[darryl]

Intellectual property laws generally are long overdue for review. So far as copyright is concerned, academic publishing, particularly of articles in journals, is a disgrace that does significant public harm for the benefit of a corporate group.

Traditional publishing is offering authors worse terms than ever. I had an interesting discussion in an airport lounge some time ago with a fellow eink user. She shared my views on traditional publishers gouging of Australians for decades. However, she had an interesting philosophy on piracy. She was using a Paperwhite and had an Amazon Australia account. She paid for self published fiction from Amazon and Amazon imprints. Anything from the large publishers, no matter the price, she pirated, viewing it as compensation for decades of being ripped-off. When I asked her how she felt about the authors getting nothing from her pirated books, she had two rationalisations. One was that most of the authors would get nothing anyway as likely very few of them would have repaid their advances, and most of these would probably never do so. She also said whilst she would prefer the author to get something, it was their own fault for going with traditional publishing, which in itself she said indicated a lack of respect for their prospective readers. We had quite an interesting discussion about authors accepting "donations" on their websites. I had not heard of Patreon at that stage, but it would probably lend itself to this purpose. I asked her about possibly borrowing from libraries. She knew little about this since Australian libraries offer only epub, which she thought was a disgraceful situation. I should add that whilst I don't condone her philosophy I do understand it.

I also don't buy Big 5 ebooks. I also very rarely buy any ebook over $6.99. Any books in these categories which I really want to read I borrow from a library. Only one of the Big 5 authors who I once read regularly has survived, and he is now a library borrow rather than a purchase. I have a new set of favourite authors, all Indie or hybrid, and many of their books are available on Kindle Unlimited.

Where I am really tempted to download pirate copies is where books are simply not available either as ebooks or at all. A lot of older science fiction in particular seems to have no official ebooks available but very many unofficial versions, of what quality I can't say. However, the fact that most seem to be pdf's is in itself a persuasive deterrent.

Whilst current copyright law seeks to equate copyright with tangible property at law, the two should not in my view be treated the same way. Copyright is an artificial creation, a statutory monopoly in theory now justified only by the incentive it provides for the enrichment of our culture. As I said above, in many cases I think in its present form it in fact does public harm. However, such a right should not go without responsibility. I think a creator should have the right not to publish at all initially. However, once published, the work has become, if you like, part of our cultural gestalt. I don't think there is any rationale for allowing an author the right to withdraw a work from availability once they have taken advantage of the statutory monopoly.

I don't have all the answers to what a sane copyright system should look like. One idea which seems to me to be compelling is to allow a copyright to exist for the life of the author, or perhaps even a little longer. Such copyright would be personal to the author, and not property capable of being completely disposed of. However, the life of the copyright would then consist of two phases. During the first period, lasting for say 5 years, or some other reasonable but relatively short period, the author would have the right to grant exclusive licenses to the content for a period not exceeding the time remaining in that first phase of the copyright. During the second phase of the copyright a statutory royalty system would operate. Anyone could publish under that statutory licence on paying a hopefully very high royalty to the author. Amazon's current royalty rates are probably a good guide. The author may or may not be given the right to accept a reduced royalty from a particular publisher or publishers, but could not grant exclusivity.

This idea is not without its problems, but it does likely solve several, including the rights grab by Publishers, the exploitation of authors generally and of course orphan and unavailable works.