Harlan Ellison on Copyright Infringement 473
An AC sent us this: "It seems that Harlan Ellison is hopping mad about copyright infringement regarding his works. You've seen this class of beef before, but it's, well, Harlan Ellison complaining, and man is he spitting venom. Just read the dag essay." Wow. See also the site's main page, which has some responses from other authors who don't feel quite as strongly as Ellison. Update: 03/07 10:22 PM EST by michael : Some readers say they don't know who Harlan Ellison is. Haven't any of you ever seen Twilight Zone?
Re:Thought Police (Score:2)
Whether software is in source or binary form does not affect its fundamental nature. Is hand-coded machine language not speech?
If you create something, you have the right to tell people, "please don't distrubite this without compensating me"
Absolutely. And this is part of Mr. Ellison's argument.
The other part, the "complaint for vicarious infringement against AOL" part, is concerned with his desire to place limitations on author's rights to distribute their own works -- under copyright other otherwise.
Re:Gawd Ellison, find the fucking capslock key. (Score:2)
Here's a nickel, kid. Go buy yourself an 8-track.
The only answer - a lot of you won't like it. (Score:3)
The alternatives to me are either 1. a draconian system of increasingly invasive copyright enforcement as new technologies make redistribution even easier all the time, or 2. artists starve, or worse, stop making art. I'd rather pay for artists up front in my taxes (with academies as job-sites, etc.) All in all, it seems like the least oppressive, most productive solution.
major ego trip (Score:2)
Think about it. How many of you ever completely read a full novel on a computer? E-books bite; they never have and never will compete with real books. Nobody wants to snuggle up to their moniter to read! It hurts to stare at text on a monitor for for over 30 minutes, so no benge reading here.
My syster is a writer. Is she worried about e-books? Heck no, nobody wants e-books, they want real books.
The people who really have reason to worry about pirate copies are the ones whose works can be copied in digital form and produce the same(or similar) experience as the origional works. Games, software, and music are things that can be copied in reasonable quality, but these industries are still very profitable. Most people still buy real copies of their software, so the idea of someone copying my software illegally is not so scarry to me.
However, I do think that limiting the ease of making copies is inportant. For example, some of my asian friends tell me that in some areas it is actually much harder to get a legitimate movie than a bootlegged one, and even then it is much more expensive. I definitely dont want to see that happen with software over the web, so I can understand this guy trying to protect his copywright.
What I really dissagree with is his methadology; he is simply suing everyone in sight! Suing AOL for having newsgroups is crazy; it is a basic part of being an ISP. If he said told AOL about the situation and AOL refused to filter or drop that particular newsgroup, then I would understand. That doesnt seem to be the case, he seems to have gone straight to the courts, which tells me he is just another sue-happy nut after some easy $.
Where is the threat? (Score:2)
However I also have a few books that hve been scanned with some sort of OCR system and saved as text files which I got from various web sites. For about 90% of these I also own copies of the books. It's actually really nice to pop open a text file on my laptop during a plane flight or something and not have to carry around a bunch of books. I also tried my Pilot using PlamDoc but that was just painfull to read.
I understand where Ellison is comming from, the same way I understand where Lars Ulrich is comming from but I just don't see the big threat. I just checked my HD and I've found the only "book" I don't own a copy of is 1984, that's actually one out of about 20.
I am an avid reader and tend to be an early adopter of most new networking technologies (like Napster), if anyone was going to cost these guys money it would be me but I don't. I spend money on new books every week. I find when I want a copy of a book it can take quite a while to find it.
I just don't see the threat to print publishers as clearly as something like Napster is to music publishers. (maybe, sort of)
Sue the Printing Press Manufacturer (Score:2)
Burris
Re:He's a professional writer who's also a nut... (Score:2)
Re:Who is this guy? (Score:2)
Dum Dee Dum Dum DUUUUUM (Score:4)
What? This is a lawsuit, not an SF story? Never mind.
__________________
He's a professional writer who's also a nut... (Score:2)
Wow, that rant was about the worst thing one could expect from a professional writer.
What happened to eloquence and subtlety?
What happened to NOT drowning out one's own point by using all caps??
What happened to having one's own lawyer review the contents of the release to assure effectiveness??
Haven't read any of his work, have you? Harlan Ellison is about as subtle as the Death Star most of the time, and his only competition for "Most Opinionated Human on the Planet" is George Carlin. Stephen King once described the forward to Harlan's book Strange Wine as making him
*Danse Macabre, 1981.I stopped taking Harlan seriously after seeing three or four his rants on an "entertainment news" show that the SciFi Channel [scifi.com] used to have on. Don't get me wrong, he does good work -- the "City on the Edge of Forever" episode of Star Trek was frickin' brilliant, as were some of the ideas he gave JMS for Babylon 5 -- but IMHO he's kind of a loon.
Try reading the article next time. (Score:3)
This is not about people creating their own content and giving it away by choice. This is about people taking the source of what little revenue a SF writer gets and mass publishing it via the Internet without paying the author a single dime.
He's right to take a stand like this. My favorite SF author, Roger Zelazny, died of cancer while working his tail off. He was well-known and a Hugo award winner several times over yet he still wasn't making enough money just off writing to rest on his heels and relax for awhile and focus on recovery. Writers, especially the really good ones it seems, are generally not wealthy. In fact, usually they're struggling to get by.
This is not about jealousy over better writers releasing stuff for free. This is a fight for survival against people who don't think they should have to pay for the work that writers like Ellison do to provide the money for their food and housing. If you're upset that he should demand payment for services rendered, then don't buy his stuff. Go ahead. Be a leech. I'm sure that none of your other favorite authors that are still alive would approve, though. Do you think Asimov wrote the massive numbers of nonfiction articles he did just for kicks? Harlan just has the rabid tenacity and guts to take a stand against it.
Paying for content. (Score:2)
Re:Not too surprising. (Score:2)
(See www.m-w.com)
Theft: 1a : the act of stealing; specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it.
So this doesn't involve theft because nobody is depriving the author of his copy of the work.
I'm not arguing your point, I just want to encourage you to use the correct words. And theft isn't correct in this context.
Re:The Beast that Shouted... (Score:2)
Come on Harlan, you wrote "From Alabamy, With Hate" after you marched for civil rights in the 60's, and you flamed God brilliantly in "Deathbird" (I'm edging into Christianity and I think that's still one of the best things I've ever read), and you fall back on all caps? Why not some 30 page thesis on how if copyright infringement continues we'll all be eating our children to survive? Why not a novella about the death throes of a civilization drowning in mediocrity because all the artists are shoveling shit to pay the power bill?
Re:Reading the article may have helped you... (Score:2)
Actually, most people prefer to read stuff in book form. While folks can print it, I don't fancy feeding several hundred pages into my printer and waiting for an hour or so for it to print (not to mention that then it's not free since I'm using up paper and printer toner/ink).
Books that I have read online and not had in my possession in physical form = 2. Both of which happened to be in the public domain anyway(the first two tarzan books by Edgar Rice Burroughs for the curious).
Number of books I have read in whole or part online = approximately 12.
We can all get high and mighty but at the end of the day he has a point: He does this for a living, how would _you_ feel if someone copied your work just before you handed it in to the client and got the cash instead of you.
This is a faulty analogy. People who publish his works online aren't getting paid. If they were then I would support Mr. Ellison's stance completely. If somebody is to be paid, then either he or his publisher deserve to be the ones receiving the payment.
However, there is no significant indication that publishing books on the net reduces sales. Any book that I have liked I desire to own from a legitimate source. Any book that I suspect that I won't like I usually check for in the library first anyway (if online versions are easily available I will often browse at least part of the book online).
I recommend visiting the Baen free library [baen.com] for a different, and IMO more rational, take on the issue.
Re:Thought Police (Score:2)
Anonymous people can communicate securely.
Take a public key from the keyservers for someone named 1337-Warez, post an encrypted message on alt.test for him. If he sees it (as millions of others will) then he can decrypt it and return the message using the private key that you included.
To accomplish the posting, use anonymous remailers.
By using anonymous remailers and drops like hotmail accounts, you could even trade files back and forth.
You could even have a comment board (completely legal because it's not providing any copyrighted materials) which lists people's opinions on the trustworthiness of various other people. Much like EBay's user ratings.
"Hmmm, seven positive comments, one negative. He looks like he's good to trade with."
Re:Your right to throw a punch... (Score:2)
After the French revolution all copyright laws were eliminated. Within about a year the only books being published were pornography because anything else would be reprinted by the guy down the street within a few days. They had to restore copyrights after a few years because not having them was a dismal failure.
Re:He seemed unusually calm (Score:2)
If Harlan wants to verbally dismember someone or something he can do it. He seemed remarkably composed on this issue. Maybe he's mellowed.
I've always wished that there was a commentator who could write with equal skill about the Internet as Harlan did in his "Glass Teat" series about television. Imagine Harlan in Jon Katz's role! Harlan wipes away the bs that cover's most people's eyes with a skill that is a joy to read.
I'm afraid, however, that the traditional publishing system will soon be dead. Harlan is defending a dinosaur. A new system will arise--and it won't look like the thing that Harlan is trying to save with legal patches. I don't think writers in the future will make money off direct sales of their works. They will make money from the fame their works provide for them through speaking engagements, advertisements and movie rights.
Re:We're not all "ignorant thieves". (Score:2)
If the RIAA had made online MP3 downloads available for $1 each we all would gladly have paid. But their Borg brains are so hardwired to only accept an increase in profit margin, that they would hear nothing of this venture that would have netted them BILLIONS. Instead they fought to restrict electronic distribution until they could exert monopoly control on it. Boo! I say. If taking music for free is all that will teach them how the market works, then I will do it happily. I am tired of being stolen from without an army of crooked lawyers to protect me like the RIAA.
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Re:OUCH! (Score:3)
Come on. I'm all for copyrights but what kinda mess will we get into if the ISP's start filtering everything????
Re:Reading the article may have helped you... (Score:3)
That's why there's a patent system. It's been hugely abused over the last few years, but the theory behind it, stopping ppl with bright ideas from being ripped off, remains as relevant as ever. And it's why there's a copyright system - your life's work may not be an invention, it may be a book, or a screenplay, or a piece of music.
If the author/inventor wants what they've produced to be freely distributed, then they have the choice to release it into the public domain, but only they can decide that - it's not the right of every kid in a bedroom to scan books and give copies away for free, or to do the same with music. If you're relying on your invention/music/writing to provide you with an income in retirement, as Harlan is, you're going to be pretty pissed. Wouldn't you be unhappy if you found some kid was stealing your pension fund?
As far as I can see, the only ppl saying that information isn't ownable (or "information wants to be free") are either: (a) ppl who produce new concepts but distribute them for higher motives (eg. Salk); (b) ppl who produce new concepts but distribute them free for the kudos involved (eg. much open-source, see ESR's essays); or (c) ppl who don't have the intelligence to product anything innovative themselves. And (c) far outnumbers the rest.
Grab.
Re:Harlan Ellison feels strongly... (Score:2)
Re:Reading the article may have helped you... (Score:3)
But you bought the book and the right to use the information. The book is short-lived, but there's no reason to expect that the right to use the information is linked to the paper.
That's just ridiculous. Why on earth would anyone think the author or publisher was due more money if you read your friend's book after your was ruined? And if you could go and read your friend's book, why couldn't you copy those words for yourself to read later?
What is the author/publisher doing that deserves more money? Are they sending another physical copy?
I interpret the intention of the law to be that the right to the information travels with the physical copy, OR the owner. Either I can install the software on all five of my computers and use it on either of them, OR I can lend the CD to my friends and they can use it as long as they have the CD. Either way, only one person at a time is using it. Ditto with my view of books.
Any restriction of the actual number of copies made is ridiculous. It gets into stupid issues like allowing ONE copy to be temporarily made, in RAM, to allow use/viewing. How about people with L1/L2 cache? Shall we reboot and turn off the cache just to satisfy that law? That sort of crap is ridiculous.
The only rational view of all this is that you buy the right to view the information and you can sell that right. If you do, you must turn over your copies of the work because you don't have the right to sell new rights to view, just to transfer the ones that were sold to you.
If you choose to exercise those rights by MP3ing your music, fine. If you scan and OCR your books, fine.
You may claim that the law doesn't say that, but that's irrelevant. As long as there are lawyers, the law will never definatively say anything. But as long as there are people, the law should reflect their will. The will of the people is that they aren't controlled by ridiculous laws that only help those rich enough to hire lawyers.
As long as a common sense reading of copyright law would allow backup copies and time/space shifting, those continue to be proper uses. You can't let a lawyer tell you what proper behaviour is.
History classes??Re:Artists won't stop making art. (Score:2)
Back in the good old days of plague and suffering, artists either lived off the patronage system, where kings paid to keep the artists in their employ, or the artists died broke and alone and didn't gain fame until after their deaths.
Some artists did a combination of both, like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who did for a time live in patronage, and managed to die alone in an unmarked grave.
Michelangelo managed to avoid patronage as a lifelong method of employment, but he did his share of royalty portraiture, because hey, that's where the money was. This is akin to the 30 second nike ad, or Jordan talking about his Hanes(tm).
Arguably, Michelangelo left us with things we can appreciate hundreds of years later, where Jordan probably has not, but the history is important to learn. Payment methods have only shifted from patronage to a monarchy to patronage to a corporation.
A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
Re:Reading the article may have helped you... (Score:2)
Your use of the CD is governed by copyright law, period. There is no license. It's pretty fucking scary that a non-zero number of people believe works traditionally have been covered by a license -- you have no idea what you're giving up as modern media moves toward licensing programs and pay per use, and away from the rights traditionally conferred by copyright. Licensing information is a significant change in the way that we traditionally trade information, and it's not one that we should take lightly, and it's definately not a step we should take simply because everyone now believes it to be the case, and can't remember any time when it wasn't the case.
We were not always at war with Eurasia.
Re:The Beast that Shouted... (Score:3)
Folks, this guy's been serious about copyright for a lot longer than there's been an Internet. In that essay, he describes his campaign to recover rights to a story after the publisher violates the terms of his contract (they published his story in a paperback with cigarette ad inserts - used to be quite common, in the 50s). Harlan started off as polite as he ever is, and ended up performing various acts of terrorism - read the story for details.
The all-caps thing has to be a fluke. Unless he's temporarily crippled and using some kind of alpha-talker, he knows better.
Re:This illogical argument is insightful? (Score:2)
Re:We're not all "ignorant thieves". (Score:5)
Do I steal music? Yes. Do I do it to get something for nothing? No. Do I do it to screw artists? No. Do I pay for any and all reasonably-priced software, games, music, and literature? You betcha. But I am boycotting the music / literature / entertainment monopolies that are charging me a fortune just to keep their stock prices high. If an artist falls by the wayside then I feel justified in knowing that I did it to offer freedom to 10x more artists in the future.
This is a moral stand, not a financial one.
But what you're doing isn't boycotting. A boycott is when you don't use a product for moral reasons. You are still using their product. You're not taking a real stand, you're trying to take a stand, while making sure you still get what you want. In the Montgomery Bus Boycott, they didn't boycott by trying to get on the buses for free. They avoided the buses. You can't have it both ways. Either your boycotting the music industry for moral reasons (and not using their product at all) or your just avoiding paying for the product because in your opinion it's too expensive.
This illogical argument is insightful? (Score:5)
You do realize you've claimed that by preventing 1 artist from making a living from selling his/her music you have prevented 10x that amount from doing so in the future. So if the goal of you and your cohorts is achieved and the RIAA is driven out of business leading to distributed music becoming free(which is what Napster has propagated) exactly how have you freed the artists?
Let me guess, "They are free to no longer have to worry about album sales, because there aren't any?".
Re:Not too surprising. (Score:2)
I think the original poster was trying to make the point that there is no proof of harm. If somebody was reprinting his books and selling them for profit then he could demonstrate harm (in terms of profits denied to him). However, copying books online for free has the same effect as borrowing a book from a library:
1) Increases the # of people exposed to the writer's work.
2) Increases the chance that the writer's work will be recommended (assuming it's not crap)
3) Increases the chance that the reader of the work will buy a book by that writer (assuming they liked the book).
How has he been harmed by this? Online books are free publicity.
Calling reading the book online "theft" is already making the assumption that the book has been "stolen". However that assumption is debatable, and given the availability of the book from a library, complete irrelevant to the outcome.
Re:We're not all "ignorant thieves". (Score:2)
Whoa (Score:2)
Well, have I got a lot of cans of human&animal shit to sell you. (Some have bought them as art works. Now it's your turn to pay up.)
Or, do you mean that infringing the rights (copyright) granted under the law is theft? Well, the courts disagree. Theft is stealing a tangible good. Infringement is violating rights granted to artists.
Is the public domain theft? Is the fact that Santa Clause, Uncle Sam, and all the rest are in the public domain a theft from the descendents of Thomas Nast? The government, in the guise of the public good, offers limited exclusive rights to artists with the expectation of the works entering the public domain. But, you seem to turn that around into the public domain being a place of thieves and pirates.
I love good writers too. And I will be happy to purchase electronic works from them if the price is reasonable and the file format's allow me, like paper, to read them how and where I want.
Re:Write him, but BE POLITE. Your 2 cents here! (Score:2)
Are you off your rocker? He "doesn't understand"? Of course he understands! If he sells a book where he's going to get royalties, do your think he "doesn't understand that its not theft" if they print and sell a million extra books that they don't give him royalties on? If he sells to a magazine with pay based on their circulation and they just hand his story over to a couple of other magazines without compensating him, do you think he "doesn't understand" that being theft of his work? There is NO DIFFERENCE between that and what we are talking about here. In both cases, he has been paid for a set number of "physical items" and all those are still there after someone produces extra items to sell without compensation.
I'm sorry, but on this issue, it is very clearly you who doesn't understand how and why proffessional writers get paid. He isn't being paid by the magazine to give them a few thousand preprinted inserts - there was no exchange of physical property to begin with. So blabbing about how the "oringinal is still there" is totally meaningless to the way he gets paid.
Now some geek is gonna start talking about how "people don't want that revenue model" and how he will just have to do something different because "he doesn't have a marketable product." Let me give you a free market clue. An unmarketable product is one that people either don't want, or don't want at the price its offered at so they don't get it. It is not a product that you don't want to pay the price, so instead you take it for free.
If you don't like the fact that H.E. expects to recieve some compensation for the distribution of his work, don't read it. Don't read any work that the author wants to be paid for. Enjoy the high caliber of work published "for the joy of it" free on the internet. And if enough people feel the same way, maybe there really will be a "revolution" in the way pubishing is done. But if you decide that you like H.E.s work and want to read it, but don't feel like accepting his terms, you are just a thief, and he understands that very well.
In the /. world, the sexual revolution must have happened because men got tired of having to marry women or pay prostitutes to have sex, so they just started raping any woman they felt like, and since women weren't getting compensation, they started offering "free love" as an alternate model because no one respected the old one. In the real world, some men and some women decided to have "free love" because it was what they individually wanted, and some men and women decided to "hold out" for more, and most importantly, no one legalized rape just because some people "Gave it away for free." And yet somehow, folks here seem to think that stealing people's work by ignoring their clearly stated contract for offering it is going to make them say "oh, well, since people want my work but refuse to pay me and just take it anyway, I might as well lie back and enjoy it and hope they bless me with lecture fees." Thats not the free market, buddy, thats mob rule.
OK, rant over. If I have some money left at the end of the month I'll send a check to the legal fund, because overall I think they are argueing an important point. In the meantime, I better sign up for the National Writers Union and hope I still have some rights to control of my work in 5 years.
Kahuna Burger
Re:This illogical argument is insightful? (Score:2)
Re:Libraries and second hand shops. (Score:3)
It can't be copied, since that creates a new copy. The copyright holder is the only one who has the right to allow that. But what happens to the original copy is not under control of the copyright holder.
That's why libraries, second-hand book stores, literary auction houses, etc aren't violating US Copyright laws. They don't make copies, and they work after the original First Sale.
Harlan is a professional writer. He makes his living off of his writing, the royalties he earns, etc. He has a very vested interest in strong copyright protection, and he is famously vocal in his opinion. He doesn't have a problem with used book stores or libraries -- besides being legal, they are instrumental in exposing new readers to his and other authors works, which benefits him and the industry. What he doesn't like is mass-production of his works in violation of his IP rights.
As I read it, there are two issues he disapproves of:
First, that his work is being copied to Usenet without his permission, and (more importantly) without his getting paid. This is consistant with Harlan's stance on stripped and remaindered books (both of which are books the publishers couldn't sell normally, and which are being sold at steep discounts with no royalties to the author), which he also abhors because he doesn't get paid.
Second, that his work is being posted to Usenet from poor scans without proofreading. This offends his sensibilities as a writer, because he feels his work is misrepresented, making it look bad. This is also consistant with past actions.
Just my thoughts.
Re:Your right to throw a punch... Not Quite (Score:2)
The last sentence of your statement is patently absurd. The first two sentences of your statement are contradictory.
A property is something that can be bought, sold, traded, transferred; that's why we, civilization, created the cash economy. A "work of art" is fundamentally no different that anything else created by any individual. The chair a woodworker crafts in his workshop is no different than a book created by an artist (that one is infinitely reproducable at economies of scale is immaterial). Would you lay the same claim that the chair too belongs to the public? If so, I hope you have a DVD player in your possesion because I sure would like one and would love to exercise my public-ownership claim to it (as a work of art created by the Sony Corp.).
But it doesn't work that way. The "public" - you and I - intrinsically own nothing, and have no claim to lay to anything, that isn't provided to us by the item's creator, no matter how easy it is for you to take it without cost. To do so otherwise is simply called stealing.
The man is an ass... (Score:2)
The man may have a distinct talent for the written word, but he seriously needs to grow up some. And he needs to jettison some of his attitude while he's at it. The ALLCAPS, though it's been mentioned above in this discussion, is just an indicator of his propensity for overreaction.
-Kasreyn
P.S. Harlan, I hand-copy manuscripts of your books for my friends and family. Come get me! =P
Re:We're not all "ignorant thieves". (Score:2)
You got it. I am stealing and I don't feel bad at all. In the past 3 years I've spent well over $20k on video games because I am a collector. But since I don't like to open the shrink-wrap I always download a warez copy off the net.
Is it stealing? Yes. Do I feel bad? No freaking way. I pay the salaries of artists and "people like you" every day, but I'm tired of being taken advantage of. If that means you lose your free lunch because you've aligned yourself with monopolies who are cheating you out of your hard-earned money, then so be it. I don't weep for starving artists, learn to program...
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Re:Maybe not so much true (Score:2)
Uhhh...your figures may be right, but they still don't support your thesis. Just because book authors get fucked less roughly than musicians doesn't make it OK. The publishers are just as bad as the RIAA. Their cartel is just less well-organized.
Re:Not too surprising. (Score:2)
Don't be stupid. If I whack you in the leg with a lead pipe, and you miss two weeks of work, I've just deprived you of income. However, it's neither theft nor fraud, it's assault and battery.
Calling something what it's not is not a cohesive argument.
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Re:We're not all "ignorant thieves". (Score:5)
a distribution monopoly is forcing me to pay unreasonable prices for music
Exactly how did they force you? By playing songs on the radio, and making it known that you could purchase the CD for a price?
Hmmm... if it's possible to force people to buy things just by letting them know that they are for sale... that gives me an idea: HEY YOU!!! I HAVE SOMETHING TO SELL. YOU MUST BUY IT.
OK, while I'm waiting for everybody on Slashdot to send me money, let's see what else we have here:
Do I pay for any and all reasonably-priced software, games, music, and literature? You betcha
OK, so you get to name your own price. Wow! I never knew I could do that. Hey you! Yeah you, Mr. Mercedes dealer. I don't think that fully tricked out 4-door with the leather seats is worth $80,000. I'll give you $10,000 for it. What? That's not enough? Give me the keys. What? You don't want to give me the keys? Say what? SAY WHAT? You're telling me my old Buick is good enough? Who are you to tell me what I should drive? Well, I know how to pick the lock and hot-wire it. I found some cracks that let me disable the electronic ignition protection system and LoJack. Before that, stealing luxury autos was really hard, but thanks to the internet it's easy now, so I guess that makes it right. Hacked the DMV 'puter too. They'll never trace the VIN on this baby. All I gotta do is hop in and drive. Whaddaya say to that?
Re:Reading the article may have helped you... (Score:2)
Grab.
Re:The real assumption is... (Score:2)
Yup. Regrettably, Ellison, just like RIAA, Doesn't Get It.
I'd like to thank him for pointing out that books are now becoming widely-available online, though. I've got some downloading to do. I love my dead-tree editions of the SF classics, but I wish I could search 'em - electronic versions of the texts sounds like a great value-add for me.
My call: Legal or not, it's not wrong to download an electronic version of a dead-tree edition you've already paid for.
Of course, Ellison is objecting to much more than this - people downloading electronic versions of books for which they haven't purchased dead-tree editions. He's got a point -- artists get screwed by publishers in much the same way as musicians get screwed by RIAA.
Re:Not too surprising. (Score:2)
DING DING DING DING! We Have a WINNER! (Score:2)
Truth is, he seems never to have grown up, or grown in any way at all. Engaging Characters, fictional and real, CHANGE OVER TIME. He (and His) never do.
Talented? 20th Century? (Score:2)
Which of his fictional works can you recommend, and where can I steal a copy online?
; )
Re:Reading the article may have helped you... (Score:2)
All these music places are going to subscription rates. This is quite reasonable - if you want to listen to a single song off an album, download it and pay a small fee for it. Or if you want a lot of stuff, pay a flat fee and get all you can eat. When there wasn't an alternative to Napster, maybe it made sense. But now there's alternatives coming up (eMusic, etc), should we continue with it? Will it get community support?
As a matter of interest, back on topic, there is try-b4-you-buy on books. You walk into a bookshop, pick up a book and open it. If the first few lines/pages grab you, you can buy it. If not, you put it back and walk away. The only purpose in downloading the whole story is to avoid paying for it altogether.
Grab.
PS. "Community standards" can be altered by pointing out the effects of ppl's actions. Drink-driving and safe sex are the obvious examples.
Re:I am skeptical. (Score:2)
I'm not positive it would work, but I think it's worth a shot before resorting to increasingly intrusive copyright laws or compelling taxpayers to pay for art they have no interest in or may even find offensive.
Re:Ack! All CAPS (Score:2)
You and he will have to shut down used book stores and music trading joints, as well as public libraries. I don't know, maybe the pirates are wrong, but I know for sure that Ellison is wrong.
Re:We're not all "ignorant thieves". (Score:2)
Or, we're using a hardball negotiating tactic. If we sat around waiting for the record companies to provide downloadable music, we'd be here till the Earth stops rotating. For a change, consumers have some power to make the record companies sit up and take notice, and they have. They're now scrambling to develop electronic music distribution systems. Why is that? Just one word: Napster.
Being "moral" when dealing with the record companies would be like being "polite" when dealing with Saddam Hussein. Doesn't make any sense.
You quoted the wrong sentence (Score:2)
We're not talking about people war3zing Photoshop. Does the context "vicarious infringement against AOL for the development of the Gnutella file transfer protocol by its Nullsoft division" make the discussion any clearer? You may have been a little hasty in snipping it.
Re:general state of society (Score:3)
There was a huge cry when Gutenburg invented moveable type. It put a lot of illuminating biblical scribes out of business. Now, books, music maybe movies and TV shows aren't going to be worth as much as they were in the past.
We'll either make the change, and maybe put some people out of business in the meantime, or we'll become more of a contraband society. Depending on how the laws go, we could end up with a lot of 'law breakers' and the average citizenry cowtowing to the illusion that etheric data is as real as a granite rock.
Only the unions complained about the fact that technology in the past 20 years made some occupations irrevalent. We progressed through that time and are still here! Now huge corporate media are clinging very tightly to the old ways -- and are getting a lot of government support.
Here's an old metaphisical yarn that nails it on the head:
Evil, in other words.blessings,
general state of society (Score:2)
Re:We're not all "ignorant thieves". (Score:2)
I hate to do this but....
Fuck off and DIE. A CD is NOT hard to create if you have one or more actual artists involved, if you don't you have to spend a fortune to get that cheesy manufactured sound that sells so well! If you want to do a classical music album, you require a lot of live-room studio time and the artists for the instruments OR a nice setting and an orchestra, not difficult but potentially costly (unless the orchestra themselves make the recording in which case they can provide the artists and instruments...get where I'm going). If you want to create a pop track you need to pay an engineer to make it sound like you "singers" can actually sing and to master it to sound clean. Actually making a CD (and I don't mean physically pressing one, I mean from deciding to do it to master) is easy, the quality is just directly proportional to the artists involved and their interest in doing it, if they aren't interested you can pay them through the nose to get them to do good work, and thats where the RIAA et al come in.
Video games, though requiring more technical abilities alongside the artistic abilities (wherever you draw the line from code2art), and film are similar, just a lot more expensive (go and buy yourself two hours of film and a camera alone and you'll see why).
Is this the battle of the "pimply teenage twits" Vs the "stupid corporate suits"?
Re:Seems reasonable, but this will have repercussi (Score:4)
"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither indivudals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back." - Life-Line, 1939, Robert A. Heinein.
Now this quote was in reference to insurance companies in the face of technology that allows people to see exactly when they'd die. I don't mean to imply that Heinlein, were he alive today, would support file-sharing like this, but it does give a good insight into the situation even from 60 years ago.
Harlan Ellison feels strongly... (Score:5)
Re:Thought Police (Score:4)
Not quite. Software is implementation of ideas. The source is speech, and could be classified as an idea, in the loosest sense.
> Forbidding someone to create and share whatever software they choose is precisely like forbidding someone to write down their own thoughts on paper and share them.
NO, there IS a difference.
That code just didn't come out of nowhere - someone had to spend time writing it.
If you create something, you have the right to tell people, "please don't distrubite this without compensating me"
Ultimately, it all comes down to ideas and numbers, but until the rest of society gets over the 2-year-old mentality of "THIS IS MINE. YOU CAN'T SHARE UNLESS I SAY" and people learn how to make a living regardless, we're "stuck" respecting other people's distrubition rights (or lack of them.) If you don't like the product, pick one that gives you the freedom to share it.
Re:Who's Harlan Ellison? (Score:2)
Speculative Fiction? Things like the Trojan Horse Project??? Well, that most definitely explains it. I *hate* the genre.
Might as well sue Microsoft and Netscape too (Score:2)
Guess he ought to sue Microsoft and Netscape too. Chances are that these pirate websites that he is also complaining about for posting his work were either viewed with IE or Netscape. They are aiding and abetting the crime just as much as whomoever wrote Gnutella, seeing as both Gnutella and the big two browsers are just methods of viewing content that is posted by third parties, and in both cases the content is in no way related to the people that wrote the "viewer" software, the "viewer" being a browser, or Gnutella.
I'd really like to see how quickly Microsoft would use their gazillions of dollars to shut down this retarded lawsuit and make Ellison their bitch. Somehow I don't think the DMCA would last very long if Gates et al didn't like it.
While you're at it Harlan, why don't you sue the guy that wrote the http protocol too... without that the websites couldn't be viewed either.
What's next, we sue Al Gore because he "invented" the internet??? Or I know, let's sue the crap out of the descendents of Alan Turing or some other notable figure in the history of the invention of the modern computer... without computers after all, those people wouldn't be using Gnutella, would they?
Mechanik
Not too surprising. (Score:4)
Having a searchable text is quite different from having a paper copy of the book. I massively prefer the former for quoting passages and doing research, and similarly prefer the latter for just sitting down and reading a book.
Therefore, I doubt this will effect Ellison's book sales in the slightest. And as he doesn't offer an electronic version of his books, it isn't really competing with anything, but rather providing a service to his fans that wasn't there before.
But it's his property, and he can do with it what he wants. However, until then I'll much prefer the enlightened perspective of authors like Bruce Sterling. I first read "The Hacker Crackdown" from the library, and then I downloaded the electronic version. Later, I bought the paperback. I greatly appreciate it when an author provides a reference like that to his fans; otherwise, I have to go back home and search through my books whenever I want to find a quote, and that's really troublesome.
Similarly, I have seen a lot of Douglas Adams stuff online, but I don't know if he knows about it. However, I hope he approves. (should have asked him when Slashdot had the interview) In the future, I hope more authors embrace, or at least examine, the potentials of the new media before lambasting and taking legal action against their present fan base. Ellison, are you out there? You listening?
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
Re:Harlan Ellison feels strongly... (Score:3)
Though I believe some of his position is justified, I disagree with it He's suing aol because software they developed (gnutella) was used to pirate his works. I know everyone here has heard this a million times, but that's like suing sony for making cd burners. What I would like to see is one of the people who *actually pirated* his work to pay for it. Looks like the guy who actually posted his stories to usenet got off scotch-free. I don't want to hold ISP's liable for their user's actions. I want to hold the actual users liable.
--
Re:Your right to throw a punch... (Score:2)
That sounds pretty good to me. .
Re:Reading the article may have helped you... (Score:2)
Precisely! You've explained it exactly. And when you bought a copy of a copyright work, you didn not pay for the "right to use that information." You've paid for a copy of that information, and you have certain rights to use that information under the notion of fair use. None of those rights include having a friend make you an additional copy for your use, if your copy has become destroyed.
Maybe a lawyerly reading of the law says otherwise, but who does that really serve?
All of us. It is extrodinarily bad to pretend that the law that the law says something other than it says. Once we give society the right to have "implicit" laws -- laws that exist and are enforcable entirely on the whims of the people enforcing them -- then we stop being a nation governed by law, and start being a nation governed by whim.
Of course, that is the case already, and perhaps always has been the case, but like all good libertarians I have a notion of the ideal; I also realize that the ideal itself is not a goal, and we would not be served by achieving the ideal, but we are served by working towards the ideal.
Copyright law is fucked. I know that, you know that, and anyone who's spent any time thinking about it knows that. But the current alternative to to tying information to a physical representation is the notion of "license", and license are way, way, way more fucked than copyright -- if we move to a system where all information is licensed, and none of it falls under fair use, we are totally and completely fucked as a society. We must have a legal and reasonable alternative to copyright, or we will end up with a situation where all your textbooks will have EULA's on them. And ignoring copyright law because it's too lawerly doesn't get us there.
Re:Your right to throw a punch... (Score:2)
Re:'fuck off and die?' (Score:2)
b) to do anything takes time, the amount of time required to produce any piece of work is proportional to the talent creating it. If you want to get a "good" album out of Britney, you need a lot of time
c) again to do anything ultimatley takes money (if only the money needed to not have to do something else). Other than that it depends on the music you are producing but you probably only need a good mic (up to a few thousand dollars), some clean hard disk recording gear and monitors(including PC can be done for about four thousand dollars up) and an acoustically clean environment to record "instruments" (you need a concrete floored room and a few thousand dollars to put in a suspended ceiling and some damped walls). So entry cost is $10-$20k. Not insignificant but hardly massive.
d) talent. This is the crux, it is only if you are talentless that you need any of your other criteria. Many talented artists have produced great works in near no time or money.
Re:The only answer - a lot of you won't like it. (Score:2)
Huh? I don't want to force artists to do anything; if they want to sell in the regular manner, that's fine; but I will strongly oppose their attempts to get the government to pass draconian laws that unreasonably limit what I can do with products I have legally bought. I also don't want to force taxpayers to pay for art that they don't want to, especially if it goes against their political, religious, or moral beliefs.
Are you willing to do programming - which according to some is a form of expression - for micropayments?
Personally all software I've publicly released is BSD-licensed, but there are quite a few shareware authors that do pretty well.
Re:The only answer - a lot of you won't like it. (Score:3)
3. A system where artists can be voluntarily compensated by their fans without any copyright enforcement, such as the Street Performer Protocol [firstmonday.dk].
Re:Reading the article may have helped you... (Score:2)
The other interpretations, which are equally valid until the supreme court rules on them, are that any identical copy of bits is the same. If my CD breaks, I can make a backup after the fact, of yours.
The 'alternative' of licensing everything won't happen without laws like the UCITA. Nobody will agree to a contract to buy a CD, especially a contract that doesn't give them any rights.
And the UCITA violates contract law and is unconstitutional. It may make it in the courts, but if it does, it'll only prove that every judge that upholds it has been bought and paid for. It's against every precedent in existing contract law and it ONLY serves the large companies.
Maybe those will end up being the interpretations of copyright law that win out in the end, but I'm not going to do them a favour and roll over and play dead in anticipation of it. I'm going to assume the law makes sense and follow that.
Re:Reading the article may have helped you... (Score:4)
As for what you might be able to do for backup purposes, or 'fair use', that's an entirely different nest of hornets, and everything I've read about copyright law sounds pretty twisted and contradictory. I'm glad you think it's all black and white, but let me be the first to tell you it isn't. For instance, Fair Use would let me make multiple copies for classroom use, or copies for research, which is really what an electronic copy is good for.
Also, another good question would be what constitutes a "library or archive"; I'd consider The Gutenberg Project to be an archive, but I'm guessing the law probably doesn't. However, they are non-commercial, and it'd be pretty cool if they could have copies of everything stored there for us to read. Except that, guess what, there's an expressed prohibition against distributing it in digital format unless you're on the library premises.
In fact, there are special prohibitions all through the copyright code that relate to what you can't do if something is "digital" or "a computer program" or over "a cable system"; well, isn't that nice of them. Remind me to modulate all my books onto audio tapes next time, so I can distribute them to my friends.
Another entirely different ball of wax is the moral implications of the current system, and even its constitutionality. I'd argue that today it would fail tests based in either of those criteria. But since we're just talking about the vast body of law that is Copyright, spread out amongst so many bills, many of them completely unrelated, I'll skip that.
Buying some books *does* give you a right to a copy of it in an electronic format, and I'm happy when it does. In fact, in some of those cases, even not buying the book gives you that right. That's because either the author, or the publisher, or both, is a kindly soul deserving of sainthood, like Bruce Sterling, or Bruce Eckel, or probably a few other great guys named Bruce. Not Harlan, apparently.
Also, if the book is old enough to be in the public domain, (whatever the fuck date Disney decides *that* is) then yes, you're entitled to a copy of it that way, too. That's because Bram Stoker isn't making that much off of Dracula lately, but I'm sure the movie people are. (the book is much better, guys; buy it anyhow)
Now, I don't quite understand the difference between my friend copying a book, and me copying a book. I suppose that's because it's a *legal* difference, and not an actual difference. Like, if our copies are identical, and my copy gets deleted, and I copy his, then in ACTUALITY, they're exactly the same, but LEGALLY they aren't.
Maybe that's why I went into Computer Science; they aren't about to convince me of bullshit like that, but apparently 535 old white guys were convinced by enough money and power that it's in actuality the law of the land.
However, like I mentioned, legality and actuality are two quite different things. I mean, legally, you'd get arrested for personal copyright infringement. But in actuality, almost no one cares unless someone is losing money. And that's almost impossible to track; it's like trying to track the effectiveness of advertising.
Copyright law itself stops no one from copying things; all it ensures is that no one knows if what they're doing is actually against the law. That's why the current code needs to be rewritten. Maybe if everyone knew what intellectual property was, what rights they had to it, and why, we could come to amicable solutions about these issues. But the truth is, I don't know anyone who could rationally understand how we could have this particular combination of laws in place to "promote the arts and sciences". It makes less than no sense.
Re:How is it different from a...library? (Score:2)
don't get me wrong, i'm not against ebooks. i like them for their grepability. i'm just playing devil's advocate.
Libraries and second hand shops. (Score:2)
Ellison is NOT wrong
Please check your facts before you open your mouth.
Re:Reading the article may have helped you... (Score:3)
At what point did everyone start to believe "as long as I've got one legal copy, I can make as many copies of as many damn times as I want, in any format I want??
Around 1998.
Seriously, for the centuries when copying required a lot of effort, it was reasonable to have laws controlling it. When high-speed net access arrived and copying became easier than typing this sentence, those laws became unreasonable. They're not effectively enforcable and laws so flouted and floutable shouldn't be on the books. As a society, we might think about how to support artists and authors in an age where copying is unlimited. But trying to limit copying is futile.
Who is this guy? (Score:4)
---
Actually, it benefits Harlan Ellison most... (Score:3)
When the profit motive is all you have to motivate art, you get cranks like this guy.
Bryguy
Jesus... (Score:5)
- A.P.
--
* CmdrTaco is an idiot.
Re:The way I see it (Score:2)
The equivalent for music would be if I could easily play, copy, or mess with the music data in any way I want. I could even post it on the net or give it to other people. However if I post it, escpecially for sale, I do risk the wrath of the RIAA, since I have obviously taken their copyrighted work and tried to profit form it. (I also think Napster is guilty of aiding this sort of illegal activity).
The GNU equivalent for what the RIAA really wants is that the government mandates that all compilers have a switch so that attempts to compile GNU code without posting it to the internet as free source would fail. Anybody trying to circumvent this switch would be caught by the thought police and thrown in jail.
That is the difference between the two positions.
Re:Reading the article may have helped you... (Score:2)
Let's compare apples to apples, shall we?
If it were a CD that I left lying on my dashboard in direct sunlight in Arizona in August, and it's a puddle of polycarbonate when I get back to the car, you're damned right I'll ask a friend for a copy of their original, and that I'll have no compunction about doing so.
--
Both sides of the coin (Score:2)
He is fighting against the publishing of copyrighted material on the Internet without any sort of compensation to the author. Many people agree with him and feel every bit as strongly about protecting the rights of artists.
The mistake he and others are making is by lumping the pirates in with the people who merely want multiple ways to view and access creative works they have paid for, all while increasing the profit to the artist himself, and cutting out the bloodsucking middlemen.
It's too bad this distinction isn't made more often.
Seems reasonable, but this will have repercussions (Score:4)
At the same time, this is an interesting side to the argument - and one that it doesn't seem is concidered very often. The recording industry (and I use them because the case is fairly analagous) typically says that it's fighting copyright infringement on behalf of the artists. But book sales and book authors are people we haven't really heard from before, and authors typically don't have as rich a lifestyle as many recording artists do.
Does this make it fair to infringe the copyrights of music artists, but not fair to infringe the copyrights of book authors? Well, no, not really. That's the catch. It looks like this lawsuit of his - if he doesn't run out of money - will have some pretty big repercussions on the online music debate, fair use dialog, and general DMCA discussions as a whole.
Re:Reading the article may have helped you... (Score:2)
You do indeed have natural rights to free speech. In the total absence of law, you can speak freely. It can be dangerous as people also have natural rights to kill one another, but you've got it. You're confusing that people generally let many of their more destructive rights be tightly bound in order to preserve themselves and their remaining rights.
Free speech is not particularly destructive. It is certainly impossible to harm people with speech - libel and slander are the closest we come to that, and even then it's generally agreed upon that it is better to err on the side of free speech, as it has a greater impact than anyone's own repuatation.
Most restrictions on speech concern different harms - the clear and present danger test is what's meant by people invoking the hairy old 'fire/theater' thing. If you say something which will have an immediate AND direct danger to someone, that's not protected. Saying that all Jews should die, is not immediate. If I'm saying it to my cat, it's not even dangerous. Saying that they should all die starting with that one right there, get him, is. Clear and present danger is a hard standard to meet.
The purpose of this though, is not to limit speech. If there IS a fire in a crowded theater, it's your DUTY to yell about it! It is to limit the most extremely dangerous results of speech, and that's such a dangerous thing to comptemplate that we've let in the camel's nose, but we're staunchly against the rest of the damn camel getting into the tent.
Copyright as well, exists in balance with the guarantee that the government will not interfere with freedom of speech. If copyright did not have a built-in pressure valve in the progress clause, it would probably have been overridden entirely by the First Amendment, which came in later. Copyright only grants exclusive rights to authors under the circumstances that Congress sees fit to grant, and even then, those circumstances lose when they face a use that promotes progress more than denying that use does.
Certainly Congress could declare that a statutory exemption exists for peer-to-peer file sharing, but only if both peers are named 'Bob.' It's their call; vague arguments about the natural copyright of authors (hint: there is none) don't apply there.
Moving on to Jefferson, the flame is knowledge. Your knowledge can never be diminished because others have it too. The immediate benefit to you may be less, but one of the best things about free speech is that it can directly help humanity to exercise it. He's advocating that.
For example, I composed a haiku this morning, while I was waiting for the bus. Spring has come early here (Seattle) and the cherry trees around my apartment are blooming. After I finished it, I was rather happy with it. Once I got to work, I immediately sent it on to my friends. Does this mean that because now at least four other people know it that I only can be 1/5th as happy?
No, of course not. This is what Jefferson's talking about. At what point did it become good to decide that the poor have no right to knowledge - that it is better for them to never be able to stand on the shoulders of giants, the way that everyone in civilization has. That it is better for them to forever have to reinvent the wheel just to catch up than to contribute their own insights to society, and thus give _us_ a new, higher point to build upon.
How is it good to deny people knowledge? Offering a reward for creating new knowledge, or discovering something previously unseen is a great idea. To do it on the backs of the people who can benefit from that knowledge, and to make specious arguments for never letting go of that knowledge simply does not do good.
Re:The man is an ass... (Score:4)
Yup, just like all his other fiction books.
Look, the man is an ass, a liar, and has gone batshit at least a half dozen times in front of my eyes. One time, he was in the bar of a hotel, and picked up a stool to swing it at somebody. Two people stopped it, but it was interesting to watch.
He is a near pathological liar, constantly "misremembering" conversations to scold people for things that he "had been promised". And very often, these were people who took copious notes during each conversation, and never once screwed up in the decades I'd known them to be handling convention guests (Sure, sometimes they'd have to give people news about things being cancelled and so on, but out and out *forget* something? No. Not with the frequency that HE accused them.)
I've been snarled at him several times myself - once when I was tuning up for a filk circle in the room it was to take place in. He wandered in AFTER I (and two others) had got there, despite the sign on the door that it was a schedualed event, and told us "music rejects" to stop playing so he could get a moment to talk to the reporter. Tuning up (which is a rather quiet activity) across the room (which had been assigned to us) was a horrible thing? So I pointed out "This is the filk room, a bunch more people will be coming to to play", at which point he launched into "Shut up!... just.. just Shut Up! Do you know who I am? I am trying to do an interview here".
Much more recently (almost exactly a year ago), several friends were yelled at by him for almost the exact same thing - he was conducting an interview right near the elevators in the lobby, and they were discussing if they should eat or go see Stan Lee talk, and he yelled at them to be quiet because he was was doing an interview. I know these people, and they aren't the type to be yelling in the lobby... it was just a conversation. In the lobby, where conversations are rather expected.
The phrase "He went Harlan Ellison on his ass" would be understood by most of Fandom without explaination.
I will not say he can't write, but he is a liar and an ass.
--
Evan
Re:Not too surprising. (Score:2)
You're still arguing on some mystical inherency basis, like when you were wrongly calling unauthorized copying theft. Now you simply assert "it's still wrong." It's true, unlimited public copying of novels reduces the monetary incentive for writers to write. It's also true that giving authors exclusive, permanent, transferable rights to control copying deprives the public of benefit. Does that make copyright "just wrong?" Maybe, maybe not. There's much more to be considered, ethically speaking, than just "it's theft" vs. "big bad companies trying to rip us off."
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Re:Your right to throw a punch... Not Quite (Score:4)
Works of art are unique - at least for the time being - in that they not only can be reproduced forever at very little or no cost, but that they must be reproduced in order to be used.
If you don't believe me, please check to see if these words are leaping off of your screen, walking across your desk, and hopping in your eyeballs. No? No: you are making a copy of them inside your own head just to read them.
And if you want to, you can remember them forever; I can't stop you. I can't exert the kind of control that needs to be exerted in order for something to be considered property. Define property. What conditions must something meet to be property? The best definition I know is that if it is ownable, the owner must be able to use it, control how and if it is used by others, and get rid of it. With words, I can do the first. The last two are not possible, unless you propose that authors lobotomize their readers and themselves at will.
Works belong to the public because that is their natural state of being. When you speak to me, anyone who can hear it has that speech. It's just like fire - that you give some to me does not diminish your own, and I can spread it to others myself. It is not property, because each copy is itself copied as it's used.
And you seem like a shortsighted person who's willing to give up the future for a little cash right now.
Tell me, what happens when some bright fellow invents a perfect nanotech assembler? If we don't all kill each other, it's almost guaranteed to happen. Then I can walk up to your chair, and almost magically cause an identical one to appear. It doesn't diminish your ability to treat the original as property; you've still got it. But now I've got the twin. And anyone else who wants one can have one too.
Given this power that could let anyone in the world have the best foods, and medicines, and clothing and homes that can be divised, your attitude would continue to enforce famine, sickness, nakedness, and homelessness. Because human inventiveness would have outpaced our social structure, and you are unwilling to change that structure.
Go on - tell me that your future would be good. Justify it. There's no fundemental difference. We have copyright NOT because words can be treated as property - which they're not anyway, if you actually examine the law - but as a carrot. The promise of some additional rewards is to encourage the creation of new works. And yet, that would be pointless if it wasn't for the small print that taketh away just as the large print giveth. That those rewards can only be guaranteed for a limited amount of time, and that the purpose is explicitly not to line the pockets of an author, but to promote the progress of the arts.
The arts advance as people can use that which has come before. Newton stood on the shoulders of giants. The artists of the Renissance had to have the Romans and Greeks. The authors of the Lost Generation had to have the authors of the Victorian era. Some small reward can perhaps be justified if the unrestricted work has great effect. Owning it forever stunts the effect irrepairably. That is why we do not do it. The right to speech, and the need for human advancement are infinitely more important than the sin of averice. If a little sin can do a great good, we'll cope. But don't expect that from a big sin.
Re:Ack! All CAPS (Score:3)
This highlights some critical distinctions (Score:4)
... at least for me. I do support increased freedom of information (<-- preaching to the choir here, I know ;-) ), as it increases the rights I think that we all have as users of that information. Fair use is not a concept developed to deprive artists of fair revenue, but rather the fundamental concept of being able to derive reasonable benefit from an economic transaction.
Still, I think that as users of information we do have the responsibility to make sure that fair use doesn't cross the line into outright piracy, for as Mr. Ellison is saying, this hurts the creators of the information. The grey areas I think pop up when middlemen try to appeal to the powers that be for increased protections in the name of the creators, when we all know that very rarely would any increased revenue end up in the hands of said creators (e.g. how many people believe that all of the blank audio media levy goes to the little bands who can't afford a stable of lawyers?)
In an ideal world there would be a simple and reliable method of direct (micro?)payment to a creator (in effect compensating them for a "viral" net-based distribution chain). In the real world, I suspect that the "free rider" problem will be a significant roadblock for some time to come ("free rider" refers to the cost of public works that are supposed to be user-supported from voluntary contributions, not everybody pays like they should).
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org [geekaustin.org]
Aaah. Just like old times... (Score:3)
For those who may not be old enough to have heard the stories of science fiction conventions gone by (let alone witnessed them firsthand), Harlan Ellison, doubtless one of the most talent writers of the 20th Century, is well known for getting, well, worked up about things.
That he has a right to be paid for his unique genius goes without saying. Just try to read the Dark Visions anthology and you will never be the same.
However, I'm not sure that authors should get that worked up about having their works put on the web. I'm not saying it isn't copyright infringement if it's done without the author's permission. But, really, when was the last time you curled up with a laptop?
Gotta have the dead tree edition; otherwise it's not a book. Put it online if you want to. If I read bits of it and I like it or think I can use it, I'll buy the book.
Re:Not too surprising. (Score:4)
Pirated text has the potential to be a serious problem. Unfortunately, Harlan's legendary bluster obscures a clear understanding of what the problem might be exactly and how extensive it in. In particular, he's going to have a hell of a time proving any actual monetary damages, and I think he is almost certainly not going to collect from the service providers.
Thank you. (Score:3)
Glad to see Harlan can't get away with obscuring the truth too far... Gene didn't ever deserve the way Ellison treated him. =/
Of course, I only defend Roddenberry so much because he's my hero. =)
-Kasreyn
Re:Reading the article may have helped you... (Score:3)
I just saw a fascinating news segment about one of those "inventors assistance" companies. The idea behind those companies is that if you, an ordinary person, invent something useful, you then take your invention to the company. The company employs patent lawyers, who will, at your expense, write up and submit a patent application for your idea, and give you a "list" of businesses that you can then try and sell your patent to. The show was amazing. My favorite was a little old lady who come up with a clever and useful invention, spent her life savings on getting it patented, then tried to find a company to license her patent. They all laughed in her face. One of them told her, "If we wanted your idea, we'd just steal it." And they probably would have. She had no means to defend the patent. She would have had to sell her house before the case even got out of discovery. The costs of suing someone for patent infringement START at about $100,000 and go up. The idea of an independent inventor inventing such a car engine, getting a patent, and successfully defending it against the auto industry is simply preposterous. If you had an invention like that, you'd spend the next 20 years of your life and all your money defending it, and then the patent would expire. Ask Philo Farnsworth. He invented television, got a patent, and RCA spent the next 20 years bleeding him dry.
No, patents are corporate tools that require enormous amounts of money to put to use. A patent is useless outside of a courtroom, and unless you have six figures to spend, it's useless inside a courtroom as well.
Let's revisit your hypothetical inventor. Call him Joe Inventor.
Joe would be unable to build and market his engine himself, because there are tens of thousands of patents covering every aspect of automobile engine design. It is simply inconcievable that he could design a complete engine without infringing on some big automaker's patent.
Let's say he designs manufacturers, and starts selling his 100MPG, zero emission engine.
A week later, Ford brings an infringment suit against him, listing 400 Ford engine design patents that he's infringing on.
Either Joe:
1) Stops making engines, in which case his patent is worthless.
2) Enters a "cross-licensing" agreement with Ford where, in exchange for being allowed to use Ford's patents, he allows Ford to use his patent. If he does this, Joe is screwed. Sure, he has the right to use Ford's patents, but he isn't an automobile manufacturer, and even if he did try and start up a company, he'd have to deal with a visit from Chevrolet's patent lawyers.
3) Sells his patent to Ford. In which case, Joe will get a small amount of money, and Ford will make millions and millions of dollars because they do have the resources to effectively enforce patents, and they have the cross-licensing agreements in place that allow them to produce engines without being sued left and right.
The idea that patents help the "little guy" is sheer propaganda. Patents are what keep the "little guys" out of the running.
Your right to throw a punch... (Score:4)
This is true for literal punches, and for metaphorical punches. The punch from artists and organized media to extend copyrights from 28 to >95 years (not to mention the DMCA) is a horrible punch toward the public. Toward the first amendment. A horrible punch which they have no right to throw and to hit.
Artistic works in the public domain benefit the public. Artistic works not in the public domain do not.
Imagine a world like only a centrury ago where copyrights had only been extended to 42 years. Star Trek (ToS) would be barely a decade from leaving copyright.. I Love Lucy would be coming up soon. Mickey Mouse would finally join his peers Santa Clause and Uncle Sam... Rudolph could join the other 8 reindeer in the public domain. (Rudolph was created about 40 years ago)
By assuming that artists have natural rights to artistic works, as compared to rights explicitly granted them under law, you do us a disservice.
Artistic works are never property. The rights granted by law to artists may be sold or transferred. The artistic work is owned by the public from it's inception.
It would be nice if Ellison would... (Score:4)
Thought Police (Score:4)
I think Mr. Ellison is a very smart guy, and I've always had a lot of respect for him. But this is sad and disappointing.
Software is ideas. Harlan Ellison is stepping beyond the issue of copyright infringement and is now arguing that we should restrict people's ability to create and share their own ideas.
Forbidding someone to create and share whatever software they choose, is precisely like forbidding someone to write down their own thoughts on paper and share them. He is attacking the very concept of free speech. As an author, he should be ashamed.
Re:Who's Harlan Ellison? (Score:4)
Re:I wonder what PKD would have said (Score:3)
The really sad part about all of this is the current dialog is pitting the audience against the authors where the real criminals are the middle-men; RIAA, MPAA, and, yes, even some of the technology companies (Napster and MP3.com aren't completely guiltless in all of this).
I think most people are willing to pay for their entertainment, but we don't like feeling like we are being screwed in every transaction (especially when we know the money isn't going to Ellison, Phillip K. Dick's estate, or the muscician's that the RIAA supposedly represents).
The mention of some of the other authors listed in Ellison's rant (Azimov and Heinlein) as well as your mention of PKD reminds me that, until the latest corporate inspired rewrites of the copyright law, many of these work's would be nearing enterence into the public domain. Didn't it used to be life + 20 years, I guess PKD's work would be in the public domain already if not for Disney's rewrite of the laws.
Re:Your right to throw a punch... (Score:3)
You seem to be implying that there actually exist "natural" rights for any thing at all. There is no such thing as "natural" rights. Ellison assuming he has a natural right to control that which he produces is not any worse than someone who assumes they have a natural right to, oh, say, property or life. It's all just social constructs at the bottom. So saying that "artistic works are never property" is meaningless. All you've done is created two separate categories of artificial rights and tried to argue that one is better than another.
Not the first time (Score:3)
--
Maybe not so much true (Score:3)
Let's assume this holds for books too (may or may not). If Harlan Ellison will let me give him 7.5% of the cover price of his stuff at his website, I'd be happy to - he'll get more money that way. I will gladly pay a buck or two direct to the artists for an album - that's more several times more than they get now. But I'm rapidly losing interest in giving a single fucking dime to publishers and recording companies which are trying to eradicate people's fair use rights while paying their artists less than 35c on an $18 CD. If their business model requires that kind of markup, they deserve to die a revenue-hemorraghing death.
Ellison the Screamer (Score:3)
When he screams remember he can produce something like this against motherhood and apple pie -- and I think he did do one against the flag in the 70s.
Reading something into Ellison's writings is like saying Stephen King writing about the government being spooky is any more than Ellison.
Ellison is the proverbial little guy, by that I do mean short, with a chip on his shoulder. His first famous public confrontation was with Asimov at a Worldcon where Asimov suggested he stand on a chair so he could be seen.
This guy is a pro at the polemic of outrage. That said, lets look at the content.
No new content in this on the current issue. Ellison has been raving about this sort of thing since I first met him at a Worldcon in DC in the 70s -- he spoke to me for reasons I attribute to a liquid lunch. There he interrupted a panel discussion by several minor pulp magazine publishers with a speech on how they were delaying and even not paying their writers they published. I also remember a similar diatribe published in the early 80s.
This could be a rehash of that speech with the context updated. It is old material for him. At times I suspect his mother died because the publisher of his writer father didn't pay on time to buy the medicine or some equally formative childhood event.
How is it different from a...library? (Score:3)
Milinar
Re:Ack! All CAPS (Score:3)
The closest I could figure out before I shrugged my shoulders in apathy is that some guy was posting Ellison's short stories to a newsgroup, and when his ISP was notified of the copyright infringements they cut off his account. So now Ellison is suing AOL and the owners of this guy's ISP? AOL wasn't even the poster's ISP as far as I can tell? Ellison seems to be upset about the fact that people were able to read these postings on AOL, as well as for his stuff being traded on Gnutella, and since an AOL subsidiary developed the Gnutella protocol he seems to blame them for that too. Thats as close as I can figure, anyhow.
Too bad Ellison didn't use any of his award-winning writing skills in making his arguement. Seeing this sure doesn't give me any interest in buying his works OR pirating them.
Maybe thats the ploy: Ellison raises a stink about his works being pirated, which then alerts people that they can get his stuff for free, people then download and sample his work, and finally (this is the brilliant part) buy a book so they can read it away from their computer.
And another thing, whats his deal with dragging dead authors like Asimov and Heinlein into this? I don't know what their opinions would have been on this matter, maybe they would have agreed with him, but they definately had a tendency to look at things in an unconventional way, so I think they might have embraced their works being distributed on the web, via the technology that they found so fascinating.
And then theres the whole
"WELL, WHAT IS KICK AN ACRONYM FOR?" WE RESPOND, "IT'S FOR KICK 'EM IN THE ASS!"
Great, thanks Harlan. Hey, how 'bout you look up 'acronym' in your dictionary, or just stop capitalizing the word 'Kick' in your group's name, eh?