What are your views on illegal copying?

[Patricia]

Ah, but suppose I put my life's savings into buying a house then renting it to tenants. It will generate an income when I'm dead. And my heirs have a right to the property and its income.
Alternative, if I put the savings into an income-generating account then my heirs are entitled to the cash and the interest.
An author could claim that a copyright represented something like the savings account or the house, perhaps?

[Pardoz]

Originally Posted by Patricia

An author could claim that a copyright represented something like the savings account or the house, perhaps?

Yup. That's pretty much the justification for the current Life+X years implementation of copyright instead of the original publication+[a much shorter number of] years model.

[JoeD]

Originally Posted by Patricia

Ah, but suppose I put my life's savings into buying a house then renting it to tenants. It will generate an income when I'm dead. And my heirs have a right to the property and its income.
Alternative, if I put the savings into an income-generating account then my heirs are entitled to the cash and the interest.
An author could claim that a copyright represented something like the savings account or the house, perhaps?

Isn't it enough for the author to pass down the money they've made from the book. Everyone else in any other job passes down the money their earned from the job or things they bought with it (minus inheritence tax).

The only exception I would make to that would be for Authors that die within a very short period of time after releasing. In which case it would be fair for their dependants to receive money from the work for a certain duration as you would expect them to receive part of the money had the author lived to see out the copyright duration.

To take an example, if copyright is life+70 then really it should be 70 years OR life+70 whichever is the shorter of the two. The 70 years should be dropped significantly too, 20 years would be much more appropriate (although actual figure is open for debate) after all, don't authors make their income on a book during the first few months of sales

I make a living off of creative works that are covered by trademarks and IP and despite that I still believe life+70 is too long. If I've made money from a specific work for the past 20-30 years, why should I get another X years and then a further 70 years money making passed down via inheritence? If I've failed to make money from the work during the 20 years since release, that's my problem and I'll need to come up with a new work to generate further income.

[kwjones]

Originally Posted by JoeD

If I've failed to make money from the work during the 20 years since release, that's my problem and I'll need to come up with a new work to generate further income.

Sometimes the contribution and signifigance of an artist's work isn't fully appreciated until after they're dead.

[zerospinboson]

Originally Posted by Jellby

But you get paid for the value of your work at once. An author (or other creative professionals) doesn't get paid for his/her work when it's done, but the payment is somewhat deferred and dependent on its quality (or success). If the author gets some some advance, then the problem is transferred to the publisher...

To quote Boldrin and Levine's Against Intellectual Monopoly (p. 141) once again:

Indeed, for books, we do find that up-front profits are typically the most important. Eric Flint reports that the “standard experience is that 80% of a book’s sales happens in the first three months.”13 In the same page he also provides, among other things, the following data for his own novel cowritten with David Drake, Oblique Approach:

• Royalty period Sales
• July–December 1998 30,431
• Janurary–June 1999 5,546
• July–December 1999 835
• January–June 2000 795

Our own data on a much broader base of fiction novels shows a decrease in sales over the initial four months of roughly a factor of six.14 The book industry, at least for paperback novels, is an industry in which the cost of creation is relatively small. Flint reports that the “average paperback sells, traditionally, about 15,000 copies” which, with a royalty of $2 per copy, would work out to about $30,000, also consistent with our broader database.

[JoeD]

Originally Posted by kwjones

Sometimes the contribution and signifigance of an artist's work isn't fully appreciated until after they're dead.

True, but by that time the author and family have had the opportunity to make money from the work. After that time the rewards are living on through your work rather than monetary. We recognise the works of Shakespeare and famous composers now (and have for some time), that shouldn't stop them falling into the public domain prior to that recognition though regardless of whether the author made money from the work or not.

Any contribution or significance will still be beneficial to the general public after the work has fallen out of copyright and may be even more beneficial.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by Pardoz

Your belief is incorrect, as it certainly read to me like you meant the owner of the book, given the context - the law is pretty clear that acquiring something for your own use without the consent of the copyright holder is perfectly legal after the point of first sale, after all. Regardless, my apologies for misreading your intent.

If we're going to owner of the copyright, authors get kicked to the curb again, as the owner of the copyright would be me. And you, and everybody else (except possibly Kenny), since the whole legal basis of copyright is that the owner (that would be us, society as a whole as represented by our agent the state) grants an individual (the author) a license to exploit something that belongs to us (the written work) for a limited time.

Sorry if this seems nitpicky, but a big part of the problem with copyright discussions is that a lot of terms have been pretty thoroughly Humptied (deliberately, in my opinion, in a cynical - and successful - attempt to muddy the waters).

(I like that term, "Humptied.")

You have an excellent point. One of the problems with this kind of discussion is exactly what you allude to: people assume that the creator owns something besides the specific physical object he has created. That's where the concept of Intellectual Property comes in.

But in point of fact, it's the other way around: the creator owns no such thing. Rather, he is granted, from society, a right to exploit not only the specific physical object, but anything derived from it, with limitations of time & fair use.

Unfortunately, the creators, particularly the corporate ones (or the corporate middlemen) are trying to change that limited right into an unlimited and exclusive one, hence "IP." They are leveraging off of DRM law to do this - the law doesn't directly give them the rights, but it gives them practical control of them.

"some will rob you with a six-gun
some with a fountain pen"
- Woody Guthrie

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by Ben Thornton

It's an interesting reason to pay for such content to encourage the current copyright holders to publish more of their back catalogue. I'm a bit skeptical about the extent to which that works, but if it did work, it strikes me as a good reason.

But if you think about it, that's precisely the rationale for copyright in the first place. We give the creator (and his estate) certain economic rights in the hope that they will be exploited in a manner that encourages the creator to create and publish.

The whole point is economic incentive, not moral right.

I agree with your skepticism, but the reason is that in any particular instance, people have different views about what the best economic procedure will be - and also, because people get bound up in emotional situations that override economics.

So the estate of John Cheever prevents the publication of certain of his short stories they don't think are up to snuff. Why? Well, maybe because if there's "bad Cheever" out there, it diminishes the value of "good Cheever," and overall, lessens the economic take. Or maybe because the estate thinks that John would have burned the bad Cheever if he had a chance.

Personally, given that the bad Cheever has already been published, I don't think that the estate has any moral right to prevent republication, whatever the merit of the stories, and as far as I'm concerned, if the stories get on the darknet, it's perfectly okay to grab them. But the relevant court disagrees with me. There's a pbook, but not an ebook about this - Uncollecting Cheever by Ann Miller, one of the participants in litigation over the right to republish the stories involved.

Anyway, it appears to be a case where the economic incentive didn't work - exactly as you skepticized. (gotta get that book read...)

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by Patricia

Ah, but suppose I put my life's savings into buying a house then renting it to tenants. It will generate an income when I'm dead. And my heirs have a right to the property and its income.
Alternative, if I put the savings into an income-generating account then my heirs are entitled to the cash and the interest.
An author could claim that a copyright represented something like the savings account or the house, perhaps?

It's more analogous to what is called a "life estate." A life estate is a right to the use or enjoyment of property, but is not full ownership.

For instance, you could own a house that you inherited from your father, but your father gave your elderly mother the right to live there for twenty-five years, or till she dies, and if any of the 25 years were left over when she died, her second husband could stay out the term. (Your father was an understanding man.)

Your mother could not get a debt equity loan on the house, or sell it to anyone. You could do both of those things (but whoever bought the house couldn't turn your mother out.) You would also be liable for the property taxes, and your mother wouldn't.

An author is like your mother. She does not own the "house." Copyright gives her the right to occupy the house for a certain period of time, and if she dies, her second husband can inherit that right if the time period hasn't expired.

You (i.e., society) actually own the house. Eventually it falls into your hands and you sell it to a condo developer for big bucks...

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by libri-libre

So if my library has eBooks for loan but they are only in ePub format (and with DRM) that my Kindle cannot read, is it OK for me to strip the DRM, convert the book to Kindle-readable, read it on my Kindle and then delete it when I'm done?

Kinda just as I'd do if I had a Nook or Sony reader (albeit more work).

I personally do not feel bad about doing this.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by libri-libre

So if my library has eBooks for loan but they are only in ePub format (and with DRM) that my Kindle cannot read, is it OK for me to strip the DRM, convert the book to Kindle-readable, read it on my Kindle and then delete it when I'm done?

Kinda just as I'd do if I had a Nook or Sony reader (albeit more work).

I'd say yeah. But you might wind up losing your library card if someone found out about it...

[ficbot]

The other thing with the house is, it is not a free and clear right to your heirs. For example, if they fail to pay the taxes on the house, they could lose it. Or if the osue requires vital repairs which they don't make, they could encounter legal difficulties (for example, in my region, anyway, the landlord is required to make sure the property complies with certain safety standards, and if any expenditures are required to make sure it meets the standard, they must pay for it). Also, I have heard stories about the government deciding to build a highway or something that goes through a private property---they do have to offer market value for it, but if you refuse to sell, there are certain circumstances where they can take it from you anyway even if you own it, if it serves the greater good. So the house analogy doesn't really work for me.

[sherya mathur]

Hi to all
According to myself illegal copying is a thieving and also like a hacking process of the any type of data.Without authorizing if anybody are downloading,accessing,reading or writing,crashing ,these all are harmful for owner.So any unauthorized person takes any type of action about the owner data is illegal.

[llreader]

Originally Posted by Ben Thornton

I was surprised at the level of support for the income of dead people. Two thirds didn't check this as a fair reason to take a copy. Perhaps we should make up some bumper stickers that say "Illegal copying of dead authors' works is a grave crime".

Very witty, sir!

I didn't check this because, for me, it depends on the lifetime of the author to some extent. I could support "50 years or life of the author, whichever is longer", but take, for example, Jack Kerouac, who died very young. I think his estate deserves the proceeds of his work (he didn't have kids that I know of, but he could have). I don't think the children of authors deserve the right to enjoy the proceeds from their parent's works in perpetuity, but the family deserves to get a reasonable amount of royalties, more or less equivalent to what a longer-lived author could have earned and used to raise them / leave a modest inheritance. (As a matter of general compassion, I would think that orphans would have more needs than children of long-lived authors, but that is kind of a fiddly way to look at making laws).

So no, I don't support blanket cessation of copyright upon the death of the author, not in the least because the Literary Mafia would be out there snuffing good writers to get all their books for free. Innocent bystanders could be harmed.

[dcalder]

Personally, I think life plus 30 years would be quite fair. 30 years is enough time for any children to grow up, get an education, and be able to support themselves. It's also more than enough time for a surviving spouse to get his/her act together and find his/her own source of income if need be. Existing copyright terms are just plain ridiculous.

Of course, I also think that, by law, all publishing contracts should have a "use it or lose it" clause whereby, if a publishing company lets a book go out of print for longer than, say, five years at most (two would be my personal preference but I'm trying to be reasonable here), the rights would automatically revert to the author who would then be able to get it published elsewhere. Further to that, if the author doesn't make at least a reasonable *attempt* to get the work republished within ten years of it going out of print, that particular work should become public domain. There's no good, defensible reason for keeping out-of-print books locked up in contracts or under copyright law. After all, if they're out-of-print, the author isn't making any money from them (nor is the publisher). And post-publishing author regret/embarrassment really isn't a good enough reason to leave a book out-of-print - once it's been published, it's out in public and it's silly for an author to try to erase all memory of that particular work by keeping it out of print.