book piracy, law, morality and copyright history (was What kinds of Books are pirated and made into EBooks?)

Bill sowed the wind and raised a whirlwind with his admissions of digital book downloads. A number of very long posts have resulted, and I wanted to try to offer some factual information, without making a very, very long interleaved response.

First - and I was disappointed to find myself disagreeing violently with Erica - many comments are entirely America-centric. This means the understanding of copyright law is deficient. Consequenly the understanding of its history and nature is also deficient.

Copyright itself is, in essence, control of copies. This has existed since the start of Christianity and consequently since the start of western version civilisation. The Roman Empire, and its successor, the Roman Catholic Church, had no problem with that since copies were hard to make and costly in time and resources, and few people outside The Church were educated to read or write.

Broadly speaking the Reformation was about release from this RC domination, and the right to copy and to derive translations [from the latin and ancient greek] of The Bible were at the heart of it. In England, which resented paying tribute to the Vatican and the RC being in essence foreign landlords, accepted the creation of the Church of England by Henry VIII. Control of the writings then passed to Henry as head of The Church of England.

The invention of European printing [more accurately of moveable type] about the same time created the printer publisher. In England the Stationers Company was licensed by the crown to print and publish and therefore control written works. The great expansion in education and writing, starting in the time of Henry VIII, and the freedom to write without the restriction of the Church led to a great outpouring of literature and other works.

This in turn led to authors getting restive about control of their own work. Thus, in 1710, the copyright act signed into law by Queen Anne. This *transferred* control of content and its use from the printer/ publisher to the creator. All this by the owner of the right, the Crown. This is a line of authority, and not a real power to take it back, to the crown. All nations place this residual power in their heads of state - or in the office of it.

For many reasons evident in the history of the past 500 years the English version is the base of copyright, but there has been much added. The United States took the English position in law as it exisited in about 1800, and the wording of US law and of the US Constitution and other documents comes largely from the English law and constitution; a little research and comparison of documents will show this.

Through the nineteenth century European writers and inventors became very restive at the way they were treated by publishers and other and the Berne Convention was born. It, with the previously agreed patent convention, came quickly under the umbrella of Intellectual Property. By the start fo the twentieth century most western countries were signatories to Berne, which related closely to the UK copyright laws. Berne brought international copyright formally into being.

Before this publishers would publish books from other countries without any agreement or payment ot author or original publisher. [Google wants to return to that] The US signed up only a century after other western nations!

In essence the community value in copyright is to further culture and invention; the realisation is that no one is going to write or invent if their work is just stolen, and their time remain unrewarded. Fairly obvious. The only effective way - in a free society - to achieve this without some form of censorship is the copyright system; at least I await any better proposal.

First Xerox offered a very easy way round this with the photo-copying machines [though not their first ones ;-)]. This was stamped on and this is now policed by industry organisations. The internet and the digital file offers a new easy copy system. This is in process of being stamped on, and for the same reasons as before, and under the same understandings about invention and culture.

Representing the community - the crown, or the nation - is a nation's government. In the US they represent the public domain; this is an answer to Erica. The government, or government level, is most suited because all such issues have great complexity. Special pleading is only one part of the mix.

Book piracy, illegal copying, breach of law stand where they have always been, the territory of the dishonest.  Which brings in the moral dimension. In the west this conjures up the Ten Commandments, but similar basic principles exist in all cultures and major religions. 

The reason is very simple to understand. They are the principles on which society can operate. Without observance of them society falls apart. This is easy to understand if one realises they are really extensions of a simple four letter word - trust. Our daily lives are only possible is we are able to trust.

The moment trust is broken suspicion steps in. Thus Bill, the sower of winds, is someone we cannot trust. If he will take books which do not belong to him, and for which he has no permission to do so, what else will he take just because he wants it? And if he does not do so now, will he develop the habit of taking?

I will leave for now the arguments about the reason the income of the originator is important, or why copyright would have little value without a publishing industry.

But I do ask all those of goodwill to separate the basic nature of copyright and the moral and legal aspects of it from those things which personally affect them. The world does not revolve around any of us, and respecting others, our communities and the moral and legal basis of all our lives is essential to the continuance of society. Most of all we must respect ourselves; the best basis for all relationships and the foundation of respect for others.

Apologies for the pomposity and length; but years of arguing these matters bring me back again and again to the fundamentals: law? or Mad Max?

Joseph

Joseph Harris - Debt Control Man
http://www.controlyourdebtcrisis.co.uk
Author: Control Your Debt Crisis on Your Own Terms
http://twitter.com/debtcontrolman 
SAQ - SAve the cheQue




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