prefer a variation of 5-6.
In my case I was unable to find a reasonably priced dead tree copy of an out of print tome I was after, but did find pirated.
I wrote the author a polite letter expressing my distress at not being able to find a hard copy, my joy in finally at least finding an electronic copy, and my pleasure in reading it. I included the full new cost of the book when originally published as a “gift” to the author, assured him I expected nothing further for the gift, and wished him well.
Expanding out a little…
In those cases where both pirated e-book and legit new or used book are available to me, I buy the hard copy and use the e-book. (No different to me morally than having someone else do the work of converting MY copy to a different format.)
On a number of occasions where the author has both a published hard copy AND a legitimate free electronic copy available (yes, some have done that) I read the electronic AND buy the book. (First one I did that with was by Larry Niven, and I’ve since done it with others.)
Oh! Some may notice that I do not pay the publisher anything in most cases. That’s on purpose. Not only was the author the person who created what I want, the publisher is the one who had quit publishing or stocking the book I feel I owe them nothing for that. Legally a poor position, but… *shrug*
I fit in the “Old Fart” group, just barely ahead of the boomers, born just before WWII ended.
November 30th, 2008 at 2:13 am
You’re asking about morality, not legality. The only purely legal thing you can probably do is just buy the paper copy used, and read it that way. While many feel that it is ‘ok’ to download a pirated e-text of a book you already own, in the United States at least this is very much a grey area and publishers have quite conspicuously disagreed with this theory. In other words, you would still be sued if it were worth the legal fees (which it probably isn’t, but that’s another issue, the ‘can-you-get-away-with-it issue, which is certainly yes.)
Now to the moral issue, which IMO is the only important one. Morality is about what people deserve, and you can’t analyse what they deserve until you analyse what they’ve done to deserve it. So here’s what all the players involved did. An author wrote a book. That’s good, and deserves compensation. Then that author sold all right to that compensation (or at least the right to receive and distribute royalty) to a publishing house. The publisher paid money for this, and it was (presumably) a deal both parties entered into with full knowledge. Therefore, the publisher now deserves whatever the author would normally deserve. However, the publisher is no longer willing to accept this cash. Instead the publisher is exercising the ‘right’ of an owner of a work not to publish it.
Do you think it is moral for a publisher to use the rights received in such a deal, to suppress a work on the author’s behalf? I don’t. Very likely, the author doesn’t feel fairly dealt with either (put yourself in their shoes, as a moral experiment). Nothing illegal has happened, but I believe it’s pretty clear that something immoral has already happened. The publisher paid for the right to publish a book and is now (to the extent that they would sue you or try to claim that right upon e-text downloaders) using that right NOT to publish it.
What do they deserve for THAT? I think they deserve some kind of moral punishment for it — a comeuppance. In fact, I think such publishers deserve a public shaming for not automatically giving the rights to books they no longer care about back to the author, or releasing them into the public domain or at the very least putting out the word that etext distribution is authorised. It may be quite difficult to prosecute this shaming in the current cultural environment; however, the very *least*, most restrained, most conservative punishment the publisher deserves, which takes on the character of perfect ‘poetic justice’ and no more and no less, is to have the work pirated with no compensation.
And that’s exactly what I suggest you do, with a clear conscience. So, option 5. DEFINITELY option 5.
If you want to also send the author some cash, by all means, but keep in mind that since the author’s rights have already been relinquished in full foreknowledge of a deal that would inevitably be dead-ended, giving the author money at this point, is an act of *charity* and *gratitude*, not *desert*. And I would suggest that you identify neither yourself nor the novel you are expressing ‘gratitude’ for.
November 30th, 2008 at 2:15 am
BTW I am 39 years old.
November 30th, 2008 at 2:17 am
Download the book, and send money to the author or his survivors. I’m tired of playing the copyrighted, out of print, unavailable except used, game that publishers foist on us.
Born in 1961. Professional programmer, so copyright keeps me fed. Except that it makes no sense as it stands today… life+70 years, except extended regularly whenever Mickey threatens to go out of copyright, is insane.
November 30th, 2008 at 2:18 am
I’m an old hacker (47, technically a Boomer) whose first computer was an Apple IIe. I’d say buy the book, then download the etext. Having an electronic copy used only for your convenience constitutes fair use, in my book.
November 30th, 2008 at 2:20 am
What about: don’t buy the used book, don’t download the e-book. Send the publisher and/or the author a note pointing out that by not making the book available they’ve lost out. Give them a reason to make a sensible choice.
Or lobby to get copyright changed so that the public good is served, which in this case could, for example, put the abandoned copyright in the public domain. The reason we (the people) grant this power is to encourage authors to write and publisher to publish. If they can’t be bothered to do that they should forfiet the right.
November 30th, 2008 at 2:43 am
I disagree with sending money to the writer, I would almost consider him to have abandonned his copyright, so i would not be squeemish about considering it now to be in the public domain.
However do think that the existing book owners have a item of which limited copies are available (in physcial form), like a limited run set of artist prints, as fewer and fewer copies are available the value should go up.
Morally, i think you should by a second hand copy, download the e-text, then send a cease-and-dessist letter the web site for distributing it (as it devaluing your rare property).
November 30th, 2008 at 2:48 am
There is nothing you can do to make using the pirated text the right thing to do ethically or legally. If you want to stay clean, you need to buy — and use — a used version of the book.
When you buy a used book, you are buying the rights to transfer it as well. This is called the right of “first sale”. Since the pirated text is, well, pirated, it conveys no rights whatsoever. It’s just a copy made without the required permission of the copyright holder.
I would recommend selling a letter to the author, however, and ask them to review their copyright agreement with the publisher and see if it covers distribution in electronic form. If the book predates the internet, it may well not have that angle covered. If so, then ask the author to consider publishing a legit electronic copy under her own copyright.
I was born in 1956.
November 30th, 2008 at 2:55 am
Oh: 42 computer programmer and syndicator
November 30th, 2008 at 2:57 am
If you’re determined to be morally correct then option #3, just buy the dead-tree copy and then download the etext. Doing anything else is just being silly – you’ve obeyed the law and you get the ebook version. Everybody wins.
44 – technically end baby-boom but I’ve never been one of them emotionally (kinda like wandering through the mess after a really great party and having everyone say “man, you should have been here”, but basically it’s all sticky floors and empty bottles, so put me down for GenX).
November 30th, 2008 at 2:59 am
Personally, I’m a very avid reader and I hope to be a writer as well someday; whether it’s short stories, rhetorical essays, or something more journalistic all pique my interest and intrigue me to further investigate said subjects across a variety of media including e-books, used-books, magazines, and new books. As a lover of information I feel that the more information that reaches society the better. I am absolutely thrilled that as a relatively poor Berkeley student I can download almost all of the classics online as well as more contemporary informational texts. I would have to say that it is indeed ok to download a book that has been out of print for quite some time or is no longer available to purchase new.
However, I feel that nothing beats the feel of an old book in the hands, and I always buy books that have made an impact on me or are so profound that I cannot continue in the electronic format to put on my bookcase. So in conclusion I would say download! Enrich yourself with information. Give your mind a break from all of the mind numbing media that’s available on every corner of the web. Surely if we can watch/listen to Snoop Dogg, The Beatles, and Hannah Montana on YouTube (all of whom collect more money than any contemporary author) without paying then we can also enrich our minds with the works of Dickens, Homer, or Twain for free. I’m sure they would love for people hundreds of years after them to even know their names let alone be reading their works!
Newly turned 18 year old here
November 30th, 2008 at 3:06 am
Options two through four are all very ethical. Part of it, of course, depends on just how much you love the character and his books. If you really love it then buy the hard copy just to have and download it (same principle as owning a CD and copying it to your iPod).
Since I’m an aspiring author I do like number four. Plus, it galvanizes her to releasing the book into eFormat later, especially if enough people do it. It’s the same principle as fan dubbed anime being allowed from Japan to the U.S. and where there’s an entire black market in fanfics (in Japanese) in Japan (at least their was). It raises interest in the book itself, and gets more people to hear about it.
Now, if the book was still available new would you buy it just to have a copy?
Also, if it was ever released in eFormat, even after you downloaded or scanned and formed the illegal version, would you buy the legal copy to give the author her due?
November 30th, 2008 at 3:07 am
BTW, was born in the 80s, and just graduated university.
November 30th, 2008 at 3:08 am
Interesting ethical question. Since the legality issue is unclear and IANAL I can’t really speak to the legality of the issue. That being said, the morality of the situation is also unclear, but if I were in your shoes, wanting the book in electronic form and finding that the book is out of print and the publisher is not interested in releasing their work in electronic form. I would write a letter asking permission from the entity that holds the rights to copy the book into electronic format for use in my ebook reader. Send the letter with the sign for delivery option and send a copy to yourself to show that you made a reasonable attempt to get their permission. If they give you permission, then download the electronic copy, if they deny you permission, then this article and the ensuing letters would make a fun news story. If they don’t respond, then go ahead and download, knowing that you made a reasonable attempt to seek permission, and keep the sealed copy of the letter you sent your self as proof. Seriously, the issue is more about the sorry state of copyright law in the US, and companies that are in the process of killing themselves through refusal to adapt to the changes that technology has brought. The reality is if the publisher says no, then don’t buy from that publisher, even if you want to read the book, and encourage us to do the same by telling us which publisher it is, and write to the authors you enjoy letting them know that as a fan of their work you want to let them know that if company x publishes their next book, you won’t be buying it because that company refuses to publish in electronic format.
We want our media accessible electronically and if a company won’t give it to us, then it will go the way of the Dodo.
The reason I do not recommend downloading the book and sending the author a check is that you will most likely not be able to get a current address, especially if the author fears death threats. If an anonymous letter showed up in your post box after you had been receiving threats, what would you do with the letter?
We can’t make the decision for you, that is between you and the dictates of your own conscience. Do what you feel you can in good conscience do, but be honest with yourself if you think you are trying to justify a decision that your conscience is feeling a twinge about. I don’t know you so can’t really speak into that clearly, just want you to be certain that your decision doesn’t negatively impact your ethical stance.
Born in ‘73
November 30th, 2008 at 3:11 am
The answer is find an alternative book. Nothing is unique, there are no new thoughts in the world. Can’t buy Roadside Picnic, get Solaris, it gives the same effect. Can’t buy Make Room Make Room, get My Petition for More Space.
Same thing with music. If Metallica or Britney won’t give you legal music for free, there are hundreds of CC licensed artists that are basically the same.
November 30th, 2008 at 3:14 am
Interesting post since I have been going through many such agonizing questions myself. Living in India, many technical books (even ebooks) are either prohibitively expensive (1$ ~ 50 Rs) or just unavailable. This along with the increased availability of broadband makes piracy an attractive option.
Many publishers are bringing out cheap Asian editions almost immediately after the US editions to counter this. EBooks are not yet easily available and the cost is many times not considerably lower.
I’d love to see Google Books work out as a viable option for out-of-print books. Personally I’d like to download the pirated book and pay the author .
( I am 35 years old)
R
November 30th, 2008 at 3:15 am
Ok, so you question the morality of things. I would go thusly:
1. Obtain the book, dead-tree version, second hand only. The tree is already been dead, Gore will not chastise you from his idling SUV.
2.a Turn the dead print into an electronic document, spending ludicrous amounts of carbon emissions (breathing, scanner and computer power, and whatnot) on a task which may or may not result in a one-time read.
or 2.b Get a pirated download version, so you do not have to fear the author will get nothing (because he did not estimate uses for his product correctly.) Keep that carbon footprint for the work done in mind.
Fair Use will enable you to have the electronic text, as it is, because you have the actual book. What do I know about copyright law? Nothing, and it may even turn out that your pirated copy, even if the text is the very same as the book, is tainted by its illegal distribution. Morally, by having obtained one legal copy, you have paid your tribute and are now unhindered to have the text in any form for your enjoyment.
Neanderthal Company doesn’t do what you want? Too bad, that is life. You are out of luck, regrettably, you lose! You appreciate a (hopefully) good book and bemoan its unavailability. But you have not made your case on how exactly the publisher made it impossible for you to legitimiately [sic] follow the law. Nobody makes you steal the book, nobody tells you to download the book, AND you can BUY the book second hand!
As to your green ambition, I am glad to find no obvious side-effect of the eReader. I was hoping on a highly toxic battery, or it being made by blind chinese orphans. But as for the rest, forgetting your moral crusade, you seem to think logical (bona fide, I have not read your other blog posts.) As for the CO2 emissions, since you mention them so your choices seem to have a balance, you and I will not agree that your personal pursuit to stay green by your actions could justify stealing something that isn’t yours.
The ends NEVER justify the means.
Your problem can be solved, as many before me mentioned here, that you contact the author and ask for advice. You may even need to contact the publisher. If you do not like the answer you get, and you do not have legal means to obtain a copy of the book, digital or physical, then move on!
Or you can wait until the book shows up in Project Gutenberg. A few of Mercedes Lackey’s books have been made available free online, directly from the publisher. So, weirder things happen.
You also would give a second-hand book a higher value. Think of this, you prolong the meaning of a thought by perpetuating its use! I can see you already conflicted choosing between saving the planet (by every ridiculous means possible,) or celebrating a thought worth saving.
If it eases your conflict, buy the (perhaps printed on recycled paper) dead-tree book, and pay for an estimated carbon-whatever absolution. Travel with a less in your carry-on.
If you feel offended by my bubbling thoughts, if you think that I am a [insert popular, negative grouping], do not waste more time on an answer. You should do something constructive instead, like turning off that damn computer and take a walk. Ted asketh, Ted haseth been giventh an opinion.
My age or my generation does not define me or my actions. I am responsible for my own opinion.
November 30th, 2008 at 3:27 am
pirate the damn thing. send a message to the publisher explaining that they lost out on a sale of an ebook of an out of print book because they didn’t take the time to make it available legally. I expect in the near future most if not all out of print books will be available as ebooks for just this situation.
late gen x or early gen y depending on who you ask (I’m 29).
November 30th, 2008 at 3:27 am
hi,
thank’s for your answer: of course, we’ll link to your post.
As I finished the translation, I’ll give to you the link to our page.
Best regards
Eric Streit
————-
November 30th, 2008 at 3:42 am
Number 3 (I’m 24)
You bought it, now you have the right to use the information contained within the book however you like. The final product (pirated e-text) is indistinguishable from what your own work would have done (scanned the book), so there is nothing wrong with it.
It’s the same reason that I feel OK downloading a movie in 640×480 mp4 format for my iPod if I already have the DVD of that movie. All I’m doing is sparing myself the effort of ripping and re-encoding the movie myself. And I really don’t think THAT is the process which I pay for when I buy the video file online.
November 30th, 2008 at 3:44 am
The problem is that you are still depriving the people who own a copy. Their used copy now has less worth. This is bad for several reasons:
The book is worth less, people are more likely to throw the book away.
The book is worth less, the publisher is less likely to reprint.
The book is worth less, you just killed the value of something that someone may want to sell.
The third arguement, I would normally say is just “life”… except that it is happening because of an illegal act, so it is “wrong”.
But, I would probably just get the ebook, unless I wanted something I could actually read, then I would get a used copy.
What the heck is gen Y? I am 24.
November 30th, 2008 at 4:32 am
From a legal standpoint (under US law), only option 1 is acceptable. I think this is a shame – copyright law desperately needs to be updated to the realities of digital distribution and on-demand printing. At some point I’d like to see a _good_ orphaned works law created. There’s several books that I loved as a child that are out of print (and run over $100 for a used copy) I would love to be able to give my friends’ children and paying that much for a 32 page picture book is just not going to happen.
In the days when keeping an inventory meant comparatively expensive large physical production runs, warehouse space, etc., it was understandable that things should be allowed to go out of print. Now that those are no longer necessary to distribute media, it would be nice to see a simple compulsory publishing license rule established, such that if a copyright holder allows something to go out of print for X years, that anyone can print it provided they pay Y as a fee.
A question is whether there should be a right for authors and/or rightsholders to withdraw a work from publication entirely.
But to actually answer your question (based on my morality), in reverse order:
5: Unacceptable to me. I’m all in favour of people who give away things for free as long as it’s voluntary on the part of the rightsholder.
4: Unacceptable to me based on most publishing contracts. The author most likely transferred the ownership of the novels to the publishing company. While you may disagree with their policy of not publishing books as ebooks, others may disagree with your decision to use $OPENSOURCELICENSEOFCHOICE. If you start justifying breaking someone’s commercial interest based on your personal preferences, if you believe if fairness, you must accept other people doing it to you as well. Or similarly, just because someone doesn’t like IBM’s policies on code you write for them, would you find it appropriate if someone downloaded the code and did as they pleased with it and sent you a check?
As other people have noted, it may be worth writing the author. Within the framework of this moral discussion it’s possible that her contract with the publisher had the publication rights revert back to her after a period of time, so she may be able to grant the moral right to download it with or without payment to her.
3: If I were you, most likely what I end up doing. It’s not technically legal but it fulfills what I see as the moral obligations. If I thought the writing so was good that the author should get some cash for it, I’d purchase more of her in print writing or try to toss her a check on top of it.
2: Still not technically legal and if I’m going to bend the law either way (options 2 and 3), I’ll do it the smart way.
1: What I would end up doing, but I’m the sort of person who doesn’t like ereaders – there’s something specific about a physical book to me.
Another moral hazard raised by the issue was touched on by some of the other comments is that bypassing the law simply because technology means it’s easy to do so also reduces the likelihood that people will chose to fight against bad laws. Copyright laws do need to be updated – if enough people found situations like yours to be a problem and supported changing them, in theory they could affect the legal system (we’ll pretend that democracy works..). If they simply shrug and download it, chances are that they’re much less likely to write their Senator and request change.
And for your demographic study, 32 (which puts me towards the tail end of Gen X – my interests and attitudes are closer to X than to Y) and online pre-WWW, with a fair amount of experience working in the music industry both pre and post mp3 piracy.
November 30th, 2008 at 4:41 am
This one seems to me pretty simple.
Would you copy the library copy in order to be able to carry it with you? I think most people would say yes. Then, taking a copy of a copy seems not a particular problem — given that neither the publisher nor the author is in any way harmed by this action.
Resellers might be harmed, but they benefit not from copyright but from restrictions on supply that do not benefit either the copyright holder (almost always the publisher) or the author. So, only a ritual legalist could object — although I do not want to suggest that this is an incoherent position (although it happens not to be mine).
November 30th, 2008 at 4:48 am
just download it.
1) since it’s out of print, you’re buying either secondhand or overstock. under the first sale doctrine, the author doesn’t receive a penny.
2) downloading it is the least resource-wasting method of getting the book. judging by your pro-environment stances, it will cost society a whole lot less for you to get it via torrent than buy it elsewhere.
3) sending money to the author can be dangerous. since you don’t personally know the lady, you can’t exactly send her a check. these pro-copyright people are silly enough to spend $10k on legal bills for a $3k judgment, so it’s very well possible that her publisher might hunt you down out of spite if they found out. you’d basically have to send cash with no return address. even then, you have absolutely no way of knowing if she got it or some turd who opens her mail for her.
November 30th, 2008 at 4:54 am
I’m going to suggest a new option, inspired by some of Cory Doctorow’s (http://boingboing.net) many comments on the topic of copyright and science fiction.
Since the books you’re after are no longer being published, the author has no expectation of any additional revenue from them, so however you get the book (buy used, find in a library, find in unauthorized ebook form), I think you can do that with the knowledge that you’re not depriving the author of any lost sales.
There are two other things which you can do for the author, neither of which I’ve seen mentioned yet.
First, you could buy one of her current works, which not only compensates her (and the rest of the publication chain), but also shows her publisher that her work is popular.
Second, and probably most important, you could praise the author and her work by name, which would probably generate more sales of her work and, most importantly, would make her and her work better known, because obscurity is a far more critical issue for most authors than piracy.
November 30th, 2008 at 5:10 am
Write the author. Offer to do a quality conversion to ebook if she’ll provide source material and put it in the public domain. Essentially, offer to do your part in ‘open-sourcing’ it. If she tells you that the rights are now held by a 3rd party (publisher), then make the same offer to them.
Then again, it may be out of print because the author actually doesn’t want any more copies of that work propagating. This too is within her rights.
November 30th, 2008 at 5:18 am
Download the e-text, read it, delete it and then when it’s convenient to you borrow the book from a library for a day. That way the author/their estate get a share of a “borrower’s fee” calculated at the end of the library’s financial year. If you want to read it again, repeat. This way you’re not out of pocket and you’re supporting both the author (just) and the library system.
Peet (Age 46, Aberdeen, Scotland)
November 30th, 2008 at 5:19 am
PS: I’m 43. WRT copyright laws in general, I see room for improvements. But I think the author and publisher should be given all the courtesies of the laws that were in effect when the publishing agreements were written. Anything else would be ex post facto, changing the rules after the players have started the game, and hardly fair.
November 30th, 2008 at 5:29 am
Option 4. It’s not your fault it’s out of print, you were willing to purchase it. Buying it second hand, in any format, doesn’t benefit the author anyway so that shouldn’t factor in to the decision at all.
Side note – should you send a check to the author every time you read an out-of-print book borrowed from the library? How does reading the ‘pirated’ e-copy of this book differ from reading a library copy?
30-year old college graduate. Don’t try to pigeonhole people into stupid ‘generation’ names.
November 30th, 2008 at 5:58 am
Somehow I don’t think the Bible covers copyright infringement (correct me if I’m wrong), and copyright infringement is an imaginary crime, theft is a real crime. (I mean imaginary like imaginary numbers – still numbers, but different).
In your situation I’d download the book and send money to the author if you can work out how to do that (I’d give up if I couldn’t find a “donate” button on the author’s Web site). If the author was dead I’d say don’t give their relatives any money. I don’t think I really agree with inheriting large amounts of wealth.
My usual tactic is to attempt to locate a book in a charity shop, and failing that buy it secondhand online. That is assuming I can’t find it in the library. And unless the book was really good, I’ll take it back to a charity shop when I’m done with it. The authors don’t benefit from my money, but at least somebody does.
And of course, if I can’t get it those ways I’ll download it, but I prefer to read books from paper because I can read them lying down in bed, and on trains (places I don’t generally take my laptop).
According to the Wikipedia I am of Generation Y and, indeed, a university student.
November 30th, 2008 at 6:30 am
Fascinating post and responses. I will just add that some publishers will re-print (or make available in electronic form) out-of-print books when they notice that second-hand copies are beginning to sell for commercially-viable prices. So, by buying a hardcopy of the book second-hand you would be contributing to the supply-and-demand market of the book, and helping to establish a ‘fair’ market price for the book (that both sellers and buyers are happy with).
Just to put another thought into the mix: no-one has considered rewarding the providers of the pirate copy (for all their public-spirited hard work), nor suggested condemning them (for breaking a law and potentially depriving publisher, author, et al. from potential future revenue).
I’m a cusp-er (Nov 1964).
November 30th, 2008 at 6:52 am
Personally, I’d just buy a used copy of the book. There are plenty of ebooks you can find to read on the road; read the hard copy at home. I’ve never read an entire novel onscreen, I find actual books much more pleasant; I can read them faster.
When a book is out of print, normally (depending on the contract with the publisher) all rights revert to the author after a year. The original publisher may well have no right to issue an ebook, even if they had the ability (they may not have the layout or text files and would have to scan and OCR from the final book). And in reality, very few publishers make a profit out of ebooks. So she could opt to release it as print-on-demand or an ebook for very little investment if she chose without reference to the publisher.
A complication is: “some of her more psychotic readers sent her death threats as a result of reading said books”. The author may well not want the book to be distributed in any form. That would not affect you sourcing existing editions though.
I am very curious as to who the author is and what these mysterious stories are you would go to so much trouble to read. Any hints?
November 30th, 2008 at 6:55 am
Pirate it. It’s the only moral course of action. Really.
Current law is immoral, and abuses authors. Extended copyright terms only benefit publishers in cases like this (and this happens to the vast majority of books!) The author no longer gets paid, and no longer owns their own work. Plus, old works are artificially kept off the market, often against the wishes of the authors.
Nearly all authors would benefit financially if copyright terms were cut to ~ 10 years, since at that point nearly all books are out of print anyway, and the author would at least have the option of selling e-texts online.
An even better solution would be to limit publisher contracts to 10 years, having all automatically revert to the original author, and eventually to the public domain. The current system extends copyright indefinitely, and gives ownership to a group with zero incentive to treat works responsibly. Making new copies of old books is illegal by default, ultimately preventing preservation of historical texts and cultural histories. It is very difficult for authors to bypass publishers for the same reasons it is hard for artists to bypass the MPAA and RIAA.
Sending money directly to the author places them in direct violation of contracts that they signed with the publisher (assuming they cash the check, and know that you’ve ‘bought’ a copy of the book). At the very least, it puts the authors in an awkward position. If the author is soliciting donations, it’s a different story, since they’ve chosen to place themselves at legal risk, or worked something out with their publisher.
If you still feel guilty after pirating the book, give your money to your local public library so they can maintain a collection of out of print books that will probably outlast the short sighted publisher’s collection.
If you don’t want to tilt at that windmill, send $ to the pirate party, or maybe buy a new work from the same author then throw it out.
Whatever you do, don’t buy drm’ed e-books!! Doing so will only make the problem worse, since it gives the publishers a “burn all copies of book” button on top of perpetual rights to prevent republishing of out of print works.
(Late 20’s; between X and Y, I suppose)
November 30th, 2008 at 7:01 am
Correspond with the author. Tell her you enjoyed her work. That might be just the spur to get her writing again.
November 30th, 2008 at 7:10 am
Personally, I’d just buy a used copy of the book. There are plenty of ebooks you can find to read on the road; read the hard copy at home. I’ve never read an entire novel onscreen, I find actual books much more pleasant; I can read them faster.
When a book is out of print, normally (depending on the contract with the publisher) all rights revert to the author after a year. The original publisher may well have no right to issue an ebook, even if they had the ability (they may not have the layout or text files and would have to scan and OCR from the final book). And in reality, very few publishers make a profit out of ebooks. So she could opt to release it as print-on-demand or an ebook for very little investment if she chose without reference to the publisher.
A complication is: “some of her more psychotic readers sent her death threats as a result of reading said books”. The author may well not want the book to be distributed in any form. That would not affect you sourcing existing editions though.
I am very curious as to who the author is and what these mysterious stories are you would go to so much trouble to read. Any hints?
[Apologies if this is a dupe, I submitted this 10 minutes ago and no sign of it so I repeated.]
November 30th, 2008 at 7:10 am
I’m 19, I would download it.
I live in Canada though, so law here doesn’t care if I downloaded it, but honestly if I had the cash I would send money to the author. That would be the “right” choice, but sadly not the one I would make.
November 30th, 2008 at 7:29 am
IMO there two issues here (1) Is the item available in the format you want (2) Have you a legally acquired copy?
Where I have a legal copy, be it book, record, CD or DVD & it is more convenient for me to convert/obtain it in a different format for my personal use I do without a second thought, however I do not download anything I do not already own – hence my move to Open Source Software.
My approach may not follow the letter of the law, but it does reward the original author which is the intend of the law.
November 30th, 2008 at 7:43 am
It’s time some entrepreneur set up a website to collect royalties on e-copies of the gazillion or so out of print dead-tree books on behalf of their living authors or heirs.
Publishers don’t pay authors much (depending on the author’s negotiating power of course) as a percentage of the retail value of a book, so I would be happy to go somewhere online where I could access a Sony e-reader version of books that were no longer in print (which means they are probably no longer the exclusive control domain of the original publisher). If I could download the book for an author’s royalty which is typically 5% to 10% of the retail price, plus a small handling fee, I would be happy to pay that, knowing that the fee was going to the author, not the publisher.
You could always pirate it, if you had no conscience at all, but if the fee was only a few dollars, not a few tens of dollars as it usually is with dead-tree books, then surely most people would see that as a fair trade. I would prefer to pay a small fee every time for the convenience of getting the books I want in one place, legally, cheaply, in a compatible format, rather than chasing down and probably having to reformat a pirate version.
Oh, yes – I’m an early boomer.
November 30th, 2008 at 7:45 am
Hello, as my two kopeks to this – what if we consider quite another course of action – pay the guy who made the pirated e-book available?
It is clear that the customer wanted the product in some special form.
The publishing company didn’t produce the product in the form the customer wants.
The author, by choosing to work with the named publishing company, is a part of the factors why the product is not available in the form the customer wants.
So, the publishing company obviously should get nothing because it failed to provide the customer with the product he wants. The author is also in question – was the one who provided the bigger portion of the product, so should be getting some, but the author chose to work with the publishing company which…. – so the author is part of the problem, and probably shouldn’t be paid.
However there is a Mr. Jack the Sparrow, the guy, who took existing product (and I believe – paid for it so the author already got some from it), and made it available in the form the customer wants it. He put his time and efforts into making it, and even not getting anything for it (I get it he is not selling it, right?). Why? I think he deserves some!
So, I would say – pay the pirate! And if you feel bad about the author – who I think is the part of the problem – pay the author too.
And in the last word – how FAMILIAR it is to me. I like music, and there are many songs I would like to get – I’m ready to pay for them full official price, but the problem is it is not officially sold in e-form at all, I cannot get them on CDs because these albums are too old for shops to have them in stock, and even pirates don’t have them because they’re not Beatles in terms of popularity.
I was born in 1975.
November 30th, 2008 at 7:50 am
You are here merely showing off that you can afford the electronic toy, and you are trying to justify using it. Go buy the book and read it like billions of people before you and stop trying in invent problems that don’t exist.
November 30th, 2008 at 8:12 am
Are you sure the books are out of print? If it is the author that I think it is the books have recently (a couple of years ago) be reprinted, and the short stories are available in her short stories collections which are published by Baen, either from their Free Library or webscriptions service.
If that is not the author, I would download the pirate copy and either send some money to the author or by second hand copies.
November 30th, 2008 at 8:13 am
Silly me. If it seemed like a good idea to me (see above), I should have realised that it would have already seemed like a good idea to someone else. In this case, Google. Here is the article….
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/opinion/30gleick.html
…which says that Google have so far scanned about 7 million books, 4 or 5 million of which are in the ‘out of print but still copyrighted’ category, and a deal has been struck between the author’s guild and Google to make them available for a nominal royalty fee to the rights holders.
There’s the answer to the moral question at the heart of the article.
November 30th, 2008 at 8:23 am
Generation X
I think the option of downloading and sending a check to the author is the most admirable but I admit I most likely would just download it and leave it at that.
One suggestion if you actually sent the author a check would be to write a letter to the publisher as well. Explain to them that the author just received all the money from you, Some of which that they could had easily received had they updated their business practices to the modern world by simply making all of their library accessible to digital formats.
November 30th, 2008 at 8:26 am
Hmmm. I like having books on the shelf. I probably have a 90% to 10% used to new ratio, and I use the library so I historically don’t have a direct purchasing relationship with the author. If I do have a direct relationship (ie have met them, read their weblogs etc) then I try to buy as close in the food chain to the author as possible so they get the maximum share of my dollars as possible.
In this case I would buy secondhand, download the ebook – at which point I am pretty much where I would be with a secondhand CD, own the physical and have an electronic copy. I would sent the author money only if I had other reasons to do so (eg read their weblog etc).
Now admittedly I have an attachment to physical volumes – a childhood with wall of books in many rooms saw to that
– however the other reason for purchasing a used book is that I see value in used book vending being a viable business, and believe it should be supported. I don’t see that the value chain consists solely in the author, publisher and new book distribution.
I’m a Very Last of the Baby Boomers.
Cheers, Liam
November 30th, 2008 at 8:30 am
Pirate it. If you want to, you could send money to the author. I don’t think you have any moral obligation to though.
Gen Y.
November 30th, 2008 at 8:56 am
Hi,,.
From Mongolia. In my country students usually just copy the book so it is cheaper than buying it. And the people aged older than 30’s just buy the book. We don’t have much ebooks written in Mongolia but I can say that students copy it.
I would recommend you if you have the “free” money to pay :
download the pirated e-text, and send a money order (so it can’t be traced) for roughly the same amount of money as the cost of the used dead-tree version of the book to the author, with a letter explaining why she was receiving it.
can be the best method.
November 30th, 2008 at 9:13 am
As I understand the relevant laws, the first option (buying the paper book and read it) is your best option. The book can be gotten from merchants who have (most likely) acquired the book through legal channels with for the purpose of selling it to others. In this case, passing up a such the paper copy in favor of the pirate copy, is damaging the resell value of the book and by doing that you you are damaging the resell value of future books by the author (as resell value of past works are considered by book sellers in determining the value of carrying an authors work.) Once you had the book the I believe you would be with in your rights to scan or type up the ebook you desire.
This option is not the same as buying it then pirating it later since by pirating in it you are supporting the pirate and by helping the pirate you are aiding those who would pirate the book without making any attempt to support the author.
All that said personally I would have already downloaded the pirate e book and make no attempt to to reimburse the author and then hope that a lot of others people would do so as well as that is what it will take in order to shake things up enough to change the current copyright/trademarks laws with do need to be updated to work in the modern world.
November 30th, 2008 at 9:20 am
I’d choose option 4, if the author doesn’t want the money, that’s their problem.
Age: 26.
November 30th, 2008 at 9:35 am
Just curious, what books are you thinking so hard about? ie. author – serie – bookname
November 30th, 2008 at 9:36 am
There are two parties that deserve to be paid: the author and the publisher. The publisher is the entity that put up the advance money, paid for editing, paid for advertising, etc… If it were not for the publisher you would most likely not know the book existed and if you were to choose to download a copy and use it illegally it would be the publisher who owns the copyright you would be violating and who would have a legal case against you (should they discover what you’re doing and decide to pursue it)
The publisher gets to decide these terms regardless of media and in almost all cases if the product is published in different media types the consumer has to pay full price for each edition they purchase. For example: You generally don’t get a special voucher to discount an audio book just because you own the paper-printed copy. If you own a DVD version of a movie and you choose to buy the Blu-Ray edition you aren’t going to get the Blu-Ray edition discounted. To some extent I would even say the publishers count on consumers purchasing multiple copies as part of their business model. The copyright laws protect their decision to set those terms.
The only exception I can think of is audio CDs. If you buy an audio CD you can rip the audio CD to MP3 files, but the only reason you can (legally) do that is because the record labels have given you the right to do so. In the Supreme Court case MGM v. Grokster (2005) the record label attorney said this
“…The record companies, my clients, have said, for some time now, and it’s been on their Website for some time now, that it’s perfectly lawful to take a CD that you’ve purchased, upload it onto your computer, put it onto your iPod.”
The big publishers for printed media have not decided to do this and the only way to legally change it is for consumers to petition, to write them and help them connect the dots that these e-book reader devices are the iPod counterparts to their media.
Until that happens I would have to say: respect the laws. The publisher has taken risk on the author, they deserve to have the copyright they hold on the material to be respected and that means you must obey their terms even if they don’t make a lot of sense.
November 30th, 2008 at 9:41 am
What makes this problem difficult is its narrowness — one person with unique needs, one book out-of-print but available used, one format shift to meet an increasingly common expectation of portability.
Because that narrowness is widening along with other changes, there is no functional answer. My own would be: Make your portable copy and then follow up by writing to the author and the publisher. (Perhaps there is risk to you in doing this, but you are the one who is trying to break ground.)
What good will that do? It will inform. Many authors’ works revert to them after a certain time out of print, and many of those authors are now self-publishing printed copies.
I’m a self-employed composer, author of books and articles, small publisher, and former programmer and business owner. If there’s a side of this to see, at 60 years old, I’ve probably seen it. Nothing is as simple as the single case here, so let me broaden it with several examples.
As a programmer, I watched my software be copied — for every copy sold, about ten were being used — and my company eventually went under because it was too small to chase copyright violations. So the law was there, but of no help. Even today, I technically own those copyrights, but will anyone send me a courtesy check for software shared for ‘classic’ computers?
As an author, I watched the publisher of one of my better-selling books go ‘bankrupt’ after overprinting 20,000 copies. They were sold as ’scrap’ to a dealer in another state … who is now selling them royalty-free online — the same person who owned the ‘bankrupt’ company. But that’s state contract law, not copyright protection. Will I ever see a check for the sale of those online copies (which are new, not used)?
As an author, I’ve also watched assignments shift to work-for-hire so that rights are handed over to the magazines so they could freely media-shift my work without royalties. There is a widespread fear of litigation so a majority of magazine authors now get no royalties at all. Some authors now save their best work for books, depriving magazine readers of facts and insights. But in either case, will anyone send me a check for copies of magazines downloaded and read or printed?
As a music publisher, I’ve chased performances domestically and internationally so that the composers could get paid … and lose three-quarters of those royalties because the copyright law applies but doesn’t help with the remedies. It’s a court decision that allows licensing agencies to represent us composers and their publishers. When people perform this music, will they send a check for those royalties?
As a composer, I’ve heard my music on television and radio but, because performance royalties are assigned by random sampling and I’ve never been sampled, I have never received a penny for them. I could represent myself or use a licensing agency; neither is effective. Will any radio or television (or Internet) station send a check?
The answer to all these questions is no. But there’s the other side, the one of trying to use out-of-print material.
As a composer, I needed to locate a text author for a new publication of a composition — and ended up with an “orphan works” problem. The author was unfindable, and so the publication was held up for nearly 20 years. The author surfaced recently (in the South Pacific!), and was now republishing those out-of-print texts — and I did get permission. On the other hand, one of the composers I publish has been in talks for three years for rights to a limerick by a long-dead author. In both cases, payment is offered but not accepted.
As an author, I recently had to track down the copyright owner of a poem so I could republish an excerpt in a recent book. The poem was written in 1932, and by now should have been public domain — but the law was changed. The author was dead and there were no heirs. After months of work (and using the Copyright Clearance Center, which was no help), I found the owner by word-of-mouth. Payment was asked for — one copy of the final book.
My point in giving these examples is that every case is unique. There is no absolute answer that fits beyond the circumstances here.
Dennis
November 30th, 2008 at 9:47 am
I’d download it if it’s available and I’d make sure I keep sharing so other people can benefit of it. And I’d do that even if I manage to buy the printed copy, since this will ensure that the book will still be accesible on the Internet when it’s not available anymore on the market.
Depending on the book, I’d also buy it on second-hand, either on a second-hand bookshop or in Amazon.
I faced the same question with old films. Some time ago, I wanted to see an old Russian film I read about, and I found that it wasn’t on any store (either phisical in my city or online), or for rent, and not even in libraries or Universities… luckily, I found a 3rd party seller on Amazon who had just one copy of the film in stock! So I quickly bought it, and then riped it, uploaded to BitTorrent and passed the torrent to my friends so they could watch the film too.
I don’t think I made any harm to the author or the studios, since they haven’t re-edited or distributed the English-subtitled version in the last 18 years. On the other hand, I think I little contribution to culture by sharing it and allowing other people all around the world to watch that great film that got forgotten.
And I’ve been on the other side many times, I’ve watched films that someone uploaded to BitTorrent and I couldn’t have watched otherwise.
November 30th, 2008 at 10:00 am
I would go for option 3: Buy a 2nd hand copy of the book, and download the pirated copy for the e-book.
By purchasing the book, you are purchasing the right to read the content contained within. I believe it should be a person’s right to choose how they read the content stored in the book.
When considering only the author who wrote the book, I’d say to go ahead and download the book. Screw her, she chose not to make it available to the public. On the other hand, there is a far greater world than just you and her to consider. By purchasing a second hand book, you are helping the economy and improving the content market as a whole by supporting the value of a book. If nobody purchased second hand content, there would be less incentive to buy it in the first place, meaning prices would need to drop and fewer authors would produce. By purchasing a book from someone else, you are making their funds available to perhaps purchase other content.
FYI: I’m 18.
November 30th, 2008 at 10:04 am
Born 1958 I guess I’m just a late Boomer
Options 4 and 5 strike me as morally equivalent and probably the best course. Sending the author money is nice but does put her in an odd position re her publisher with whom she has a non-compete contract. (I shed no tears for the publisher in this case, if you won’t sell me something you can hardly argue that I’m hurting you by not buying it.) If the book were still in print I would go with option 3 with the possible improvement of donating the book to a library or charity, (Although I admit that the donation is a moral grey area, I just favor letting other people read my copies of books I’m not using at the moment.)
By the way you’re on Slashdot.
November 30th, 2008 at 10:37 am
Why would you want to make yourself known? Just pirate the copy, and be on your way. There’s no need to print a full page ad in the local newspaper describing what you have done, and that you’d like to pay royalties. Part of me seriously hopes that a lawyer gets involved here and screws you over.
November 30th, 2008 at 10:53 am
Option 5. As it’s out of print, noone expects to earn money with it anymore. I’d just pirate it (only for myself) and read it. Call me socially irresponsible or whatever, but I don’t have the need to jump through all kinds of moral hoops, just to make myself feel better about it.
My age is 28 and I’m a computer science PhD student.
November 30th, 2008 at 11:10 am
The last option.
The only way the publisher / author is going to change their behaviour is by it being made very clear to them that they are loosing revenue by not making the text available in ebook form.
Legally you are in the same position for all the options except the first one, and in my experience, sendign money is going to just increase your visablilty and you are more likely to have legal proceding brought then if you had just downloaded it.
So … the last option. I’m in my mid-30s.
November 30th, 2008 at 11:27 am
Just pirate the book.
If the author and/or publisher cares enough, they will make the product available for legal download for a fee. Publishers of anything that can be digitized must adapt to the reality of 21st century technology… those that fail to do so, and rely instead on 20th century copyright law, will soon find themselves extinct.
I say this as both a publisher of digital media and proud Gen. X’er.
Peace
November 30th, 2008 at 11:29 am
(Found you from slashdot.)
Just download it.
Sending the author money is a cute idea but exposes you to far too much risk of discovery and prosecution, and as somebody else pointed out probably violates the author’s contract not to compete with her own publisher.
All the other alternatives suck. There’s no reason that buying it used should assuage your conscience, since the author doesn’t see a dime of that.
Since the law is illogical, ignore it.
November 30th, 2008 at 11:53 am
If you acquire a copy of the book via any mechanism that the author has not authorized, it’s unethical.
All rights inherent in a book emanate from the author, including the right to make copies and distribute it. Unless the author has transferred some or all of those rights, e.g., via a publishing contract, or unless the law transfers some of those rights, then no one else has any rights at all vis-a-vis the book.
This has nothing to do with copyright. Copyright is the law’s way of recognizing what I just said.
November 30th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Get the pirate copy, send payment to author if still alive. If author is deceased it should be free as in beer. Copyright for out of print literature with dead authors should be void.
Boomer, voracious reader.
November 30th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Woulda coulda shoulda this whole article and the following posts are nothing but mental masturbation.
Here’s what’s really going to happen:
1. All these people want the ebook.
2. They concoct some elaborate rationalization for downloading the pirated copy using excuses about sending the author money etc.
3. They download the pirated copy and now have what they want.
4. That’s it. The end of the transaction. It’s too much trouble or too easy to forget to follow through on their original plans to “send the author the money”. They have what they want and the transaction is done.
Doubt my version? Believe you or a few others would be different? Think I’m too cynical? Look at how many pirated ebooks are out there. Then try to find ONE author who received money for a pirate download.
Even people with the best intentions forget or become too lazy to bother once they have what they want. That’s why most transactions require money before you receive the product.
November 30th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Sorry I forgot.
Age > 40
November 30th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Born in 1987, so technically Gen Y, but raised with Gen X siblings.
My answer is conditional: how expensive are used copies of the books? Out of print books vary widely in price. If you can get it fairly cheaply, buy that, and then pirate a copy to use on your device. If used copies are expensive, go right ahead and pirate the book. If you feel badly, send the author some cash.
I was in this situation earlier, where I wanted a copy of a book, but it was out of print and used copies went for something like $2000 (US) for a book that when it was released cost $10 (US). I got it through Inter-library loan, copied it, scanned it, and then read it. If I could contact the author, I would gladly send him the original cost of the book, but there’s no way I’m gonna pay $2000 for it.
Also, btw, Jerry Pournelle is a man. He *might* be an orphan, but he certainly isn’t a widow.
November 30th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Age 37, I’ve been doing option 3 for a while, but I’m starting to think option #4 is more morally correct in the larger picture (both in terms of artists being reimbursed for their works, and the environment).
November 30th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
I’m 21. I guess I fall under “Gen Y”. I hate that term.
I am a professional computer programmer and a liberal arts student working on degrees in English and philosophy. I live in fantasy dedicated to technology, literature and philosophy (which includes ethics), so I could not help but respond to this.
I have no ethical conflict with downloading the pirated text, but for those who do I suggest that you download the pirated text, read it, and then delete it. Welcome to the library system. Don’t do anything other than that, its not worth it. In fact, deleting it is not worth it either. Just keep it. Actually, download every book you have ever wanted to read. Call yourself a pirate, listen to some Adam and the Ants. Doesn’t that feel good?
A side note:
I find it absolutely bizarre that people use “eReaders”. My impression is that they are only used by those “who can remember a time when the Internet didn’t exist” but wish that they didn’t. Have you ever observed someone 40+ years in age attempting to be “hip” by speaking in arcane or fabricated slang to some kids who use no slang at all? That’s what an eReader is: an object seemingly from the future that has absolutely no place in contemporary society. I have no problem with eBooks, but I am bewildered by the existence of a dedicated device to reading/displaying them. Why shell out the few hundred dollars for such a device when you likely already have a laptop or a PDA/iPod/whatever? How much excess do you really need to live in? I know there are practical reasons for using these eReader devices but do you really need them? I don’t know one person who has one, and I don’t think I ever will.
Though perhaps this SNL skit had a strong impact on me.
November 30th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
This question is valid for all media formats.
I recently wanted to rent some National Geographic episodes of Mega Factories which I had already paid to watch through my cable bill. The guy at Blockbuster told me that they didn’t carry those and to go online and order the DVD from National Geograhic. I found a two disc “collection” available for $50 which I thought was steep but I figured would have the whole season on it. Nope! Only three episodes, so I had to bittorrent the rest which you couldn’t even buy. I don’t have a dvd player so I ripped the disc into the folder of “other” episodes to watch on xbmc.
November 30th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
Okay, I was born in 1976, I’m a published author, and the owner of a small publishing company (see link). And I’ve got to take exception to two things in this statement:
“Setting aside the observation that the Neanderthal attitudes and business practices of the publisher involved has made it impossible for me to legitimiately follow the law, enjoy the novels, and direct money to the author via royalty payments — what do you think is the morally correct course of action?”
First, Neanderthal attitude. Um, sorry, but neglecting e-books is not a Neanderthal attitude, nor is taking a book out of print that isn’t selling well. My first book publication was in 2000, in the middle of the e-book revolution, and I’ve been paying attention to what e-books have been doing ever since, as well as what readers think of them. The actual market for e-books is very, very small – small to the point that after the first e-book “revolution” a lot of publishers canned their plans for e-book lines. Things are slowly changing, and a market is slowly growing, but “slowly” is the operative word. While testing a textbook out on a class as a free e-book, the most frequent feedback we got was a complaint that the book wasn’t a print book – and that was in 2006.
(Hell, Stephen King once tried to make it work around 2002 or so…it was a great success until he asked for a small amount of money for the book, and the e-book promptly flopped. If Stephen King can’t make it work, there isn’t a big market.)
But, there is one bit of technology that can bring that book back, and I can’t help noticing the option you didn’t state – contact the publisher and ask them to reprint the book as a print-on-demand book or an e-book. If they agree, and print-on-demand is a technology that has made it so that books can remain available for much, much longer, even if not too many people are buying them, then you’ve satisfied all of your requirements.
Let me say something else regarding this unspoken option – publishers use the information they have on hand. If people start writing in that they wish that a certain book is back in print, they’ll know there’s a market, and they’ll bring the book back into print. If you remain silent, the information never gets to the publisher, and the book stays out of print.
So try out option six – I think it will get you better results.
November 30th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
The most ethical answer may be to form a grass roots lobby to reform copyright laws back to the original intent of encouraging the creation of new works. This means that all works should fall into the public domain after 7 years (the original law) or maybe after 10. This also means that “commercial use” should be defined as selling anther’s work for a profit and non for profit sharing should treated differently than selling others work. Actually, I think non-for-profit sharing should be fair use, regardless of it’s alleged impact on the market, but I am in the extreme minority on that last one.
Supporting authors of works in the public domain would then be a good act taken on a voluntary basis. I would encourage creators to put up donation sites and addresses for people to contribute to if they like works that are in the public domain or want to encourage a specific creator. I don’t see an ethical issue and I don’t think that the infringement you describe is “stealing”. I am more morally offended by the way corporate media interests have outright bought congress and changed intellectual property law in the last 50 years to make it so lopsided and anti-creative than I am by someone reading a book for free.
Since that option would take too much effort and be unlikely to pull off a David to corporate lobbies Gollaiths, I would not feel guilty about downloading it.
I am 41.
November 30th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
You travel a lot. You probably have a laptop. In a distant town connect to a hotspot and download your ebooks. Then, disappear into the night. Eventually the pressure you just helped place upon an old and failing system will cause it to collapse. That will in turn bring opportunities for new systems and change.
November 30th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
additionally i am mid 30’s
November 30th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Ethically, there’s not really a dilemma since no one is hurt and there is no way in the current system to address such an occurrence. There’s not really a wrong answer here in the traditional ethical sense but if you want to support the author then send them money.
Legally, I’d buy the dead tree copy then download the pirate version or scan it. (I’m not sure this actually complies with the law but it should show a willingness and attempt to do so on your part). It’s unlikely an author will sue you for something that is out of print but it’s not so crazy that a publisher would. Middle men who add very little value beyond distribution and market risk mitigation (publishers, studios, riaa, mpaa, etc.) hold a very precarious spot as they are the most easily replaced in the chain from artistic creation to commercialization. Since they are so easily replaced they have to crate an artificial environment where they are necessary then defend it in the courts. Be wary of upsetting them unless you want to take on that fight.
Tactically, I’d pirate it and send money to the author because if everyone did this then authors would see it as the publishers costing them potential sales and money and the system might change.
November 30th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
I would download the etext largely because of convenience and the lesser carbon footprint.
Whether I sent a money order to the author would depend on who and what that author was. Sometimes I read (or watch things) simply to see how people with very different viewpoints think and present their arguments. For example I wanted to watch “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”, but would rather flush $10 down the toilet than give it to IDiots like Stein. So in a case like that I wouldn’t send the author a money order. If it were Richard Dawkins’ ‘God Delusion’ I might consider it (or sending a donation in Dawk’s name to a charity he supports.) In addition it would depend on how poor the author was… Someone who needed the royalties from his or her work would be more likely to get my money.
I’m 38… went to college in the 80’s and finished post-doc in 2002.
November 30th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Buying a used copy doesn’t send anyone money but the third party who is selling it. If the publishers have taken themselves out of the picture, it’s as simple as a transaction between you and the author – loopholes and contract particulars be damned. Copyright shouldn’t cover anything that’s no longer being “copied” and sold to the public. Thus I’d choose Option 4.
I’m a Millennial.
November 30th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
I’m surprised and dismayed at the number of people posting here who seem to think that ethics has something do with income or cost.
Explain to me why it’s ethical for a poor college kid to pirate something but not for somone with a decent income? I see posts rom college kids who assert that it’s OK for them to pirate something because they just poor students who can’t afford to buy it. How does that work? Are they stealing beer because they’re poor, too?
The business about pirating something and sending money to the author is also nonsense. Who does that? Who can find the author? Where’s the publishers cut? (The author didn’t spend any money to print, distribute and market the book.) Just buy the damn book.
Fundamentally, sending money to someone after taking something you don’t have a right to take doesn’t turn a wrong into a right. Try applying that logic to shoplifting. Go ahead and tell the cop that your were going to send some cash to the author after you got home.
November 30th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
[...] morning, Slashdot had a link to a blog post pondering the ethics of downloading illicit (”pirated”) e-books of out-of-print books [...]
November 30th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Interesting question. The reason for the creation of copyright is to encourage authors to produce and publish them, with the expectation that while production of the works is protected, the ideas and the works themselves belong to the people.
If the publisher and author have decided that they no longer wish to *attempt* to profit from these works, and knowing that while the production of the works is protected by copyright the works themselves belong to everyone, I personally would have no problem with downloading the pirate version. That being said, I find the idea of directly mailing a check to the author very poetic, but it is dependent on your being able to determine where to mail the check.
Final note, if an author and a publisher who control the copyright on a work decide to stop making it available, should they be allowed to maintain their copyright? If copyright was designed to encourage the creation and distribution of works through financial gain, then should those who refuse to continue distributing a work be allowed maintain their copyright, or should it become public domain.
Also I’m 29, depending on which definition you use that makes me either a Gen X or a Gen Y.
Dustin
P.S. You never mentioned a final alternative, find the book at and check it out from the library.
November 30th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Speaking as a professional novelist …
There are a couple of minor things wrong with the “grab a warez copy and send the author some money” picture.
Minor one first: the author has effectively withdrawn the work from publication, by allowing it to fall out of print and not re-selling the rights. Given the stuff about death threats, it sounds to me as if they actually regret publishing the book in the first place. In grabbing a copy then — aside from copyright issues — you’re perpetuating it. Whether you can justify this in all conscience is up to you … but you may want to consider the effect this has on the author’s sanity.
Secondly: let’s set aside that point and focus on the bigger one. The big problem with “grab a warez copy and send the author some money” is that it doesn’t deliver a price signal to their publisher. This is an important issue. Suppose I deliver a book with a notional audience of 1000 people world-wide who are interested in it. The publisher knows they can break even on my books by selling 800 copies. Now suppose 250 folks download a warez copy and send me 10% of the cover price (pretty much a standard publisher’s royalty) while 750 buy the dead tree. I’ve received the same amount of money as if I’d sold the 1000 copies, but the publisher only sees the revenue from 750 sales, so they make a loss. Which means they will be disinclined to buy my next book or print more than 750 copies of it. Ergo, you may be giving the author money, but you’re indirectly harming their career.
There is a way around this: just grab a warez download, then buy a copy of their current book. You don’t have to read it; you can give it away if you like. You’re buying the title sends them money, and it also encourages their publisher to keep buying their books. And speaking purely for myself I’d consider it acceptable conduct for my books. (My publishers probably disagree, because in principle they’d love to sell you everything in triplicate — hardback, paperback, and ebook — but I’m speaking for myself here.)
November 30th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Download and donate (b. 1983)
November 30th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
genY here. fuk copyright. steal the book, the shitty movie of the book, the even shittier video game of the movie that was made by people who never read the book, and if you feel bad about stealing, mail a bomb to the publisher.
November 30th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Stop agonizing about it.
I take the view that by downloading a copy someone else has made available, you are not personally infringing copyright, the person who makes it available has done that. Your action in downloading seems to me to be entirely equivalent to finding a copy that someone has left on the bus.
So download the e-text and read it, but under no circumstances re-distribute the copy you downloaded, because that would clearly be infringing on someone’s legal copyright.
If you wish, you can write to the author and say you enjoyed it, if you did.
I see no need to make any payment to the author, since neither the author nor her original publisher seem to be motivated to earn further payment for the work.
November 30th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
I have no ethical reservations about downloading copyrighted material off the internet. It may be illegal, but I don’t find it unethical.
I think that sending money to the author would be wonderfully generous of you. I would do it onymously.
I was born in 1974; I don’t know what generation you want to call that.
November 30th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
The one problem with the “pirate it and send the author money” approach is that the author is really only one person who deserves to get paid for the production of the book. Even if it wasn’t a dead tree version, the publisher still proofread and formatted the book, and fronted the expenses for it ever to see store shelves at all. They deserve to make some money back on their investment, too, even if they’re not interested in an electronic release.
Cory Doctorow specifically asks that people who want to pay him back for the books he gives away not send him money, but rather buy a copy for someone else, because that way his publisher gets paid for the work it put in on the book too.
One thing you might want to do is try to contact the author and see if she can put pressure to bear on the publisher to release electronically. If she’s putting her stories on Fictionwise, she’s clearly not opposed to electronic publication. (And if she’s who I think she is from the description, I happen to know she has an Internet presence (I count her as one of my best Internet friends, in fact), which shouldn’t be too hard to track down with a search engine.)
It can’t hurt to let the author know you have an interest in the electronic format, because even if she doesn’t have the rights now, eventually they’ll revert to her and she’ll have to decide what to do with them.
That doesn’t help you with your current dilemma, of course, but it might be useful for the future.
November 30th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
I’m a baby boomer (a young baby boomer though not young enough to be Gen X.)
I think you’ve got a couple of courses of action that are slight improvements over 1, 2, and 3 (and you really should have numbered them yourself for ease of commentary).
Option 1:
Buy the used book. Once you have it, copy an electronic (albeit pirated copy) down to your machine, read it and once finished with the ebook and and the tree book, either resell the tree book or donate it to your library anddelete the ebook.
Option 2:
This would take a bit more work but would satisfy one additional goal you have. Buy the used book BUT ASK THE AUTHOR TO NOT SEND IT BUT PLACE: “Property of Ted” inside the front cover. Then download the ebook and read it. Once you’ve finished reading it, ask the seller of the dead tree book to drop it off at the thrift store, library, etc. You’ve both saved the environment, kept the economy going, presumably satisfied fair use and copyright, AND read the book with a clean conscience. Let’s not dwell on the conscientiousness of the seller too much.
One last comment:
You’ve stated that neither the author nor the publisher gets remunerated for the sale of a used book. This discounts the entire effect of the used book economy. The original owner sold that book most likely so that they could buy another. The next owner likely did the same thing, and so on and so forth. In general a thriving book economy is good for publishers (and hopefully for authors) regardless if it is the first sell or the third cell–all benefit from a reading, consuming populace.
November 30th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Ask the author’s wishes and abide by them if you can. If he doesn’t respond, I think you’re most justified downloading the etext and sending the purchase price of a used book to the author. The publisher is adding no value to this transaction any more, if they can’t keep the book available to those who want to purchase it.
Born 1966.
November 30th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
A quick follow-up:
Did you check your local libraries for a copy of the dead tree version? Or did you check the regional extended libraries? Your concern to do-the-right-thing in this ethical issue compels me to suggest you just go ahead and do the right thing: Check out a copy from the library and carry it with you and read the existing legally available media. Out of print books are generally available through a library or library consortium.
November 30th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
I *personally* would just download a pirated copy. End of issue.
Downloading a copyrighted book from the net isn’t even illegal in my country. Making a photocopy of a borrowed book for your personal use and for the people living in the same household with you is also considered fair use. Distributing a copy (physical or electronic) is copyright infringement.
I am almost 40.
When I was a little kid, our teachers and parents wanted us to go to library as often as possible. Borrowing books from the library was very … virtuous.
So it is very difficult for me to see the difference between borrowing the book from the library and downloading it for my Sony Reader from the “darknet”.
You, if you have moral issues should definitely purchase a used book.
Most of the people discussing here do not see any reason in buying a used book if you shortcut your fair use format shifting (OCR-ing) by downloading a pirated copy.
BUT!
Imagine that all the people took the same route (just downloading without buying used copy). Nobody would purchase used books anymore. Some people purchase books knowing that they can sell them later. If it was impossible to sell used books, there would be less new books purchased.
Some publishers sell DRM protected e-books for the same price as paperback or even hardback. That is insane! Not only they entirely remove the cost of making physical copy, and most of the distribution costs they also sell something that is *MUCH LESS VALUABLE* to the customer.
E-book is less valuable than the paper copy because:
- you are deprived of many of your fair use rights (you can not lend book to your friend, to your wife)
- you can not sell the book once you are finished with it
- your e-books die in a few years when your reader dies, or a DRM server is taken down. A paper copy can easily survive several generations. I have books that were purchased by my grandfather.
November 30th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Pirate it. You could get it from some library somewhere for free right? This way you’re saving taxpayer dollars by not taking up a librarian’s time.
What happened to that grand library of the internet anyways?
Also, you could buy the author’s next book.
November 30th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
I’d go ahead & pirate it. As an “old fart” actually pre boomer (1945) I use the long established pirate organization called the public library. I read 4/5 novels a month & haven’t paid for one in years. Many libraries even have ebook downloads available. If you feel really bad cheating the author, send him a dime or quarter which is probably more then he’d get from the publisher if you bought a brand new hardcover edition.
November 30th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
#179: “…knowing that while the production of the works is protected by copyright the works themselves belong to everyone…”
How is it possible that the works belong to everyone?
Copyright protects the author’s natural right to decide who is allowed to make copies of his book. If you buy a book, you only have the rights transferred to you by the author or by law. If neither give you the right to make new copies of the copy you bought, then you don’t have that right.
Society, or “everyone”, does not magically acquire rights when a book is published. It is necessary to show how rights are transferred from their point of origin and creation — the author — to other individuals.
November 30th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
justcorbly @191: copyright is not a “natural right”, it’s an entirely constructed one. Originally it was there to allow the Crown to monitor who was printing what, by licensing presses — subsequently it was repurposed as a vehicle for promoting the creative arts (and hijacked by large corporations).
*Moral* rights are another matter entirely; I think you’re a little confused here.
November 30th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
I have a similar issue with old plans for model aircraft/boats. No one is going to ressurect the original model kits, and without passing the plans around they’ll just die.
There are three sides to this question – the original authors, middlemen, and the public. Any answer which minimises the parasites in this transaction (aka middlemen) will have my vote. If we can use the web to directly connect creators to consumers this must be good.
Once we have eradicated the middlemen, society can determine how much it wants to pay for creativity. It’s cynical, I know, but creative types are rarely driven by big bucks. They will usually create even while they are starving in the gutter. So I suspect they will not be paid much by consumers. On the other hand, the huge reach of the web means that even a small amount from each consumer might be a tidy sum.
November 30th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
In the US Constitution, copyright is not a natural right, but one of the Article 1, Section 8 economic powers of Congress, like the power to build a road. But we still respect copyright, a government-granted monopoly, just as we respect right of way on a government-built road.
(Good to see a comment from Charles Stross, whose books have been making my brain hurt but in a good way lately, about the need to send a signal to the publisher. Do publishers look at the used market when considering reprinting a book?)
November 30th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
I like paper books, so I’d buy a used copy. If I could stand using an e-reader, I’d just download the e-book. Unless you fear legal trouble, why jump through the hoops of the other options? To me, they are morally equivalent.
Sending a check to the author may give you a nice warm feeling, but would it help accomplish any larger goal? The ultimate desire is to have more books available in electronic form. The publisher needs incentive to expend money and resources to tap a new medium. Perhaps you should send a check/letter to the publisher as well.
Mike
Generation Y
November 30th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
#170, Robert B. Marks: (Hell, Stephen King once tried to make it work around 2002 or so…it was a great success until he asked for a small amount of money for the book, and the e-book promptly flopped. If Stephen King can’t make it work, there isn’t a big market.)
To quote from a blog entry I wrote a few years back:
Ah, yes, The Plant—Stephen King’s brainstorm after his short story “Riding the Bullet” did so well as an ebook. The fly in the ointment was that King was too used to thinking in terms of paper books and just couldn’t seem to get his head around the differences. This led to problems.
Back in December of 2002, I wrote an email message to the Ebook Community neatly summarizing those problems in response to someone else’s inquiry. It went like this:
And so King shelved the book, and it cast a pall over the entire ebook industry. If such a famous author couldn’t “successfully” sell a serial ebook, then the market must just not be “ready” yet. ($463,832 profit. I wish I could “fail” like that!)
November 30th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Don @195: “Do publishers look at the used market when considering whether to reprint a book?”
I don’t have first-hand knowledge of this because I’m in the happy position of only one of my books ever having gone out of print (and if anyone wants a warez copy of “The Web Architect’s Handbook”, published 1996, just drop me a line
… however, my understanding is that what they look at is the sales potential of the book.
If it was an early work by an author who subsequently broke big, they’ll print accordingly (for example, “The Big U”, by Neal Stephenson — sank without trace, but it’s back in print on the back of his other books, because he’s huge these days). If it has a cult following, they’ll bear that in mind. If it’s the early part of a series, and the original publisher screwed up, but the author is offering more books, they may go for it — for example, Kage Baker’s Company books (originally botched; Tor republished the early books and picked up the later ones).
However, most books die young. They look dated, or that style goes out of fashion. Or the author dies and nobody knows who owns the literary estate (this can be a real headache). Or the literary estate is owned by people with entirely unreasonable ideas about how much it’s worth. (At least one major dead British SF author, B*b Sh*w, is, I’m told, out of print for this very reason.) Reprints seldom sell anything like as well as an initial release, because they’re competing with their own second-hand market (and, these days, with the warez in circulation).
John @191: this might surprise you, but libraries pay authors for books. (When you borrow a library book, you’re ultimately paying a tiny piece to the author out of your tax payments.) Here in the UK, with Public Lending Right, I regularly get a cheque from PLR for my library loans — not huge, but much nicer than a kick in the pants.
November 30th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
I have been reading ebooks on devices (Palm PDAs using eReader, phones, now a Kindle, and an iPod Touch with eReader) since the late 1990s (http://comversations.com/2003/09/17/personal-digital-adventure-part-1/ explains more). And I am a FOSS guy, so I understand and respect copyrights. I have run into the dilemma way too many times, and for the lack of anything else to guide me, have been using the “order dead-tree version, get digital text version from the net” since forever.
I understand that I could technically (!) be breaking laws, on the other hand, I believe I am within my rights to choose the method most convenient to me to use my purchase. As long as I do not read the eBook at the same time as someone is reading my dead-tree copy, I am abiding by most acceptable laws (remember Borland’s “just like a book” license?) of not causing multiple copies of the same book to be in use.
I have, in the past, also done the “get the digital copy, send money to author” routine where it was feasible, especially when a text was not available for sale (anymore, or ever). It is not practical most of the time, since I have to track down the author to send the money, but if you can, it certainly bypasses any draconian laws that may exist.
November 30th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
@193:
I did not say copyright is a natural right. It’s a law that recognizes and protects an author’s right to decide who, how, and when someone can make a copies of something he’s created.
All rights inberent in a work emanate from the author. It is simply impossible for someone else to acquire any of those rights from anywhere else.
November 30th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Cut the author a check, and pirate the e-book. Your conscious is relieved, and you get what you want, win-win.
I’m 30, so I guess that makes me a Gen X’r
November 30th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
@193:
Look, you’re a writer. From an ethical or moral point of view, I don’t see any difference between someone accessing your laptop, or your publisher’s network, grabbing the files representing your current novel, printing and marketing several thousand copies OR some poverty-stricken college kid grabbing or making a copy of the book that you or the law did not authorize.
If I buy one copy of one of you books, is it OK with you if I print, bind, and try to sell as many copies of it that I can?
November 30th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Not personally a big fan of ebooks, so I’d probably be carrying a physical book around anyway.
But if I did want the ebook format, I think I’d opt for obtaining it by whatever means I could, and finding a way of sending the author some compensation. The book might be out of print and therefore not giving them any revenue anyway, but if it’s a book I valued enough to go through this process, I’d think it worth paying something for anyway.
November 30th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
@202: I note your point. However you’re missing the first sale doctrine. (You buy one of my books. Thereafter, you can do anything you like with that *copy* — including burning it, or selling it to someone else for more money than you paid for it, if you can find a buyer.)
First sale doctrine does not, of course, confer the right to make child copies of the item you’ve bought — but it’s entirely at odds with the licensing model that music and software publishers would prefer us to use.
You also muddied the waters further: buried in “grabbing the files representing your current novel, printing and marketing several thousand copies OR some poverty-stricken college kid grabbing or making a copy of the book that you or the law did not authorize” you skipped entirely over *printing AND MARKETING* — which implies “profiting from”.
There are whole areas of intellectual property law in which it is in fact entirely legal to copy something for your own personal use, as long as you don’t sell it for money — design and patent law in the UK, for example (according to my pet IP law postgrad).
Bluntly: copyright is entirely the wrong tool for the job at hand, which is (a) rewarding creatives [like me] for creating work for the public enjoyment, while simultaneously (b) maximizing the public’s ability to gain access to such creations for their enjoyment. And as long as people keep confusing copyright with ownership, or ethics, we’re going to have difficulty discussing the subject.
(Personally I blame the ass-hats in the software biz for demonizing “pirates”, and the music and film industries for copying them. But that’s another argument.)
November 30th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
@204:
I’m not, and don’t intend to, defend corporate distortion of copyright law.
I am making a distinction between copyright law as it exists today and what I describe as an author’s right to determine who has a right to do anything at with something he creates.
I keep returning to my central premise: That all rights inherent in a creative work emanate from the work’s creator, that, in essence, those rights come into existence with the work.
I know of no way for anyone else to acquire the right to do anything with that work unless that right is transferred to them by the work’s creator, or by the law.
I see copyright law, as abused as it is, as merely recognizing that state of affairs.
Note that this doesn’t defend ot excuse the behavior of music and software publishers. They’re able to pursue draconian policies only because the creators of the works they sell transferred that right to them. E.g., if a musician doesn’t want Big Name Corporation to throw the RIAA at kids downloading his songs, then that musician shouldn’t deal with that corporation.
November 30th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
@205: “what I describe as an author’s right to determine who has a right to do anything at with something he creates.” These are the Moral Rights within the sense of the Berne Convention on Copyright (the international treaty which is implemented in local laws just about everywhere, including the USA), and they’re inalienable.
I can — if you twist my arm — sign away my copyright in a work I created, by licensing someone else to do whatever they want with it (including using it to make money for themselves and not giving me any of it), but I *can’t* sign away the moral rights, which boil down to the right to be identified as the originator of that work.
“If a musician doesn’t want Big Name Corporation to throw the RIAA at kids downloading his songs, then that musician shouldn’t deal with that corporation.”
Easier said than done (at least, until relatively recently) — the RIAA represent a cartel that controlled the physical media distribution chain, and if you didn’t want to play ball with them, you didn’t have to publish vinyl or CD media.
Book publishers, luckily for us, don’t constitute anything like that kind of choke-point on distribution of books.
November 30th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
@206:
>>”…the RIAA represent a cartel that controlled the physical media distribution chain…”
True. But their control of the physical media process does not negate my argument, it just drastically reduces the alternatives available to musicians.
It’s sad that so many people only have an interest in this issue because of the abuses of certain corporations. This leads them to throwing out the baby (an author’s rights) with the bathwater (corporate abuses of copyright law).
Also, when I’ve had this discussion before, it seems many people believe the law creates rights. I disagree, believing the law may recognize or thwart or facilitate are abilities to exercise our rights, but the law in no way creates our rights.
November 30th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
If, as Option 4 suggests, you have contact info for the author such that you can send money, how about contacting her and asking what she’d like you to do?
If the publishing company is not issuing her work, she can take steps to have the rights revert to her. At that point distribution decisions are up to her too.
Since she’s still alive, she most certainly should be compensated for her work. However, the publishing company is not actively engaged in distributing, marketing, promoting etc. her work – which is the remit of a publishing company – and so should not be entitled to compensation.
Just my $0.02
November 30th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
Gen Y and proud of it,
I would like to second the sentiment of #204 this is clearly a case copyright was never designed to handle and is an inappropriate tool for handling the problem at hand. To make a reference to Meme theory (no I’m not talking about LOL cats or Viral Video’s) in nature gene mutations are instantiated and reproduce based on functional merit, if they enhance the survivability of the organism they are instantiated in (in any way including in some cases seemingly frivolous enhancements to quality of life) they flourish, if they are without benefit, they atrophy (or cause death to the organism, but that’s a different concern). In considering ideas(meme’s) in a similar manner to genes it is clear that for the majority of the populace these books are non-functional and even potentially pose a danger to the author; however for a niche group the ideas presented in this book are functional in that they enhance the quality of life (albeit superficially) of the readers.
The problem is that for centuries the only method of rewarding creativity and the development of new ideas and the amalgamation of ideas in new ways has been to monetize it within the scarcity model that has proven functional for distribution of concrete resources. Hence copyright law has made an effort to find ways to create artificial scarcity in a resource that is not only non-scarce (you don’t lose ideas in the act of communicating them), but are in-fact dependent on re-communication and open distribution (and we as a society are dependent on this open distribution for the further evolution of culture and society in general). The logical distribution model would be compensation based on the derived value an individual gets from the work (what the final model for something like that would look like will take many years to iron out, but so far the donation model combined with the sale of concrete ‘perks’ seems to be achieving some success and could form the basis of this new distribution model).
But, how it should be done and how it is/can be done in the current system are very different things so to answer the question within the bounds of the question:
In this case I would recommend contacting the author, in as anonymous way as you can and still get feedback. If the author has a way to get you the book or is willing to accept payment if you download the pirated copy, this would be the most beneficial to her as it would be an encouragement to her as an author to know that even something she may consider a failed effort still has some value to someone. Regardless of her response, however I feel you would be justified in acquiring that book by any means necessary; if she is not willing/able to let you take the moral high road, it doesn’t mean you need to (or should) cancel the trip.
As for compensating the publisher (or their printer/marketing department/etc.) they have already been compensated. That the book has been translated in to a digital format means someone bought the book thus compensating them for their role in distribution. That they have ceased to expend resources to release it means they have forfeit the right to be compensated for resources they failed to expend.
As long as you satisfy the moral requirement of attempting to reward the author your conscience is clear. As for the legal aspect; the law is non-functional, broken by design; there is no sense shedding tears over breaking something that is already broken.
November 30th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
Oops – forgot: Gen X.
November 30th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
[...] I have a moment, I’ll try to tally up the responses that I got to “An ethical question involving ebooks”and see if there are any interesting patterns based on self-identified generational markers. [...]
November 30th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
[...] An ethical question involving ebooks | Thoughts by Ted [...]
November 30th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
I see no ethical issues with any of the options.
Option 2 is probably considered fair use as it is analogous to a “backup”.
Although there’s nothing wrong with option 4 (no one could reasonably argue that you are hurting them by taking it), I would shy towards option 3. I like supporting the creative works of artists I like. The larger the share of profits I know are going to the artist and not middle men the better I feel about a purchase.
Gen Y.
November 30th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
Pirate a copy for yourself; buy a used copy and give it to a friend that will like it.
November 30th, 2008 at 9:27 pm
Pirate a copy for yourself; buy a used copy and give it to a friend that will like it.
[Born in 1980, have worked in publishing since 2002. Obscurity is more dangerous than piracy.]
November 30th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
Well Ted, your liberal views on fighting Islamic terrorists, “(Torturing prisoners in Guantanomo in violation of the law? Oh, wait… too late…)”, would suggest that you would probably already be dead in another attack so I propose that you aren’t even alive to post this dilemma so, STFU!! If all you have to worry about is whether it’s ethical to pirate an ebook or not, you have WAY to easy of a life! How about going to the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan and fighting nut jobs who want to destroy your way of life? Do that for a couple of years and let me know what your priorities are after those two years! Stupid little twit.
November 30th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
I’m of the already stated opinion that infringement does not equal theft.
I would add a 6th option to your list: download the pirate copy, read it, and then make a point of telling your friends and even strangers that the author and story are good and worth checking out. You’ve now paid the author back with some free word of mouth marketing — the best kind of marketing there is. Maybe some of your friends will buy some of the author’s in-print books as a result.
Culture is not a one-sided relationship. It is a marketplace of ideas that are spread, stolen, and rehashed. People who consume culture contribute to this by sharing that culture with their friends. Thus people who are particularly good at producing new cultural works become valued. This does not always need to mean monetarily, but under capitalism, fame tends to equal more income, so it works out.
I guess I count as Gen X.
November 30th, 2008 at 11:55 pm
It’s really easy to pose these kinds of conundrums around copyright, and Intellectual Property generally, and hard to provide answers. I find that situations where it is hard to answer generally indicate that the question is wrong, or that there are assumptions underpinning the question which are confused.
In the case of copyright, we are conflating separate concepts. These concepts are the economics of creating new content, vs the economics of distributing existing content.
People need money to survive, and they also like to make things. Unsurprisingly, many people like to create information-goods and make money from them.
Pre the digital era, it was found that a simple way to make that happen was to extract some payment at the point of distribution (by selling copies), rather than at the point of creation. It’s easy to motivate the use of the wallet when the product is sitting there staring you in the face, not so much when it is still a twinkle in its creator’s mind.
This worked because of the unfortunate restriction that it cost significant resources to produce and distribute copies of things.
Now, this restriction is lifted. It is basically free to access copies of pre-existing information. What an amazing thing! It’s a watershed for humanity, really something to feel proud of.
However, tying payment to the point of distribution is no longer practical. And really, it throws into sharp relief the arbitrary nature of that structure in the first place; people were never paid for creation, but for distribution of copies, by holding artificial monopoly on copies.
It is good that distribution is free. It enriches us all. Examples of this (eg: youtube, wikipedia, FOSS) are trivial to notice and numerous.
We really, really, really need to stop treating this as a bad thing.
Related to this, note that the model has also been that creators (and all and sundry involved in the process) create once, but are paid many times, potentially many many times. This hasn’t really ever been fair, has it? No matter how good my novel or song or movie is, should I be able to buy a private island from the profits? Should everyone else protect my ability to do this?
There are ways for creators to be paid for the act of creation. There is no reason why this has to be a popularity contest where the few win the lottery and the rest fail; it could be that many good creators earn enough to live well, like other professionals.
Separately, if it is free to distribute intellectual work, then let it be free. Every instance where this is impeded, is friction in the machine, and a direct harm to the person who is not able to access that information.
Coming back to the question, let’s look at the moral dimension. On the one hand, even buying a second hand book has an indirect benefit to the author, because part of the value of any durable item is based on resale value. People will be willing to pay less for something that they can’t resell, all else being equal, so supporting the second hand market supports the primary market.
On the other hand, the author and the publishers have been paid for the work. It sounds like they have been paid handsomely, in fact. Does it affect them if you read the book without paying for it? Not at all. Consider this: if it is ok to buy the second hand book, put it on your shelf, then download a copy for your reader, why buy the book? Could you just borrow it from the library? If not, why not?
I would download it and read it, and lose not a wink of sleep.
Separately, I might send money to the author, especially if they provide a mechanism for that, but to support future creativity. Not to support past creativity. That past creativity is done, the reward has already been had.
December 1st, 2008 at 12:25 am
Although I haven’t read every single post, a scan through seems to indicate an alternative- check it out of the library – an historically ethical, community supported method of distributing information and stories.
December 1st, 2008 at 12:42 am
pirate the copy. being that the book is out of print, and the author wont be receiving payment whatever you do, take the best course of action for yourself – save a few bucks.
born ‘88
December 1st, 2008 at 1:04 am
@218: “There are ways for creators to be paid for the act of creation.”
There are some ways, but are there enough? And if there aren’t, where would we be as a society? That’s something we need to think about before actively pulling down the current compensation model for people who create creative work: scriptwriters, authors, poets, musicians, composers, and even programmers.
The scarcity model combined with capitalism has a lot of flaws and lots of inefficiencies, to be sure, but what’s your alternative? Consider that for any field, there are large number of mediocre artists/authors/programmers, a small number of “mid-listers”, and a very tiny number of really talented individuals. Who gets to decide who gets to be funded to write/compose/program full-time? How much salary differential should there between the top-notch artists/authors/programmers and the ones that are competent-but-not inspired professionals, versus those who are lovers of the art, but really aren’t super talented?
What about the support personnel? How do the copy editors get paid? The illustrators and graphical designers? Or in the programming world, you have the superstars programmers, but what about the tech writers; the testers; the performance analysts?
One model that was used in the baroque and classical eras was patronage by the nobility. Bach’s Goldberg Variations were composed for a nobleman who wanted some music that could be played while he fell asleep (he was apparently an insomniac), and who presented Bach with a golden goblet and 100 gold upon completion of the work. During other parts of his life, Bach was paid (approximately the same wages that a modern mason or metal worker would make today) to direct two boy’s choirs at two different churches as well as composing a fresh new Cantata every week for Sunday services. It’s rather doubtful to me that either mechanisms (patronage by the super wealthy, or support by the local town church) would work in today’s society.
Some kind of democratization of the patronage system have been tried, but human nature and the tragedy of the commons is a very hard problem to deal with. If everyone assumes that somebody else will pay for the act of creation, there might not be enough money raised to support the artist/composure/musician/programmer. (People can donate money to me via Sourceforge; hardly anyone does, even though nearly all of my ext3/4 work gets done on my own time these days — even those people that I spend personal time helping to recover their data. That’s OK; I do my filesystem work as work of love/passion, and I’m fortunate there is related work that I do that people _are_ willing to pay me to do.)
There are no easy answers here!
December 1st, 2008 at 1:10 am
First off, I’m 54.
My personal preference is #1: lugging a used dead-tree copy of the novel
The CO2 emissions of having is shipped is offset by the book not being incinerated. It is NOT the only way to comply with copyright law.
Solution #0, borrow the book from a library is an easy, cheap, CO2 friendly, pro-copyright solution.
Solution 2 would be, in my opinion, fair use, as long as the electronic text went no farther than you. I scan microfilm and retype or OCR copies of it for my own research.
Solution 3 fails because it promotes pirated e-texts on the web. Having your own copy is a pilpul on the arguments of pirate e-texts.
Solution 4 attempts and fails to sidestep both copyright issues and the Author’s wishes. At least the Author profits.
Solution 5 is just bad. You not attempting to do any ‘right’ thing, copyright violation.
Simple and straight forward. Break any laws you want, just admit you are.
December 1st, 2008 at 1:14 am
Between the options you provide, option 4 sounds ethical enough for all practical purposes, although you still have to recognize that you are breaking the law. However, for the sake of the argument, I will suggest one more option. Option zero. How about, since you can’t buy the book in the form that you want it, don’t buy the book! Why do we feel entitled to getting whatever we would like to get? What if you wanted a copy of the Constitution, or the Mona Lisa and the National Archives, or the Louvre didn’t sell copies, or allow pictures? Would we be trying to justify different ways of breaking into these buildings to get the copy you so much wanted?
I’m 34 btw, so I guess I’m gen-X
December 1st, 2008 at 1:45 am
[ Note: this was a mangled posting which was reposted by the author, emlyn, in comment #225. I've removed this to make it easier for people who are following the very long set of comments. -- tytso]
December 1st, 2008 at 1:47 am
(I messed up my previous post, and need to repost. Lucky for me that publishing is free! He)
>> “There are ways for creators to be paid for the act of creation.”
> There are some ways, but are there enough? And if there aren’t, where
> would we be as a society? That’s something we need to think about before
> actively pulling down the current compensation model for people who
> create creative work: scriptwriters, authors, poets, musicians, composers,
> and even programmers.
I was wondering if someone would notice that I glossed over this. Mea Culpa.
Getting paid for creation is a hard problem, I’ll admit. Maybe we need to break it down further?
Firstly, ip laws generally are supposed to balance the interests of the society as a whole with the interests of creators. The creator gets some monopoly right, to facilitate getting paid, and the society gets the benefit of the intellectual product, freely available eventually. That’s how it’s supposed to be, anyway. Let’s take it at face value…
If intellectual work is freely copied, that’s clearly a benefit to society. The only potential problem is that people will stop creating new work because they can’t find a reason to do it. It’s a reasonable objection, but I think if you look at today’s free culture sphere, you can see it’s not really the problem you’d think. The quality of work coming from outright volunteers (such as yourself!) is really quite amazing.
This combines with a feature of the networked environment which is that we don’t need so much local reinventing of wheels; we just need excellent people to create information/solutions that people can use repeatedly.
Large amounts of this are currently happening for free; I think it is defensible at this point to say that, certainly in the consumer space, all the IP creation we could need will from this point forward be able to be met from free sources (as in beer, and as in creators contributing their creations freely).
So I think at this point in time it is reasonable at least to say that creators not being easily rewarded is actually not a problem for the society as a whole, and that to say otherwise is the position that requires defense.
As to an individual being able to benefit from creation, well this is difficult too. There are ways; you can accept donations (and be poor), you can use the reputation you gain to make money in other ways (support, consulting, speaking, custom coding, etc etc), you can extract money for non-information goods and services (support for software, printed books, concerts, merchandise).
And, to be blunt, if you don’t like any of these methods, then stop creating and do something else. I suspect most of us will feel compelled to create, regardless of whether there is a lottery ticket associated with the act (as for musicians), and regardless of whether Dean Kamen can afford an island.
There’s another way we are being rewarded for the work, which is involvement in the burgeoning great project. We create, and add to the collective intellectual wealth. Maybe we don’t get rewarded for that act of creation. On the other hand, we draw extensively from this pool of intellectual wealth, and receive many times over what we have contributed. No money changes hands, and yet we are richer.
We need to find a way to think about that side of things. Pre-existing information goods are not scarce. It is only when we stop trying to treat them that way, that the true benefits of that can be realised.
Eventually, the hardware world will start to bleed into the information world. It’s about to start, the first consumer 3d printers exist now. Think of this as the late 70s for hardware as software. The problems we are wrestling with now, in the world of information, become a lot more serious when it’s real stuff. But you have to ask the question “is this really a problem at all?” Or are we just looking at this the wrong way?
December 1st, 2008 at 2:08 am
Download, send money order.
I’ve done the very thing thrice myself. (Once with a book, twice with music.)
December 1st, 2008 at 3:25 am
I’m 45yo. And I would go with option 4, download and send anonymous check to author.
But I think buying a copy for the shelf would make me feel better, perhaps I would do this as well.
I agree that the copyright should be returned to the writer after a period or life-time.
But, shouldn’t the same go for paintings? off topic.
Glenn
December 1st, 2008 at 4:56 am
#168 Chris is right. Anyone with-it enough to have an ebook reader should be with-it enough to know that books (not their physical form, but their essence) are a relic of another age. The present is blogs and movies. Want to know how to bake a pie? Google. Want to visit an imagined place? Netflix.
December 1st, 2008 at 7:21 am
There’s no reason you shouldn’t download the unauthorized on-line text
and read it. Sharing is good, so laws against sharing are morally
void. If you don’t believe sharing is the moral equivalent of
attacking a ship, you might decline (as I do) to describe unauthorized
sharing or copies with words like “pirate”.
But there’s a tricky assumption in the scenario: the assumption that
you own an “e-book reader”. That term normally refers to products
that are designed to be platforms for DRM (Digital Restrictions
Management). Even if they can also be used to read non-DRM texts,
they are part of a plan to make DRM the norm and establish a
pay-per-read world.
The way to defeat that plan that is to reject these products,
including the Sony Sh-reader, and the Amazon Swindle, and any e-book
reader that implements DRM. If you want to download and read an
unencrypted electronic copy of a book, an ordinary laptop will do
fine.
In DefectiveByDesign.org you can find the FSF’s campaign against DRM.
Together we can defeat pay-per-read.
December 1st, 2008 at 7:25 am
I am really surprised at the dearth of people who seem to have even *thought* of simply asking the author (or her agent).
All kinds of invective has been leveled at the state of copyright and the eeevil corporations. But the author is a single human being; a lot like you, trying to make her way in the world. She created the thing you’ve admired. And as an added bonus, she knows the skinny on the legal situation with respect to her book.
It would be interesting to understand why this option seems not to have even occurred to most people!
December 1st, 2008 at 9:16 am
Incidentally, if the author is who I think it is, the books you’re talking about are not in fact out of print. I checked with her and she said so herself. They may be hard to find, but not out of print.
Or you could be talking about someone entirely different.
December 1st, 2008 at 9:35 am
Diverse comments:
The people answering a blog entry are selected to fall on the libertarian end of the spectrum. You would likely get different answers from a more representative sample.
IP law is clearly not yet capable of handling digital copies. It is unremarkable that the corporations are seeking obsessively to extend copyright, since what other option do they have with physical media?
The pendulum will swing the other way when (as seems likely) a significant fraction of all copyrighted works outlive the corporations holding them. You expect generations of respondents to exhibit different opinions – why not generations of corporations (legal personages)?
Be careful demanding digital rights. A fully digital economy would make ugly kludges like copy protection far more workable, and would draw the attention of legal entities to enforce them. (And would also jeopardize libraries big time.)
One of the foundational myths of America is the story of Lincoln traipsing through the snow to return a borrowed book. Not all aspects of this situation are founded on copyright. Buy or borrow a physical copy and you will avoid these questions entirely and will be supporting the part of the system that has nothing to do with copyright. No questions of author’s regret, or publishers profits need be considered. If this means you can’t read the book on a plane (after all, if the author has received death threats, so might a random reader), so be it. Read it at home and buy somebody else’s e-book for the plane.
Boomer
December 1st, 2008 at 10:17 am
Since the law does not protect individuals any longer, but merely enslaves them, I can’t in good conscience recommend obeying the law. Instead, I recommend downloading a bootleg copy, and then sending a check to the author. If the publisher wants to be stupid, screw ‘em.
(born in 1978)
December 1st, 2008 at 10:32 am
Pirate the ebook, don’t send any money in and it’s a win/win situation for yourself.
Baby Boomer, age 46, and been owning computers since 1975
December 1st, 2008 at 11:07 am
Young Gen Xer.
I personally would pirate the book. This is a common problem with books and in the past I’ve ordered from overseas and waited months for out of print second hand books. Its not worth the effort for a product that isn’t on sale.
Morally if its not for sale and I’ve not deprived someone else of genuine income or an asset. Legally in todays world it is a touchy subject. Since no one sells a real copy however its pretty hard for a lawyer to take you to court for copyright infringement. Just because something is law does not make it right or immoral to break the law. Simply means that someone wanted to exert control on the “little” people, it rarely if ever represents the common view of wrong.
December 1st, 2008 at 11:21 am
If it is a book I really like and I would like to read again and again. I would buy the used copy to keep, books outlast any form of electronic storage, unfortunately it represents a dead tree as well so the words should be valuable as the tree itself.
Since the book is out of print and you are so passionate about it, it seems this could be something you would want in print, but since you only want it as disposable in-flight reading.
If its a short-lived passion or something like a book on programming language the e-book is the way to go, and we go back to the beginning were this company has not provided an e-version, I would suggest you buy a used version of another out of print (abondoned) book you did not find on-line. Then scan it, OCR it, edit it and then upload it. After you can download the other e-versions. The uploading is your payment for the abandoned books you just downloaded and obviously you shall always seed.
Now for the author retribution send her a postcard and do mention her work on your blog. Blog mentions are becoming as important as book reviews, and you never mentioned her name, nor her work, yet you did give the brand of your e-book reader with even a link (common she could use the hits, I bet she even has her own blog).
Sending her a postcard/money would be nice perhaps she even has paypal or maybe she would not mind if you buy some of her other books that perhaps are already available in e-form.
I believe abandon-ware should be as free as free software is. It does not matter if the copyright has not expired, if the legal owner does not care or commercially exploit its idea then the idea should be set free.
Just make sure the book is truly abandoned.
“Las ideas son de quienes las piensan, al igual que la tierra es de quien la trabaja.”
I was born 27 years ago.
December 1st, 2008 at 11:26 am
This is why I don’t buy e-books much. Option 2 is just wasteful: it spoils a perfectly good copy of the book that someone else can use someday. I do option 1 all the time, but I also don’t travel much, to save on carbon. Options 3 and 4 are basically equivalent: 4 may prompt the author to chase up her publishers to change the situation, but given the way most authors get treated by their publishers, this is unlikely to have much effect. 5 is only any good if you don’t much care about the author.
John: sort of a late period Boomer, I think.
December 1st, 2008 at 12:39 pm
I think that in this case, it’s the used-book vendor that stands to lose money by you pirating an ebook. If you bough the used book, the author would not get any money but the ebook vendor would be compensating for the effort of procuring & storing the book. The author is no longer entitled to receive any money for the sale of that used copy of the book.
I’d send a check to the used book vendor.
December 1st, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Download the pirated version and send the author the money with an explanation.
December 1st, 2008 at 1:39 pm
The question misleads a lot of people.
You want the electronic version, so go get that, by whatever means is most convenient. The question really is – how do you do that while providing an ethical return for the product?
So two questions in there: return to who?, and what’s ethical?
1) return to who? People have mentioned
A) the author and publisher,
B) a owner of the distributed work, and
C) a library.
A) The author and publisher have a pre-existing agreement regarding right of sale. The book-version of your question didn’t come from an author, but a publisher. If you are going to pay for a ‘new’ e-distribution of the book, the publisher deserves first right of refusal for your money. Existing contracts ensure the author gets their cut. Assuming they don’t support e-books, you are now clearly trying to pay for an unsupported format of their product. There is no moral decay on your part if they decline your attempt to pay for your digital copy. (more on that in the ethics half)
B) Would you pay for a ‘used’ e-book from a ‘redistributer’? Hard copy to virtual copy don’t align, just as theft and copyright infringement don’t align.
While it could increase the used market, it wouldn’t increase the market for new material, which is more important for a capitalistic society, no?
C) Ever wonder if a library will start lending out e-books to patrons? How would late charges work?
The library is a ‘red herring’. its the generic charity answer to make you feel better, while trying to avoid the more challenging question of ethical return.
2) What’s an ethical return for the product?
(the generic 4 types of ethics, horribly paraphrased)
A) unfairness to you
B) unfairness to the author/publisher
C) unfairness to the general public
D) what’s the greater good?
A) From your perspective, there’s no point to buy the hard copy. Its unmoral to force you to buy a dead tree, pay for the shipment, just so you don’t use it.
B) Hey – they put their assets on the line! They deserve a just reward for the work. Any copyrighted / patented work has the same formula – 50 ideas that you loose money on, and one that makes lots of cash. Less return on the good ones will mean the authors don’t get to see the more risky projects come to fruition.
C) The longer a work remains in a cage, the longer it takes for the public to seize advantage of it fully. USA beat out Britain in the early 1900’s in part due to restrictive copyrights in Britain. Innovation! There has to be an ethical point where society has to make the trade off between paying for an innovation, and then letting others use it to make their big buck. This leads to deflationary values of copyrighted material in some instances, as this date approaches. Unfortunately, due to corporate weight, the legal dates of copyright have extended. As the marketability of the book has past (can’t be sold for a profit due to low volume VS overhead costs), its at the time to be free (speaking outside the specific legal enforcements of copyright lengths). This is true even with the digital copy! If you sent a cheque in for $20 (a high value) to the publisher (the only one for that book within the last year probably), it has to be cashed appropriately, the author found, the ‘cut’ determined from old records hiding in the basement, blah blah blah. It would easily consume $20.
D) You can afford the time to read, and even pay for it. Its a better world if you paid *someone* for that pleasure. You know – returned the enjoyment.
Bugger – I talked myself into giving money to the library.. DOH!
Grant
36, feeling old.
December 1st, 2008 at 2:39 pm
This is an unusual case — the author apparently doesn’t want the books out there? In this case, I’d respect her wishes — but that’s merely preference on my end, not advice for someone else.
Under normal circumstances I’d download the pirated version and send money to the author if practical. I published a bunch of my work as e-books a year or more back — got about 25 pieces of email from people asking me to put a donate button up on my blog. The books and stories have been downloaded several thousand times — and fans donated a couple thousand dollars. Did everyone who downloaded a book send money? Nope, probably fewer than 5% did. But the money is still money I wouldn’t have had otherwise.
I don’t read e-books — I’m 46 and blind in one eye and my vision’s awful enough I have a hard time looking at the screen for lengthy periods. But I have downloaded mp3s, and I have used pirated software, and I’ve used the same approach in both areas — mp3s I’ve kept, I’ve bought something by the singer. Software I’ve kept, I’ve purchased. Angie Aparo, Chantal Kreviazuk, Feist, Katie Melua, a few others, I’ve spent money on all of them as a direct result of downloading their songs. I bought licenses of Photoshop and 3D Studio Max as a direct result of trying out pirated copies.
I’m uninterested in the legal details. The law is frequently either immoral or stupid — but I am interested in what’s right. I never agreed to current copyright law, as either an author or as a reader, and I don’t feel bound by it — but I do feel more or less bound to try and do the right thing. Even an author’s rights to his/her own work aren’t anything like absolute — Author X got death threats over her novels? She certainly has the right to abandon telling those stories, for that reason or any other — but I fail to see where it gives her the right to tell others not to read it. (Not clear she’s gone that far, from the blog post.) I wouldn’t read them, because it’s a courtesy I’d like extended to me in similar circumstances, but that’s courtesy at best — I wouldn’t go so far as to say I think it’s immoral to read the works against her wishes.
December 1st, 2008 at 2:40 pm
I am late GenX.
To me, the problem with everything that starts with “download the pirated …” is implicitly supporting sites that pirate material. It is true that you are merely trying to get your hands on something that is out-of-print and that you would like it in a format you can easily ingest. However, I am unwilling to do that in a way that compromises my morals and supporting/visiting sites that promote pirating falls outside of that.
For me, the options are:
1. Buy and read in original format. It won’t kill you to carry an actual book and if you care so much about the environment, don’t fly for a living.
2. Buy and convert into whatever format you like. Is it a pain? Yes. Accept that it is the cost of living your life based on a set of values and not on convenience and then move on.
3. Don’t read the book. There is a lot of material out there that is available, without moral dilemmas attached, that you can read instead.
December 1st, 2008 at 3:56 pm
It all depends on what your true objective is. If you’re looking for more content from the author and want to encourage more stories from said author then wire a little money her way and download the pirated version. This also serves your sub-objective of acquiring more digital reading material via taking money away from those evil little used book stores which pushes them closer and closer towards filling chapter 11. This in turn leads towards people buying more e-books. Since publishing companies generally go where the money is, this should increasing the incentive for publishing companies to go digital which then in turn gives you more digitized reading material and as an added bonus ensures that the author receives royalties on the story/content it’s self, instead of the physical book.
Down with vile used book stores!
Gen Y
December 1st, 2008 at 4:02 pm
If possible, I would try to avoid the given text until I see it in a used book store or a used form of the book to avoid legal issues and be environmentally friendly. Then I would resell the book so that the next individual could make the same decision. While “lugging” around books can be tedious, I think that it’s the best way to ensure one is not committing theft and still enjoying the original form of the particular author.
December 1st, 2008 at 4:19 pm
I would pirate it and send the book author’s an e-mail asking if he would like some money or the deletion of the pirated file.
It would be nice if the writers put it for free after a Xth edition, or maybe after X $ in sells or something like that.
December 1st, 2008 at 5:39 pm
I would do one of the last two. However, if I really wanted it to be untraceable, I wouldn’t send a money order. I’d send cash. Old, dirty cash in small denominations. Handled with gloves on. Gloves for the stamp and envelope, too.
But then, if you’re that concerned about tracing, you shouldn’t send anything.
As far as moral obligation goes, it’s not clear to me that you have any to the author. The author has already been paid for every dead tree edition sold, and has no plans to either write more or to release old ones as ebooks. That is tantamount to an explicit statement of expecting no further revenue from that franchise. Between that and your desire to have any payment be untraceable, I think you should just do the download. From a free wireless access point.
Tail end of the baby boom.
December 1st, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Everyone operates their businesses under certain assumptions. Sellers of new and used books assume that that their investment in procuring books will not become worthless because people decide not to follow copyright law and make their own copies. If you want to create a disincentive for finding your favorite rare books online, making illegal copies of other books is a good way to do it.
December 1st, 2008 at 5:56 pm
I was faced with the same problem recently and I’ll tell you what I did.
There was a book that I wanted to read but it was unavailable in any digital form so I typewritten the entire book using my Underwood to keep with the way the original book was written and to save our enviornment. Then I scanned into my PC the typewritten pages and converted them into a WordPerfect file which I saved onto a floppy.
I brought the floppy over to a Kinko’s where the nice counterman there charged me 24.00 to convert it over to a PDF so I could convert it to a PubX format so I could read it on my new laptop when i travel.
I set fire to the original book and the typewritten pages in my fireplace to keep warm and recycled the floppy.
I also donated 10.00 to Greenpeace in the authors name.
Now, I feel at one with the world.
December 1st, 2008 at 5:59 pm
You are all assuming one important point: many books that are currently out of print are being offered to other publishers for a new edition. If there are a lot of pirated copies, then that reprint will never happen. No publisher wants to invest a lot of money, just to compete with pirates. This is especially true of legit (and probably higher quality than amateur OCRs) e-editions.
IOW, options 4 and 5 may be reducing your chances of getting good files of books from authors you like.
And a last note, the cost of a new edition of a trade book (a bit of jargon meaning hard back or large paper, of general interest) runs about $20,000. This includes marketing (mostly reviews and web 2.0, so you hear about the book in the first place), copyediting, proofreading, design for cover and text, composition (like typesetting updated for computer-age). For mass market paperbacks, it’s generally higher. Even ebooks soak up unbelievably large amounts of cash.
I’m 48, and a 17-year veteran of the publishing company back-offices (yes, the $ are real numbers).
December 1st, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Incidentally, I find it a very sad state of affairs that you use convenience as a reason for breaking the law. You send a message to others that it’s ok to break the law whenever they want, if it seems ok to them.
So, you find carrying books when traveling to be more cumbersome than you’d like. What’s next – pirating software because you don’t like paying for software? Running stop signs because your leg hurts when you press the brake pedal?
I can understand breaking the law in certain cases, such as, perhaps, speeding to get a pregnant mother to the hospital to delivery a baby. For cases of convenience, the justification gets much more difficult.
I don’t buy for a minute your attempts to justify your decision through environmental impacts. It appears that first you decided that you wanted to copy the book, then, you decided to look for justification.
If you don’t like the current law, you could lobby for changing it.
December 1st, 2008 at 8:56 pm
[...] publishing industry is abuzz about a blog post that appeared over the weekend asking whether it is right to read an illegal e-book of a work that is out of print. (Remember, neither the author or the publisher gets any money from the sale of second-hand books.) [...]
December 1st, 2008 at 9:01 pm
[...] An ethical question involving ebooks | Thoughts by Ted (tags: books copyright DRM piracy ethique abuse auteur DocumentNumerique e-book P2P editeur opinion) [...]
December 1st, 2008 at 9:56 pm
@emlyn: I suspect from what you write that you are a FOSS advocate. It is an argument that works, but only for those with either day jobs to support that work — jobs that includes hardware, software, access, power, etc. — or who have a particular passion and can spring themselves (through youth, lifestyle choices, or retirement with past compensation carefully managed) from surrounding responsibilities. Those who create brilliant work (in any field) may or may not share these choices or luxuries, and may not be part of a similarly brilliant community who also shares them. Pluck out content creators who are supported by day jobs and set them to work without compensation and see where it leads. How many websites announce something like “because of [money, family, time...] I can no longer support this [product, service, site...]“? Unpaid work is also no guarantee of excellence, which is why Wikipedia, for all is expanse, is also not authoritative. Authority comes from professional work, and professional work largely suggests compensation … and in the case of a book, music, or research compensation from royalties and similar payments which allow the professional work to be continued until the next step. Payment and professionalism do not guarantee excellence, of course, but they permit the continuation of excellence where it may exist. Royalty income also allows experimentation and failure that are not punished by economic disaster. Society is risk-averse, and does not directly compensate those in the process of experimentation — something else (day job, royalties, lifestyle choice, madness) supports that.
I don’t defend the absurd mockery of a copyright regime we’ve got now, but its source is, so to speak, ‘pure’.
That said, I wonder if, in addressing these questions, the issues beyond raw initial content are being seriously considered. The editors and designers were casually mentioned, but these are the people responsible for crafting what you read. Accomplished authors are proud of their work and will fight tooth-and-nail with editors … but authors also understand that accomplished editors clarify intent, define transitions, improve language, challenge assumptions, address missing information or background, unmuddy points-of-view, etc. Other editors remove impediments in language, structure, and cohesiveness. Designers, together with artists and typesetters, work on legibility and presentation, crafting the final work in a way that supports the narrative whole. The book must then be marketed or it will sink into the great sea of publications and, irrespective of its quality, be unprofitable and quickly withdrawn. And all of this takes place before the book is printed! Even an ebook must be edited, designed, prepared and marketed. (Many who have download plain texts feel the inadequacy of content without a container, and those who have read self-published authors may sense a certain unfinished character.) After preparation, printed versions also create an entire stream of participants, from the carbon-initiating ones (paper, printing, shipping) to the libraries and their loans, and outward to the remaindered and used market, personal collections, give-aways and yard sales and eventually into a legacy bookshelf or recycling stream.
As in film or music, raw written materials are crafted by a team to create what is identified as an author’s work. This team is supported by a company, small or large, which profits from (successful) sales. The author, on the other hand, is an unknown quantity. Save for tried-and-true formula writers or celebrities, the chances of that author’s book (or film or song) returning a profit to the publisher are small. And at the very end of that chain is the author or composer, who receives no salary but rather gives up everything for what may be minuscule royalties on sales.
So setting aside the legalities for the moment, what is done by copying an out-of-print book into electronic format for one’s own use? As one individual act, just about nothing. But as a generational trend — and that’s what is really significant here — it marks a major shift of understanding and practice. The understanding becomes that after the act of ‘creation’, the work is governed by the reader/listener/viewer rather than the creator and the creator’s support team, and the reader/listener/viewer is free to format-shift, reformat, and mash up its contents. (The initially European concept of ‘moral rights’ comes into play, and is affronted by this reader/listener control.)
This is enormously important, isn’t it? This is the Commons in action. It is taking back what it gave by nurturing creativity, taking back the ideas and inspirations and cultural background to make their reassembly into a ‘new’ work possible. On the other hand, the Commons is pulling on the weakest link: an author’s survival.
No solutions here. I’m just noting the change is irrevocable and the law as it stands loses meaning.
December 1st, 2008 at 10:02 pm
I’d try to contact the author — it could be that the book is in the running to be put back in print. It could be that the author is considering e-publishing it herself. (I have seen something along the lines of the latter, on the blog of one of my favorite authors. She was pondering self-publishing some of her out-of-print books… And perhaps sequels if she can make it financially worth her while.)
December 1st, 2008 at 10:17 pm
@249: “For mass market paperbacks, it’s generally higher. Even ebooks soak up unbelievably large amounts of cash.”
I’m curious why it costs more money to prepare a mass market paperback? I would think that would be cheaper than a hardback, since presumably a lot of the work to typeset, correct typographical errors, etc., would have already been done the first time around.
For whatever it’s worth, I’ve examined some of the pirate editions, and I can tell you that there exists quite a few people who are apparently willing to spend a lot of time cleaning up spelling mistakes and other formatting errors from OCR scans. Some of the pirated ebooks out there are at least as good quality as some of the legitimate ebooks that I’ve purchased from companies like Fictionwise and Baen Webscription Books. For publishers who don’t want to spend money getting an ebook prepared, they might find that there are volunteers they can enlist that might be willing to do work of cleaning up and otherwise preparing an ebook for publication, perhaps in exchange for recognition and a few free ebooks (that were prepared by other volunteers). Those people are certainly quite willing to spend a lot of their time cleaning up ebooks and then “giving away” by posting their cleaned up ebooks, even at possible risk of getting sued by some rabid, scary, New York City Lawyer ala the RIAA/MPAA. Many of them might be quite willing to spend $3-5/book to get a legitimate copy, as long it is not DRM’ed. If the costs can be brought down far enough for out of print books such that they *can* be offered at that price point, and it’s emphasized what percentage of the money is going to the authors, it may be that a lot of people won’t bother pirating copies, especially if it can be made iTunes-like easy to purchase the ebooks.
Just a thought.
December 1st, 2008 at 10:57 pm
@253 Dennis,
I’m not entirely sure whether emlyn was intended to write from the position of being a FOSS advocate or not. It’s possible, although these days the philosophical argument around “information wants to be free” have gone far beyond their original Free/Open Source Software roots. For example, consider Lawrence Lessig’s writings and proposals around Creative Commons.
I’ll note that I’ve been lucky enough to be able to work on Open Source Software for my entire programming career (at least for all of my full-time jobs; while I was at MIT, there were some consulting gigs that I did where I did some minor help with proprietary software, but these were very small, short-term contracts that I did on my own time; MIT allowed that sort of thing, since it didn’t pay all that well). I’ve received the FSF 2006 Advancement of Free Software Award, and I was apparently the first North American Linux Kernel Programmer.
Yet you may find from my writings that I’m very much a moderate in these copyright decisions, since being a creative myself, I very much appreciate that we need to have sustainable business models so that content creators can have food with their meals! That being said, I’m also very much a realist, and believe very strongly that we need to meet the world in terms of how it is today, and not how we would like it to be. We can do things to try to steer the world of tomorrow to be more like our aspirational goals, but we have to be very clear-eyed about the way things are today.
It may very well be, however, that business models may very well change, and how books are edited may very well change — for example, what if the concept of a fixed novel gets replaced by one where there are some changes over time, and in fact copy editing gets done by early readers, much like the braver souls who are experimenting with the Linux Kernel prereleases find and fix bugs so that when the stable version is released, it is much higher quality? The net result is that fewer copy editors may be needed, because that work is getting done by volunteers. As far as marketing is concerned, it’s already the case that many authors have their web sites maintained by volunteers who are passionate about their work. Can volunteers replace the marketing necessary so that authors can get slots on “The Daily Show” or “The View”? I don’t know. Perhaps not.
What may end up happening is that very nature of what gets published will change. This is not a new idea; Eric Flint has pointed out (and he may not have been the first) that the nature of novels such as Great Expectations where greatly affected by how Charles Dickens was able to monetize them; that is, their form was changed based on the fact that they were written and published in a serialization format. Such works tend to have a very strong beginning, since the author needed to convince the magazine publisher to agree to start publishing the story, but then the novels might meander for a while whilst the author “milked” the story for as long as possible — each additional week or month that the story ran was another week’s/month’s rent and food, after all. Such serializations also tended to have more cliffhanger endings at the end of chapters to entice the reader to keep buying the next magazine.
So to, it may be that the move to ebooks may eventually result in changes of the art form itself. And that may not necessarily be a bad thing in and of itself.
One thing which I strong believe is inevitable, however — is that change is coming and it is highly unlikely that things will stay the same in the publishing business. Or the music business for that matter. Just as the existence of Open Source Software has already made and is forcing (more) changes onto the software industry.
December 1st, 2008 at 11:30 pm
@256 tytso, I think we largely agree — I could have used an editor on my post. I failed to make the distinction between on the one hand the OP question about the used book (and the editorial-production-marketing stream impacted) and on the other hand the nascent change whose results are far from known.
I think the concern is not so much the reader/viewer/listener demand (in the Dickens example, or the transformation of the novel itself from Gilgamesh onward) but rather the reader/viewer/listener transformation of the details of content itself — weakening the concept of authorship on which copyright depends and which several industries are defending in some ignominious ways.
The question of the used book, then. Is it a transformation of content that participates in this greater shift, or does it ignore the content and attempt simply to jump over a temporary hurdle of inconvenience? The latter, yes — but isn’t it also simple convenience that seems to have brought so much to the table?
December 2nd, 2008 at 2:18 am
@257 Dennis,
As far as the purchasing the used book is concerned, it’s not clear that helps helps the editorial/production/marketing stream. It may help support the secondary market, yes — which might indirectly support the process of getting the book back in print, but that seems to be about it.
When you talk about the reader/viewer/listener transforming the content, I think there are two issues being conflated. One is “format shifting” — the publisher is only releasing their ebook in one DRM’ed format, which isn’t supported by a particular e-book reader — so some folks may decide that, DMCA or no DMCA, they are perfectly justified to break the DRM so they can transform the eBook format to one which works with their e-book reader. This is similar to those have no compunction downloading the CSS encryption cracking code so they can play DVD’s on their Linux system. Or so they can transform the audio/visual stream so they can play it on their PSP, or cell phone or whatever. Silly end users, who feel that if they’ve purchased the contents of the DVD once, that they shouldn’t have to pay for it a second, third, and forth time when they want to play it on their PSP, cell phone, etc……
The other reader/viewer/listener transformation of the content that can happen is when they participate in helping to improve the actual work. This sort of thing isn’t actually new to computers; for example, consider the interaction between a Jazz musician and the composer? Or the candenza in a concerto, where the soloist gets to do pretty much anything he/she wants between the deceptive cadence until the dominant chord. Or, of course, since days of Gilagamesh, any epic tale told orally by story tellers, who often change details to suit the needs of the audience.
In the open source world, the maintainer passes judgement on whether a particular modification will be accepted or not; as a result, even though Linus Torvalds has not authored the bulk of lines of code in the Linux Kernel, he is recognized as the primary maintainer/author of Linux. So would something like that work exactly the same way with, say, a fantasy novel which is developed on-line? I really don’t know if it would work, or whether some changes would have to be made. One of the things that is required in the open source world is being able to let go of your ego and the NIH attitude; certainly not all programmers are able to make this transition, and it’s probably true for authors as well. So this sort of thing will not be right for all authors.
December 2nd, 2008 at 4:01 am
[...] Read the rest of this post Print all_things_di220:http://voices.allthingsd.com/20081202/tso/ SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “An Ethical Question Involving eBooks”, url: “http://voices.allthingsd.com/20081202/tso/” }); Sphere Comment Tagged: Theodore Ts’o, Thoughts by Ted, Voices, copyright, eBooks, piracy | permalink [...]
December 2nd, 2008 at 7:57 am
Why send the money anonymously? Tell the author you are enjoying her book that’s out of print and you know where to get an electronic copy if she doesn’t have one (many authors don’t have final, edited, electronic copies of their own works) and wants one to put on the web herself. Tell her that despite the fact that the book is only available used, you wanted to express your appreciation and send it in monetary form. Then paypal it to her.
The whole industry needs to shift to a post-experience economy, where people pay, not for copies of things, but to support the works and the content creators who are valuable to us.
December 2nd, 2008 at 10:16 am
@258, tytso,
I know you’re wrapping this up and have gone on to the evaluation in your blog, so briefly my overall point is not to support copyright per se but rather to find a way to recognize (and remunerate) the integrity, effort and ‘voice’ of an original work.
Trends in the secondary market help the primary market. I have seen older materials (books, recordings, computer games…) go back into commercial availability. The format may be changed (paperback book or ported to another machine, say) and the used market may today encourage the production of emedia. It may also create new editions of the same material — there’s a reason Harvard owns the copyright to the long-dead Dickinson (absurd as that may be).
By “convenience”, yes, I mean format-shifting. There is no content basis for changing formats. I’m making the point that format-shifting is (excepting obsolete and unavailable reproduction tools) just convenience, not a contribution to the content. (In either case, DRM and extended copyright (length and means) are impediments.)
We’re talking about a wide grey area. One one side, you mention performers of cadenzas — which are not “pretty much anything he/she wants” between the 6-4 and the dominant, but added content that is stylistically appropriate and contextually meaningful. That’s an individual set of informed choices, authorship in itself (and cadenzas are credited). As for jazz musicians, no, when working with extant material they don’t merely “improve”, they create and compose inside and outside the context of the original composition (even if they are the original composers). Informed individual choices again, and unique authorship. (This might apply to entirely new re-codings of a programming problem, but having done both pretty well, I’m not so quick to make parallels between art and problem-solving.)
On the other side is the tension between author and “content tinkerer”, which Wikipedia exemplifies. I think that is one area which authors (and by author I mean content originators — writers, composers, choreographers, sculptors, painters, poems, playwrights, etc.) fear. If, for example, an author fights with a competent editor, what does it mean to be ‘edited’ by an incompetent one — or by many of varying competence? How does an author deal with accidental damage, vandalism, and stupidity as opposed to improvement or illumination, especially if the author is going on with another work? Where does one merely become a committee chair, ultimately voted out of the room? Putting an idea into fixed form is how copyright distinguishes the Commons from the work of art, however much ego is involved in the latter. I think that distinction is not only useful but also provides the milestones of cultural change.
Ego matters. I’ve yet to see evidence of any brilliant fixed form of creative imagination coming from committees or crowds, except for actual ensemble- (”committee”-) centric artforms such as group improvisation (real-time interaction) and large-scope projects such as film. Would crowdsourcing have made “The Waste Land” a better poem? “Autumn Rhythm (Number 30)” a better painting? “Gruppen” a better composition? What on-line novel contains such brilliance and integrity and multiple threading layers?
I’ll head over to your conclusions and the followup posts there…
Thanks much,
Dennis
December 2nd, 2008 at 12:15 pm
@tytso:
“I’m curious why it costs more money to prepare a mass market paperback? I would think that would be cheaper than a hardback, since presumably a lot of the work to typeset, correct typographical errors, etc., would have already been done the first time around.”
First, the vast majority of rack-sized (aka mass market) paperbacks are originals — not reprints of hb or tpb.
Even if they are reprints, the composition is usually redone, because the proportions of the page are different, or because the font is unreadable small if the pages are merely shrunk. And in any case, the ink doesn’t perform the same way on mpb papers as on the higher end papers, so you generally benefit from different fonts. Horses for courses, and fonts, too!
Next, you need a different cover, because you’re going for a different market segment, and the cover designers with the oomph to grab a mpb buyer’s eyes are generally more expensive.
And you print more of these things, so, while the PPB (paper, printing and binding) is much less per copy, it’s a lot more in total, and can be more as a fraction of revenue.
And then there’s the marketing angle. This, too, takes more resources. And, let’s not forget: a trade book (hb or tpb) can break even at 5,000 copies, but a mpb needs at LEAST 20,000 because of the lower price, higher costs, and the higher discounts demanded and received on them by wholesalers and retailers.
Did that cover your question?
December 2nd, 2008 at 1:12 pm
A number of comments make the assumption that reading or copying book
means you owe money to the author or someone. Publishers often make
this claim; however, others reject it, including for example the US
Constitution when it makes the copyright system _optional_.
Since the publishers’ claim is meant to attack sharing, I eject it. I
do not believe that reading a book or copying a book imposes any debt
on the reader.
The stated purpose of copyright in the US is to promote progress by
supporting authors. That’s a good purpose, so if you want to send
money to an author, I encourage you to do it (whether you copied the
book or not). I wish it were easier to do this anonymously.
But if you send money, don’t tell yourself or others that you did it
to repay a debt. Say you did it because you like the author’s work.
December 2nd, 2008 at 1:13 pm
A number of comments assume that the interest in a particular book is
fixed, and conclude that distributing books in one form means an equal
reduction in the demand for other forms.
This kind of reasoning would lead to the conclusion that used books
should not be sold, because that might reduce the demand to print a
new edition. I think that’s a reductio ad absurdam for the whole line
argument.
But there’s another flaw, in the assumption that interest in a given
book is fixed. From what I have read, aside perhaps from some
bestsellers, distribution of digital copies of a work tends to
increase the demand for printed copies of the same work.
December 2nd, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Many of the responses are couched in terms of civil disobedience. Certainly Richard Stallman has sufficient standing to claim this motivation. Others appear to be confusing personal motivations with nobel community aspirations. Disagreeing with a bad law is not the same as coherently protesting it.
The world is full of mechanisms for limiting access to content. For instance, I recently had the great privilege of seeing Van Gogh’s “Postman” in the flesh at the Barnes Foundation outside of Philadelphia. The Barnes is a very idiosyncratic museum with unique access controls.
Digital media are different because copies are as good as the original (or so we often assert). Access controls must be different. This is not the same as asserting they should always be missing. I would prefer that random curiosity seekers not have access to my medical records. Those who write journals will tend to expect that they remain private.
The issue isn’t digital media – it is publication. Publication of digital media need not be fundamentally different than publication of physical media. But if copyright is not deemed to be the right mechanism for protecting intellectual property – in particular digital IP – than I would suggest that one will have more success advocating a revision to copyright law, rather than demanding that it be eradicated or ignored completely.
In any event, the original question was worded in a very loose fashion of preference, not need – of ease of access, not the fundamental preservation of access. Books remain available, even if out of print. Libraries and used book outlets exist to gain access to them. One need not focus on the “pirate” metaphor to find a way around the author’s rather limp dilemma.
December 2nd, 2008 at 1:30 pm
@262 Marion,
Thanks, that’s really interesting. It’s surprising to me that the designing covers are so much more expensive for mass paperbacks than they are for the hardbacks. I must be one of those latte-drinking elites that the Republicans hate so much, since I generally like the hardcover or trade paperback covers far more than the ones for the paperbacks! Of course, I’m also a cheapskate, so often I will wait for the mass paperback version to come out. <grin>
The other reason why I often prefer the paperback version is size; I own enough books that storage is very much an issue. That’s one of the other reasons I’m moving much more aggressively to ebooks, which is that my shelves are groaning with books, and I don’t have the time or patience to get them sold on amazon.com as used books, and I can’t bring myself to throw books out.
– Ted
December 2nd, 2008 at 2:11 pm
@261: Dennis,
I don’t mind keeping the comments going as long as the conversation is advancing the topic of discussion. My guess is that there are plenty of things still to be unearthed and to be learned, and if people want to do it in the comment stream in my blog, I’m very happy to keep it going. If there’s a major new topic that we want to talk about, it might be worth starting a new blog post just to keep the time to reload the page down to a manageable level, and I’m very happy to do that. (Hmm, if the fact that there are over 260 comments on this post is starting to get inconvenient, and you want to post a reply as a comment to the followup post, feel free. I’m tracking comments to both still.)
As far as whether convenience and format-shifting are the same thing, I think I have to disagree with you. It can be argued that time-shifting ala TV shows and VCR’s might be more for convenience, but for someone who has to work very strict hours, they might disagree with you pretty strongly whether that is convenience or not. However, I think using “convenience” as a short hand for format shifting as far as ebooks are concerned very much misses the point.
The problem is the one which you identified as a parenthetical throwaway: “excepting obsolete and unavailable reproduction tools” which is a critical problem right now as far as ebooks are concerned. Thanks to DRM, which many people (myself included) regard as evil, most eBooks are tied to a particular device. And even if they aren’t, there are multiple incompatible formats out there, and there is no guarantee whether the Sony eReader, or the Amazon Kindle, or some other eReader might prevail in the end. A number of ebook readers have said on various forums that will either only buy non-DRM’ed books, or will only buy non-native DRM’ed books because they it is in a format they know can be cracked (yes, in violation of the DMCA, oh well) so they can be sure that when their current ebook reader dies, they are confident that they won’t have to buy Yet Another Copy of the darned book. This is particularly true given that with many of the most popular ebook hardware, the battery is not replaceable, and will eventually need replacement — which today means the unit has to be replaced. And who can guarantee if a unit that supports Amazon’s proprietary ebook format, or Sony’s proprietary ebook format, will still be available for commercial sale when that happens? Remember, books can last 300 years or more. With modern electronics, you’re lucky if it lasts three years. And many publishers are pricing ebooks at the same price as hardback books that can last 100 times longer the ebook reader that must be used to read their proprietary DRM’ed format. (And publishers are surprised that ebooks aren’t selling well? Hah! I’d love to know what they are smoking, it must be some pretty good stuff….)
As far as your comments about authorship by committee, I think this may stem from a misunderstanding about how FOSS software development happens in practice. Ego is very much in evidence, it is not authorship by committee. For the parts of the kernel that I control, if someone sends a patch which I don’t like, all I have to send is four characters: NACK. There is no voting, and it is most emphatically not authorship by committee. I have seen some maintainers review patches with a brutality (but alas, often not the wit) that of Oscar Wilde giving his opinion of some hapless author and their really badly done manuscript. (Or substitute your favorite brutal reviewer, whether it be from the New York Times, et. al.) There is usually a single person who can say no, and often says no, to proposed modifications of his code. Of course, the competent maintainer will give a more kinder review, more constructive review, because s/he doesn’t want to drive away contributors. So expectations are set about style, newer contributors are mentored, and over time, the contributor becomes more mature and patches need less and less review.
How would this translate into the world of authoring fiction? Well, for example, I could imagine an author creating a world, much like say Robert Lynn Asprin’s “Thieves World”, where authors collaborate on character development, timelines, and so on. The maintainer might have absolute dictatorial say over the backstory and future development of the characters in that world, and who might reply with nothing more than “ixnay on the gay fanfic, guys; Laszlo is clearly a het male, and that’s not changing unless you want to pull a parallel universe plotline, and even then I get to approve whether it works with the world we are building together”. My understanding is that there are series which work very much in that way, with some minor variations, so this is hardly new to the publishing world. Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover World is another example which springs rapidly to mind. Could such a model be monetized via some scheme where a participate pays a certain amount a month to read the web-based forums to discuss such a world, and if they want to participate in collaborate in such a world they pay an additional fee (to recognize that it takes time and energy to review contributions and mentor new contributors). One could further imagine a system where more senior contributors receive credits in exchange for completing chapters and/or short stories, and for helping to mentor more junior writers. Would such a scheme work? I don’t know. But I’d love it if someone tried it and found out!
Professor Robert Greenburg, in his Teaching Company mp3/CD/DVD class entitled, “How to Listen to and Understand Great Music”, commented that while the advent of recordings had a great benefit towards people who wanted listen to music, it had the unfortunate side effect of discouraging and ultimately limiting the number of non-professional musicians. If it is true that there are ultimately many people who love to write, and are driven to write, some of these schemes might actually enable more people to practice writing, and eventually, become good at it. And that ultimately might be very good thing for our culture.
December 2nd, 2008 at 2:45 pm
@Richard Stallman
“A number of comments make the assumption that reading or copying book
means you owe money to the author or someone. Publishers often make
this claim; however, others reject it, including for example the US
Constitution when it makes the copyright system _optional_.
Since the publishers’ claim is meant to attack sharing, I eject it. I
do not believe that reading a book or copying a book imposes any debt
on the reader.”
I almost agree with you. I would say that writers have a right to control their work. I would say that publishers (who invest an enormous, and generally unnoticed amount of time and money in the works bringing those works to the reader) also have a right to control the outcome of their work.
Now, obviously, that control can easily be circumvented. But you can also easily circumvent my control of my purse. (Maybe — that depends upon how big and mean you are — and how many things have annoyed me that day!) But regardless of the ease, no one would advocate that you ordinarily have the right to remove my control of my physical property simply because you can.
What pirates fundamentally steal from authors and publishers is **control.** Once that control was grounded upon the difficulty of copying the work. That difficulty has been eroding steadily since the invention of the printing press.
Now, it needs to rest squarely upon our consciences.
Would you want your words here to be used, without permission, in a way that made you appear to take a position you find morally repugnant? It’s easy to do so now. No? Control of our own work is important to all of us, in one way or another. Some will insist upon attribution: they want ego strokes as payment. Others need to use their words to feed their families, and try to use the control that we, as a society, have agreed is their right, in order to extract that payment.
What we’re all discussing here is the degree to which we are willing to abide by the will of those who have taken the time, effort and resources necessary to bring us something we WANT. What respect do we owe the author and the editor and the illustrators?
It is my opinion that THIS is the moral issue, and the answer is that we owe their intentions for their work very great respect indeed.
And, by the way, we should all be aware that there are 97,000 publishers selling less than $0.5 million per year in the US alone. (That means that they can afford maybe one, or two full-timers on staff. They’re TINY.) By contrast, there are fewer than 200 with sales of greater than $50 million.
There are more than 400,000 titles per year published in the US alone. The vast majority of these rarely or never see the inside of a bricks and mortar bookstore, and are produced by one of that 97,000.
Think about that reality before you stereotype all publishers as greedy, giant corporations.
December 2nd, 2008 at 3:58 pm
@268 Marion,
I haven’t said this earlier, so let me say this now — I’m very glad to have folks who are from the Publishing industry participating in this discussion — thank you for taking the time to help us see things from other, critical perspectives.
I am wondering where you are getting your numbers. If they are from entities that are have requested ISBN prefixes, what percentage of the 97,000 publishers who receive less than $0.5M USD are actually in the business of being profit-making enterprises? For example, some Fanzines are obtaining and registering ISBN numbers, and they give away their work. The same can be said for the American Diabetes Association, the Audobon Society, and many other non-profit organizations, which publishes several publications, many of which are available at no cost or for the cost of printing; they may have annual budgets far in excess of $0.5M, but their goal in publishing their pamphlets or books is not necessarily one where they expect to make a profit, so they might spend far more than $0.5M to create their publications. The same might be true for big pharma companies, who will create many pamphlets and books, many with ISBN numbers which are given free of charge to doctors to market their drugs. (My dad is a doctor; I remember the days when they would host lectures and give away a lot more stuff than just books at fancy French restaurants…)
In any case, I wonder a little bit about your statistics, and how many of the number of publishers and number of books published by said “small publishers” would change if we only counted those publishers who are publishing books with the intention of primarily being a profit-making enterprise, and excluding books which are given away for free, or sold at a loss with the intention of promoting some non-profit or for-profit cause or product.
That aside, you touch upon one of the central questions about copyright, and I’ve talked about it briefly in my followup post; maybe it deserves a more extended treatment. Namely, is the primary goal of copyright control, or to make sure creatives are able to earn a decent living, so they can continue creating and thus contribute to society and to our culture? The US Constitution justifies patents and copyrights in terms of “promoting the progress of Science and the Useful Arts”. (And yes, we’ll ignore the question about whether any of Jackson Pollock’s action painting or John Cage’s 4′33” composition constitutes “useful arts”.) As it is framed in the US Constitution, its primary purpose seems to be much more about economic issues, and not “the moral rights” of a creator to control his or her own work. That is explicitly mentioned in the Berne Convention, but at least for those of us who live in the States, it’s an open question whether control of the work is more the means to an end, rather than the end itself.
If it is really about control there are some dangerous waters we can enter; for example, is it really the author’s and the publisher’s sadistic, malicious will that a work go out of print, and not be available to readers? If that is really want they want, we can make the moral argument (if you believe that creatives have that moral right) that we should be morally bound to obey the will of the creator. If in fact it is merely an unfortunate side effect, not necessarily the malicious will of the author/publisher, but “it’s just business”, then the question of whether we are morally bound to follow laws which are unjust is a different one.
(For example, some states still have laws on the books that essentially prohibit consenting hetrosexual couples from anything other than the missionary position; whether one is morally bound to follow such a law is I think a fair question. Not everyone believes that laws should be followed regardless of whether or not they make any sense. And not everyone believes that, as an act of civil disobedience, that after engaging in the prohibited, mutually consensual sex act, that one is morally obligated to present themselves at the police station, declare that they broke the law, and accept the consequences of violating said law, as a matter of “proper” civil disobedience.)
The flip side of this argument is that, especially for someone like Richard Stallman who was responsible for writing the GNU Public License, the GPL is all about control, and not about economically supporting the author. So if he believes that people are morally bound to follow the GPL because it was the will of the creator, it’s hard to also claim that we should ignore the desires of the creator when it comes down to not wanting anyone from reading their work without first paying five bucks first. So we need to be a little careful here lest we fall into the trap of hypocrisy.
So far, I’ve been talking in the moral, or ethical mode. From a legal perspective, things are clearer, although issues such as fair use and what constitutes a derivative work can also be quite quirky — and things like the DMCA have been an utter disaster. Unfortunately, given everything from the example of the Bush administration to people ignoring speed limits, to the extreme slowness of the law to adapt to digital media, over the last couple of generation, I suspect there has been an increasing tendency, for better or for worse, for people not to submit to the rule of law as being automatically morally or ethically laudable a priori. When laws increasing clash with what people view as common sense, this just makes matters worse.
December 2nd, 2008 at 5:29 pm
@267 tytso:
I distinguish ‘convenience’ from ‘necessity’. If there’s a choice (miss work, miss a deadline, lose some money) then format-shifting is convenience — a choice to make life easier. If there’s no choice (the format becomes unavailable due to broken DRM or obsolete hardware) then it is necessity — there’s no other way to access the work but to format-shift.
Admitting that there are both grey areas and extremes here, I make that distinction because the argument against DRM, proprietary construction, etc., is weakened by both the convenience and sharing claims. With all respect to RMS, only the powerful, wealthy, influential, or evangelistic can demand that the manifest product of the mind be wrested away under the guise of convenience or sharing. We’ve made a centuries-old, functional social contract about that.
Please understand that I have absolutely no respect for DRM, dongles, response codes, or other attempts to limit access to materials (including gambits like JSTOR), and have actively campaigned against them. Even as a happy member of ASCAP, I have opposed the likes of the Sonny Bono and DMCA copyright abuses.
On the other hand, I do support reasonable shepherding of manifest work by the government which also protects my life and liberty. My personal behavior is based on this. I’ve formally abandoned copyright on all my earlier computer programs, articles and manuals and made copies available for download. My musical scores and parts are available for download with the trust that performance fees will be paid — yes, I retain those copyrights because their seeds bear fruit very slowly. Unrecognized when they were written, my compositions published and languishing for 20 and 30 and even 40 years are finally receiving performances. My long-term investment may not be very profitable, but there is some return. (I would have lost these rights in your #13 the followup thread, by the way.)
I appreciate your comments on FOSS and collaborative novels. It’s interesting that these do in fact depend on a similar good will — much as individual creators depend on good will in this era of infinite replication of copyrighted works. (As for Greenburg, this is a point that I have made over and over in essays since I first lifted my head up about this issues in the days when the 1972 sound recording copyright revisions were made. The democratization of creativity tools is long overdue.)
Back to generations: A cultural trend that denigrates authorship by associating it with (take your pick) elitism, corporatism, RIAA abuses, poor marketing, etc. (much of it actually inspired by elitism, corporatism, RIAA abuses, poor marketing, etc.) will become an embedded ’screw the creator’ approach used to excuse convenience arguments and even, if you will, carbon-footprint arguments. Okay, okay, just prodding there — but the carbon cost and detritus of plastic and metal readers and the race to sell new plastic and metal readers with more features seems a bad bet against biodegradable paper.
Dennis
December 2nd, 2008 at 7:50 pm
@269 tytso-
You said: “If it is really about control there are some dangerous waters we can enter; for example, is it really the author’s and the publisher’s sadistic, malicious will that a work go out of print, and not be available to readers?”
Why should it be considered sadistic or malicious that a creator limit the production run for their works? I see artists selling limited edition prints of their 2D (and sometimes 3D) visual art regularly. Musicians do so more rarely, but it happens. Is this sadistic? Or does it have other meanings?
I notice this kind of thinking throughout this topic. It is as though our collective thinking has decided, in a digital world, that once a creator makes a work, it belongs more to the public than to its creator. Is that really the way we should be viewing these things?
December 2nd, 2008 at 9:38 pm
@269 tytso
I’m happy to chip in with what I know, but I’m not even close to omniscient about publishing. No one can be, to my great joy. It’s a discipline where the longer you work and study the more you realize you’re just at the edge of the pool of knowledge.
As for the source of the figures, I’m using the BISG reports (Book Industry Study Group, an independent industry research group studying the state of publishing, pointing out trends, pointing out possible problems, and researching possible solutions).
From the same report: the vast majority of small presses are doing adult trade (as in not kids books, and designed to be eligible for the bookstores), with professional or scholarly publishing coming in a distant second, followed by juvenile, religious, etc.
Some of the adult trade will actually be intended as promos for other services or products, though. But even there, the ability to control the use and exposure of the content can be critical. I’m sure we can all easily think of a dozen PR disasters that could happen in other cases. Most of these companies and authors would rather not share their knowledge than to release it to be used willy-nilly, even where sales are not the goal.
These are the companies that will freely clear permissions on any and all reasonable uses of their material, with minimal requirements for attribution and not much else.
As I said, if you want compensation, you NEED control. Anyone who thinks that ads will support content creation is, I think, a tad naive. Recent trends support this, in my biased opinion. (Noticed what’s happening to TV, for example? or to ad-supported internet initiatives?)
I know many authors who have utterly public spirited and selfless reasons for pulling their work, or certain editions of their work, from distribution. Think about outdated medical, engineering or technical texts, for example.
I know others who simply are unsatisfied with the work in light of their later development, and would recall every copy if they could. Whether you LIKE that reasoning, I submit that we owe them the respect of no longer issuing new copies for a certain period. If the work is REALLY worth keeping alive, then when it hits the public domain we can get on with the publication. But at least the author’s nose won’t be rubbed in it anymore. (BTW, I actually think the lengths required by international treaty are absolutely over the top, but there you are. We’re in the world wide sea of ideas now. Gotta put up with some blips along the way.)
I see no parallels between giving a creator control over the product of his or her mind and hands and the more extreme forms of social legislation, though. It seems to me that IP control is the opposite, in fact. We’re taking it away from the mob and giving it back to the individual most involved.
Just thoughts from the trenches. (NB: I’m one of those back-office types that no one in their right mind allows out in public, rather than an editor or marketer.)
December 2nd, 2008 at 9:50 pm
in re DRM:
Let’s separate different types of material before castigating all DRM. After many years of thought, and work with literally thousands of different publishers on the issue, I think that for MOST trade books DRM is ill-advised.
But, I see very real needs for DRM in the following situations:
–For any type of material that pirates have been actively taking.
–For non-trade books that have price tags in the $500 and up range. Yes, that’s per copy, and there are LOTS of those titles. Most of them are used in snippets, but the information has very high value when used. Usually, this material has cost enormous sums to develop and then the costs per copy to publish are also equally high. And it’s almost always sold in very small numbers, so a single lost sale is a bigger chunk.
–Books marketed to communities where the prevailing ethos favors readers over creators in any of a number of ways.
In short, if you’re not looking at the very specialized, very expensive reference markets, then I suggest that the best way to kill DRM forever is to stomp on pirates and on the tendency to violate copyright anywhere you see it. When we all respect each others’ property, no one needs to lock their doors — even the ones on IP.
December 2nd, 2008 at 10:33 pm
@272: “If the work is REALLY worth keeping alive, then when it hits the public domain we can get on with the publication.”
Umm, it’s been a long, long time since any copyrighted work has been allowed to hit the public domain, and if Disney has its way, that may very well not happen again in our lifetimes, or our children’s children’s children’s lifetimes. At this point, copyright terms in the US are even longer that required by the Berne Convention (and I agree with you that even before the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, they were already over the top too long; no thanks to Victor Hugo).
As far as whether or not creators should have the right to withdraw works that they are ashamed of, how far should that right extend? Should they, if they feel “ashamed” be allowed to forbid resale of used works? That right is codified in Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 109 of the US Copyright law, but should it be? Should the rights of creators be weighted that heavily? How about the right to send a letter requiring everyone who owns a copy of their book to burn it? How far, exactly, should the moral rights of authors extend? I argue that society also has some rights to the continued availability of culturally significant works once they become sufficiently widely available that they enter our culture. Others may disagree with me, but I don’t think that a priori the natural rights of the creator of a work outweighs all other considerations. See comment #18 in my first followup post for a demonstration of how the rights of the copyright owner are already quite limited, and how there are plenty of exceptions carved into the copyright owner’s exclusive rights. I’m just arguing that, given the insane length of copyright terms, this ought to be an additional exception so that the rights of the creator and the rights of society are adequately balanced. And I say this as someone who creates intellectual property myself; I am not just a consumer of copyrighted works.
December 2nd, 2008 at 10:44 pm
@273 “I suggest that the best way to kill DRM forever is to stomp on pirates and on the tendency to violate copyright anywhere you see it.”
I guess I’m too cynical to believe that. I believe that publishers and authors will try to grab as much power as possible to control their work, and maximize the amount of money they can make from their work, including forcing people to buy a new copy of their work each time their computer or ebook reader gets replaced. I think the only way to kill DRM forever is to repeal the DMCA, and explicitly word an exception in the Copyright Law allowing for format-shifting for an individual’s personal private use. We already have an exception in Copyright Law allowing users to make a copy of their computer programs for backup purposes, and to make a copy from the hard drive to memory so the computer program can be run; this would just be one more exception.
As far as dead-tree versions of high-priced, $500+ up reference material which is only used in snippets, I wonder if a direct translation dead-tree version to a DRM’ed ebook version really is the right way to go, especially if the information needs to be updated with any kind of frequency. Things like the Physicians Desk Reference (PDR) are huge, and expensive, but maybe they should be (actually, already are) delivered electronically and access mediated via subscription (and perhaps limited by the number of queries you can make per hour, so as to avoid someone from sucking down the entire database locally, if the content providers are so paranoid about such things happening). This is happening already for many such reference materials, so I would argue that the right answer probably doesn’t involve DRM, but rather simply making it an online subscription service.
December 2nd, 2008 at 10:46 pm
@271 Brian,
Most of my reply to your comment has been made in comment #18 of my first followup blog entry. I wrote it in reply to one of your comments there, but I’ve since recognized that much of what I wrote applies much more to comment #271 here.
– Ted
December 3rd, 2008 at 12:07 am
@271
> It is as though our collective thinking has decided, in a digital world, that once a creator makes a work, it belongs more to the public than to its creator. Is that really the way we should be viewing these things?
Yes, absolutely. Once you show the information to someone, sing that song to an audience, let someone read that book, I think it no longer belongs to you. You should still be acknowledged as the author, but not have control over what others can do with it. There is some justification for giving the author some control for a very limited period of time (a decade at most) so authors can live off their work, and if someone is making money off it the author typically should get a cut, but fundamentally I strongly believe creative output belongs into the public domain.
December 3rd, 2008 at 2:41 am
Let’s play Devil’s Advocate for a moment: do you send an author money every time you check one of their books out of the library? (If so, bully for you!)
Viewed in such a light, even given the arguments against simply downloading the novel due to some possible harm it might possibly cause to either author, publisher, reseller, or so on, I see nothing wrong with downloading the novel (and either paying or not paying the author for it, as you will).
Because, again, if the book were in a library, or (better) if you were borrowing it from a friend, would you be wrangling over the ethics of what to do in that situation: “Should I take the book out of the library, or buy a copy for myself, or take the book out and send the author a check? What’s the RIGHT THING to do?!”
That’s what it comes down to. Downloading a so-called “pirate” copy of a book is not fundamentally different than borrowing a book from a friend, or joining one of those book swapping clubs who pass a used novel among dozens of persons, and which is perceived as somehow OK.
I suggest the whole issue is really the incorrect use of the word “piracy”, and the emotional reaction and various associations it instills, rather than the act itself. I suggest if the publishing industry were to refer to book borrowing as “piracy”, it would be viewed with the same contempt and disgust as electronic piracy, and many of the same arguments would be levied against the “wrongness” of the act of borrowing/lending.
December 3rd, 2008 at 3:50 am
@277 Yodel
You said: “fundamentally I strongly believe creative output belongs into the public domain.
I think things like this are pretty easy to say – until you’ve actually tried to make your way in the world based on the fruit of your creative efforts.
If they made it so and I were a for-profit author, I’d simply give up and get a job flipping burgers. I’d feel society had no right to enslave me so, and I’d either stop creating, or create only in secret and share with a few dear friends. It’d be my way of telling society it has no right to enslave me thus; to declare eminent domain on my creative abilities. So they could bloody well do without the benefit of my creative labors, and enjoy only the burgers.
Marion Gropen has it right when she says “if you want compensation, you NEED control.” Personally, I’d lean towards a copyright extending the length of the creator’s life (or 20 years from publication, whichever is longer), unless sold to a 3rd party in which case 20 years from sale.
These numbers aren’t just picked out of a hat. I’ve thought about them a lot (and still I wonder what I might be missing – I am by no means sure of them!). I think it’d be a crime to see an 80 year old author living on a pittance while other make millions printing and selling his now public-domain works. On the other hand, for most works I don’t see a corporation really gaining much profit from >20 year old books – and if the demand is still there, then let the public have it since the author sold his full rights.
The proviso ‘life of the author or 20 years from publication date, whichever comes later’ is to address the case of the author who writes something great from his deathbed (or near to it). That guy should be able to pass a portion of this to his heirs. But not a lifetime sinecure; they didn’t write it.
Yes, I have a sense that authors write, uh … ‘gifts to society’ you might say. But there is a line in there. It’s hubris for a society to begin feeling entitled to those gifts.
December 3rd, 2008 at 3:51 am
drat. I seem to have forgotten to close a tag (only the word “or” should have been italicized). Sorry ’bout that.
[ I've gone in and fixed your comment by adding the missing tag. -- Ted]
December 3rd, 2008 at 8:42 am
@278
Bryan, there is two aspects there, getting a cut if someone is making money off it, and being able to control who’s allowed to use it. For the former, I would agree with your sense of fair duration (max(life, 20)), with some fixed legislated rate. Is is simply not true that you need individual control to get compensation.
It is the control aspect that I object to. Max(life, 20) there would make it pretty much impossible to have great derived works (that the author doesn’t agree with) of more or less current art. I find it an atrocity that the estate of Jimi Hendrix could prohibit to use his music in ‘Fear an Loathing in Las Vegas’, for example, and I’m positive the world has been robbed of countless masterpieces that way.
Just imagine if science ‘copyright’ worked like you’d like art copyright to work, we’d still be riding horses instead of cars.
Here I think 10 years are fair, maybe with a paid extension to 20 – lifelong control is far, far too much.
December 3rd, 2008 at 8:58 am
@278
Bryan, there is two aspects there, getting a cut if someone is making money off it, and being able to control who’s allowed to use it. For the former, I would agree with your sense of fair duration (max(life, 20)), with some fixed legislated rate. Is is simply not true that you need individual control to get compensation.
It is the control aspect that I object to. Max(life, 20) there would make it pretty much impossible to have great derived works (that the author doesn’t agree with) of more or less current art. I find it an atrocity that the estate of Jimi Hendrix could prohibit to use his music in ‘Fear an Loathing in Las Vegas’, for example, and I’m positive the world has been robbed of countless masterpieces that way. Another example is an author who no longer likes their earlier work and would like to make it disappear – I just don’t think anyone should have that right.
Art is not just production of individuals, it’s a shared tapestry. Just imagine if science ‘copyright’ worked like you’d like art copyright to work, we’d still be riding horses instead of cars.
Here I think 10 years are fair, maybe with a paid extension to 20 – lifelong control is far, far too much.
Clearly you feel that lifelong control over one’s creative output is a natural right , and I feel it’s a privilege that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense as is – it looks like both are gut feelings, right?
December 3rd, 2008 at 9:22 am
Bryan, I think if you ask most [book] authors, the vast majority of them will tell you that they make precious little money off of their works some 20-30 years later after they are published. For software, this is definitely true; in fact, for software, it’s likely that after 10 years or so, for 99.999% of programmers, they rae no longer making money on their software. At that point, do we really worry about keeping something under copyright so that the rare, rare author will be able to continue living off of something they did 30 years ago?
Granted that for different classes of creatives, the time before they earn a “fair return” (which is a devilishly hard concept to pin down — is the CEO of GM who earned $14 million dollars in 2007 a fair salary?) may be different; Dennis on this board has claimed that in some cases it’s take 30-40 years before a musical work of his has been performed. On the other hand, other composers have made an absolute killing on their compositions by that point.
So as far as your question of whether an author will go off and say, “if you don’t give me what I want,
I’m going to hold my breath until I turn purplego and flip burgers at McDonalds instead”, for the author such as Stephen King, who has earned well over a hundred million dollars — I’m going to have to call bullsh*t. So for the highest grossing authors, I don’t think so! What we should worry about instead is the mid-list authors, and there I’m not convinced most of them will be able to write a single magnum opus at the age of 20 which will support them for the rest of their natural lives.One way of thinking about this is if we were looking from the outside into this world, before we were born, and we didn’t know whether we would be born into the body of a failed CEO who would walk away with millions after corkscrewing their company into the ground, or ito the body of a worker who gets laid off after working at that company after 30 years earning barely $50,000 a year (the median income for a family of four), or the body of a filthy rich author who earns Sayguns and Sayguns of dollars a year, or the body of a struggling midlist writer who writes because s/he loves to write, needs to write, would write even no one paid him/her to write, — or the consumer who is frustrated because copyrights have now been extended for hundreds and hundreds of years and massive amounts of society’s culture has disappeared into this nebulous zone where they are out of print, yet still protected by copyright — how would you set up the rules, not knowing what situation you would find yourself in?
Given the probabilities, do you make things heavily slanted against the workers screwed over by the incompetent CEO, in the hopes that you might get lucky and become the incompetent CEO? Or do you set things up so that the workers get a better deal? Similarly, in the case of the authors, do you set things up so that they might be able to do one book when they are 20 and then live off of it for the next 60 years? Or do you optimize for the much more common case where most works go out of print much, much sooner than that, and you may be the consumer (or author) wanting to use or build off of something that would have entered the public domain before copyright terms started getting extended, and extended, and extended…
December 3rd, 2008 at 10:02 am
[...] their post on Google’s agreement with the Author’s Guild and their response to this post on the ethics of ebooks will leave you with a not insignificant amount on your mind, I [...]
December 3rd, 2008 at 10:12 am
Despite the fact that works on the artistic edge take many years to achieve visibility, I would be happy to return to a 28-year once-renewable death+20 term — if it were fairly applied to all works (from me to Disney, with no exceptions and no bogus ‘editions’ that get new copyrights), if it included a ‘moral rights’ concept, prohibited the sale of copyright, barred ‘work for hire’ exceptions, extended fair use to derivative work, disallowed corporations or universities from owning the copyright on their employees’ or students’ work, formally recognized some version of the creative commons license, and provided a useful orphan/abandoned works provision. That would at least attempt return copyright to being creator-centric, acknowledge and encourage the role of the Commons, and simplify the copyright code; a once-renewable 28 year death+20 term would be a reasonable period for the more long-lived society we now are.
December 3rd, 2008 at 10:43 am
[...] copyright even matter anymore? (via Moby [...]
December 3rd, 2008 at 11:08 am
Heh. I wasn’t thinking of the Steven Kings of the literary world, tytso. Those guys will basically make their own gravity whatever the arrangement is. I was thinking of the midlist guys. Nor was I thinking of the one-hit-wonder author who somehow deserves to live the rest of his life from one novel. I think this class of author is exceedingly rare. No, I was thinking of the whole mixture. The workaday authors who put out a novel every year or three. We both seem to be science fiction guys, so … go check John Varley’s site, or Spider Robinson’s, or David Brin’s. Names I’m guessing you recognize, but minor fame hasn’t brought them megabucks. They’re doing okay, but their houses are no nicer than mine or yours.
But would it be right that any of these living author should sit on the sidelines and watch other entities collect money by publishing their works? Other entities who had nothing at all to do with the original work? Personally I don’t think so.
December 3rd, 2008 at 11:19 am
Also, I forgot to mention – the part about them making precious little from their old works is precisely why I’d like to see them actually get that precious little. I do still enjoy, and look for, science fiction from the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. Last year I bought The John Varley Reader, and re-appreciated some of his 30 year old stories. Took my breath away – again. And I’m glad to know that a dollar or so of the purchase price made its way into his hands. Basically, I bought the guy a Coke. I wasn’t exactly gold-plating his doorknobs.
December 3rd, 2008 at 11:38 am
I’m afraid I disagree strongly with your position that the rights of the audience/readers completely dominate those of the creator once the work has been shown/performed/published.
I think we should work for a balance. For example, I wouldn’t argue that an author or other rights-holder has the right to force the destruction of copies already released. On the other hand, I feel that it is their right to determine whether more copies get made.
I very much feel that an author of, say, Holocaust memoirs should be able to prevent a Nazi-apologist from using their work out of context. Or a Holocaust denier. A civil rights analyst should be able to deny use of their words (beyond the fair use limits) to a KKK author. Etc.
I recognize that this limits the ability of people to create derivative art that contravenes the original creator’s desires. That is a frustrating limitation for many beginning novelists and for fans. I just don’t think that the good of society as a whole is damaged enough by that to justify seizing that work. It’s all about proportion and the rights of the individual vs. the desires of the mob.
As for the ability to make money without control:
The ad model is already being phased out in many other media, and has never shown signs of working well for books. It has been tried, but it has never been sustainable.
The shareware model is of very dubious utility. Every trial by authors or publishers that I have heard about was a failure.
I just don’t see either one replacing our $30 billion (in the US) sales, or even replacing the authors’ share of that (between $3 and 6 billion, by my estimate).
We can’t even make direct sales to readers work (even to bookstores, for the small press) work, because of out-sized transaction costs. Book publishing is an unusual industry operating within constraints that have created a system that looks very odd to newcomers. The obvious shortcuts tend to put those who take them straight into bankruptcy.
I’m not aware of other models for making money from an author’s work, let alone for publishers. Any ideas?
December 3rd, 2008 at 1:07 pm
If you want to kill DRM, sign up at DefectiveByDesign.org
and participate in our protests.
December 3rd, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Author: tytso
Comment:
@268 Marion,
I haven’t said this earlier, so let me say this now — I’m very
glad to have folks who are from the Publishing industry
participating in this discussion — thank you for taking the time
to help us see things from other, critical perspectives.
======================================================================
The flip side of this argument is that, especially for someone
like Richard Stallman who was responsible for writing the GNU
Public License, the GPL is all about control, and not about
economically supporting the author.
The GNU General Public License (or GNU GPL for short) is all about
NOT letting programmers have control over what users do with programs.
So if he believes that people are morally bound to follow the
GPL because it was the will of the creator,
I don’t.
Legally, the GPL (as we sometimes call it for short, once it’s
established _which_ General Public License is under discussion)
operates based on copyright law. However, its moral basis has nothing
to do with law. To violate the GNU GNU means denying users freedoms
they are supposed to have, or else opening the door for someone else
to do so. This wrongs or endangers the users in general. The
original author is generally one of them, and is the one who has the
legal power to enforce the license — but when we enforce the GPL, we
do so for all users.
In an ideal world, where software was normally free and non-free
versions of free programs were not a significant phenomenon, there
would be no need for the GNU GPL. To get there, we would have to go a
lot farther in teaching the public to value their freedom and reject
freedom-trampling software on principle. In the mean time, copyleft
is an important weapon for defense of our freedom.
December 3rd, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Author: bryan Comment: @269 tytso-
You said: “If it is really about control there are some
dangerous waters we can enter; for example, is it really the
author s and the publisher s sadistic, malicious will that a work
go out of print, and not be available to readers?”
======================================================================
Why should it be considered sadistic or malicious that a creator
limit the production run for their works? I see artists selling
limited edition prints of their 2D (and sometimes 3D) visual art
regularly. Musicians do so more rarely, but it happens. Is this
sadistic? Or does it have other meanings?
I would not call it “sadistic”, which implies a raw pleasure directly
from the pain of others. I don’t think anyone in this scenario feels
that. But there is a similarity.
Why would someone pay more for a limited edition? Only because he
values the deprivation of others. Even if this does not qualify as
sadism, it is certainly malicious in spirit. The artist may not,
himself, value anyone’s deprivation–he may only value the income–but
he profits from and foments the practice of valuing others’
deprivation.
I don’t think this practice is harmful enough to prohibit, but I would
not give an inch to cater to it or facilitate it.
December 3rd, 2008 at 1:30 pm
[...] even picking up a paperback off the breakroom table? Yesterday Galleycat referenced a blogpost on Thoughts by Ted on the ethics of reading illegal digital copies of books that may or may not be available legally [...]
December 3rd, 2008 at 1:33 pm
[...] Theodore Ts’o (”Thoughts by Ted“) set off an interesting debate on his set last week, garnering more than 200 comments, some [...]
December 3rd, 2008 at 1:42 pm
@Yodel 282
You said “Clearly you feel that lifelong control over one’s creative output is a natural right , and I feel it’s a privilege that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense as is – it looks like both are gut feelings, right?”
I’ve been reading what authors have to say, and thinking about these issues every so often, for over 20 years. I know a few authors. I’ve put a lot more than my gut into my thinking, but you are right about one part: it’s my basic sense of fairness (or maybe that’s just my gut) which says an author should have some say over his works – unless he sells his rights to have that say.
I do not think the author should be able to renege on former contracts. So the idea of an author whose control was so absolute that he could sell me a book and then make it go up in flames – that does not appeal to me at all. I want the contract to state what could happen. I’d be all for an author trying to sell a book that was clearly labeled “Warning. Might go up in flames at any moment!” … because then I’d know not to buy it. But others might like the novelty of that, so the author should at least have the chance to try it. Who knows. It might become cool among some small art-fiction sect. So I’m with Marion on this one. The author should be able to decide when to stop printing new copies. Should not be able to unilaterally change the terms of sales already made.
I think the converse should be true also. Society should not be able to renege on its deal with the author. If last year the author published a work and had expectation under the Sonny Bono law for 70 years past his death – well, I don’t agree with that duration. But it’s the law, and I do not think it’s right to pass ex post facto laws. So the author should have those rights for that duration. If we changed the law tomorrow (and yes I would welcome this!), it should apply only to works published after the change. Changing the rules after the player enters the game is another thing my gut says is wrong.
As a corollary to that, we individuals don’t get to change the game either. I fully understand the difference between infringement and stealing, but that doesn’t make infringement any less wrong. Especially when no-cost alternatives (libraries) exist. So I don’t think it is ever right to pirate a work, where by pirate I mean ‘make an unauthorized new copy of a work that is within its copyright period.’
December 3rd, 2008 at 1:44 pm
bah. screwed up the italics again. I need tag-therapy!
December 3rd, 2008 at 1:45 pm
@292 RMS
A limited edition is a source of deprivation? This strikes me as a hammer-nail reaction.
A limited edition — whether a single piece or 500 (and not some Franklin Mint pseudo-limited-edition bogosity) — is an object where a special care is taken in its presentation or production. It offers a closer connection with the artist. It affords pleasure to the creator, the producer or team, and the receiver. The signature has a feel. Each component is unique and each one in the edition slightly different.
(It is no more deprivation than the meal that I prepare for a table of friends deprives non-guests of the experience. There are limits to experience — does eating with friends represent the terrorism of the scarcity model?)
And a limited edition does not require monetization. On my wall is a limited edition of twelve proofs of a series of rose prints pulled by a friend and given as a gift. In my library is a limited edition Harrison of Paris book that was never sold, only given to friends of the author or publisher. I have dozens of limited edition books and posters and sculptures and musical scores, all gifts, and have made limited edition objects myself, including a hand-made run of fifteen books of the collected works of artists friends, bound in plexiglas, buckram, burlap and birch bark.
But these are objects, and so live outside the narrow textures of the computer monitor. The shallow information that comes over the Series of Tubes cannot — and who knows when it will — replicate the character of an object … book, sculpture, painting, photograph, performance. The digital realm has its own character, a data-based realm of infinite replicability of its version of reality, a simulacrum. It does not encompass the sweaty rioting in the Paris concert hall of 1913 or the family at table in Iowa with a handed-down recipe or the texture of a Brancusi in the rain or the sound of spring peepers in Vermont or the smell of skunk at midnight in Pennsylvania or the call of one magpie among many in an Italian landscape.
The limited edition is the hyper-reality of a manufactured object. Its presence deprives no one, for it exists out of its creator and the creator’s team, and is a gift to the culture.
December 3rd, 2008 at 3:05 pm
@ 290 Richard Stallman
“If you want to kill DRM, sign up at DefectiveByDesign.org
and participate in our protests.”
These protests may work, but I suggest that as long as people have reason to believe that DRM is their last line of defense, they’ll use it. We need to offer an alternative that looks like it might be successful at meeting their goals.
And changing the zeitgeist to make copyright violation uncool is a good step toward such an alternative.
If you also want to change creators’ attitudes so that they offer their work under some alternative sort of license, then go for it! I just prefer to keep the choice in the hands of those who create, rather than have society engage in some sort of social experiment that’s likely to have rather extreme unintended consequences.
December 3rd, 2008 at 7:30 pm
[...] poor Ted. This one — the one that had an ethical question involving ebooks. Basically, he wants to read an out of print book; he is willing to pay for a legal electronic [...]
December 3rd, 2008 at 9:48 pm
@287: “I was thinking of the midlist guys….. The workaday authors who put out a novel every year or three. We both seem to be science fiction guys, so … go check John Varley’s site, or Spider Robinson’s, or David Brin’s.”
Bryan, I’m not an expert in these matters, but my understanding from some of Eric Flint’s very well considered essays in this area (published as a series of essays in Baen’s Universe over the past couple of years), is that the midlist authors earn very little money once a book gets older than a surprisingly small (single-digit) years. And books by these midlist authors (and I’m a big fan of Spider Robinson) have a tendency that once they go out of print, they stay out of print.
So at least for midlist authors, (a) long copyright terms probably don’t help them much if at all, and (b) if a publisher chooses let the book go out of print, it’s probably gone for good. And if the publisher is being economically rational and is letting the book go out of print because the publisher can’t make money on it, and there are people who are motivated enough to slice the binding off the book, individually OCR each page, and then correct the OCR errors, and reformat it as an etext — and these people exist; if you haven’t found vast troves of these ebooks on the Intertubes, you haven’t been looking very hard — what is the right public policy thing to do?
Clearly there is a huge class of people (some on this comment stream have derisively called them “the mob” — I wonder if some of these folks have ever driven faster than the speed limit in violation of the law; many respectable people do that; wanna call them part of “the mob”?) are quite willing to break the law, and put in a non-trivial amount of effort making a high quality illegal etext. So if the publisher can’t figure out a way to make money to make the book commercially available, maybe it’s time for it to enter the public domain, even if the requisite 120 years hasn’t gone by yet? Not doing this only deprives the book from the culture, and we’ve already established that it’s not doing any economic good for the author given that the publisher can’t figure out how to make money, which is presumably why the book has gone out of print, so the arguments against it, at least from an ethical point of view, seem to be weak at best.
The argument that maybe the author is ashamed of his early work just isn’t very convincing to me, BTW. If the publisher has made it available commercially as a mass market item, at that part the book is part of our culture, and at the very least will be in Libraries and in private collections. Given that most people seem to think that authors have no standing to demand that their books be burned after some years later out of their own personal shame, the claim that they are part of our culture is a pretty strong one. So if it is no longer commercially available, then it should not be a crime for people to make it available via non-commercial means. They are going to do it anyway, even if it does take the law a huge amount of time catch up with reality. I’m sure the Puritans who outlawed various sexual practices felt strongly that society would fall apart if some of the laws they pushed through were ever repealed; but if the vast majority of society don’t feel that those laws are against the law, what are we going to do? Put a vast majority of the population behind bars?
I suppose we could make it like speeding — “tsk, tsk, tsk, you violated copyright law. I’m going to have to write you a $75 dollar ticket.” That’s where we are in Massachusetts as far as possession of small amounts of marijuana. Who knows? Maybe that’s were we’ll end up with copyright law if no one is willing to acknowledge reality. I’m not sure that’s actually a good place to end up, though; the reality, is that even if we do nothing, we will be participating in a social experiment, because technology and the general consensus is forcing a change, one way or another.
December 4th, 2008 at 3:46 am
hi,
we finished the translation of your primary post: you can find it at this page: http://www.laquadrature.net/wiki/Une_question_éthique_concernant_les_ebooks
thank’s a lot for the permission to translate
best regards
Eric!
—–
December 4th, 2008 at 5:31 am
@#289: I very much feel that an author of, say, Holocaust memoirs should be able to prevent a Nazi-apologist from using their work out of context. Or a Holocaust denier. A civil rights analyst should be able to deny use of their words (beyond the fair use limits) to a KKK author. Etc.
How about the Church deciding there is no quoting the Bible if you are using those quotes to disprove the existence or morality of God or the Church? Or, a little closer to the ground, how about presidents denying the right of the opposing party to quote their statements or present their plans if those statements or plans are presented in a bad light?
Using things “out of context” is a far different thing than “copyright”. Contextual usage of material is an intellectual/ethical issue that copyright simply can’t be used to deal with without creating a chilling effect on discourse and the search for truth.
December 4th, 2008 at 6:34 am
Author: bryan
Comment:
@277 Yodel
You said: “fundamentally I strongly believe creative output belongs into the
public domain.
I think things like this are pretty easy to say – until you’ve actually tried to
make your way in the world based on the fruit of your creative efforts.
======================================================================
If they made it so and I were a for-profit author, I’d simply give
up and get a job flipping burgers. I’d feel society had no right
to enslave me so, and I’d either stop creating, or create only in
secret and share with a few dear friends.
So you would hold your artistic works hostage until we willingly stop
sharing? I will not ransom them at such a cost. You can keep them
hostage all your life, and spend it reveling in bitterness, if you
really want that kind of life.
It’d be my way of telling society it has no right to enslave me
thus; to declare eminent domain on my creative abilities.
To “declare eminent domain on your creative abilities” would mean
forcing you to write or perform for others. That would indeed qualify
as enslaving you. I don’t think anything truly like this happens in
the US; the closest thing would be found in the abusive contracts
record companies impose on young musicians. No one here proposes this
(or did I miss something). I think you are exaggerating wildly.
If we subtract the exaggeration, we see that you started from the idea
spread by the propaganda term “intellectual property”. You believe
you have a natural right to control all the copies of something you
wrote, and everything that people do with them. (In fact, in the US
you have never been given all of that power.) You must feel enslaved
already because a library could buy a book and let visitors read it.
This is one of the reasons why we should refuse to use the term
“intellectual property”. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html.
The freedom to share is a necessity in the digital world. I
sympathize with your wishes for more income as a writer, but that is
not as important a ending the harsh War on Sharing.
December 4th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
A very interesting discussion. I’m particularly appreciative of the link to the gnu discussion of the term “intellectual property”. Clearly this is a phrase that is misleading, likely intentionally so. However, the real failure of usage is at a more fundamental level. What is “property”, in general?
The current rabid capitalist vision of property is quite distinct from those of earlier times. Some cultures had no fundamental notion of ownership at all – Manhattan wasn’t owned, so how could it be purchased? In feudal times, the aristocracy and ultimately the crown owned everything – including the people. Even the goblins in Harry Potter have a different notion of property.
Rather, the issue is about finding the most functional balance between individual rights (of various sorts) and community rights. That is, the fundamental issue is about the Tragedy of the Commons: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/162/3859/1243
(One chooses not to belabor that this link is available precisely because the copyright holder chooses to make it so. Copyright is a two edged sword.)
The Tragedy of the Commons must be differently posed for electronic media, but exists nonetheless. Having reached the village green first, Disney’s electronic cattle can’t denude it for the rest of us. But having profited first, Disney has inappropriate influence over legal decision-making that has repercussions far beyond their corporate interests. They are Captain Hook in this play. The rest of us, the Lost Boys.
So “intellectual property” is a poor term of art for an umbrella concept over diverse and distinct instrumentalities like copyright, patent and trademark. That boat has sailed, however. It is the term – the meme – we have to deal with. If the IAU now tells us that a “dwarf planet” is not subclassed from “planet”, why infer that intellectual property is subclassed from property? And in particular, there are far broader problems with property concepts than electronic media have to deal with. (And one might point out that all property – money – is itself now represented digitally anyway.)
Isn’t the real goal to devise new concepts of IP (a rose by any other name) that are a better fit to electronic media? Isn’t that, for instance, what copyleft and other open source schemes are about? What is the appropriate mix of control and fair recompense that applies to digital creations? Rather than seeking the staggeringly unlikely goal of eradicating copyright, wouldn’t it be more successful to devise a new IP mechanism, “digiright” or some such, that is a better fit?
It seems like software patents are undergoing some long overdue evolution to better fit the actual practices of the art of software engineering.
Agitate to evolve IP memes.
December 4th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
We’re having a very good discussion here, and I grateful to be a part of it.
(BTW, I apologize for the term “mob” in an earlier post. It sounds derisive, when I was simply trying to avoid hackneyed words like “masses.”)
I know that most discussions of copyright and intellectual property tend to devolve into idealistic arguments. In a perfect world, we might perhaps be able to find the one right balance between the creators’ rights, the need to encourage further creativity and the need to use the created work in order to produce further work.
And in that perfect world, we would be able to write laws that would clearly draw lines between the creativity that produces tools (machines, inventions, software) and that which produces entertainment (music, video, fiction) and that which produces information (research reports, etc.). Where popular non-fiction would fall, I have no idea.
We tend to blur those lines. We prescribe solutions for the piece of the puzzle we tend to work most with, and to fail to understand how those solutions will affect the rest of the picture.
Some people seem to be assuming that society would benefit from full and complete freedom to use any idea, story, tool or invention from the moment it was presented to the public. I am not at all convinced that this assumption is valid in and of itself.
I am assuming that the individuals have a right to have some control over their creations, and that society needs to have some access to those creations. And I assume that these two forces need to be balanced, as all competing demands are balanced in our society.
In an ideal world, we would be able to come to some accommodation that fits each individual situation, rather than applying one size fits all laws, or letting the side with the richest lawyers win. (And that’s often NOT the rightsholders. Just look at the Google/AAP/Author’s Guild suit.)
I’d like to see these arguments focus on what we might actually be able to achieve, though. And they rarely do. That’s too bad. If we put all this thought into coming up with something that might work, we could change the world.
In that connection, I have to laud Richard Stallman and others like him. I may disagree with him on a number of philosophical points, but practically, they have managed to create a viable and useful alternative that allows creators to grant permissions to all and sundry **without** the prohibitive costs that used to be associated with such actions.
And, by the way, I don’t think anyone, most emphatically including me, would ever want to restrict fair use in the ways listed by Raven Dramorgen (#302) suggested as an implication of my examples. All of her counter examples were within current fair use guidelines, or could be made so.
December 4th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Interesting discussion, nice to have many different opinions represented.
To my eyes, and as far as books/novels are concerned, the current copyright is not such a bad system as such (for other areas, as publishing of tax-funded scientific matter, I have another opinion), the ideas are ok (protect moral rights, try to guarantee revenue).
Instead of thinking of radically replacing the current system with some wild new stuff, maybe some practical adjustements could correct the flaws, e.g. the out-of-print and no-e-book-format-available problems which got this discussion going.
- For the problem of books no longer being available (meaning here edition sold out, not including the case of the author retracting his work, which is another issue), introduce an obligation for the publisher to keep the work available (for a reasonable price), lest the contract with the author on that work become void (or at least non-exclusive, so that the author may negotiate with another publisher) / un-authorized copying become legal / insert here whatever mechanism likely to favor access to the book.
- Maybe forbid exclusive copyright licence deals alltogether ? Or restrict the exclusivity to the media for which the publisher is willing to produce ?
This would allow an author to renegotiate more easily with another (e-)publisher in case his/her primary (paper-)publisher is unwilling to reprint the book or provide a format in which another publisher is willing to publish. Possibly protect the primary publisher with a small part in the new deal, to avoid publishing companies which just buy away big-selling authors and leave the risk of the first publications and finding new talents to others.
- Tie copy-right to obligation: introduce an obligation for publishers to make easily available an open-format version of the book once the book falls into the public domain. I’d strongly favor bryan(#279)’s max(lifetime,20years) period over the much too long current delay, but that’s another matter. Making sure the public domain has a lot to offer would be beneficial for all of us.
December 4th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
@306 Adrian:
“For the problem of books no longer being available (meaning here edition sold out, not including the case of the author retracting his work, which is another issue), introduce an obligation for the publisher to keep the work available (for a reasonable price), lest the contract with the author on that work become void”
It may not be in copyright law, but it IS in almost all publication contracts. When the title goes out of print (or when annual sales drop below a given level, now that POD means titles never need to go OP), the rights revert to the author, with the exception of the subsidiary rights already sold to other publishers whose editions are still selling.
“- Maybe forbid exclusive copyright licence deals alltogether ? Or restrict the exclusivity to the media for which the publisher is willing to produce ?
This would allow an author to renegotiate more easily with another (e-)publisher in case his/her primary (paper-)publisher is unwilling to reprint the book or provide a format in which another publisher is willing to publish.”
This will have major unintended consequences. No publisher wants to sink $20k and up into a book that’s going to have unknown competition from another publishers’ editions. That’s why publishers are insistent about getting control of and selling sub rights. And sub rights are a MAJOR part of the profit margin.
The lack of e-books in the formats you want is generally caused by one of two factors. Either somebody in the command chain is afraid of piracy, or the profit margin of converting and then administering sales in all those different formats and outlets is not positive. Toward that end, there are now companies that are developing software that allow publishers to make the conversions and handle the thousands of rights transactions, royalty calculations, etc. involved. The accounting is the expensive part, of course, but when wasn’t it?
“- Tie copy-right to obligation: introduce an obligation for publishers to make easily available an open-format version of the book once the book falls into the public domain.”
Um, public domain is not the same as out of print. And given the economic importance of issuing reprints of old books, sometimes after years, it’s unlikely to become the same, barring the outcome of the much-to-be-execrated Google case settlement.
And remember, when the book goes OP, rights revert to the author. So the publisher doesn’t even have the right to issue such a file. Worse, after even 5 years, they probably can’t FIND the original file. You should see what a production manager’s office and files look like! Trafficing all that stuff creates a whirlwind of details that generally can’t be tamed by even the most anal-retentive of neat freaks. (And all good production editors quickly become detail-obsessed neat freaks!)
December 4th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
So I’m going to ask a stupid question — how exactly does the Google settlement work? As I understand it, it’s an agreement between Google and the Authors Guild. The publishing houses were not a part of the agreement, or even the discussions, to judge from how they are sniping at it and the general sounds of unhappinesses emanating from their direction. But given that most authors’ contracts seem to give exclusive rights (at least as far as book and ebook publication) to the publishers, how could a settlement between the Authors Guild and Google apply to the vast majority of the books currently published (and which Google had scanned into their system)?
Is there some web page that summarizes exactly what was agreed to, and who it binds, and what will probably the likely end result?
December 4th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
@307: “It may not be in copyright law, but it IS in almost all publication contracts. When the title goes out of print (or when annual sales drop below a given level, now that POD means titles never need to go OP), the rights revert to the author, with the exception of the subsidiary rights already sold to other publishers whose editions are still selling.”
I’ve heard the claim (I don’t know if it’s true), that at least for Speculative Fiction, the clause that rights revert to the author if the books goes out of print is rare. Or maybe that’s the excuse the authors are making for why a book goes out of print/why it’s not available as an etext. At least one author has said, effectively, that it was out of his/her hands; that book was out of print, and it was totally up to publisher X whether to do another edition or making it available as an eBook, and that his/her works that were published by publisher Y were generally in print and/or available as an eBook, and those decisions were totally out of that author’s hands. Of course, it could be that the authors are lying to their fans on the Internet…
December 4th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
The settlement is between the two primary plaintiffs, the Authors’ Guild and the American Association of Publishers, and Google. But it’s in the process of being certified as a class action, and the class will be all rights holders of book-type publications.
And it’s a bear. The bigger publishers and the AG are trying to cast it as a victory, but I’m very dubious about the real end effects.
There aren’t any summaries I would trust, but the whole 300 page draft agreement is publicly available from the Authors’ Guild site.
For a moderately informed discussion of the implications for small presses, you are welcome to join Pub Forum (www.Pub-Forum.NET), and read the archives. They’re member only, and not easily searchable, but the discussion is all contained in the past couple of weeks’ activity. Pub-Forum is a listserv for small and indie publishers, and it’s one of the rowdier ones. And yes, I can invite you — I’m one of the listmoms (which ought to count as penance for a whole RAFT of sins).
December 4th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
@307 Marion Gropen
Thanks for the info (didn’t know reverting clauses were already common, without the need for law enforcement apparently) and comments. As far as exclusive rights are concerned you are probably right: they no doubt represent a crucial element in the investment calculations of a publisher.
As to the last point, tie copy-right the obligation of making the work available once it falls into the public domain, I shouldn’t have presented it as if it were related to the problem at hand (OP books becoming unavailable), it isn’t, as you point out. It was another idea along the line of associating copy*right* and obligations towards the future of the work: if a trusted entity (e.g. the Library of Congress ?) were handed an open-format digital version of every book published (if I am not mistaken the LOC already has paper copies), this would ensure, whatever the subsequent fate of the book, that it could be made available the day it becomes public domain (it could be argued that in the present state the delays are such that computers might not even exist any more when this is the case, or that archive maintaining costs would be tremendous). Otherwise, even if the publisher were not interested in re-publishing the work, we could not even be sure the production manager could find the file again, as you rightly point out.
December 4th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Adrian, Marion,
Note that it’s not necessarily required that to require publishers to keep an electronic copy of a text, or require the Library of Congress to keep a copy of the book in electronic copy. Another approach would simply be to amend the copyright law that if an affirmative defense against copyright infringement would be (a) if a book-type object was widely available for commercial sale at one point, and (b) was no longer widely available for commercial sale (i.e. out of print). This would allow people who are already quite capable of scanning out-of-print books to do so (and in fact, are doing it now) to do so with out having to worrying about the publishers going all RIAA on the small percentage of the American public that still bother to read books as a entertainment activity (as opposed to surfing the web, playing video games, watching movies/DVD/Tivo, et.).
I haven’t had a chance to read the Google/Author’s Guild settlement, but if the large publishing houses were involved, it may very well be recognitiion of this fact which is why they signed onto such an agreement. People are scanning books already (there exists a bittorrent containing literally thousands of science fiction books all scanned in, including all of the most significant authors and their books). So not only has the horse left the barn, for at least some genres, the barn is aflame. So it may very well be that the large publishing houses (which generally tend to have the largest overheads), have figured out they won’t be able to make any money on the vast majority of the out-of-print books, and getting a small fraction of money from Google is better than nothing at all.
December 4th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
@312 tytso:
You’re right that electronic filing of copies with the LOC as part of the copyright registration would make it easier to put work into electronic distribution once it goes into public domain. It would also, and more usefully, make it possible to get inexpensive copies for further publication in electronic or printed forms.
There’s just one problem. Electronic formats change more quickly than paper. And worse, the US government has some really poor track records with electronic formats. (Ever tried to use files in the .sid format from the LOC? No, it’s not a typo.)
I agree that it takes too long for books to get into public domain. (For those who don’t know, the current numbers are: pre-1923 publication or life + 70 years, so anything written by someone who died in 1938 or earlier is fair game. And the Berne Convention requires life + 50.) I would prefer 20 years, with an option for one renewal.
But it’s so very easy to clear permissions on the vast majority of work, that I’m not really worried.
As for the conventional contract terms in speculative fiction, they might not contain a reversion clause, but I’d be surprised if publishers weren’t quite willing to add one if asked. The authors may not be aware of that, though, and some agents may not care.
(NB: Most agents are competent, but by NO MEANS all of them are. If you sent a fund of stories behind that statement, you aren’t wrong! But then I’m a cynical old so-and-so.)
December 5th, 2008 at 1:04 am
To present “balance” between authors and readers as a goal in copyright
law is a misunderstanding of the purpose of copyright law.
See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.html.
December 5th, 2008 at 1:05 am
Author: Dennis Bathory-Kitsz
Comment:
@292 RMS
A limited edition is a source of deprivation? This strikes me as a
hammer-nail reaction.
———————————————————————-
A limited edition — whether a single piece or 500 (and not some
Franklin Mint pseudo-limited-edition bogosity) — is an object
where a special care is taken in its presentation or
production.
A limited edition is when the maker states the commitment that no more
than a certain number of examples will be sold.
In some cases it can also be true that the artist takes special care
making them. Perhaps the small quantity makes that possible. But
these are two (or more) different issues.
An artist who makes pieces with special care can’t produce very many
of them. That’s a natural limit. Saying “I promise not to make more
than 20 of these” is an artificial limit.
If you appreciate the care with which a piece was made, I see nothing
wrong in that. If the artist can’t make many pieces while taking that
much care with each, that’s nobody’s fault. I don’t think she has an
obligation to make more than she wants to.
But if you appreciate the _commitment_ that no more than 20 of these
pieces will be sold, that is valuing the deprivation of others.
If you don’t value the deprivation of others, then you would judge the
care used in making the piece, but you would not care whether she will
make 20 or 200 as long as the one you might get is well made, right?
December 5th, 2008 at 1:33 am
@315 RMS,
If your concentration is on monetization as opposed to creation, then we diverge — especially with your “perhaps” which carries with it a level of mistrust.
The process of creation that includes actually producing an object includes the decision when to stop. Round numbers are nice, and the artists I’ve known plan that way — how many books in an edition, how many prints to pull. But I produced 487 unique silkscreen posters until I ran out of ink. On the other hand, I only produced 15 books because I figured that would be the number I could afford the time and materials to make.
It seems to me that a focus that forgets the chef, the bridal gown designer, the storyteller, the potter, the lithographer, the printmaker, even the parents, is one that fails in fact to acknowledge that the act of creating a work is limited and it is the century of mass production that is anomalous. All who create the aforementioned produce a limited edition that may or may not be monetized at some point. By focusing on the money (and the concomitant faux-deprivation), the conclusion is “my choice is your deprivation”.
To reiterate, that view is through the lens of digital replication, which is replication of a just one simulation, not one of the actual work — unless the work was created in that form. The ebook is not the book, the mp3 is not the music, this message is not my voice. When I read your words, I cannot associate them with reality, what you look like (I’ve never seen you in person, however difficult that may be to imagine!), whether your accent or tone of voice would change how I hear your message, how I might reinterpret your meaning if you had a bald spot or a Jay Leno jaw. Are you charismatic or a whiner? I don’t know. Your words in these posts and your essays sound like a debater making a point, which is not reality. Am I deprived?
Take it further. You yourself are a limited edition, having reached your limit. So… should the technology become available tomorrow at no cost, would you whip up a batch of clones so as not to deprive others? Would you give up your uniqueness to stamp out endless selves? That’s where the deprivation argument heads — not to mention the real RMS power equation.
Dennis
December 5th, 2008 at 1:42 am
@314: “To present “balance” between authors and readers as a goal in copyright
law is a misunderstanding of the purpose of copyright law.
See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.html.”
Richard, your argument is one based on the US Constitution. Which is fair as far as it goes, although your method of exegesis is uncomfortably close to one which conservative/Republican “strict constructionist judges use to strike down progressive laws on the Supreme Court. Be that as it may, it is still a very US centric point of view. For better or for worse, the Berne Convention, spearheaded by Victor Hugo, uses as its basis the French legal concept of “the Right of the Author”, or droit d’auteur. That has very different understanding of the fundamental moral principles underlining Copyright, and for better or for worse, the US is a signed the Berne Convention; it is an international treaty ratified by the US Congress. (Worse yet, the US signed the WIPO treaty, which is what obligated us to pass the DMCA.) This is one of those things that make it hard for the US to reform copyright law; we have signed treaty that by international law, has a rather different philosophical background than that which the US understood in the constitution before the Berne convention was ratified.
It also means that FSF (or Richard’s) arguments based on the philosophy of copyright won’t be recognized by Europe, because people there have a different set of axioms with respect to whether authors have rights or not. In fact, it seems to me that Victor Hugo’s position was that authors had a lot more rights than society does, and what we need to do is to try to rejigger things so it is recognized that society has a claim on our collective culture, and that it is indeed a balance, not just 100% the needs of the author that has to take precedence.
December 5th, 2008 at 1:55 am
@316: “Electronic formats change more quickly than paper. And worse, the US government has some really poor track records with electronic formats.”
Actually, incompatible formats is actually not that big a deal, if you ignore DRM. Pretty much all of the ebook standards are either XML or some derivative/relative of XML (i.e., HTML, SGML). And converting between different XML derivitives is trivial, in part because XML was designed to make this easy. So for example once the DRM on a Microsoft Reader .LIT file is broken, it’s absolutely trivial to convert a .LIT file to a .LRF file; the open-source program to do this is relatively straight forward. (The program to crack the .LIT DRM has to be obtained from a download site in Poland, where they apparently do not have a DMCA-like law.)
In fact, some Sony Reader owners prefer to purchase eBooks in Microsoft Reader format, since its DRM has been cracked, so they can be comfortable knowing that books which they purchase is future-proofed if they need to change to some other ebook Reader that supports some different format. (Again, format-shifting between XML derivatives is pretty simple, as long as DRM doesn’t get in the way.)
The ironic thing is that the Sony Reader’s native format has a DRM which has not been broken yet, so there are some Sony Readers that will choose not to purchase books from the Sony Store, but rather from a store that uses Microsoft Reader, where the DRM _has_ been broken. This creates a rather perverse incentive for inventors of ebook formats. A format whose DRM has been cracked will be more popular amongst people who care about being able to format-shift; but if it is too obvious that the format has been cracked, then publishers will refuse to release books in that particular format. So for maximum business success, manufacturer of an eBook reader needs to pick a DRM scheme which appears strong enough to fool
Neaderthalparanoid Publishers who are terrified about their product getting pirated, but weak enough that once it is nicely entrenched (like for example DVD’s), the DRM can be cracked by folks in Eastern Europe which doesn’t have inconvenient laws like the DMCA. Yes, this doesn’t make much sense. But then again, very little about DRM actually makes sense.December 5th, 2008 at 4:37 am
@300 tytso:
Essentially, those midlist guys do value every dollar they get, for the precise reason you mentioned: they get so few of them. Taking away a few more, because ‘it’s not that much anyway’, does hurt those guys. And they do get reprintings; you seem to have missed the rest of my post where I gave one example. Spider has had several (the Lifehouse Trilogy and the Stardance Trilogy come to mind, and I am fairly sure I own a late reprinting of one of the Callahan series). I wonder how he’d feel about losing the revenue from these? Robert Heinlein had several books re-appear from long periods of not being printed; I was glad to see them and glad to see that a few dollars from my purchases made their way to him (or his wife, soon after his death).
As the the argument about the author who wishes no further printings of his works. It is a mistake to conflate this with the author wanting all of his already sold books to be burned. No one is seriously suggesting that. I have touched on it lightly, but said that such a thing should never happen unless the buyer was warned of this before the purchase. It is sad that this kind of strawman is so often erected in discussions like these.
@ RMS 303
I find myself hoping that you are not the real RMS. I may not always agree with him, but until now I had not considered him the sort of fellow who would so blatantly misconstrue another’s words, and personalize the argument, in order to make a discussion point.
I have not once used the term “intellectual property” in this discussion, nor said that a creator should be given the right to control everything people might possibly do with a written work once released. I certainly do not feel enslaved by libraries; I quite enjoy them and the concept of them. I loan out my own books as well.
The points I have made have all been in the context of a creator having the control to publish (or not) his works under the conditions and at the prices he sees fit, as long as those conditions are in plain view to all who would use/read/buy/enjoy those works, and are binding. And (of course) as long as the individual has the free choice to use/buy/read/enjoy those works, under the given conditions and at the given price – or not. To me this is a good balance.
I understand the GPL, and have read its several versions over multiple times. have also read most of the other things written at gnu.org and a fair slice of what’s to be found at FSF. I use GPL’d works when that suits me and I thank all of the contributors to them. I’ve written a few things myself and have considered putting them under GPL, but instead went with the BSD-style license. I say this, not to incite the evergreen opensource licensing debate, but simply to show my understanding of them – and a bit of my own spirit by revealing the choice I made. I’m glad GPL exists, and that people have the choice to create and share within it. I hope that GPL and works under it continue to thrive. However, I do not think that it and similar agreements should be a creator’s only choice.
I’m also well aware of, and largely agree with, the exclusions that exist within copyright law, having read Title 17 several times. I mention these because people seem to keep telling me about them, as if I didn’t know they existed.
I do not see any ‘War on Sharing’ going on – except where said ’sharing’ violates the rights of people who had every expectation under national and international law and treaty, to see their works being copied and sold within the agreements made.
December 5th, 2008 at 11:59 am
Most of us wouldn’t claim to understand either U.S. or international copyright law. Those that do make this claim would tend to be highly paid lawyers with a personal stake in some position, rather than neutral principled arbiters.
However, one might again assert taking a broader view than what Berne or the drafters of the Constitution had to say. Trading public rights for private privileges happens throughout our governments and economy. As a thousand billionaires have bloomed over the past decades, the hoi polloi have been subjected to a relentless campaign of misinformation to convince us that such vast quantities of treasure could possibly have been earned by these individuals, rather than misappropriated.
Rather, each billionaire represents someone who has been repeatedly – incessantly – been granted special access to the common assets of mankind. In our long since vanished mid-century liberal past, several mechanisms such as inheritance restrictions (a sunset provision) served to redirect this concentrated wealth back to the public instead of creating new feudal lords. These mechanisms have been largely abandoned, for instance, through the insipid insistence on cutting taxes on the (justly or unjustly) rich.
The lengthening of copyright terms and the vast enlargement of restriction of public freedoms should be understood as only one front in a much larger war.
Further, if we are to view the inherent rights of the readers as more fundamental than the granted privileges of authors, it might help to review the authors’ own inherent rights, principally existing in the form of protections against plagiarism. It is simply not true that readers’ rights always trump authors’ rights – even in an extreme libertarian interpretation. A reader has never – will never – have the unfettered right to take the work of others and represent it as their own. I have often quoted authors from Marcus Aurelius to Ralph Waldo Emerson, I will never fail to acknowledge them.
There will always be lawsuits about the boundaries of rights to sample and quote from published (and even completely unpublished) creations. The readers will not always win; the authors should not always lose.
Finally, one strong aspect of electronic media is that everybody now owns the equivalent of the printing press. All of us are both readers – and authors. If there is some way to reconcile the alternate interpretations of Berne and the Founding Fathers, it likely lies in a revised understanding of our shared goals as both producers and consumers of content. Unlike economic wealth, we can all be arbitrarily wealthy in the economy of ideas (and the representation of ideas).
“Property” implies a zero-sum game. The currency of language is unbounded.
December 5th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
Author: RobS
Comment:
A very interesting discussion. I’m particularly appreciative of the link to the
gnu discussion of the term “intellectual property”. Clearly this is a phrase
that is misleading, likely intentionally so. However, the real failure of usage
is at a more fundamental level. What is “property”, in general?
======================================================================
So “intellectual property” is a poor term of art for an umbrella
concept over diverse and distinct instrumentalities like
copyright, patent and trademark. That boat has sailed, however.
It is the term – the meme – we have to deal with.
It is a fact that many people have this supposed concept in their
minds. But the only effective way to deal with this fact is to teach
them to stop using it in their thoughts.
I sympathize with your wish for an easier way, but the easier ways
don’t work. Accepting this “umbrella term” as a sensible topic for
discussion rules out all thoughtful opinions, and leaves people to
argue about a choice between various simplistic foolish views. “New
concepts of IP” won’t help, because the overgeneralization in the term
will lead people towards overgeneralization every time.
For instance, copyleft is a method of using copyright law. To
understand it properly, you need to think in terms of copyright law.
People who try to understand it in terms of “intellectual property”
get the wrong idea, and they think copyleft can be applied to patents.
(That is impossible: patents are not like copyrights.)
(To correct one side point: copyleft cannot be properly understood in
terms of the ideas of open source, either. It reflects the ethical
aims of the free software movement, which open source rejects. See
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html.)
Rather than seeking the staggeringly unlikely goal of
eradicating copyright, wouldn’t it be more successful to devise
a new IP mechanism, “digiright” or some such, that is a better
fit?
I do not advocate abolishing copyright entirely, but I do advocate
changing it. If you want to think about how to change copyright law,
first you need to see the issues that it raises. These issues are
unique to copyright law. In order for people to focus on them, they
first need to disconnect copyright law in their minds from other laws
such as patent law and trademark law. In other words, they need to
stop basing their thinking on the term “intellectual property”. Any
discussion about how to revise “intellectual property” is an uphill
battle against the bias and confusion in that term.
My experience has shown me that rejecting the term “intellectual
property” is the _easiest_ way to start a thoughtful discussion about
the issues of any one of these laws. We might wish for an easier way
out, but the easy ways don’t lead out.
We can do this job. We have done more difficult things already.
We just need you to pitch in and do your share.
December 6th, 2008 at 2:00 am
I’m obviously getting in way over my head
…but perhaps a few more comments.
The clarification of free software versus open source is very helpful. I agree that a good way to start a conversation on important topics is to actually talk about the topics
That said, it seems unhelpful to focus on “business” as the driver for the open source community’s choice to actively avoid discussing the free speech element. Isn’t the real driver, rather, that the fraction of the world’s population cognizant (even slightly) in these issues is vanishingly small? The real business issue is that there are many times that many people willing to make a buck off of subverting free software.
However – again, I have to wonder why such an iconoclastic group of people keeps focusing so narrowly. So – copyright, patent and trademark (and presumably other such non-IP “thingies”) are distinct concepts and social contracts. How exactly does this distinguish “intellectual” property from just plain “property”?
“Owning” (whatever the heck that means) a house is different from owning a car is different from owning an appliance is different from owning jewelry and baubles and bangles is different from owning a computer is different from owning a book is different from owning a family heirloom is different from owning a cultural artifact is different from owning a dog is different from owning a tank of gasoline is different from owning a carton of milk – and on and on.
Even the non-tangible nature of copyright/patent/trademark is not a unique facet of the issue. What can be said about the nature of owning spectrum bandwidth or a logging license or a mining lease or other intangible yet non-knowledge based “stuff”?
(Yes, I get it – the whole point is that free speech isn’t about ownership or control, but a lot of the issues with physical stuff aren’t specifically about that either.)
Ought we not focus on clarifying the verbs here – “speaking” or “writing” or “reading” or, yes, even the verb “to own” – rather than fretting about the myriad of distinctions that shatter the common concepts supporting the nouns? (See Steven Pinker, for instance.)
December 6th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
The article argues in terms of the US constitution, which is relevant
to questions about what US law should say. However, no law or
constitution can be the ultimate foundation of ethics: if something is
seriously wrong, no law, treaty or constitution can make us consider
it right. Sometimes it is right to change the constitution.
I think that this decision in the US constitution was a good one.
The Bern Convention requires copyright to last too long, so we need
to change it or end it. However, it doesn’t change the basic ideas
of copyright law in the US.
The WIPO copyright treaty is an example of a treaty which has zero
moral authority. The only thing it can oblige a country to do is
withdraw from the WIPO copyright treaty.
December 6th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
The presence of a reversion clause in the book contract does not
ensure authors will really be allowed to distribute their own books
when they are out of print — because publishers cannot be trusted.
I proposed 10-year copyright at a panel at a science fiction
convention. A prize-winning author on the panel angrily objected to
anything more than 5 years.
His contract had a reversion clause, and his books were out of print.
He wanted to start distributing his books, but his publisher refused
to admit they were out of print. So he had a legal dispute with his
publisher. He figured that more than 5 years copyright would probably
do him no good.
Of course, there was a small chance he would make some money from
reprints later. Does that justify making copyright last a long time?
Does that justify prohibiting people from sharing? Some people seem
to be arguing that the fact the copyright system supports most authors
so badly makes every aspect of it precious, and justifies nasty
measures to prop it up. The less good it does, the more we need to
keep it, they say.
Rather, the fact that the current system works so badly should
encourage us to replace it with other ways to support the arts — ways
not based on forbidding people to share.
December 6th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
By focusing on the money (and the concomitant faux-deprivation),
the conclusion is “my choice is your deprivation”.
======================================================================
I don’t think you and I are talking about the same issue.
I was talking about a specific practice in which the artist _makes a
promise_ not to make more than N examples. You seem to be talking
about other issues; for instance, other reasons why an artist
might not make more. I have not expressed an opinion about that.
December 6th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
I commented on the harmfulness of the term “intellectual property”
because the term has been used in this discussion and it is important.
Several people have used it in this discussion, and other have not
used it. I was responding specifically to someone who agreed that the
term is harmful but was discouraged by the perceived difficulty of
avoiding it. I urged him to go ahead and make the effort.
On another issue of terminology, referring to authors as “creators”
suggests that authors are above mere humans and deserve power over
them, regardless of how it affects them. Speaking as a reader and
author, I see no automatic justification to give authors special power
simply “because they are authors”. Only public interest can justify
copyright, and now that sharing copies is easy and useful, it
can’t justify forbidding people to share.
December 6th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
@325 RMS:
A creator makes a choice based on circumstances. The reason is actually irrelevant to the result — unless you need to infuse it with evil intent in order to make an argument that one choice is better than another if the result is the same. Can you can show how they are actually different in a blind A-B comparison?
@326 RMS:
I refer to “creators” so as to include everyone from the family cook through the internationally celebrated author. It is the opposite of being above others but rather demonstrates how democratic the concept of “creator” actually is — and indeed identifies why choice matters, and why wresting choice from a creator might actually be an act of philosophical hubris.
Dennis
December 6th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Ok – how about this point of view? Usage – the ultimate public interest – determines the meaning of the words we choose. I could wish that corporate interests – and their vast “public relations” (talk about an evil phrase) budgets – didn’t have such a disproportionate effect on the social conversation, but whether or no, meanings will continue to evolve.
Attempting to steer the discourse by insisting on a particular vocabulary is itself a form of control.
It’s one thing to criticize phraseology like “intellectual property”. But to assert that the word “creator” is tainted seems 180 degrees out of wack. Surely we should all aspire to climb our own creative Everests? As Emerson says, language is fossil poetry. The discussion over free speech (or software) too often loses track of the poetry, magic, mystery, art, scientific curiosity, and even technological creativity of what the speech is supposed to be about.
December 6th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
@326: “On another issue of terminology, referring to authors as “creators”
suggests that authors are above mere humans and deserve power over
them, regardless of how it affects them. Speaking as a reader and
author, I see no automatic justification to give authors special power
simply “because they are authors”.”
I wonder if this might be more of a cultural issue. Programmers are trained that it is good to practice “ego-less programming”. If someone suggests a better way of doing something, or points out a flaw, it is considered a good and laudable thing to accept the constructive criticism, and fix the code. Indeed, a programmer who refused to accept criticism would be mocked, and if it were an open source project, the project would be forked and placed under better stewardship. This is true even with a FSF-sponsored maintainer, as was demonstrated when the FSF-blessed GCC maintainer refused to accept improvements, leading to the egcs fork, which eventually was recognized as the true version of GCC, and the FSF was forced to recognized the egcs fork as the mainline version of GCC. After the kerfluffel was settled, there is clear consensus that what happened was the Right Thing; for the projects, for the users, and for the community.
In contrast, authors tend to feel proprietary towards their characters, their universe, and many authors are extremely quick to send out lawyers with sharkskin briefcases and threaten to sue the daylights out of anyone who attempts to write their own stories based on someone elses’ universe. In the literary world, the sympathies tend to be with the author, which is generally seen as being in the right. People who try to use another author’s universe without their explicit approval put down as being “beginning authors” who clearly aren’t capable of creating their own universe.
In contrast, programmers who reuse code are generally seen as Good Programmers, and indeed not reusing code and writing code from scratch each time is often a sign of an immature programmer; and it’s interesting that it’s often considered the complete opposite in the literary world.
December 7th, 2008 at 3:36 am
And now we start down the path of redefining key terms of our very language, to allow people the opportunity to experience a work without rewarding its creator.
How far must this slippery slope go? With a very slight squint one can see the attempt to redefine economics. Will physics need to be redefined next? It seems to be that all of this springs from a simple statement: “I want …”
I want books or software or some other thing to continue being available even when the artisan no longer wants to produce them. OK, a network-connected world greatly reduces (but does not eliminate) the costs of continuing to make these copies available. Someone, somewhere, still bears a cost. It could be the Library of Congress (ie the taxpayer); it could be a kid seeding a torrent from his own computer and home broadband connection. The cost was lowered, and perhaps borne by someone else, but it did not entirely evaporate.
We’d all like to have something for nothing; we’d all like to ignore the fact that the something did have a cost. When, for instance, an author/creator bore a cost, in time and effort and thought, to create a thing that I enjoy, I feel it is only just that I find a way to give something back; that I respect the creator’s wishes regarding that creation. It seems somehow shameful to me that so many people are really starting to feel that this is not essentially the right thing to do. And that they seek now to change the language in order to make this seem fair; to hide the very real fact that the costs still exist, and someone, somewhere, must pay the costs of our every fulfilled I want moment.
December 7th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Author: tytso
Comment:
@326: “On another issue of terminology, referring to authors as creators
suggests that authors are above mere humans and deserve power over
them, regardless of how it affects them. Speaking as a reader and
author, I see no automatic justification to give authors special power
simply because they are authors .”
======================================================================
Programmers are trained that it is good to practice
“ego-less programming”. If someone suggests a better way of
doing something, or points out a flaw, it is considered a good
and laudable thing to accept the constructive criticism, and
fix the code.
…
In contrast, authors tend to feel proprietary towards their
characters, their universe.
I think this relates to the fact that software is a functional work,
meant to do a practical job, whereas fiction is art, and meant
only to display one’s imagination.
December 7th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Please post the response below to this comment:
Author: RobS
…but perhaps a few more comments.
Comment:
I’m obviously getting in way over my head
======================================================================
That said, it seems unhelpful to focus on “business” as the driver
for the open source community’s choice to actively avoid
discussing the free speech element. Isn’t the real driver,
rather, that the fraction of the world’s population cognizant
(even slightly) in these issues is vanishingly small? The real
business issue is that there are many times that many people
willing to make a buck off of subverting free software.
In my experience, business interests are a substantial part of the reason
(because they control a large fraction of the publicity) but you are right
that it is not just a matter of that.
However – again, I have to wonder why such an iconoclastic group
of people keeps focusing so narrowly. So – copyright, patent and
trademark (and presumably other such non-IP “thingies”) are
distinct concepts and social contracts.
If we want to criticize laws and propose changes in them, we have
to look at each law based on what it says.
How exactly does this distinguish “intellectual” property from
just plain “property”?
This question reifies the concept of “intellectual property”, treating
it as one coherent thing. That is precisely the confusion that the
term encourages. If you are looking for an answer to this question,
you’re looking in the wrong direction for any kind of understanding.
Even the non-tangible nature of copyright/patent/trademark is not
a unique facet of the issue. What can be said about the nature of
owning spectrum bandwidth or a logging license or a mining lease
or other intangible yet non-knowledge based “stuff”?
There are many kinds of intangible property, and they all raise
different issues. Even two activities which are fairly similar in the
abstract, such as logging and mining, are very different in practice.
They need different policies, too. A discussion of “extraction policy”,
starting from the idea that there must be a single joint policy for
logging and mining, would be misguided.
A discussion about “intangible property” could perhaps be interesting
as a matter of abstract philosophy, but if the concern is political
policy, that is not a coherent topic.
December 7th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
The semantics are a pain. If it isn’t physical, what is it? What is it if its purpose is to solve a problem or act on something on/for something else? If its purpose is itself or in itself?
The over-arching category is ’stuff we do’. Some stuff manifests as physical, some stuff manifests in itself. These are the meta-genres of physical and intellectual stuff — call it property or something else, but those meta-genres are useful in some contexts. Refine it further and you get RMS’s distinctions — they are useful for his discussion, but muddy up others (such as teaching — what sort of category is that?). Other genre divisions are useful for other kinds of discussions because there are identifiable differences (art and craft, fiction and nonfiction, building and sculpting, teaching and learning, walking and dancing, composing and performing, performing and recording, bread and wine and cheese, even high- and low-level programming tools).
We have this same issue of definitions in music that concern composers. Most people have only a vague idea of musical genres outside the few they might listen to. The existing meta-genres (popular, jazz, classical, folk, world…) are as useless for serious discussion as intellectual and physical property. How can “classical” include studio electronic music, Romantic symphonies, minimalist trance, avant-garde chamber, Gregorian chant, primivitism, aleatory, etc.? It can’t. For me and a growing number of people, the wide meta-genres are pop and nonpop. Some classical occupies both in that wide grey area, as does some jazz, some world, and even some pop. It becomes a multidimensional set of colors and overlaps.
In other words, the sematic argument will inevitably devolve into what’s useful for the poster. So I’ll ask instead, do RMS’s distinctions help Ted solve his dilemma justly, guiltlessly, ethically, morally, legally, selflessly (noting the distinctions there as well) or is one sacrificed for the other? (Keep in mind that the introduction of “Ms.” was fought over bitterly, but eventually solved a societal dilemma in the U.S. So RMS is not fighting the windmills.)
Yet when RMS writes, “I think this relates to the fact that software is a functional work, meant to do a practical job, whereas fiction is art, and meant only to display one’s imagination,” he creates a false distinction like “classical” and “pop” and so there is no solution to be found. Fiction is a sub-genre, software is not. Better to compare a computer game with a novel, or a financial application to a mathematics text — but those comparisons, though perhaps closer to parallel, are similarly unhelpful.
So what definitions help Ted to make his decision? Because the law is far behind reality, then effectively, only the rights of the creator and the rights of the receiver are in play.
Dennis
December 7th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Bryan cautions against a slippery slope of “redefining key terms of our very language”, whereas Richard (arguing the other side) admonishes against reifying terms like “intellectual property” – even to the extent of asking questions to clarify one’s understanding of their meaning. The conversation is in need of a koan:
A monk asked Zhaozhou, “Does a dog have Buddha-nature or not?”
Zhaozhou replied, “Mu.”
Yes – we get it. IP is not property. (It is frequently not even “intellectual”.) The assertion appears to be that this “Mu-IP” doesn’t even form a single set of topics for any purposes possible for humans to discuss. Does software have Buddha-nature? This appears not only a question that must be unasked, but to form a koan that can’t even be used as a teaching moment.
Whether tangible or not, stuff we refer to as property of any sort varies dramatically in its philosophical underpinnings. It is unremarkable that the law does a poor job of mapping these issues to our many different and conflicting needs. If all “Mu-IP” is a question of free speech (not in the slightest regard to be contaminated by notions of ownership), does this make all “Mu-property”, a question of free “stuff”, in general? What would such a social model be? Rather far beyond socialism, communism or even anarchy.
Laws are written. What is written demands interpretation. Language is full of vocabulary and idiom and usage that is often contradictory, quixotic and maddening. Telling someone that they have to unring the bell and unask the question and somehow find their way blindfolded through the gateless gate is obviously a great way to convince folks like us to contribute to a blog
But one suspects it will continue to be less than entirely successful as a way of influencing public policy.
Authors, not just readers, have inalienable rights – rights not focusing on the economic and control issues that we have been debating. As I type these words in this forum on this date (on this planet in this galaxy), in an almost magical sense I have the expectation that should someone else ever after knowingly quote my words that my “ownership” of them will be acknowledged. This is a different kind of ownership – one that demands no remuneration and implies no control. But one that will survive translation into languages yet unspoken by species yet unborn on planets yet to coalesce from their natal nebulae.
To return to the original question of this thread – what should our moderator do? Do whatever he wants – copy the e-book, don’t copy the e-book, picket the manufacturers of e-book hardware, picket the world’s legislative bodies, incorporate a non-profit, incorporate a for-profit, go live in a cave and take a vow of silence. Just expect to take the consequences of whatever law or corporate culture or military-industrial complex you might potentially be discovered to “infringe” upon.
Is this an ethical issue? There are bigger such.
December 8th, 2008 at 8:02 am
Author: bryan
Comment:
And now we start down the path of redefining key terms of our very language, to
allow people the opportunity to experience a work without rewarding its creato
———————————————————————-
We’d all like to have something for nothing; we’d all like to
ignore the fact that the something did have a cost.
Some of us are authors of substantial published works, and we know as
well as anyone what work is involved. (”Work” and “cost” are not
synonymous.)
We are not trying to “ignore” this. We simply disagree with your
views about what significance it has. I am in favor of supporting
artists in various ways, but not ways that interfere with sharing.
December 8th, 2008 at 8:04 am
Author: Marion Gropen
Comment:
@Richard Stallman
“A number of comments make the assumption that reading or copying book
means you owe money to the author or someone. Publishers often make
this claim; however, others reject it, including for example the US
Constitution when it makes the copyright system _optional_.
Since the publishers claim is meant to attack sharing, I eject it. I
do not believe that reading a book or copying a book imposes any debt
on the reader.”
I almost agree with you. I would say that writers have a right to
control their work. I would say that publishers (who invest an
enormous, and generally unnoticed amount of time and money in the
works bringing those works to the reader) also have a right to
control the outcome of their work.
======================================================================
I almost agree with you. I would say that writers have a right to
control their work. I would say that publishers (who invest an
enormous, and generally unnoticed amount of time and money in the
works bringing those works to the reader) also have a right to
control the outcome of their work.
For art, I can approve of control over certain aspects of use of a
work: specifically, modification of the work, and commercial use.
But no amount of time or money can entitle a writer to restrict people
from reading books, keeping books, or noncommercially sharing them.
These freedoms are essential.
The reason I am not impressed by the effort they spend is that I’ve
done it myself. I don’t believe the time I spent writing GCC would
entitle me to stop people from sharing it. I don’t believe the time I
spent writing the GCC manual would entitle me to stop people from
sharing it. So I don’t believe any other writer’s effort can entitle
to him to that power.
We should insist on the freedom to read books, keep books, and share
copies, including on the net. It is not clear how this will affect
sales of books; some may increase while others decrease. But that is
a secondary question. If it decreases, and if that induces some
authors not to write, we can adopt other methods to support writers
and thus encourage more writing. We readers can do this as much or as
little as we please, because the purpose is to get more books written,
and we readers are the judge of whether the increase is worth whatever
it costs us.
December 8th, 2008 at 11:24 am
Obviously, this is a conflict based upon contradictory axioms.
I believe that individuals should be free to choose and that markets are a very good mechanism for ensuring that varied desires and resources remain in equilibrium. (Of course, we need regulation to ensure fair play, and that such things as the problem of the commons are dealt with.) I think, in particular, that each worker should be free to decide how to sell his or her labor, and to whom.
In that framework, Open Source, sharing and copyleft work very well, as OPTIONS to be taken by those who do the work. I understand that “sharing” is a positive value for some people, but I don’t think it should be forced down the throat of those who would rather not.
Is the most important freedom that of the worker (writer, illustrator, designer, editor, etc.) who produces a book, or that of the reader or another writer, who would like to use that book without hindrance? Right now, these two needs are held in balance, but if copyright were abolished, or became meaningless due to societal disrespect of that law, the balance would tilt toward an extreme.
And yes, I do think that there’s a balance. Fair use is pretty broad. Permissions are usually given for the asking, or for a very nominal price. Books DO go into public domain (although I agree that this should happen earlier).
There have always been limits of free speech. You can’t shout Fire in a crowded venue, unless there IS a fire. You can’t defame others. Requiring that you have permission to use someone else’s work beyond the bounds of “fair use” are no more of an infringement of liberty, in my opinion.
Circling back to the original question, the legal answer is obvious. The ethical question will be decided by which freedoms YOU value most. And by which freedoms your social circle most values.
In practice, that valuation will be done mostly unconsciously and will be more of a rationalization of desires than a rational consideration of consequences and philosophy. By discussing these issues, perhaps we can make that process more overt.
Thanks, Ted, for hosting this. I’ve enjoyed the discussion, but I’m afraid this will be my last post. I’ve fallen behind on some deadlines.
December 8th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
First, a comment about blogistics – some are relying on indentation to quote prior messages. This is preserved in the email record, but not the web version. A bit ironic considering the thread.
The thread is clearly winding up. I’ll attempt to say something without triggering an immediate rejection of my premises due to semantics. Semantics are indeed important, but even more so is the fact of a discussion being permitted to occur in the first place – again ironic given the free speech elements of the topic.
Isn’t the key failure here precisely that a single format – copyright – is being (mis)used to cover all cases of the more general class of “wide ranging social compacts (note the plural) regarding intangible utterances, assertions, works of conscience or of pragmatic investigation, technological, scientific, artistic, academic, literate, humorous, political, religious or any other expression”? (Boy – that’s a lot more understandable than the tainted “intellectual property”
When RMS says…
“For art, I can approve of control over certain aspects of use of a
work: specifically, modification of the work, and commercial use.
But no amount of time or money can entitle a writer to restrict people
from reading books, keeping books, or noncommercially sharing them.
These freedoms are essential.”
…isn’t there an implicit assumption that books are not art, and in particular an assumption that RMS’s own experience with writing software and books about software (and books about books about software) – that this experience scales to all forms of books?
Surely it should be obvious that not all books are created equal. For just one example, consider Edward Tufte’s classic works on the expression of information content (irony on irony). Tufte goes to the extreme of self-publishing in order to – yes – control the format of “his” books. These books rise to the level of art – where art most definitely doesn’t describe a work devoid of practical content.
Having published them, Mr. Tufte indeed can’t restrict me from reading them, from keeping them, or from sharing them (even commercially if I were dumb enough to sell my copies). But the public good – not just Tufte’s personal whims – are served by not encouraging debased and degraded copies to be made – digital or mimeographic. Whether discouraging such craven behavior requires legal or economic sanctions from the body politic is a separate issue, but the public good is not always unilaterally (and simplistically) served by a Palinesque “Share, baby, share!” mandate.
The medium is the message. (So familiar it doesn’t really demand an explicit reference, but again given the ironies inherent in this conversation, I should state that Marshall McLuhan said that.)
December 8th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
@336 RMS:
I am glad you wrote the GCC manual and imposed no sharing restriction on it. You did impose a set of restrictions, though, under the GPL v1.2 and later.
Which is wonderful and appropriate. I and many others are now richer because you gave us this thing, and I sincerely thank you for it. I am happy that you and others give us these gifts at such a low ‘cost’ (that cost being an adherence to the restrictions you did choose to apply). I certainly would not want to remove anyone’s rights to do so.
But then you say “I don’t believe the time I spent writing the GCC manual would entitle me to stop people from sharing it. So I don’t believe any other writer’s effort can entitle to him to that power.”
Why must your choices – your unique valuation of your own efforts, automatically be inherited by all others who create written works and make them available to others? Shouldn’t each creator of a work be able to set his/her own set of valuations, and apply their own terms, either more or less restrictive than the terms you chose?
It is as if you have decided that you alone should set the bar, and all others must meet it, or not be allowed the opportunity to publish such works. I sense a great deal of hubris in this.
December 9th, 2008 at 12:57 am
Author: RobS
Comment:
Bryan cautions against a slippery slope of “redefining key terms of our very
language”, whereas Richard (arguing the other side) admonishes against reifying
terms like “intellectual property” – even to the extent of asking questions to c
===========================================================================
Bryan cautions against a slippery slope of “redefining key terms
of our very language”, whereas Richard (arguing the other side)
admonishes against reifying terms like “intellectual property” -
even to the extent of asking questions to clarify one’s
understanding of their meaning.
In order for questions to serve the purpose of better understanding
an issue, they need to avoid incorporating mistaken assumptions.
The more deeply the assumptions are buried, the harder it is
to see them and reconsider them.
In this case, the crucial assumption is that “intellectual property”
is a coherent concept, useful to discuss. When a question presumes
that it does, my only possible response is to make that assumption
explicit and then challenge it.
By all means do ask questions to clarify the disparate issues that
some people describe as “intellectual property” — including questions
not bound by the assumptions in the term “intellectual property”.
December 9th, 2008 at 3:42 am
As I type these words, Yahoo! Sports features the headline:
“Owner calls out his player”
Beginning:
“Cowboys owner Jerry Jones publicly berates Marion Barber after the running back doesn’t play.”
Clearly Jones doesn’t own the player in any normal sense of the word “own”. It is even hard to reconcile concepts of property with “owning” a sports team. Rather, Jones is signatory to various contracts that grant him rights and responsibilities related to something called an NFL franchise. Jerry likely owns (in its more usual sense) various aspects of the physical plant required to operate the Cowboys franchise. For instance, a so-called owner of a sports teams might hold title or lease to the stadium that the team plays in. But even such is a third millennial conceit involving several banks and holding companies and some complex understanding between the municipality, county and state that the team represents.
If IP is not a coherent concept, this may reflect more about our society’s naive notions of property in general, than it does about those limited aspects pertaining only to intellectual or intangible assets.
RMS’s specific position appears to be that a conceptual model quite distinct from notions of property should apply to TIFKAIP (The Ideation Formerly Known AS IP), and further, that instrumentalities such as copyright, patent and trademark that are commonly lumped together under the (taken to be) innately misleading umbrella of IP must only, ever and always be discussed in splendid isolation, one from the other.
It strikes this observer that pragmatic use of rhetoric is an exercise in impedance matching. A transmission medium will fail if the interfaces are not critically tuned. Ratchet the rhetoric too taut OR fail to torque it tightly enough, and the useful signal will fade exponentially downward.
In any event, it is unquestionably a quixotic quest at this late date to get the world’s governments and hordes of lawyers to reject usage of the term, “intellectual property”. Especially if no replacement is offered instead.
Personally, I’m quite sympathetic to a strict free speech argument – in spite of or perhaps because the U.S. Constitution has been under determined assault for the last several years. More power to you if you can stay the vast economic forces arrayed against you. One might opine that a judo-like redirection of the unstoppable momentum might have a slightly higher (than zero) probability of success, however.
But any successful rescoping of TIFKAIP has to occur in an international context, including some sort of accommodation with many countries for whom the concept of free speech is radically different. What legal framework exists common to all countries? Perhaps only property law.
In “The Stuff of Thought”, Steven Pinker makes the rousing argument that human language reuses structures (verbs and tenses and aspects, oh my!) tailored for the expression of physical relationships to describe intangible ideas. Perhaps the property metaphor – as limited and inapposite and unappetizing as it is – has triumphed not only because vast corporate interests want us to view these issues that way, but because this is how our minds work.
One can hit ones head against a concrete wall – and one can pound ones head against the wall. The two verbs don’t just have different meanings – those meanings are subclassed from the structure of the language itself. One class of verbs implies a single bounded event – the other, an iterated process.
A successful strategy isn’t about avoiding conceptual walls – it’s about how we bounce off them.
December 9th, 2008 at 4:59 am
Author: RobS
Comment:
First, a comment about blogistics – some are relying on indentation to quote pr
======================================================================
RobS interpretated my words as making a distinction between art and
books. That makes no sense, since books are obviously art (fiction,
poetry, images, musical scores…). However, other books are works of
practical use (manuals, textbooks, dictionaries, cookbooks). Other
books state personal views (for instance, Free Software, Free
Society).
I can approve of some kinds of control over artistic works
(specically, over commercial use and modification). However, the
freedom to read/use a work, the freedom to keep your copy as long as
you like, and the freedom to share copies noncommercially, are
essential. Nobody is entitled to take those away from anyone else.
December 9th, 2008 at 10:25 am
First, some definitions. Random House (dictionary.com) defines “essential” as:
1) absolutely necessary; indispensable.
2) pertaining to or constituting the essence of a thing.
With “essence” being:
1) the basic, real, and invariable nature of a thing or its significant individual feature or features.
(With electronic media, the definition of “thing” is also key.)
So, three essential freedoms are asserted:
1) the freedom to read/use a work
2) the freedom to keep a copy indefinitely
3) the freedom to share copies “noncommercially”
Essential how? An “absolute necessity” or rather a work’s “basic nature”? The latter is an assertion about a particular thing. The former is an assertion about the world. “Une pipe” remains a pipe if the mouthpiece is removed. Continue making modifications and at some point it stops being a pipe. A (perhaps copyrightable) picture of a pipe was never “une pipe” to begin with:
http://multimedia.semanticweb.org/COMM/examples/#Pipe
Even short of pointing out that all works can be destroyed, there are limitations. One needs to acquire access in the first place. Also, no copy is permanent – magnetic domains and bearings and read heads degrade.
The third asserted freedom is as much a statement about social infrastructure as it is about a specific book. Sitting on a plane holding the world’s most egregiously restricted e-book reader, one can still share the e-book with the person next to you.
It also seems to this reader that the noncommercial rider has been attached purely as a sop to the evil corporate media. (That is – RMS making a statement against “penal interest”.) I can grab a book at random from my shelf and sell it – even sell it via electronic means online. Why not electronic copies?
I admire, support and share a strong position regarding free and/or open access to “content”. Attempting to protect this through a Gordian knot of analogies to absolute freedoms seems non-optimum in its pragmatic results. This also risks trivializing more basic freedoms such as the rights not to be spied upon, imprisoned and tortured.
The right of free speech is essential in both meanings of the word. Contingent technology for the conveyance of that speech is a different matter.
Power is the ability to define phenomena. – Newton (Huey)
December 9th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Author: RobS
Comment:
As I type these words, Yahoo! Sports features the headline:
======================================================================
> But any successful rescoping of TIFKAIP has to occur in an
> international context, including some sort of accommodation with
> many countries for whom the concept of free speech is radically
> different. What legal framework exists common to all countries?
> Perhaps only property law.
Your use of the term “intellectual property” has led you into a
supposition: that copyright law, patent law, trademark law, and others
fit a common “legal framework”.
But it isn’t so. The US has not changed the basis of copyright law to
fit that framework. The seductive mirage misled you.
The term systematically leads people into errors of fact, because it
leads them to try to generalize where it isn’t warranted. Copyright
law and patent law are not similar, and trademark law is totally
different from the other two.
> In any event, it is unquestionably a quixotic quest at this late
> date to get the world’s governments and hordes of lawyers to
> reject usage of the term, “intellectual property”.
Predictions like this are attempts at self-fulfilling prophecies. If
people believe them, they can act so as to make the prophecies true.
People said in 1983 that it was quixotic to reject proprietary
software and develop a free operating system. That task required lots
of actual work, not just winning people’s agreement. Yet we did it.
Maybe we can do this too.
But it is not even relevant to ask whether we can convince everyone to
drop the term “intellectual property”. Whenever we have a discussion
about copyright law, we may as well make it a clear and thoughtful
one.
Every time we wish to discuss an issue of copyright law, we have a
choice to make. We can call it “intellectual property” and introduce
bias and confusion at the foundation of the discussion. Or we can
reject that term and stand a chance of thinking clearly. The former
only does harm; the second can be useful.
Whether or not we can set the whole world straight, it behooves us to
make this discussion about copyright as clear and thoughtful as we
can, and that means avoiding the confusion of “intellectual