Re: Re: copyright term arguments again

From: "Marion Gropen"  
> On Mar 19, 2010, at 6:07 AM, [email protected] wrote:
>>
>>    Posted by: "joseph harris" [email protected] joe9438
>>    Date: Thu Mar 18, 2010 4:19 pm ((PDT))

........
> Actually, I am switching between practical implications and ideal  
> justification, as I see BOTH as relevant. I didn't label it as such,  
> because I figure we're all bright boys and girls, and I don't want to  
> insult your intelligence, but you're quite correct here.

Indeed I am quite sure we are all bright boys and girls - and we know that is usually a politician's mix! 
;-)

.......
>>
>> Copyright does not cover ideas. There is no prevention to the  
>> sharing of ideas. I have yet to see how this is put forward seriously.
> 
> And neither do I -- but that's the reason that most objections by the  
> general public boil down to, unless they're simply "I want to" in  
> disguise.

I still can't see how that applied to my original contention. We are discussing copyright term. We are agreed that term does not influence the flow of ideas.  Where that is the public view it is a matter of education.

> 
>> Copyright and term were no problem at all. If my argument holds,  
>> then the issue of property establishes?
> 
> As far as I can see, IP is indeed property. Like many forms of  
> property, though, there is a societal good to be had in restricting  
> the rights of the owners. In this case, we have agreed, for centuries,  
> that there is a good to be had in limiting the term of copyright.

Here I haven't any idea how you conclude this. So far as western society is concerned (if we take the post-Roman Empire as our start) copyright - or its equivalent freedom to copy or even to see - has moved from total control to varied control. The Roman Catholic church had total control for about a millenium - a very long term!

The reformation was the beginnings of change, and in England, which has had major influence on copyright, that power merely passed to the sovereign with the creation of the Church of England. The use of the printing press led to licencing to printers. It took 250 years for the Act of 1710 giving authors any control of their own work. Berne, more than a century and a half later, introduced terms for authors that were more in keeping with the changes wrought by the industrial age.

One logic of that trend is total rights to the author for ever. I don't see the point, but the best seller is the Bible, so maybe Jesus's descendants would have a claim...

> 
> In particular, most rights holders are impossible to find (or next  
> thing to it) after a decade or two. They die, their heirs move, no  
> one  was designated as literary executor in the first place, . . . .  
> and the work is locked up until it hits public domain. Sometimes  
> finding the author in order to deliver this period's royalty checks is  
> next door to impossible. I've had more than a few of those.

Certainly a problem, but no justification for taking rights on the pretence of 'orphan' works. It is a 'thin end of the wedge' approach.

> 
> This doesn't usually matter, as I tell novice publishers all the time.  
> There are millions of alternatives to choose from and you can almost  
> always find another that meets your needs, but it's still not doing  
> anyone any good.

But, but, but, it does not follow the reverse is true; to whom precisely is it doing harm or evil? Apart from the Google profit margin?

........
>>
>> As though it supported shorter term. You know better than I do that  
>> there can be 1001 reasons for the short life of many. Also that a  
>> failed book is quite capable of revival decades later
> 
> CAN, but it's rare.

Well, it is quite rare for someone  to murder someone else, but that is no reason for putting aside 'Thou shalt not kill', in whatever form it is understood. But, as ususal, it becomes all about pecuniary matters. Either I have control of my work or I do not. For some material it is a protection of privacy.

In fact, through POD and ebook there are many books having a new lease of life. Or are we recognising only best sellers?

> In the US, you can already determine which books are under copyright  
> by checking with the Copyright Office, if I understand correctly. I've  
> never been an acquisitions editor, but ours never had any difficulty  
> with that when we were doing older reprints.

This is factually incorrect. You can check the copyright only of those books registered at the Copyright Office i n the US. These come down to those regisetered for a fee to protect potential penalties [a way to undermine the point about Berne] and, if it is a repository, the fact of a book's publication in the US. Neither of these proofs gives much information about the *state* of copyright or of the life and death of the author.

Books from outside the US are much harder to source in this way. Unless we are to encourage theft of copyright material, I see no particular need for a cumbersome registration system. It will never contain the details of a contract, and this has a lot to do with control. If there is any system of assumed ownership it makes all those contracts useless.

The implications are tremendous, as with any breach of principle.

> 
>> This doesn't answer it:
>>
>>> --Eternal copyright really does represent an expensive and extensive
>>> requirement for database management, if those who wish to use old
>>> material are to be able to ask permission.
>>
>> That lovely database dream! It ain't practical; and who cares in any  
>> way what the db problem is. It is a tail wags dog arguemnt.
> 
> I repeat, we already HAVE a database, and I'll bet that the UK does,  
> too. 

The UK does NOT have one. Nor, to my knowledge, has there ever been a serious suggestion for one. We do have five or six depositories for new publications, such as the National Library and the Library of Wales, but these are oft-breached left-overs from early licencing. Many books do not even have an ISBN.

Not only that, but it's a publicly run one. It's just not very  
> accurate when books are more than a few years old, as no one remembers  
> to update their contact info. So it's not a dream at all to have one.  
> And, we have the Copyright Clearance Center, where rights holders  
> already register, and keep updated, what permissions they will grant  
> for things like course packs, and how much they want for them.

Thre is a great difference between a system that some people work with, and a comprehensive system. The latter requires compulsion. It also requires compulsory updating; and penalties and yet more. No one, not you nor anyone else, has given indication of the slightest benefit to authors in all this; and they are the ones at the pointed end. I have seen only two reasons for doing it: compulsive control, and protecting Google's backside.

> 
> This is just a minor extension of current practice, and it's quite  
> fair: if you want to keep control of, and exploit, your own property,  
> you need to keep your information updated so that you can be found.

We obviously differ in understanding 'minor extension'. The opposite is true. If,  for whatever reason (and they are legion) an author fails to keep information updated under that system, all his work is fair game. So he awakes from a seven year coma to find Google has destroyed the true potential for him in a decade of prior study?

> 
> If you own land, and you don't update your information in the property  
> tax database, you lose the land. What is the difference in fairness?

Well that may be another feature of the dictatorial process that some accept; here there would be long legal process should such action be needed. It would take quite some record of failure to pay council tax before any attempt at sequestration is put forward. Private takeovers, even for major development, are very hard.

So I find that an unfamiliar scenario for comparison.

>> Continuance of title is no problem at all. Dealing with truly  
>> unatributable material requires no change in anything, except  
>> application of exisiting property laws!
> 
> That's not true. It IS a problem, and it's a problem for many  
> different kinds of property. If you abandon your car, and no one can  
> find you, the car is seized. If you abandon your land or building,  
> it's seized. And these are high worth items, especially compared to  
> most IP, and ones that are hard to forget that you own, and hard for  
> society to lose track of who owns it and where you are. Practically,  
> IP is much more loosely tethered to the owner, and of much less import  
> in most cases.

See above. Here ownership does not pass automatically for breach of regulation. Only if cars are abandoned on public roads or property is there any right to remove as obstructions. Where there are parking charges or severe restiction that my be sooner rather than later.

Again there is no right of seizure of land outside very tight legal frameworks here. In both cases you posit there are questions of unpaid dues or obstruction. An abandoned manuscript causes no difficulty, and has no tax to pay - except under your proposals above.

> 
> As a matter of fairness: if you can't be bothered to keep track of  
> your rights, and let others find you, why should society care either?  
> I'm not talking about a Google-style grab, but a reversion to a  
> shorter term. I really don't see how a term of life plus 70 is useful  
> for the owners of the vast majority of works. For most works, the  
> shorter term is plenty, and it puts a limit on the amount of data  
> tracking we're asking our governments to do.

As a matter of fairness and morality, if they are my rights, butt out! If you are saying these are not my rights and I only rent them, then you do a Google and change the whole underpin of copyright. None of this is truly an argument for shorter term. The problem with all your other points, which were below, is that they again deny the principle of copyright. 

The current principle is the one that we tell pirates: 'it ain't yours'. Any proposal to solve problems places onus on someone else; but solution of those problems does not benefit that someone else in any way. 

You suggest repeatable decades, with a highly complex set of rules; but I still see no particular advantage in it. And then undermine it yourself with the 'pristine forest' example. ;-)

But let me express my real disappointment in this:

> It isn't. It is, however, the only area I can discuss in detail, from  
> personal knowledge. And it's also the largest publishing ecology in  
> the world, by a significant margin.

This is the 'might is right' argument. With respect the US is currently suffering serious loss of prestige and influence in military and political areas for assuming that it works. If you are part of the civilised world, and you pride yourself on democracy then it is understanding, not impostion, that carries co-operation forward. The EU, specially France and Germany, have virtually declared copyright war on the US over the failure to reign in Google; simply to force it to obey Copyright Law and convention.

> No one, ever, to my knowledge, has forced the use of a certain price  
> point by the publisher. Bookstores, however, buy those books, and  
> charge whatever they darn well please, in free markets like those in  
> the US and recently in the UK. Amazon wants that same privilege, but  
> is having to negotiate some of it away.
> 
> READERS are the ones, though, who determine what price points fly off  
> the shelves, and which sit there until they're returned.

Lovely argument IF the reader is making the decision. To suggest a retail price from a bookseller ***that all readers and buyers*** can access will not determine 'reader demand' elsewhere is naive at best. Previously bookstores and clubs have been limited i ntheir ranges, by geography or marketing budgets.

>>
>> Who decides pricing,
> publishers set list, booksellers set the sticker, and readers decide  
> whether or not it's worth buying. Demand and supply all the way. And  
> that's WHY publishers have settled on those "standard" prices, as I  
> suspect you already know.

And ONLY Amazon can afford to take a big hit on its selling price in order to flex monopolistic and anti-trade muscles! Standard prices are for standard book, as I'm sure you know ;-). At a time when hundreds of thousands of new publishers are appearing round the world it seems odd to cling to practices of the dinosaur past.

> 
> 
>> who decides ownership
.....
> But minor tinkering is an adjustment of something that we have all  
> invented together, and is NOT like messing with a law of physics or  
> chemistry.

Actually... the understood and expressed laws of physics have been altered very dramatically throughout the past century; certainly i n the area that Einstein dropped his bombshell! Understanding of the universe changes all the time - not just extends. The actual role of DNA is undergoing frequent revision as the complexity begins to show, and the tinkering of GM companies looks the greedy precipitous ignorance some of us knew from the start of that tinkering. And chemistry has not been without rethinking.

'Minor tinkering' has to be just that. When it ignores or fails to understand  principles it is destructive.

> 
>> , who actually owns the property?
> 
> We all get to decide what the rules are, and then follow them. It's  
> not written in the stars, but by us. It's something we can change to  
> make our world run better. But, if we're to work by analogy with the  
> rules we already have, and which we have thrashed out over millennia,  
> as the ones that work best, then I would say that the creator owns the  
> work, and can determine what use it's put to. Then his or her or their  
> heirs own it. And that continues until either society changes the  
> rules, or the owners abandon it.
> 
> NB: setting something down as you carry in your groceries isn't  
> abandoning it. Parking your car isn't abandoning it. Neither is  
> keeping a book out of print, or out of a given format, abandoning that  
> right. But leaving all rights to it lying around for years, and then  
> not being findable at your last registered location, that MIGHT be  
> considered abandonment. The analogy is a house that's shuttered and  
> unused for years. If the authorities try to contact the owner, and  
> cannot, and the taxes go unpaid, then it will be seized and held as  
> public land.
> 
> 
> Marion Gropen
> Gropen Associates, Inc.
> By-The-Question Consulting,  Tools for Publishers, & Classes
> www.GropenAssoc.com
> Her blog: www.GropenAssoc.com/blog
> 

In your repeat of the land sequestration, you again miss the difference. The house is taken after process to recover unpaid taxes; not because it is abandoned. I can abandon a car in any way that does not bring it to attention - a shed on my own land, down an old mine shaft, in a neglected cave, and it is no one's business but mine. [We don't pay tax on off-road vehicles]

In the same way as the car. If I am not using my work to make money or present for another reason, why is it your, or Google's, business.

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


------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------
Post a message:   ebook-community [[at]] *
Unsubscribe:      ebook-community-unsubscribe [[at]] *
Switch to digest: ebook-community-digest [[at]] *
Switch to normal: ebook-community-normal [[at]] *
Put mail on hold: ebook-community-nomail [[at]] *
Administrator:    ebook-community-owner [[at]] *

(* == yahoogroups.com)
-------------------------------------------------------Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ebook-community/

<*> Your email settings:
    Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ebook-community/join
    (Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
    [email protected] 
    ebook-community-fullfeatured-hHKSG33TihhbjbujkaE4pw@public.gmane.org

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    ebook-community-unsubscribe-hHKSG33TihhbjbujkaE4pw@public.gmane.org

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/