Quote:
Originally Posted by Phogg
The position has always been that piracy isn't piracy when the big publishing houses do it.
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Cites, please. If your statement is true, it should be easy to find multiple examples where any of the big five or, formerly, six said that it was OK if they did it, but not OK when other biography publishers do it.
Here is another case you could read up on:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/copyrigh...811_F2d_90.htm
Actually, the position of big publishing houses on this issue with biographies is exactly the same as small publishers, except that small and non-profit publishers don't have the money to pay for quotations or fight in court.
One example consists of the several small and university press biographies of Irving Berlin, none of which I have read because they are, according to reviewers, weakened by inability to quote from Berlin's songs:
http://www.pitt.edu/~atteberr/jazz/a.../BERGREEN.html
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/08/05/bo...er-979590.html
Quote:
Originally Posted by barryem
There isn't really enough information in that article to know what to think about this.
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By itself, yes.
If you read a lot of biographies, you would know that attempts to control what we read, concerning public figures, mars our reading experience.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Quite. Clearly the publisher has no moral qualms about making money from the biography of Dr Goebbels.
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Harry, I usually agree with you, but not here.
A way to think about this:
In other threads here, I've seen the big publishers attacked on grounds they only buy book proposals and manuscripts that they think will be blockbusters. Here we can see how untrue that it. They are putting resources into a trouble-making book, by an acclaimed non-best-selling author. that has little sales potential.
Contrast with this non-profit decision not to publish:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/easte...2014/04/russia