Authors Guild takes on Piracy/Copyright Law and eBook Royalties

[AnemicOak]

A couple of Authors Guild news items that may be of interest to some folks...


Fearing Piracy, Authors Guild Pushes Change to Copyright Law

Citing a major uptick in Internet piracy, the Authors Guild has urged Congress to require that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) monitor and filter their networks for pirated works. Among the proposed changes to copyright law suggested in a letter addressed to the House Judiciary Committee, Guild officials want to replace the current "Notice and Takedown" regime authorized by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) with a "Notice and Stay Down" provision.

Under the Guild’s proposal, ISP’s who do not take "reasonable measures" to keep "all infringing copies” from their networks would lose their "safe harbor" immunity from claims of infringement.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/b...right-law.html
https://www.authorsguild.org/industr...and-stay-down/



Authors Guild Slams 'Inadequate' E-book Royalty

The Authors Guild released its first “detailed analysis” in its Fair Contract Initiative, an outreach effort aimed at improving the standard contract for authors. The piece, released to the Guild's membership Thursday morning, examines what the organization calls “inadequate e-book royalties” and argues that the digital royalty favors publishers far too heavily.

As part of its analysis, the Guild said that it hopes “established authors and, particularly, bestselling authors" will begin to "push back" on the reigning e-book royalty rate of 25%. The Guild is hoping this small, but powerful, group can take a stand "on behalf of all authors, as well as themselves.”

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/b...k-royalty.html
https://www.authorsguild.org/industr...e-for-e-books/

[Fat Abe]

Doubtful that this form of filtering could be achieved without ISP's snooping on all incoming data streams of their customers. Also, remember that once the data is encrypted with https, the ISP's would have to get involved in code cracking. In a word, this whole idea is overreaching. I believe that authors have a right to copyright protection, but they should pay for their own sites and use robots to index the rest of the internet. Why should the ISP have to make such an investment?

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by Fat Abe

Doubtful that this form of filtering could be achieved without ISP's snooping on all incoming data streams of their customers. Also, remember that once the data is encrypted with https, the ISP's would have to get involved in code cracking. In a word, this whole idea is overreaching. I believe that authors have a right to copyright protection, but they should pay for their own sites and use robots to index the rest of the internet. Why should the ISP have to make such an investment?

It's also unworkable:
http://the-digital-reader.com/2015/0...own-provision/

And oh yeah, it's just SOPA under another name:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...staydown.shtml

[Barcey]

Originally Posted by Fat Abe

Doubtful that this form of filtering could be achieved without ISP's snooping on all incoming data streams of their customers. Also, remember that once the data is encrypted with https, the ISP's would have to get involved in code cracking. In a word, this whole idea is overreaching. I believe that authors have a right to copyright protection, but they should pay for their own sites and use robots to index the rest of the internet. Why should the ISP have to make such an investment?

That will be next, "https must be made illegal because it makes it too difficult to catch pirates, after all if you're not doing anything wrong you have nothing to hide".

If any regulations are required for ISP's it should be in the opposite direction to make sure they have controls in place to make sure nobody is tapping into those choke points without court orders.

[DiapDealer]

I'm for anything that gives rights-holders an easy way to report possible copyright infringement, and anything that helps speed up the investigations of said infringement. I'm against anything that allows those same rights-holders (or their appointed agents) to pressure ANYONE but the proper copyright authorities to "take down" content.

The fact that keeping up with piracy "is hard" has no bearing whatsoever on rights-holders' attempts to punt the investigative and the policing duties of potential infringement to parties who have no business performing such duties (regardless of how technologically equipped they may be to do so).

Copyright holders' rights should not trump due process simply because due process is time-consuming and difficult.

It's like requiring citizens who witnessed a potential crime to make an immediate citizen's arrest, or face legal consequences themselves if they don't.

EDIT: as for the ebook royalty portion of the announcement??... good on 'em. Nice to see the Guild fall out of lockstep with Big Publishing for a change.

[pwalker8]

So, they want the ISP's to press the magic "no pirated ebooks/music/movies/whatever" button? Methinks that the Author's guild wants to have their cake and eat it too.

The basic issue is that since there isn't a copyrights database, it's very hard to determine who is the legitimate copyright holder. They should create a copyrights database and if you aren't listed as the copyrights holder in the database, then you 1) can have any work that you post taken down (ideally, ebook stores would use this to determine who is allowed to put works up for sale) and 2) you can't issue take down notices.

The flip side is if you are listed as the copyright holder, then the work is automatically taken down, no questions asked.

If a work isn't listed in the copyright database, then it's not under copyright. This would solve a whole lot of problems. Database to be paid for with a small fee for the life of the copyright on each copyrighted material.

Obviously this wouldn't solve all problems, but it would provide enough of a framework that the rest of the problems are solvable.

As far as the standard rate thing, isn't this an illegal conspiracy? (yes, the illegal is redundant since a conspiracy is by definition an group of people coming together to do something illegal) Unless the Author's Guild is actually a union which is exempt from many anti-trust laws in the US.

[crane3]

If the authors truly want copyright "protection", then they should also require that the book titles be under copyright laws also. If a book is copyrighted, then it should include the book title since the title is part of the book.

[auspex]

Originally Posted by crane3

If the authors truly want copyright "protection", then they should also require that the book titles be under copyright laws also. If a book is copyrighted, then it should include the book title since the title is part of the book.

That really makes no sense (and is never going to happen). Book titles are, in fact, under copyright law. The part of the law that says you can't generally copyright a single word or phrase...

[pendragginp]

Right. Totally unworkable for titles.

[dgatwood]

Originally Posted by Barcey

That will be next, "https must be made illegal because it makes it too difficult to catch pirates, after all if you're not doing anything wrong you have nothing to hide".

If they tried that, you'd see a record surge in credit card fraud, because you can typically make minor tweaks to a cable modem's configuration and sniff all the traffic for the entire neighborhood. Without HTTPS, those numbers would be sent in the clear.

[murg]

How would you differentiate between a 'stayeddown' illegal copy of an ebook and the legitimate one being sold on a website, such as Google Play.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by Fat Abe

Doubtful that this form of filtering could be achieved without ISP's snooping on all incoming data streams of their customers.

ISP's? I think we are talking about public internet file hosting sites, not ISP's.

Whenever they do a takedown, they should obtain a hash* for the book. As a programmer, this doesn't seem onerous to me. It might take a lot of processing for large movie files, but, as a reader -- not my concern

Then, whenever uploading something that fits in the size range of a book, software would check the database of taken down hashes and make sure it didn't match. If you consider that snooping, well, I'm pretty sure they are already doing it, for all uploads, to see if it is on the child pornography hash list. So there's no new snoop.

Are there ways the pirate uploader can get around this? Yes, I can think of several. However, complicating piracy means fewer copies available for download at any one time, and less piracy. No law enforcement action stops all crime, but this would help.

As for people who are storing their own copies, I would think that, except for a small number of book collectors with thousands of saved titles, they can easily fit in free private cloud storage, like Windows OneDrive. That is, unless I am wrong, outside the normal scope of takedown notices.

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Copyright holders' rights should not trump due process simply because due process is time-consuming and difficult.

This seems to me an objection to the current takedown system. I don't see how taking down the same book again raises a new issue.
_____________________
* A character string that can uniquely identify the contents of a file while being far shorter than the original.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

This seems to me an objection to the current takedown system.

It is indeed.

I firmly believe that takedowns should only occur at the request of the verified rights holder (after whatever vetting process is necessary to prove one is indeed the rights-holder--or acting on their behalf). That, and I oppose any and all automated/robo takedowns and/or stream interruptions based on on alleged (yet entirely unsubstantiated) infringement claims. And anything that requires non-authoritative parties to act as enforcers for uncorroborated copyright disputes is bogus as well

Shutting things down on--let's face it--hearsay, if we're being totally honest, and sorting it out later (if at all) is completely unacceptable.

Their new "requests" are overstepping bounds that were already overstepped long ago.

[crane3]

Originally Posted by auspex

That really makes no sense (and is never going to happen). Book titles are, in fact, under copyright law. The part of the law that says you can't generally copyright a single word or phrase...

It does look to me like the copyright office is just as corrupt as the patent office. The patent office allows patents of items without any workable items, including apple's patent for the work "retina" when used with computers (guess a computerized retina scan violates apple's patent). The use of a plagiarized book title is OK along with the authors' encouragement.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by crane3

It does look to me like the copyright office is just as corrupt as the patent office.

I may misunderstand your point.

With hundreds of thousands of new English language books published every year, and tens of millions already published, I don't expect them all to have titles never used before. Such a rule would force almost all novel titles to be long, since the short ones are taken. Repeat titles with a different author name are not considered plagiarism as the word is normally defined.

Your posts on this board are copyrighted in the US. No need for registration -- in the US, copyright is automatic. But neither I, nor the owner of Mobileread, violated your US copyright, because I made fair use.

Without being able to make extensive quotation, as I and others frequently do on this board, our speech would be muzzled. That's why I am a strong supporter fair use under US copyright law, and similar legal doctrines in many other countries.