What are your views on illegal copying?

[GhostHawk]

First off, get the book industry to cut out the waste. Quit making us pay for books that are never read. That alone would half the price of most books. Tell me that if you could find your favorite author for half of what your paying now you wouldn't be interested. How many more hardcovers would they sell if the price was half of what it is now? 2 times, 3 times, or more? Same for paperbacks. Publishers could actually make much MORE money than they are now. Simply by cutting out the waste.

Second, how long is the average book on the "front" list? 2 - 4 months? 5 years after that is it even in print? Why does it need to be protected for 70 years or the life of an author?

Author is going to make his money off it before it hits the shelves with an advance.
Granted he may get a royalty check if the book sells big enough.
Why should the publisher be protected for that length of time?

Cut copyright back to 10 years. If the author dies give his heirs the same time he had left.

Publishers have 10 years to make their profit off any given book. Most patents run for less time than that. For those books who truly make it to blockbuster status. Let their be an "extension" that publishers can file for. And pay a hefty fee for, that would double the time before it goes public domain. So the Harry Potter books would be tied up for 20 years instead of 10. More than enough time for 95% of all "new" sales.

With the waste cut out, and publishers not needing to "protect" the sales of paper books.
Ebook prices should plummet dramatically. With a limited time frame to work with publishers would work hard at getting the backlist books out as ebooks.

With the lower cost of both pbooks and ebooks who's going to bother to pirate?
You'd drive the pirates right out of business.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by GhostHawk

F
Cut copyright back to 10 years. If the author dies give his heirs the same time he had left.

Publishers have 10 years to make their profit off any given book. Most patents run for less time than that.

Patents last 14 to 20 years.

I've got no problem with a 30-year copyright length. That's long enough to make a profit on the initial book run, wait a couple of years to decide if it's still interesting, get a movie produced (that's often several years), wait to see if it wins any awards, a year for it to come out on DVD and so on, another few years to see if it's worth picking up as a tv series.

I've got no problem letting the initial author get a cut of all that, instead of just the studios. That's a long enough copyright run to encourage the author to write more, and distribute it widely--instead of keeping it to himself, where he wouldn't make as much profit, but also wouldn't see it used in ways he doesn't like.

The purpose of copyright is to encourage distribution to promote progress. Not to allow profit. Length of copyright has to be enough to inspire that sharing--and for many authors & artists, 10 years wouldn't be enough.

What I'd *really* like to see is paid extensions: 15 years copyright for free, +15 more for a $500 registration fee (which you'll do if you think you have any chance of exploiting it in the future), +15 more for a $5000 reg fee (only corporations would bother, for the most part, but an instant classic might get re-registered), and +15 more for $25,000. Every 15 additional years: another $25k. Disney can keep the mouse under lockdown by paying the government--and by extension, the public--for the right to keep the public away from what's supposed to be ours.

[zerospinboson]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Patents last 14 to 20 years.

What I'd *really* like to see is paid extensions: 15 years copyright for free, +15 more for a $500 registration fee (which you'll do if you think you have any chance of exploiting it in the future), +15 more for a $5000 reg fee (only corporations would bother, for the most part, but an instant classic might get re-registered), and +15 more for $25,000. Every 15 additional years: another $25k. Disney can keep the mouse under lockdown by paying the government--and by extension, the public--for the right to keep the public away from what's supposed to be ours.

$25k for the classics Disney lifted from the PD, and LotR? Why? :|
More like 25k per week for every week after the first 15 years. 1600$ per year is a joke, for the stuff your children will be required to watch while growing up.

[llreader]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Patents last 14 to 20 years.

I've got no problem with a 30-year copyright length. That's long enough to make a profit on the initial book run, wait a couple of years to decide if it's still interesting, get a movie produced (that's often several years), wait to see if it wins any awards, a year for it to come out on DVD and so on, another few years to see if it's worth picking up as a tv series.

Interesting proposal, but I imagine the studios would mine the 30-year-old stuff for all it's worth, and then have a copyright for 30 years on the movie with no obligations to the author. Sort of like what Disney did with Snow White and Cinderella. Although I am sure a lot of newer authors would get deals as well, probably most movies would continue to be written by scriptwriters, updating 30-year-old stories with robots and global warming and whatnot.

The 30-year-limit sounds like an idea that the movie studios would do well with - a huge backlog of stories to choose from, no royalties, and 30 years to exploit a movie. But I imagine they wouldn't consider it a good deal, because the price they pay for film rights is probably nothing compared to the "long tail" of endless copyrights (sorry, talking to myself here).

[GhostHawk]

Totally agree elfwreck on the paid extensions.

If they want to keep something out of public domain let them pay through the nose for it.
I think I'd add a couple of zero's to your figures though.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by llreader

Interesting proposal, but I imagine the studios would mine the 30-year-old stuff for all it's worth, and then have a copyright for 30 years on the movie with no obligations to the author.

Then they miss the opportunity to exploit new trends. Wait 30 years for Harry Potter movies? Not a chance; some movie company will pay for the right to make them now. However, we'd see a lot of small, indie movie production houses waiting for copyright to expire, and we'd get more movies made based on books from two generations ago, rather than just blockbuster movies based on bestsellers from the last 18 months.

But I imagine they wouldn't consider it a good deal, because the price they pay for film rights is probably nothing compared to the "long tail" of endless copyrights (sorry, talking to myself here).

Of course they wouldn't. They want copyright to last forever. They don't want the public--which includes their competitors--to have the right to make new works based on the old ones, or to freely share the ones that already exist.

What they consider a good deal is irrelevant; the purpose of copyright isn't "to allow creators & investors to make as much money as possible off a given work."

[Ben Thornton]

I'm not sure that I like the idea of paid copyright extensions. The whole point is that the works return to society. Selling extensions just means that the rich get richer while society is denied its heritage - excepting the leavings from the copyright-holders table.

I'd be happy with the greater of 50 years or life + 20.

[Patricia]

Originally Posted by llreader

Interesting proposal, but I imagine the studios would mine the 30-year-old stuff for all it's worth, and then have a copyright for 30 years on the movie with no obligations to the author. Sort of like what Disney did with Snow White and Cinderella. Although I am sure a lot of newer authors would get deals as well, probably most movies would continue to be written by scriptwriters, updating 30-year-old stories with robots and global warming and whatnot.

The 30-year-limit sounds like an idea that the movie studios would do well with - a huge backlog of stories to choose from, no royalties, and 30 years to exploit a movie. But I imagine they wouldn't consider it a good deal, because the price they pay for film rights is probably nothing compared to the "long tail" of endless copyrights (sorry, talking to myself here).

You may have a point. Look how long it was for Lord of the Rings to get filmed. And the Narnia books.

[MrBlueSky]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Of course they wouldn't. They want copyright to last forever. They don't want the public--which includes their competitors--to have the right to make new works based on the old ones, or to freely share the ones that already exist.

What they consider a good deal is irrelevant; the purpose of copyright isn't "to allow creators & investors to make as much money as possible off a given work."

Thats partly true.

More prescient however, is that a more robust public domain would compete with newly published material. If the 1930's, 1940's and 1950's books were already in the public domain — todays authors would not get much of a look in. For example, nobody writes better country-house mysteries than Agatha Christie, nobody writes comedy of manners better than P. G. Wodehouse, and nobody writes crime like Dashiell Hammett.

Its no accident that the most famous, most read and (arguably) best loved fictional detective is the Public Domain's own Sherlock Holmes. And from the public domain, countless move adaptations, TV series and book pastiches have kept 'The Cannon' in print ever since its first publication.

Other genres have their own equivalents.

The monopoly cartels extend the length of existing copyright simply because they can't compete with the public domain. They have no interest in publishing decade old books (with a few notable exceptions), they have no interest in exploiting their old catalogues — but under no circumstances can they allow free access to them either.

Their 'business model' is that of a dog in a manger. I don't want it but you cant have it.

[brainycat]

I may have missed this in the discussion, but I would add a couple of options to the poll:
It is ok to copy a digital book for personal backup/archiving
It is ok to transcode digital books for compatibility with my device(s)

If doing either of the above means cracking DRM, that's not a problem from either a technological or moral viewpoint.

[fugazied]

Originally Posted by zerospinboson

$25k for the classics Disney lifted from the PD, and LotR? Why? :|
More like 25k per week for every week after the first 15 years. 1600$ per year is a joke, for the stuff your children will be required to watch while growing up.

Yep it would have to be a % of profits for it to have any meaning. When Disney 'borrows' a public domain story and then slaps patents/trademarks over their glossy cartoon version they should pay for the right. Because once they have those cartoony characters they always manage to get 80 year copyright extensions on them and make a LOT of cash off them.

[Robert Minneman]

I read this poll mainly from the perspective of personally having invested thousands and thousands of dollars on hard copy books and now that I have an eReader (Sony PRS-505), I'd love to have all those stories available to me on my preferred media.

I've already paid for the book, why should I have to invest more money to get the book in the new format?

Yeah sure, it was 'great gravey' early on for the music industry, transitioning from LP to 8-track to casset then to CD. Sure the music industry was only to happy making us pay, over and over and over to own a copy of an albulm in all those various formats to keep up with technology. What happened when they realized that with the transition to CD's and the CD format transitioning to a cheap and common computer device? Why they tried to get the laws changed in such a piss poor and generic manner that made just about any use of any digital media by a home user illegal. Some companies (specifically Sony Music comes to mind) went so far as to insert malware trojas on their music CD's that were supposed to prevent "unauthorized copying" of the music, but instead caused major functionality issues for thousands of people.

I'm sorry folks the genie is out of the bottle, and while I'm certainly concerned that the actual creator of a work may not get his just deserts, I have no such worries over the publishing industry. They've worked themselves into this whole, let them dig themselves out.

There are those of us who will use this 'power' responsibly:

Creating/obtaining "digital backups" of originals we have purchased so that those works can be made available to us on the most modern media. We've paid our monies to the author and the publisher already, after that point anything we do for our own private/personal use of said is our business.

If I purchase the collected works of Heinlein, photo copy the pages and wallpaper the inside of my house with them, that's my business, and perfectly legal (if not bad decorating).

That said, I'm sure very soon there will be periods of time, like with the music industry where I will wish for a means of paying my money directly to the musician instead of to the general industry. Having learned of the moral abuses the music industry has practiced over the years with their artists, well, I shed no tears for music execs, let me tell you.

Then there are those of us who would be irresponsible and abuse this new power:

Making it point to create and obtain copies of works that they have not paid for nor have any intention of ever paying for.

That sort of copying is wrong.

Only a few of the choices on this poll reflected that, and it's reassuring to see that those that believe that sort of copying is ok are actually a very small minority.

[Harmon]

Jerry Pournelle is a well known science fiction writer (among many other things - an amazing man) who posted an interesting article at his blog about three years ago on the issue of pirating &c. Basically, it involved a site called scrbd,com, the Electric Frontier Foundation, and the Science Fiction Writers of America.

Apparently, the scrbd site had all kinds of unauthorized ebook files on its site, so that it was, in effect, a pirate (I say "in effect" because their actual knowledge and culpability is not at all clear to me, but the practical result seems indistinguishable from piracy.) The SFWA tried to get these files taken down, and perversely, the EFF thwarted them. Meanwhile, there's some kind of side issue involving Cory Doctorow that I have not parsed out yet.

Pournelle sets up the situation thusly, then goes deeper into the facts:

If one reads those versions and nothing else, the case is very clear. SFWA in a bumbling attempt to bully a legitimate web site threatened use of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and was properly smacked down by the Electronic Frontier Foundation to the cheers of all those who are hip to the ways of Web 2.0.

His article is at It is well worth reading in its entirety, but the part that is relevant to this thread begins at "DRM SUCKs":

Another bit of deadwood is the argument that since DMCA is deeply flawed - downright evil in places - badly in need of amendment - that somehow gives everyone the right to ignore the legitimate rights of authors.

I don't think you know anyone more critical of DMCA than I am, and I've been pretty loud in my denunciations of the excessive extensions of copyright life embodied in that ill-conceived act; nor has anyone been more vocal in denouncing some of the criminal provisions of DMCA. We can all agree that DMCA has to be rewritten.

When Congress rewrote copyright law to put the US in conformity with the Berne Convention on Copyright, the result was the Copyright Act of 1975. SFWA was heavily involved in that work. Then President Fred Pohl, and other SFWA officials including me, testified to Congress and worked with Congressional Staff. So did the Authors' Guild and other writers associations. The result was a pretty good law.

The Copyright Act of 1975 changed the nature of copyright: prior to that, copyright extended for 28 years, renewable in the 28th year for an additional 28 years. Many authors, including me, were satisfied with those terms; but that had to change.

The change was forced by the Berne Convention. If the United States was going to join the rest of the world, we had no choice: copyright has to be for the life of the author plus fifty years, copyright must be automatic and hard to lose, and there must be no requirement for renewal. These provisions are hard wired into the Berne Convention and are not negotiable. They originated with Victor Hugo, whose influence and persuasiveness were decisive when the Berne Convention was drafted. He insisted on all three of those provisions. It would be nearly impossible to change them now.

The Berne Convention, alas, gives member states the right to increase the term of copyright, but never to shorten it. Congress, influenced by corporate lobbyists serving Disney and other such companies, has extended the term of copyright to what many call obscene lengths. Now what Congress has done, Congress can undo; and those who really hate lengthy copyright terms can and should work to have them cut back to life plus fifty years. They won't find any major opposition from authors' associations. The last time SFWA debated the issue, there were a few who were happy enough with the present terms - one children's book author says she likes the notion of her great grandchildren being supported by her works - but the general consensus was that life plus fifty years is either fair or more than fair, and certainly enough. I doubt SFWA would actually join an effort to shorten copyright terms, but I am absolutely certain it would not actively oppose the change.

There are plenty of other changes needed in DMCA, and SFWA - provided that it has not been entirely emasculated by the current imbroglio - will probably be working to get them. But whether or not DMCA is changed, the fact that part of DMCA sucks isn't and shouldn't be thought a moral excuse to rip off the rights of authors. Of course you knew that. As Samuel Johnson observed, we seldom need educating but we often need reminding.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Harmon

Jerry Pournelle is a well known science fiction writer (among many other things - an amazing man) who posted an interesting article at his blog about three years ago on the issue of pirating &c. Basically, it involved a site called scrbd,com, the Electric Frontier Foundation, and the Science Fiction Writers of America.

Apparently, the scrbd site had all kinds of unauthorized ebook files on its site, so that it was, in effect, a pirate (I say "in effect" because their actual knowledge and culpability is not at all clear to me, but the practical result seems indistinguishable from piracy.) The SFWA tried to get these files taken down, and perversely, the EFF thwarted them. Meanwhile, there's some kind of side issue involving Cory Doctorow that I have not parsed out yet.

Scribd is the youtube of text. It has some of everything--legit ebooks, legal documents (pdfs of rulings of court cases), bootleg ebooks, random articles by bloggers (legitimately posted or not), and so on.

The SFWA, acting on behalf of a few of its members, served Scribd a DMCA takedown notice demanding it remove all content it claimed to be infringing on copyrights--over 1500 links. Scribd did so. However, the SFWA didn't have permission from many of the copyright owners to request removal of that content--including Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, which is legally available pretty much everywhere online that has ebooks.

Several authors were disturbed to get notices that said, "this content has been removed from Scribd at the request of they copyright owner." Since they'd put the content on Scribd themselves, this was news to them. Boingboing had much to say about it. The SFWA has their own writeup
of what happened.

Accusations flew; apparently, SFWA had come up with a list based on keyword searches without bothering to check the specific contents at each link. Potential lawsuits for false DMCA reports bounced around, to which the SFWA reacted by saying basically, "oh, that wasn't a DMCA takedown notice" ('cos if it was, they were guilty of a serious felony by claiming to represent people they didn't), "it was just a polite please-remove-this request." To which Scribd said, umm, we don't remove stuff just because someone asks us.

AFAIK, no lawsuits were filed, but the SFWA's rep still hasn't recovered; part of the fallout was the then-current VP saying, "I'm also opposed to the increasing presence in our organization of webscabs, who post their creations on the net for free."

A scab is someone who works for less than union wages or on non-union terms; more broadly, a scab is someone who feathers his own nest and advances his own career by undercutting the efforts of his fellow workers to gain better pay and working conditions for all. Webscabs claim they're just posting their books for free in an attempt to market and publicize them, but to my mind they're undercutting those of us who aren't giving it away for free and are trying to get publishers to pay a better wage for our hard work.

Since more and more of SFWA is built around such electronically mediated networking and connection based venues, and more and more of our membership at least tacitly blesses the webscabs (despite the fact that they are rotting our organization from within) -- given my happily retrograde opinions, I felt I was not the president who would provide SFWAns the "net time" they seemed to want at this point in the organization's development, or who would bless the contraction of our industry toward monopoly, or who would give imprimatur to the downward spiral that is converting the noble calling of Writer into the life of Pixel-stained Technopeasant Wretch.

(April 23 has become Pixel-stained Technopeasant Wretch day.)

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by GhostHawk

Totally agree elfwreck on the paid extensions.

If they want to keep something out of public domain let them pay through the nose for it.
I think I'd add a couple of zero's to your figures though.

I'd tie fees into how restricted the usage was.

i.e. "All rights reserved" = cost $$$, "Compulsory liscence" (i.e. you pay, you can use) = cheaper, "Free for non-commercial use" = cheaper, etc.