Re: Re: Amazon remotely deletes 1984

On 7/25/09, joseph harris <[email protected]> wrote:
> From: "Erica Frank"
>
>  Especially since a good
>  > deal of copyright law hinges on "publication date."
> Not so sure about this. There are complications in the US because of past copyright
> being so at variance with Berne. But new copyright since 1978 in the US is now all life
> plus.

It's life-plus for published works. Unpublished works are covered by
different laws. And I wasn't just talking about length of rights, but
copyright protections--they're stronger for unpublished works.
Figuring out what "unpublished" is, is a bit blurrier these days.

Is an email that's cc'd to a dozen people "published?" How about a
thesis that's copied to a review board, and archived at a university?
Is a blog post "published?" Are the posts in this email
community/mailing list "published?"


>  > "More tightly" defined? Do we have a definition for publisher? (I've

> Even the concise OED of half a  century ago has trouble with this. Publishing is
> to issue copies for sale to the public, while a publisher produces copies and distributes
> them to booksellers or public. No mention of sale in the noun definition.

I don't think "copies for sale" is required.... I'm certain publishing
includes free copies. Other than that, the definition is is basic and
obvious--and lacking in precision that's be necessary for some
copyright cases.

Are websites publications? Is Twitter a publisher?

Magazines and such have their own practical definitions; when they buy
"unpublished" works, they mean "works that our readers haven't had the
opportunity to see before." Many magazines will buy short stories that
have been online, as long as they've only been in locked forums, or as
long as they're removed before the print version comes out. Since
their interest in unpublished work is entirely capitalistic, that
works fine.

But copyright law, figuring out what's fair use in regards to whether
a work was published or not, needs a strict definition of
"publication." And I haven't seen one of those brought up in
discussions of the legalities.

>  Comparison with newspapers brings a further twist in this. The editor is legally
> responsible for the content of the journal, while the publisher may or may not be! [Lots of
> cases, in the UK anyway, that make one wonder.] Back to books: when the case over
> Lady Chatterly's Lover was brought it was against the publisher [Penguin, I think].

Paladin Press was sued for aiding & abetting a murder, for its book
"Hit Man." But in that case, there was no question that they selected
& influenced the content of the book.

>  Broadly I think the publisher is the one responsible for preparing the work for issue. But
...
>  And your question is then whether making Kindle-ready is 'preparing the work for issue'.
> Since it is a technical process [whatever problems it throws up] it fails any test of literary
> involvement. And that brings another criteria! Especially as a publisher is usually involved
> also in the editing process.

Yep. Much confusion all around; until recently, there's not been a
category of "formats & prepares work for sale, without any editorial
input whatsoever." There've been publishers who did almost that little
(they generally at least arranged a book cover, albeit from a
formulaic & simple set of layouts), but since they were trying to
imply they were worthy of the same respect as other publishers, they
downplayed how little they shaped the content of the books.

> > I suspect a lot of the piracy would go away if publishers would figure
>  > out a legal, convenient way for people to transfer ownership of
>  > digital files from one person to another.
>
> My impression is that most ebooks now are sold without any DRM, and
> people are put on their honour to do the right thing.

Most ebook stores use DRM. Amazon, the Sony store, BooksonBoard,
Diesel ebooks, ereader.com, and coolerbooks.com all have DRM. (Only
Amazon's Topaz and Sony's LRX formats have not been cracked.)
Fictionwise is split; their multiformat books are non-DRMd, but they
have a substantial, perhaps larger, section of "secure" (DRM'd) ebooks
in several formats.

Most individual publishers who have ebook stores sell without DRM,
although it's mostly PDFs (which are troublesome as an ebook format),
and some of them have put weird attempts to limit the use of the
files. I believe the individual publishers are far outnumbered by the
large ebook stores--which even DRM-lock the public domain works they
sell.

>   Publishers are trying to promote a "one purchase=one reader"
>  > model--which is not how most of us learned to love books. Some people
>  > resent being told they can't share books with their friends; some
>  > believe that all filesharing is exactly the same as literal theft.
>
> These are the tensions that do need resolving I agree. As in so many businesses
> I am reluctantly convinced that the secret lies in marketing.

I believe the resolution requires a lot of discussion, in a lot of
different areas, from a lot of perspectives, because there are many
complex issues involved, and no single panel of people, no matter how
well-informed, is going to consider all the issues involved.

I also believe we need a lot of awareness-raising; I don't think most
of the general public really understands how copyright changed when
works no longer needed to register or even affix a copyright
notification. The combination of that, with home computers & printers,
meant the previous legal foundation of published vs not became
exceedingly blurry.

I'm aware that some of that (maybe a lot of that) is tangential to the
issues involved with the Orwell books.

-- 
"I follow Eris blindly in all things. That She is the Goddess of Chaos
simplifies this immensely."  -- Christian the Pagan


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