Internet Archive’s National Emergency Library Harms Authors
authorsguild.org
authorsguild.org
The hard part? In an in person festival, the student hands their sheet music to the judge sitting in the room before performing, so the judge can track and note any deviation between the music and the performance.
We wanted a similar experience online, so our local festival organizers reached out to the wonderful music publishers licensing lawyers. Their response was wholly unhelpful. They wanted to make SO certain that in this pandemic their precious sheet music for elementary school age kids was NOT stolen. They wanted measures such as pasting a “used with permission” watermark on any picture of the music, purchasing a separate copy for the judges, and ensuring secure erase of any files after the festival!
It was absolutely insane. This sort of inflexible attitude in a time of crisis makes me irrationally angry. If we had any way to avoid purchasing music from these .... people ... I would do it in a heartbeat.
Which is a great reason to just boycott their works, get every piano school to stop using them, and thus starve them of all royalties.
The client's job is to recognize that and sidestep them once in a while, of course. Especially during exceptional times.
Scrap copyright and find other ways to support creators. I'd suggest funding from government for a decent number of writing scholarships with input from various sources (including the general public if feasible) on which writers to support.
This could be started without scrapping copyright initially, simply require that all output from the scholarships be released under Creative Commons Zero.
I suppose you could complain that funding creators by taxation (or government debt, more likely these days) is involuntary. True, but I just see it as a way of paying for civilization. In total, the cost may be similar to what people are currently paying in copyright licenses, but with the benefit that all works would now be available to all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild,_Inc._v._Google,....
Fuck them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect - The Streisand effect is a social phenomenon that occurs when an attempt to hide, remove, or censor information has the unintended consequence of further publicizing that information, often via the Internet.
Screw copyright and screw this rent-seeking noise. Self-publishing is rapidly becoming the norm, and who knew - authors are seeing way higher returns on it. Copying e-books incurs no material cost and therefore charging for it is not justifiable.
Have you got evidence for either of these claims? Are you an author?
1.) Publishers do provide editing, etc. services that authors would otherwise have to pay for out of their own pockets. That may or may not be a worthwhile tradeoff. But, between forgoing and advance and paying for services, authors are probably at least a few $K out of pocket if they go their own way. To the degree that things like book tours/promotion/etc. are relevant--they often aren't--that can add to the difference.
2.) For, especially non-fiction, authors for whom books are more about boosting their profile than bringing in money directly, traditional publishers (rightly or wrongly) have considerably more cachet than independent publishing.
3.) This becomes less and less important, but independently published books probably won't be in book stores.
Another thing I find for tech-related books--which is what I do--is that if I do things myself, I control the length whereas publishers generally have a minimum number of pages in mind which may be more than the topic really warrants. And a final point is that, as an individual, I have more flexibility in just giving copies away (especially ebooks) if I did the book mostly for promotional purposes.
Writing is also a great way to meet interesting people and expand a personal network. Whenever I meet someone who has an interesting job and/or interests, I almost always suggest that they write at least one book.
It's not some clickbait garbage either. It's been front page HN numerous times.
What should I be doing? I have a paid book as an option. But everyone Google searches "free book", it was so bad I ended up making my own free link for SEO reasons.
When looking at copyrights, it is easy to look at the few artists that are making millions and forgetting about the majority that can barely cover their costs. Copyright laws also have been getting a bad reputation because they have extended to benefit people and institutions far beyond the original artist/authors and are viewed as unfair. But lets not forget that they also allow many authors to make a living. Also publishers will perish when copyrights are broken down and as a result they no longer will be able to support authors while they are still working on their books.
The online equivalent can stay open in these times. Physical libraries cannot. The ability to make books accessible while people are isolated is a good reason for the Internet Archive to open up in cases of emergency.
Publishers are fat enough already from their rent seeking of poor authors. They should've died long ago, so the world can benefit.
If anything, wild ebooks have increased a lot my paper books purchases, and even if not everybody is like that, even for the percent that is alike it would mean that more free ebooks means more purchases.
"This library brings together all the books from Phillips Academy Andover and Marygrove College, and much of Trent University’s collections, along with over a million other books donated from other libraries to readers worldwide that are locked out of their libraries.
...
We understand that we’re not going to be able to meet everyone’s needs; our collection, at 1.4 million modern books, is a fraction of the size of a large metropolitan library system or a great academic library. The books that we’ve digitized have been acquired with a focus on materials published during the 20th century, the vast majority of which do not have a commercially available ebook. This means that while readers and students are able to access latest best sellers and popular titles through services like OverDrive and Hoopla, they don’t have access to the books that only exist in paper, sitting inaccessible on their library shelves. That’s where our collection fits in—we offer digital access to books, many of which are otherwise unavailable to the public while our schools and libraries are closed. In addition to the National Emergency Library, the Internet Archive also offers free public access to 2.5 million fully downloadable public domain books, which do not require waitlists to view."
There must be rules concerning intellectual property. Laws are the rules our society lives by, and when a prominent public organization decides to willfully break copyright law in this manner it harms everyone.
Copyright law is messy and there are many unintuitive parts. Educating people about the details is difficult and this change they have made is essentially teaching people that it's ok to steal IP.
It's not ok.
I think a more concrete term for unintuitive is outdated. The use cases for Copyright law were defined a century ago when society and technology was different. It is difficult for current citizens to understand copyright law because has nothing to do with their own day to day experiences and needs.
Great video about Copyright by Tom Scott: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU
Too long didn't see: Copyright is broken needs to be fixed in a way that fits the current situation and needs, but, it is going to be damn hard to do.
Why? Human societies created plenty of art and innovation just fine for thousands of years without the concept of intellectual property being a thing.
We tend not to believe that being the first person to write some specific code gives the author the right to restrict any party from editing or redistributing it under any circumstances, or that the author deserves any compensation at all for their work. Why should that freedom be considered fundamental and inalienable only when applied to software, but not all creative works? Particularly since most such works are now distributed as software.
I can understand paying for the physical manufacture of a book or other distribution medium, or maybe paying to cover server costs and hosting, but I can't see a strong argument for the premise that expression itself can or should be owned, if for no other reason than, in modernity, the ownership of media is also the ownership of culture, and corporate ownership of media is also corporate ownership of cultural expression.
Like as not, Disney's versions of old fairy tales are the canonical representation in most of the world. Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter, the DCU, etc, are no less components of modern culture than Shakespeare, Byron, Dickens, Homer, etc.
Yet while anyone can tell a story using Romeo and Juliet, or ancient gods, no one can or will ever be allowed to legally tell stories in the Star Wars, Disney or Harry Potter universes without permission from the IP owners. Those copyrights will be extended and enforced indefinitely. Regardless of your beliefs about whether and how an artist should be compensated for their art, this commoditization of free expression to a form which is only legitimate if it generates revenue (often for a corporation and not the creator,) is damaging to society as a whole.
At best, maybe, the term for copyrights should be extremely limited, and there should be laws preventing the extension of copyright beyond a certain time. But not forever.
>Laws are the rules our society lives by, and when a prominent public organization decides to willfully break copyright law in this manner it harms everyone.
The obvious rebuttal to this is that it is not only our right but our obligation to break unjust laws, and many people consider copyright and IP laws to be unjust.
Of course, the obvious counter-rebuttal to that is that most people who claim the moral high ground for piracy really just want free stuff.
P.S. you cannot 'steal' intellectual property. That is a fiction you have bought into.
More on the history of copyright here: https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2020/shrinking...