Re: The Politics of Media Distribution (Re: Press Action Hero of the Week (fwd)

Gilles d'Aymery has honored us with another response to comments and
proddings made on this list concerning Swan's usage policy.

I forgot to thank him for his first response (even though I forwarded it
to the list, without his permission), but I'd like him to thank him now
for taking the time to explain the rationale of Swans' usage policy,
something he is really under no obligation to give.

I hope this thread is as helpful for others as it is for me--someone who
was always interested in the multi-posting rules at Swans, and who is
generally interested in freedom and copyright.
/a

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Gilles d'Aymery <[email protected]>
To: dvanhorn <[email protected]>, [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 17:59:28 -0800
Subject: Re: [ballistichelmet]  The Politics of Media Distribution (Re:
    Press Action Hero of the Week
X-Mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c)
Return-Path: <[email protected]>

Dear David (and Hello again Aaron),

Thank you for your e-mail. I think that we could have a constructive
exchange of views. First it would be useful if you could stop inferring
too much about what I do and what I think.

You do *not* know for a fact that the authors and I "are incorrect in
thinking they know how to control that use so as to maximize its effect."
Neither do I know. One thing I know, however, is that my policy to control
the use of the content has nothing to do with maximizing its effect or its
dissemination, if you will. So, right there you are basing your opinion, or
opiniated judgement, on a false premise.

You go further and assert that I am ignorant of the free software
movement and that I misread your comments. I happen to be quite
aware of the free software movement (since the late '80s) and of the
various *free* licences out there, some of which you included links. I
fear that you are too focused on that *specific* isssue -- that of
software -- and in doing so you may well be comparing apples and
oranges.

There is an old adage in your country: When you assume, you make
an ass between you and me (or something approaching). I would
appreciate it if you could stop assuming, and asserting how much you
are *right* and I am *wrong* -- the good old B&W, us vs. them,
BS.... Please, kindly spare me, and your audience. It serves no
purpose.

Allow me to answer your points, a), b) c) d) and e)

a) To reproduce work in copies.

Certainly. I actually encourage this endeavor. Print as many copies as
you wish and hand them over to your friends and neighbors. Do not
hesitate to have any Swans' Work published in your local newspapers
or university magazines. You can even have any of them published in
the New York Times (I will owe you big time!). There is only a
couple of conditions. The Work *cannot* be changed and Swans
must be acknowledged, including its URL. Note however that this
encouragement does not include electronic dissemination through,
particularly, the Web, and to a lesser degree of importance, e-mail
distribution lists (I also have a particular revulsion for personal, self-
centered blogs). In short, say ballistichelmet.org has a print edition,
you are most welcome to use any Work from Swans but you are
prohibited to republish any Work from Swans on your Web site
(there, you can, if you so choose, include a paragraph or a short
synopsis of the Work and point to its URL).

b) To prepare derivative works based upon the Original Work.

This looks to me as a software-centric requirement, but, even in the
writing world, this is acceptable and has been done for ages. It's
called *quoting* part of a Work with full attribution to the author of
the Work. I see no problem here. As said, this has been done for
ages.

c) To distribute copies of the Original and Derivative Works to the public.

Here you are both vague and all over the place. My answer to your
point a) should take care of your first proposition. And we need to
explore a bit more what you mean by derivatives work. If you mean,
re-writing the Work as you so please, forget it (except as a case study
in which you quote the original Work and offer an alternative writing --
 but here again we fall within the quote-unquote concept that has been
used for ages).

d) To perform the Original Work publicly.

Another example of vagueness. Perform publicly? Where, how? How do
you "perform" an essay "publicly?"  A public reading in your town's
square, in your local theater, in your dwelling? Sure, go ahead, read the
entire 10+ volumes of Marx's Capital to your heart and breath
contentment. And do the same with any of Swans' Work. Now, if you
mean, electronic performance, especially on the Web, forget it.

e) To display the Original Work publicly.

And here again, sheer vagueness... How do you display Mona Lisa?
By puting a pic on your site, printing copies of the pic and distributing
it to your "neighbors?" When It's already on the Web site of the
Louvre Museum? How do you display the US Constitution in public?
How do you display the Work of a personal individual who may very
well not be interested in being "displayed". How do you display
*Madam Butterfly,* if you are an opera buff (and, btw, how do you
improve on it)? In short, same as c) above...

I happen to dislike copyrights, yet was forced to use these laws by
circumstances. People where *stealing* and *scavenging* Swans'
Work (some of those people, I truly did not want any association).
Pieces were republished on the Web without even an
acknowledgement to their origin. Bigger sites would repost our work,
acknowledge us in tiny print and we would get no or little visits
originating from their sites (in another word, they took advantage of
Swans' work to advance their own interests). I've had pieces
reproduced under a different name. I've had pieces reproduced
without the accompanying notes. I've had pieces edited and then
reproduced without alerting the audience to the edits. And I can go
on, and on.

In all instances, this was done by US based individuals and Web sites.
I got tired of this trademark -- US dismal intellectual integrity
(sorry...). The funny thing is that the only people who have a problem
with my policy are, guess what, US based. And even funnier, the only
people who are afraid of a call from an attorney are, guess what
again, Americans.

It works, thank you.

Meanwhile, I am developping Swans from scratch and we do have
20,000 visitors a day here and then. In 1996 we had 2 or 3 a day.
No one is paid. Not even me. No one asks for money and we do not
even highlight this simple fact as you do so blatantly (in fairness, I will
in the short future ask for financial help. But it will be for updating
computers, software, and Web/e-mail hosting, not for personal profit -
- and I will put those costs and amounts raised right up there on the
site).

I am a craftman and intend to carry on preserving and defending
craftmanship.

Now, a quick word about Aaron's latest thoughful post (which I
append at the end of this e-mail):

Aaron is quite correct. I am aware of CounterPunch and the like. It
just happens that a) my name is not Alexander Cockburn and I do not
have his family's money, and b) I do not scavenge -- i.e., when you
come to Swans, you get original Work, some good some not so
good, some you agree, some you do not. *But* it IS original work.
That is why peole keep coming back to Swans. That is why people
increasingly want ot be published on Swans.

Remember the road less traveled...?

They are the most beautiful ones I have ever hiked!

In conclusion, I'll be happy to have a sane and sound discusssion on
the various merits, so that maybe we can develop a better policy, but
I am reluctant to go on with phraseology, indictments, and overall
short, if not poor thinking.

I am herby requesting that you post my answer to your bulletin board.

Your sincerely,

Gilles d'Aymery
Swans Commentary

PS  When refering to my last name, the correct way is to write
*aymery* not *d'Aymery.* But then, correctness is an oblivious
concept... Just refer to me as Gilles d'Aymery. Thank you.

On 11 Feb 2004, at 18:32, you wrote:

> Aaron S. Hawley wrote:
> > I see d'Aymery's copying policy as more of a way to self-determine
> > the way the work at Swans is used and presented.
>
> This is exactly what d'Aymery is doing.  Unfortunately, the publishers
> and authors of Swan's are incorrect in thinking they know how to
> control that use so as to maximize its effect.  That's why a Free
> license that provides a world-wide, royalty-free, non-exclusive,
> perpetual, sublicenseable license to do the following is a Good Thing:
>
> a) to reproduce the Original Work in copies
> b) to prepare derivative works based upon the Original Work
> c) to distribute copies of the Original and Derivative Works to the
> public d) to perform the Original Work publicly e) to display the
> Original Work publicly
>
> The Academic Free license does precisely this, for example.
>
>    http://opensource.org/licenses/afl-2.0.php
>
> > From: Gilles d'Aymery <[email protected]>
> > Date: Sun, 8 Feb 2004 18:11:14 -0800
> > Subject: Re: [ballistichelmet] Press Action Hero of the Week
>
> > My use of copyright laws has nothing to do with patenting *ideas* or
> > *works.*  It has to do with people taking advantage of someone's
> > else work for the benefit of their own endeavor -- without even
> > crediting the originator.
>
> > People should not, and are not "free" to appropriate [ideas].
>
> This remark and its repetition throughout the response is telling of
> d'Aymery's ignorance of the Free Software movement and a misreading of
> my comments.  Nowhere did I say people should be free to appropriate
> work as originally theirs and without attribution.  Many copyleft
> licenses include attribution clauses, eg. the Academic Free License
> above.  There's also the Creative Commons attribution license.
>
>    http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/1.0/
>    http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/1.0/legalcode
>
> David


On Sun, 8 Feb 2004, dvanhorn wrote:

> Aaron S. Hawley wrote:
> > But I think you may be inferring too much by combining this quote of
> > d'Amyery and his web site's copying policy.  I believe he is exercising
> > the original motives of Copyright law: that which aids authors and their
> > work.  He's not trying to patent anything.
>
> I'm sure I was inferring too much, but this is one of those things I love
> ranting about.

As do I.  My conclusory thoughts on the issue are concerned with whether
the values you, myself and others (on this list) come to feel about the
freedom of computer software, computer documentation,
science/research-related publishing, government information, music, or
legal briefs can be equally applied to the work of those in other fields.
Doing political commentary and research, especially from a (critical)
perspective which consequently receives little recognition or support,
although having universal similarities (concerned with knowledge) offers a
different operating environment, needs and challenges.  In a way, that
there exist a myriad of free licenses for different types of work even
within computing (for documentation, libraries, and software), underlines
this point.

I see d'Aymery's copying policy as more of a way to self-determine the way
the work at Swans is used and presented.  He wishes to have single
postings of work in an uncompromised setting. Although, perhaps this is to
Swans own detriment, given the popularity of "competing" sites like
CounterPunch.  But it seems he's quite aware of this (it seems his policy
is "in spite" of thse other web sits), and is not simply carrying on an
antiquated (and failed) use of copyright with digital media.  It seems
that d'Aymery critically grasps the consequences of how the work at Swans
is distributed and presented and what that consequently says, politically,
about the content.  In a streak similar to what you yourself infer about
the site based on its limits on distribution.  (I also catch a hint that
d'Aymery has technical reasons for having demanding all the site's
original content only be available from swans.com)

In a similar way the GNU GPL is not concerned with complete freedom.
Copyleft attempts to protect a free software programmer's work by making
sure that others must share their work, too. It is in fact concerned with
distrubuting freedom for all users, something that was and is very
controversial even within the free software movement.  Yet, the very
controversial issue of copyleft has been at the crux of the creation of
both viable free software and a free software community.

I say this all in trying not to rhyme with what I imagine were (and are)
the traditionalist arguments made by some of the first proprietary
computer programmers (and more likely software companies) made some
decades ago.  It is actually just that period, a time when programmers and
their trade were pushed into a proprietary model without their being asked
(fairly, anyway), that makes me appreciate the forum Swans offers, and
also become curious of writers and _their_ expectations of their own work:
in availability, distribution and compensation.

D'Aymery was kind enough to respond to both of our first posts.
/a

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Gilles d'Aymery <aymery at ix.netcom.com>
Date: Sun, 8 Feb 2004 18:11:14 -0800
Subject: Re: [ballistichelmet] Press Action Hero of the Week

Dear Aaron,

Thank you for forwarding this post.

Copyright laws do defend the interests of big corporations and
commercial interests. They also defend the *little guy.* Indeed, you
are using copyright laws when you make *any* demand within the
GNU's FDL.

My use of copyright laws has nothing to do with patenting *ideas* or
*works.*  It has to do with people taking advantage of someone's
else work for the benefit of their own endeavor -- without even
crediting the originator.

Ideas are as free as the morning breeze. Ideas, when they are original
(which most often they are not), should "freely" circulate around the
planet. And people should, and are "free" to build upon them.

People should not, and are not "free" to appropriate them.

Swans, to my recurring lament, does not provide much or any *new*
ideas. It provides, however, original work -- opinions, thoughts, and
yes *ideas,* whether new or not, and whatever the definition of
*ideas* is  -- on a bi-weekly basis, on the Web. Original work means
that it has not been published elsewhere (with the usual exception that
confirms the rule).

It takes immense dedication. I do not say that "nuthing is for sale." I
live it. There is no ads on Swans. There is no money on Swans. There
is not even a request for donations on Swans (get my inference,
here?), and I do not impugn the character of the dissenters.

I just walk my talk.

One is free to use an idea, for any purpose one chooses.

One is not free to appropriate the original idea.

One is free and *should* study and run with an idea.

One should not run and appropriate it.

One should not redistribute original work when the work is available
for all to see. Just point the on-line "neighbors" to the URL.

To improve upon an idea is a sine qua non of progress (moving
forward); but, if intellectual integrity has any reasonance, the
improvement must acknowledge the origin.

I could go on and on and on, and explain how much multi-posting and
self-appropriating is detrimental to Swans' growth and to my work
and to the time I put in, and to the very notion of "change" (something
that your generation is and should be concerned with), and how much
it helps the status quo, the people who actually talk about change but
think about their bank account, or look into their bank account in
order to affect change.

I could. I won't.

And I've not made a dime out of it all. Dimes seem to be a big part of
the contempary experience...

So, please, tell your correspondent (David?) that I salute him, wish
him well, and hope that he will think further and deeper into the future
that he envisions. I can only hope. He will decide. Reality will be the
judge.

In the meantime, I thank you for reading and visiting Swans. Just do
not multi-post! :-)

Yours sincerely,

Gilles d'Aymery
Swans Commentary
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