Do you consider it to be unethical...

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by Harmon

And we need a law that no protectable copyright period can extend for more than 10 years from the date of registration.

...

Ten years seems too short. That would mean every book, movie, song, etc before year 2000 would be public domain?

[Strolls]

Originally Posted by DJHARKAVY

What about borrowing it from the library, scanning it and reading it on an ebook reader?

a) How does the author lose out, compared to our borrowing it and reading it on paper?
b) How does this differ from downloading it from the darknet?

If you borrow a book from the library, scan it and reading it on an ebook reader, then it's probably fair use, until you return the book to the library. At that point you would ethically (if you had claimed the fair use "right" to create the ebook) destroy the ebook you created.

The author derives income from the sales of books to the library. If more people borrow a particular title then the library has to buy more copies of it, or borrowers have to wait or do without reading it. Scarcity is a property of physical books. To borrow the book from the library, scan it, return the p-book and retain the e-book - that's piracy no different from a straight darknet download.

Borrowing a book from the library and photocopying it in its entirety is clearly copyright infringement. We just never had a problem with that in the past because it's not cost-effective to photocopy entire books.

Here in the UK it's clearly established in law that you may photocopy so many pages - and no more - for personal use. I forget the number, but it's perhaps a dozen pages. We have had court litigation in instances when, for example, a teacher has made 40 photocopies of 2 or 3 pages of a book to hand out to students, and I believe the publisher has prevailed and received damages for that.

If you buy an e-book from Amazon then that is covered under a license or EULA that you agree to at the time of purchase.

If we're talking about darknet downloads or ebooks you've made yourself then you can't go far wrong (ethically, at least, and in the context of current copyright law) by considering the physical copy of the book as your "license to read it". If you give away your physical copy of the book, you give away your right to read your e-book. If you want to download an e-book off the darkent, then buy a pyhsical copy first, for the "license".

The author "losing out" or "not being paid" for secondhand copies and loans of books I've already covered here and here, and no-one has yet disputed the soundness of those economic arguments.

[Strolls]

Originally Posted by carld

This repeated hair-splitting still sounds like mealy-mouthed word games to me.

Which you don't seem able to refute.

Calling other posters "mealy-mouthed" seems to me dangerously close to flinging personal insults.

[guyanonymous]

Originally Posted by Fbone

Ten years seems too short. That would mean every book, movie, song, etc before year 2000 would be public domain?

I'd be good with 10 years...

I'd go so far as to promote 7 years....potential markets are now (electronically) MASSIVE compared to the past, and electronic distribution costs almost nothing...tons of time for distribution/sales...and for people to build on your work and society to expand creatively and intellectually.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

Do you consider it to be unethical to download from the darknet a book which is under copyright but currently out of print in all legitimate forms?

If the copyright owner is no longer interested in being paid for the work, then is obtaining it elsewhere really hurting anybody?

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Fbone

Ten years seems too short. That would mean every book, movie, song, etc before year 2000 would be public domain?

In the majority of cases, if that content hasn't made the owner a profit after 10 years, do you think it likely that it ever will?

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Strolls

If you borrow a book from the library, scan it and reading it on an ebook reader, then it's probably fair use, until you return the book to the library. At that point you would ethically (if you had claimed the fair use "right" to create the ebook) destroy the ebook you created.

I'm not sure about that. Making a copy of something you only have temporary access to is legal for TV shows; why not for books? You can tape shows to watch later, and even to watch them with friends; why not copy books & share them with friends?

(I'm pondering. I don't expect that would hold up in court. But I don't expect it'd be brushed aside as irrelevant, either; the parallels are pretty strong.)

The author derives income from the sales of books to the library. If more people borrow a particular title then the library has to buy more copies of it, or borrowers have to wait or do without reading it.

For registered, state libraries, sure. But I have friends who have private lending libraries of books, and those don't inspire more sales when they're popular.

Scarcity is a property of physical books. To borrow the book from the library, scan it, return the p-book and retain the e-book - that's piracy no different from a straight darknet download.

The difference is that you did the work yourself. It's legal to copy a TV show you like; it's unclear whether it's legal to buy a homemade copy from someone else. Unclear whether they're allowed to run off extra copies & give them out.

Here in the UK it's clearly established in law that you may photocopy so many pages - and no more - for personal use. I forget the number, but it's perhaps a dozen pages.

Can you track down the law for this? I know many institutions--schools, businesses, nonprofits, and so on--have guidelines meant to keep them from being sued, but most guidelines I've seen have been built around "this is the maximum we're sure is safe," not "this is the maximum allowed by law."

If you buy an e-book from Amazon then that is covered under a license or EULA that you agree to at the time of purchase.

Breaking a EULA is not breaking the law; breach of contract is only subject to the penalties within the contract. If you break Amazon's license, Amazon may stop doing business with you, but that doesn't make it copyright infringement.

If you want to download an e-book off the darkent, then buy a pyhsical copy first, for the "license".

There is something nonsensical about this approach.

I have dozens of boxes of paperbacks. (Mostly sitting in storage lockers; house doesn't have room.) I could, theoretically, chop, scan & convert them all to ebooks. And then what? I'm morally, maybe legally, obligated to keep a collection of thousands of damaged books to prove I've got a right to my ebooks? And if I decide they're taking too much space, I can burn them or shred them, but not give them away?

There's something horrifically wasteful about this approach, about insisting that all these powerful digitizing tools can't be used to *increase* access to knowledge; it has to stay a zero-sum game based on the amount of paper that's been paid for.

I'm aware that "just send out 4000 copies of the ebook" is *also* a bad idea. But we need to find some middle ground, some way of letting Person A legitimately share their digital books with Person B, the way they can their physical books. We need real digital libraries, not publisher-restricted ones; publishers don't get a choice about which of their books show up in physical libraries. We need communities, not corporations, to decide what content is worth sharing with whom.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

In the majority of cases, if that content hasn't made the owner a profit after 10 years, do you think it likely that it ever will?

Not likely, no. The issue is with the things that *are* profitable after 10 years, like the first book in a popular series that's just being made into a movie.

I'm happy with 20-30 years of initial coverage, and an option to extend--for a fee. If they're going to keep that material away from the public, let them pay for the right to do so. The copyright office should be self-supporting; the fact that it's not is part of how broken copyright law is.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Not likely, no. The issue is with the things that *are* profitable after 10 years, like the first book in a popular series that's just being made into a movie.

I don't think laws should normally be concerned with the rare exceptions, but rather the majority. The idea of copyright should be that it gives the average work enough time to make a profit for the artist in order to encourage the creation of art. Getting into special extensions just to cover the occasional material that does become popular after a significant length of time doesn't benefit the public, but rather only serves to increase the profit of the creator, which isn't what copyright is really supposed to be about.

The "extension for a fee" is not a bad idea.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

I'm not sure about that. Making a copy of something you only have temporary access to is legal for TV shows; why not for books? You can tape shows to watch later, and even to watch them with friends; why not copy books & share them with friends?

Isn't that the definition of time-shifting?

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Not likely, no. The issue is with the things that *are* profitable after 10 years, like the first book in a popular series that's just being made into a movie.

I was thinking the same way. Also, to allow the copyright holders to benefit from the next generation of fans. Star Trek as an example comes to mind.

Some material can take a long time to create or produce. There is always a lag between copyright and release shortening the time further. Will quality decrease because there is less time to profit? I can envision multiple movies released based on an 11yo book by different studios simultaneously. No need to purchase film rights.

Also, need to allow time for new media formats. "Director's Cut" and "Anniversary Edition"

And it's possible media companies will increase prices to compensate for shortened protection.

[Strolls]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

If the copyright owner is no longer interested in being paid for the work, then is obtaining it elsewhere really hurting anybody?

Thanks for your insightful comment. If you'd like to contribute further to the discussion, could you possibly address this post and this one, please?

[Strolls]

Originally Posted by Fbone

Some material can take a long time to create or produce. There is always a lag between copyright and release shortening the time further. Will quality decrease because there is less time to profit? I can envision multiple movies released based on an 11yo book by different studios simultaneously. No need to purchase film rights.

Multiple points here, I'm not going to quote them individually.

• Make the copyright from release date.
• I would expect quality to improve. Special effects and established directors are expensive. Put a limit on the budget of individual movies and then the cheap thing is ethusiastic and innovative young directors. A good writer doesn't tend to improve his work by spending longer on it - sur he does a first draft and an edit, but he doesn't spend a decade at revision.
• IMO - with reference to movie rights of an 11yo book - we should treat private use separately from commercial use.
• It's pretty academic to talk about a 10 year copyright period, anyway. Realistically, we're not gonna slash copyright to 10 years and appease artists by saying "we'll increase it again if we need to". That seems like a slppery slope. We can only succeed by stating the the aim of copyright reduction, and then reducing it step by step, by 10 or 20 years at a time.

Originally Posted by Fbone

Also, need to allow time for new media formats. "Director's Cut" and "Anniversary Edition"

I would expect the newly released material to be covered under a new copyright period.

Originally Posted by Fbone

And it's possible media companies will increase prices to compensate for shortened protection.

Well, that's quite acceptable. Since we get liberal access to it after 10 years, the cost averages out.

[Cyclops]

You know one way to get round this whole grey area? If a book is OOP but still copyrighted and you want toread it on your Reader then they should say, Ok you can download it and read it and after such and such a time it expires.
If I felt guilty about a book I'd d'loaded that was hard to find I would delete after reading anyway!

[Strolls]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Can you track down the law for this? I know many institutions--schools, businesses, nonprofits, and so on--have guidelines meant to keep them from being sued, but most guidelines I've seen have been built around "this is the maximum we're sure is safe," not "this is the maximum allowed by law."

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

One part that leaps out at me is that teachers can reproduce "1% of the work per three-month period". So I'm guessing of the average text book, that's a couple of pages, twice per semester. And presumably under this rule they can make as many copies of those 2 pages and hand them to every pupil in the class.

The other is that librarians may not make "more than one copy of the article or more than one article contained in the same issue of a periodical". (link) That link also has provisions that the librarian isn't supposed to photocopy the same article for your mate, if he asks for the it immediately after you leave (or, I think, another article from the same magazine; but they're allowed to make a copy for someone else, on a different "occasion"; i.e the next day or the next week). The "reasonable proportion of a literary, artistic or musical work" (mentioned on the wikipedia page) would probably be determined to be not more than a typical chapter.

Of course all libraries have self-service coin-operated photocopiers, and have done for years. These rules - or some guidelines based on them - are taped to the top of the copier's lid.

But the point is that limitations upon fair use copying of printed matter is fairly well-established here.

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

There is something nonsensical about this approach.

I have dozens of boxes of paperbacks. (Mostly sitting in storage lockers; house doesn't have room.) I could, theoretically, chop, scan & convert them all to ebooks. And then what? I'm morally, maybe legally, obligated to keep a collection of thousands of damaged books to prove I've got a right to my ebooks? And if I decide they're taking too much space, I can burn them or shred them, but not give them away?

Well, under current copyright law, I don't see how you can prove that your digitised collection is actually fair use (format shifting, like ripping your CDs to MP3) without retaining the physical copy.

Apple ship iTunes with the ability to convert your CDs in to MP3s. I don't think you could be successfully prosecuted today for doing the equivalent thing with your books.

If you give the physical copy away and keep the digital copy then you have allowed two people to retain copies of a book that was sold for one person to read at a time. The precedent established by paper books (doctrine of first sale &c &c) is that you're allowed to transfer the book to someone else, but by doing so you deprive yourself of the copy.

Analogy: You're allowed to create MP3s of your CDs with iTunes, but you can get into trouble if you share those MP3s on the internet.

You should remember that I've prefixed a number of my own comments by saying that I don't agree with the way copyright is currently managed, but I believe I'm giving a sound interpretation of the current law / practice. So there's no point in taking issue with those of my comments and saying "that's totally crazy, mate" - I agree with you!

We're making do with legislation which was enacted for obsolete technologies, we're bolting stuff on to try and make sense of that (or make "analogies" of those old technologies in an attempt to apply them to the current ones) and also our legislators are bought and sold by the Disney Corporation. Honestly and personally, I don't expect any of this to make sense until the Roman Empire has fallen again, and we start writing our rules again from scratch.

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

There's something horrifically wasteful about this approach, about insisting that all these powerful digitizing tools can't be used to *increase* access to knowledge; it has to stay a zero-sum game based on the amount of paper that's been paid for.

I totally agree with you, mate. I very much believe that the digital revolution allows us to share the gifts of knowledge and art with the world's poor at barely any cost.

I certainly think the first step would be differing sets of criteria for commercial and non-commercial infringement. But Hollywood ain't going to go for that, and it's them what pay the politicians.