Intellectual Property Rights

[wyndslash]

Hi! I'm not sure if this is in the right sub-forum, but since this has something to do with e-books anyway.

So here's the thing. I think everyone here is intelligent, so I need to pick your brains. My group and I need to do a paper for our Globalization and Development class, and we had to pick a topic that has something to do with globalization and development (duh! ), so we were interested in intellectual property, maybe something about copyrights OR patents.

I need to read up on it. I'm especially interested in the relationship of copyrights to e-books, so I would love it if anyone could point me in the direction of reliable links for sources of info or public domain ebooks concerning the topic. I need to read up so I can make the question for our paper and our stand.

Thanks so much!

[jbcohen]

Let me give you a term for copyrights as they apply to electronic books, its Digital Rights Management (DRM). DRM is code that is appplied to an electronic book that can stop a reader from doing undesirable things with the book that were sold to the reader. For example violating the copyright by selling the book or other things that are prohibited by copyrights. The troubble with DRM is that it is often carried a bit to an extreem by some authors who use it to limit the number of times that a reader can open the book or not allowing the reader to store the book on a backup hard drive. DRM is one of those things that are easily cirumvented so I personally do not worry about them much. My advice is to read up on what DRM is and how it relates to intelectual property rights.

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by jbcohen

Let me give you a term for copyrights as they apply to electronic books, its Digital Rights Management (DRM). DRM is code that is appplied to an electronic book that can stop a reader from doing undesirable things with the book that were sold to the reader. For example violating the copyright by selling the book or other things that are prohibited by copyrights. The troubble with DRM is that it is often carried a bit to an extreem by some authors who use it to limit the number of times that a reader can open the book or not allowing the reader to store the book on a backup hard drive. DRM is one of those things that are easily cirumvented so I personally do not worry about them much. My advice is to read up on what DRM is and how it relates to intelectual property rights.

Selling a book doesn't violate copyright. US, and other countries, have laws related to the first sale doctrine.

The problem with ebooks though, is you cannot transfer rights properly. Blame it mostly on DRM. There is no way to shift a ebook from one account to another, with any of the known DRM systems.

[Giggleton]

I'm a bit interested in property as well. I see property evolved from non-existence, everything was everyone's, to the idea that land could be owned, the produce of that land could be sold etc.. to today where the products of mind, ideas can be owned and sold. I see property rights on a pendulum that has swung to one extreme and will now begin to swing back to the other side.

As far as transferring ebooks goes, if we think of our ereading devices as single book devices, which we can do if we only load one book/idea onto it we can surely trade/sell/give away these ebooks to whoever we please. After trading, the original purchaser would no longer have their copy but they could always ask for their copy back from whoever they gave it to ad infinitum.

I do think it is safe to say that without the transfer of knowledge gained from the written word/moveable type/ebooks, globalization/development would not have occurred. Therefore, in order to more rapidly speed ourselves along into the new era, and push the property rights pendulum back, it would behoove us to share as much knowledge as we can.

[SleepyBob]

Originally Posted by Hellmark

Selling a book doesn't violate copyright. US, and other countries, have laws related to the first sale doctrine.

The problem with ebooks though, is you cannot transfer rights properly. Blame it mostly on DRM. There is no way to shift a ebook from one account to another, with any of the known DRM systems.

Blame it also on a lack of legal clarity on whether we even own anything to be transferred. I can buy a Season Pass to Six Flags, but I can't sell it back and forth with my neighbor so we can both take advantage of it.

So the question remains, when you purchase an ebook, did you buy a copy of the book, or did you buy a "Season Pass" to read the book?

[montsnmags]

Originally Posted by wyndslash

Hi! I'm not sure if this is in the right sub-forum, but since this has something to do with e-books anyway.

So here's the thing. I think everyone here is intelligent, so I need to pick your brains. My group and I need to do a paper for our Globalization and Development class, and we had to pick a topic that has something to do with globalization and development (duh! ), so we were interested in intellectual property, maybe something about copyrights OR patents.

I need to read up on it. I'm especially interested in the relationship of copyrights to e-books, so I would love it if anyone could point me in the direction of reliable links for sources of info or public domain ebooks concerning the topic. I need to read up so I can make the question for our paper and our stand.

Thanks so much!

It is very topical at the moment. I suggest looking up the ACTA treaty, which had its "signing ceremony" a couple days ago:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Co...rade_Agreement

(note, despite the title, it is very much to do with copyright)

Although not specifically about ebooks, the Agreement would seem to directly and very strongly relate to the copyright aspects you're looking at. And you'll find much discussion likely if you go googling.

Cheers,
Marc

[wyndslash]

thanks everyone

[emellaich]

You can, of course, read the wikipedia article to get started. I usually do, just don't use it as the only source in your paper. Use it to get your basic education.

Another interesting source can be found in the writings of Eric Flint at Baen when he writes as the Prime Palver. Especially cite-worthy is his post that shows a speech on copyright in the English parliament from the 1800's. See it here:

http://www.baen.com/library/palaver4.htm


From a globalization point of view, there are four different things that complicate all of this.

1) What exactly does a copyright cover? You can't copyright a letter "T" or a word "The". You can't even copyright a plot -- many plots are similar. On the other hand, You can't take a complete work and change one word and claim it is different. Bottom line is that what is protected is open to some interpretation. Furthermore, there is the thought of "fair use" that allows you to use some portions of a copyrighted work for specific purposes. However, the terms of fair use is defined differently by different jurisdictions.
2) Which leads us to the fact that copyright is defined on a country by country basis. This means that there is no universal definition. There are some treaties that attempt to harmonize things, but they are not universal and they don't completely solve all differences. Furthermore, in practice some countries are known/believed to blatantly disregard copyright. Whatever, the exact law, it is fairly easy to obtain copies of copyrighted works in China and India, for example. This makes it hard to protect works in these markets.
3) Works need to be translated into various languages. The translated work can have a unique copyright from the original work. I'm not up on this, but I imagine it could lead to more confusion as to whether a work is a translated copy of an original work in another language, or whether it is a new work that happens to have a similar plot. However, even if it is admitted to be a translated work, it has its own copyright that is separate from that of the original work. For example, many editions of the Bible are in the public domain, but if you were to publish your own edition that was translated/changed from an existing edition then your new edition would have its own copyright.
4) Many of the problems with global copyright are actually related to business arrangements that are influenced by all of the above, but are separate from those factors. When it comes to selling a book in a specific country (Russia, Australia, Germany, ...) a company that is successful in the United States often does not have the reach to succeed in another country. The issues include legal (navigating local copyright issues), language/translation, distribution (where are books sold in that country), printing (no reason to ship those dead trees worldwide), and marketing. So the rights to local marketing are licensed to local/regional publishers who are experts in a given market. The issue that arises is one of trans-shipment between regions. A US publisher doesn't want to invest in marketing and then see all of their efforts undercut by a cheaper edition from Australia. Therefore, these license deals are made to be valid only in the region of the deal. This means that a US publisher can only sell in the US and an Australia publisher can only sell in Australia. However, this also hinders global efforts, and it is a reason why internet web sites (who offer products to the world) have geographical restrictions. Their US source is not allowed to sell books to anyone who sells outside of the US, and so on.

The simple answer to the previous dilemma is to license print versions to print publishers and to retain a global ebook license. However, the publishing business is all about high overhead and low fixed costs. Once the publisher spends time finding, editing, marketing, and producing a book they need to spread those costs over as many books sold as possible. With the shift towards ebooks, this means that the publisher needs rights to both print and electronic versions in their territory or they can't make money. As a result, the geographic restrictions on print books have also encompassed electronic books. This is why you will see an online bookstore only letting buyers from a specific region buy a specific edition of a book.

MLH

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by jbcohen

Let me give you a term for copyrights as they apply to electronic books, its Digital Rights Management (DRM). DRM is code that is appplied to an electronic book that can stop a reader from doing undesirable things with the book that were sold to the reader. For example violating the copyright by selling the book or other things that are prohibited by copyrights. The troubble with DRM is that it is often carried a bit to an extreem by some authors who use it to limit the number of times that a reader can open the book or not allowing the reader to store the book on a backup hard drive. DRM is one of those things that are easily cirumvented so I personally do not worry about them much. My advice is to read up on what DRM is and how it relates to intelectual property rights.

DRM has nothing to do with copyright or intellectual property laws.

[montsnmags]

Originally Posted by kennyc

DRM has nothing to do with copyright or intellectual property laws.

Kenny, can you elaborate? DRM (Digital Rights Management) is, I understand, specifically created to enforce the rights of copyright holders. Anti-circumvention laws, apart from being in the US's DMCA are also in the international WIPO Treaty, aren't they, as well as at least being suggested for inclusion in the ACTA? The latter two would seem to very much make them "international" in flavour, and therefore for enforcement by signatories in their copyright laws (as they are in the DMCA for example, as well as Australia's Copyright Act), thus seeming quite "on-topic" for the OP's original query.

Cheers,
Marc

[kennyc]

I perhaps overstated when I said it has nothing to do with it, cause it is clearly used by some companies, but with or without DRM a work is still covered by copyright law.

DRM is a method of encrypting documents which some companies use. But the Copyright law and intellectual property laws are Laws, not methods of managing. DRM is not part of the law. DCMA is a law with respect to DRM.

From Wikipedia: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures (commonly known as digital rights management or DRM) that control access to copyrighted works. It also criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, whether or not there is actual infringement of copyright itself.

In other words DMCA is another law which is in regard to DRM, but again it is not Copyright Law itself as stated in that second phrase of the last sentence.

Copyright law is the law that protects the authors of works against unauthorized copying of their works. (and has nothing to do with how they might go about protecting it -- DRM or otherwise).


BTW: there was no intent to say that post was off topic, certainly it is related, but copyright has been around much longer than DRM or DCMA.

[montsnmags]

Thank-you, Kenny. I understand the distinction you were making now. And my apologies that my post unintentionally implied you were saying the post was off-topic. I included that "on-topic" bit to emphasize the ACTA and WIPO parts, without making my own distinction between that and your post.

Cheers,
Marc

[kennyc]

It's important. As you well know these particular topics can get "hot and rowdy" in no time. I should have been more careful in my wording.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by wyndslash

I need to read up on it. I'm especially interested in the relationship of copyrights to e-books, so I would love it if anyone could point me in the direction of reliable links for sources of info or public domain ebooks concerning the topic. I need to read up so I can make the question for our paper and our stand.

There are not many useful public domain ebooks about IP & international developments, because IP law has changed drastically in the last few decades; anything in the public domain (other than court rulings & other government documents) is going to be horribly outdated.

If you're up for a swarm of reading on a single topic, the Google Book Settlement website has some info about the ongoing lawsuit (which is still stuck in limbo, because the settlement agreements have been thrown out by the judge; apparently, private parties--Google & the Authors' Guild--can't just agree among themselves that nobody else is allowed to sue them over works that neither of them has any legal control over); InfoDocket put together a large collection of links, including one to The Public Index, which tries to have all the available legal documents.