The Virtue of High Priced Books

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by leebase

You linked to one article that makes HUGE cause/effect leaps, ignores HUGE relevant "likely causal facts". It's an opinion piece that you agree with. It's not proof of anything.



Who posited that? Offering up a red herring are we?



You are foisting off a red herring -- the notion that those arguing for the value of copyright are therefore arguing in favor of all aspects of copyright from the past unto today.

Not so. As you have correctly pointed out, the origins of the British copyright model were not about economics but about censorship and government control of ideas. Lumping those notions in with copyright as it was instituted in America and how it's used today is spurious to begin with.

Also, your historical facts support what today's copyright supports claim. Without copyright there is vast plagarism. That was true even back then and would be orders of magnitude more relevant today.

Yes, with copyright prices are higher. That's the VIRTUE of copyright, not a problem with copyright. The virtue of copyright allows there to be income from more than just direct labor. Beethoven could make money from teaching piano, of course. But with copyright, he could make money from creating a symphony -- and not just from his own performance of said symphony.

Today we have BOTH copyright AND the free exchange of ideas. Anyone who wants to put their work into the public domain can do so. Thanks to copyright, those who wish to control their creations and be paid for them can do so as well.Your one link to a paper that tries to put all the differences between Germany and Britain on copyright is full of holes. Self evidently flawed.

Lee

That's not true any more. Technology has rendered the ability to control a creation into a very limited thing. You can only control obvious commercial exploitation of copyright, where there is enough money to be worth fighting over, but at the individual, non-commercial level, all control is lost.

Sorry, those are the facts. This does not preclude people buying copyrighted material, but buying has become a choice, not a necessity.

[leebase]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

That's not true any more. Technology has rendered the ability to control a creation into a very limited thing. You can only control obvious commercial exploitation of copyright, where there is enough money to be worth fighting over, but at the individual, non-commercial level, all control is lost.

Sorry, those are the facts. This does not preclude people buying copyrighted material, but buying has become a choice, not a necessity.

It's still WRONG and there are plenty of folks who choose to be ethical. They don't steal, not because they fear getting caught, but because they have a personal sense of ethics.

Getting around DRM is still something outside the skills of a lot of people. But you're right that personal piracy of music is rampant. Still, American Idol can't get away with not paying royalties to the artists who's songs are used. And individuals have been sued by the music industry.

Lee

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Leyor

Quality IS actually a very subjective thing. A very finely edited book about the dictomy of pimples, is that quality? A sobbing romance novel, is that quality?
It's a challenge that faced many libraries, do they invest in books with good narratives and of a high standard, content wise or should they invest most heavily in the books the public wanted, even if it was in their eyes trashy litterature such as Duke Nuk'em the Book.

What? No, quality is not only a subjective thing. Spelling mistakes in a book makes it have less quality and especially bad quality with respect to correct spelling. This is totally objective.

A finely edited book probably have high quality with respect to the book and how the text is presented.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by leebase

It's still WRONG and there are plenty of folks who choose to be ethical. They don't steal, not because they fear getting caught, but because they have a personal sense of ethics.

Getting around DRM is still something outside the skills of a lot of people. But you're right that personal piracy of music is rampant. Still, American Idol can't get away with not paying royalties to the artists who's songs are used. And individuals have been sued by the music industry.

Lee

Once again, you seem to miss the point. I am not talking about the ethics. I'm talking about the bald-faced reality. The ethics of High Chivalry got blown away by the Gunpowder Revolution, it didn't come back. Same thing is happening to Copyright. It's being blown away by digital technologies. If you want it to come back (over the long term), you'll have to ban all digital technologies. (That's how the Japanese responded to the Gunpowder revolution, by shutting out the outside world and all the technologies that threatened the status quo.)

If you want to believe that obscurity = security, be my guest. It's a joke in actual security design circles.

Now as I pointed out, commercial exploitation is still affected by copyright, as there is enough value at stake for litigation. The random user has been successfully sued, the legal costs for the suit vastly outweighed the about that could be seized. 100,000 such "victories" would, by itself, bankrupt the music industry.

[spellbanisher]

Originally Posted by leebase

Communism doesn't work because folks stop working when there is nothing to gain from their labors.


Lee

Considering that most developed countries are as much socialist as capitalist, I think your point is kind of weak. Communism failed not because people stopped working; Communism failed because the government became a monopoly over the means of production, meaning no competition, and ultimately, economic stagnation.

Soviet Communism was akin to a corporate monopoly, only instead of shareholders you have the party, instead of a CEO you have the head of the party or the dictator, instead of controlling one industry the regime controls all industries, and unlike a regular monopoly, which has a more powerful government to answer to, a communist regime has nothing higher to answer to.

[leebase]

Originally Posted by spellbanisher

Considering that most developed countries are as much socialist as capitalist

How is "most developed countries are socialist" make anything I say about COMMUNISM weak?

And in the modern developed countries -- what segments of societies are creating the new products and innovations? Is it the parts that are "socialized" are the parts that remain free and capitalist?

Lee

[spellbanisher]

Originally Posted by leebase

How is "most developed countries are socialist" make anything I say about COMMUNISM weak?

And in the modern developed countries -- what segments of societies are creating the new products and innovations? Is it the parts that are "socialized" are the parts that remain free and capitalist?

Lee

We'll, your understanding of communism seems to be that it was a society where people were not compensated or paid. The problem was not a lack of productivity; there was plenty of productivity. The problem was inefficient use of resources and misallocations. Nineteenth century workers were very productive; they helped build the modern world (industrial revolution), yet most of them made below subsistence wages.

Almost all the basic research done for what makes up the modern world, biotechnology, computers, the internet, gps, radar, satelite, was provided by government funded institutions. Additionally, those most responsible for the innovations and products of the modern world are not the best compensated. Most scientists make a pittance. The average engineer makes about 70,000 dollars a year, and even the best paid engineers and programmers only make 2-300,000 a year. Good money, but not nearly close to what a professional athlete makes, or a hedge fund manager, or a wall street executive. Of course people want to be compensated for their work, but there is no a strong correlation between creative activity and compensation. In other words, people don't become scientists and engineers to get rich.

Back to the OP, I see no problem with high priced books. I do think there needs to be a balance between access and ownership. Culture is shared; it is not owned, contrary to the dogma of copyright warriors. No one originates anything in himself, and those on the side of access understand that. Our current copyright laws have become so skewed against access in favor of ownership that the debate has become trench warfare, two sides divided into those that believe in access, and those that believe in ownership. Neither side is wrong per se, but both are extreme.

We do have some balance between access and ownership, but I don't know if we have the right balance. After two or three years libraries can usually make copyrighted books available for a limited time in limited quantities; I think this is a fair trade off, and it is a reason why it is vital to continue to support libraries. There is also limits on the duration of copyrights, but currently those limits are too long and too uniform.

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by spellbanisher

Considering that most developed countries are as much socialist as capitalist, I think your point is kind of weak. Communism failed not because people stopped working; Communism failed because the government became a monopoly over the means of production, meaning no competition, and ultimately, economic stagnation.

Soviet Communism was akin to a corporate monopoly, only instead of shareholders you have the party, instead of a CEO you have the head of the party or the dictator, instead of controlling one industry the regime controls all industries, and unlike a regular monopoly, which has a more powerful government to answer to, a communist regime has nothing higher to answer to.

This book tells of soil erosion as if not the sole cause of all civilization's declines, at least a primary factor in such.


http://www.amazon.com/Dirt-Civilizations-David-R-Montgomery/dp/0520258061/

Poor planning(non-organic planning) Along with massive amounts of death doled out to the communistic ideal at the expense of the united states taxpayer probably had something to do with the soviet unions collapse.

No system ever really fails, they are either working as intended or need to be worked on to attain such a state.

[crich70]

Actually the classics became that because enough people enjoyed them that the publishers(who wanted to make $$) kept them in print. Those books that didn't make much money went out of print. And in the past a lot of writers would publish their books in parts in the newspaper before they actually were printed up as a whole book. Charles Dickens was one such writer. And Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories were 1st printed in the Strand Magazine before they were collected into books. Many classics have become part of the language as well. If we tell someone that so and so is a real Scrooge for example or that someone we know is a real Sherlock Holmes most people know what the person means without being told.

Originally Posted by Mrgauth

I believe most of the "classics" are that simply because there were so few decent books available up until the last 100 years. Prior to that few had A book, well enough lots of books. I truly believe if many of those so-called classics were released today for the first time they would amount to nothing. But that's just me as I find most of the classics to be drivel.


As for prices of books, I could care less what they want to price them. I simply know what I will pay and if it is more than that, forgettaboutit. My biggest disappointment is the fact that ebooks are not much, and in some cases not at all, cheaper than physical paper books. That I just don't get.

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by tompe

What? No, quality is not only a subjective thing. Spelling mistakes in a book makes it have less quality and especially bad quality with respect to correct spelling. This is totally objective.

A finely edited book probably have high quality with respect to the book and how the text is presented.

Writing is an art and a science, and like all sciences there are technical details that are clearly defined. How many misspellings a book contains or how many grammatical errors occur are certainly measurable technical errors.

However, the fact that technical errors can and do exist does not invalid the statement that book quality is subjective. As an example, a poorly edited, grammatically incorrect sci-fi novel possesses infinitely more "quality" to me than the best-edited KKK manual in the world.

I am not all hot and bothered about the grammatically incorrect books on Smashwords. If the author is truly unskilled, the technical errors will occur early enough in the book that very little of my time is wasted and I can move on to greener pastures. I'm more concerned about the quality of the book content - and in that regard, I do not think the publishers are effective gatekeepers because they are too busy trying to push out the next big thing than to make or suggest meaningful edits. (Not that this strategy doesn't work for them, but that's another post entirely.)

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

I am not all hot and bothered about the grammatically incorrect books on Smashwords. If the author is truly unskilled, the technical errors will occur early enough in the book that very little of my time is wasted and I can move on to greener pastures. I'm more concerned about the quality of the book content - and in that regard, I do not think the publishers are effective gatekeepers because they are too busy trying to push out the next big thing than to make or suggest meaningful edits. (Not that this strategy doesn't work for them, but that's another post entirely.)

Us and Them. Nope, everyone is a publisher and hopefully lots will be gatekeepers. We can discuss the quality of a particular book all day long, but it is likely the case that the creator thinks their creation is of the highest quality. What to do? We could do nothing, always an option. Or we could just become each other's gatekeepers as we already do, other things too I suppose.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

The ethics of High Chivalry got blown away by the Gunpowder Revolution, it didn't come back. Same thing is happening to Copyright. It's being blown away by digital technologies.
...
Now as I pointed out, commercial exploitation is still affected by copyright, as there is enough value at stake for litigation. The random user has been successfully sued, the legal costs for the suit vastly outweighed the about that could be seized. 100,000 such "victories" would, by itself, bankrupt the music industry.

Copyright isn't being blown away, exactly, but if it's going to be effective, it needs to be reshaped. It needs to deal with unauthorized commercial exploitation (which was always the intent, but 50 years ago, people didn't have the ability to copy a movie in their homes), and on free distribution that has a commercial impact, and give up on trying to stop "copies."

Copying is now a matter of daily business & social life; there's no legal difference between your computer's automatic copying of a web page and your deliberately copying a friend's ebook. The web page presumably gave permission by existing--but what if it revokes that? Existence on the web doesn't give you the right to copy it; what if they've got an unencrypted page with company documents, that the only give the URL to select people, and prosecute for copyright infringement anyone else who visits it? What if a company decided to make its money this way: post some sensitive documents online, track the IP addresses of any unauthorized person who visits the site, get a warrant & prosecute for copyright infringement?

And yeah, that's a rather silly example--that fits perfectly with copyright law as it currently stands. (Google "Righthaven.") The law has allowed companies whose sole purpose is to prosecute copyright infringement--without proof that the infringement is causing any harm to anyone.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by leebase

I guess they could just choose to starve. Methinks a job that exists is superior to one that doesn't exist.
Lee

Keep drinking the kitten blood.

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Copyright isn't being blown away, exactly, but if it's going to be effective, it needs to be reshaped. It needs to deal with unauthorized commercial exploitation (which was always the intent, but 50 years ago, people didn't have the ability to copy a movie in their homes), and on free distribution that has a commercial impact, and give up on trying to stop "copies."

In a very short time, most of the world's population will carry devices capable of easily copying all forms of digital content, there will be no need to head to your local bootlegger to obtain content. There will be no commercial market for content...