Posts by Mark Harris
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I just picked up this via Robin Gross at IPWatch:
I couldn't resist forwarding this one ...
Lebanon Claiming Only It Owns Hummus, Falafel, tabouleh And Baba Gannouj
Another day, another ridiculous intellectual property lawsuit. Along the same lines as various regions in France declaring that only they can sell "Champagne" or Greece being the only one allowed to offer "feta," a group in Lebanon is claiming that various popular middle eastern foods such as hummus, falafel, tabouleh and baba gannouj are property of Lebanon and Lebanon alone. In fact, the group is planning to sue Israel for "stealing" its food. They're actually claiming that this could be a violation of a "food copyright" (something that
doesn't actually exist). Specifically, the group says that since Israel sells such foods, it's taking "tens of millions of dollars" away from Lebanon, where those foods should be bought. This, folks, is what happens when you build up a society around the idea of "owning" infinite goodshttp://techdirt.com/articles/20081007/1531482481.shtml</quote>
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Why one set of rules for Intellectual property people and another set for everyone else?
There's only a contradiction if you regard copyright as a property, rather than a licence to control and benefit. Which you appear to do.
Otherwise, there are plenty of examples of separate goups within society having different rules applied to them. Lawyers have regulations about what they can do, which are enforced by law. Football referees have no laws governing them. There's no contradiction because they fulfil different roles in society.
I'm not denying your right to profit from your work. Copyright allows that and I'm okay with it. I don't think you have the right to have it forever, is all.
What can't you see? Copyright only comes to you through an act of law, and that law places limits on the term.
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No, to make the Doctorow model work, you need to be Cory Doctorow. And not an inch to the side, either -- John Scalzi couldn't do it, Charles Stross couldn't do it, Ken MacLeod certainly couldn't. <quote>
You might be surprised at some of Charlie Stross' thinking on this.
<quote>I mean, I've no idea about Doctorow's finances etc, but being an SF author is probably the third most significant activity he engages in -- Boing Boing, free culture advocacy, and then SF authoring.
You're right, you have no idea and neither do I, but I've learned that assuming makes an ass of u and me :-p
He gets huge amounts of publicity via Boing Bong, he does high-profile copyright work, he networks and he writes books. Most authors can only expect to be very good at writing books; telling them to be like Doctorow is pointless. He took the Californian Ideology and made it work for himself; very few people can do that.
Keir, he creates that publicity by the work that he does. Any writer who 'only writes books' is doomed to obscurity. You've got to market them to a publisher, do the sales tours, speak at conferences etc. - it's all part of the job. You've also got to be a researcher, network with useful people who have knowledge that you lack. You seem to think it all comes to him on a plate. I don't think so - I think he works bloody hard.
No one is just a writer. We all have multi-faceted lives where we are different things at different moments and to different people. It's called being human where I come from.
And suddenly I see why I dislike the copyfight people -- it's the good ol' Californian Ideology in full roar.
Apart from the fact Cory's Canadian and damn proud of it, and that he lives in London, that's just plain stupid prejudice. And if that's where you're going, I'm disengaging from you.
Fun while it lasted, but I won't be responding to you any more, Keir, on this topic.
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@Islander
I really *cannot* understand your desire to 'want(ed) to build on' someone else's work: be inspired by it, great -there's so many writers who do this. But they/we create something new: we dont just steal someone else's characters/storyline - especially when & while copyright holds-
I don't want to build on your work, or anyone's necessarily, but it is a right my grandfather had and his, and it's being whittled away by greedy corporations who don't give a wobbly damn for the creators - they just want as much money out of it. I want the ability to build on existing works restored to me and my descendants (figuratively - I don't think my cats care about copyright - everything belongs to them anyway) should an occasion arise where it's worthwhile.
That's why I support the Creative Commons concept. It doesn't replace copyright; on the contrary, it relies on copyright as it's foundation. One can't give permission to use something one has no control over.
I don't want to "steal" your work either. If I was to use your character in a story, I'd want to do it with your permission and that might involve a payment or a profit-sharing deal while, as you say, copyright holds. And you never know, I might do something wonderful with it that rekindles interest in your work and transcends it into something anew generation wants to be part of. And if not me, then someone else.
What I don't want to see is that work locked away where no-one can get at it because you're worried that it somehow diminishes you for someone to use your work as a starting point.
You complained that you don't get anything like the level of income that you think you deserve, and yet you support the system that makes that the case. That's what I *cannot* understand, Keri.
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Oh crap:
"life +50 in NZ"
"road rules"
[sigh] -
@robbery
that's nice but why do you think that it is societies right to strip a citizen of their possessions in a non communist society. why in a democracy are capitalism rules only for non IP.
Copyright is a right granted by society for a limited time. Initially, it was 14 years and it has gradually crept up to life +50 in N and more elsewhere, but the concept has always been that there is a limit. Every right comes with obligations. You ask "why" when I say that culture is not property and the reason is that society says so through its laws. Those laws that grant you copyright over your creation also set limits on it, for the benefit of society as a whole. We live in societies for mutual benefit. This is one of the prices of gaining those benefits, like rode rules or taxes.
I'm not sure what you're getting at with your intepretation of my comment but I meant that if you want to infer all writers are rich from the jk rowlings example of all musicians are rich an decadent based on some hip hop videos you''re falling for the hype. those people are the .0000000001 % and yay for them, but its not real life for creatives.
Which was my point to Islander way back before she was outed. I agree that they are the exceptions, but that is the nature of the business you have chosen. Dickens was just as much an exception. We remember him and Trollope and a couple of dozen more from that era, but does anyone seriously think they were the only writers writing? Where are the hundreds of other creatives from the Victorian age? Gone, their contributions lost, forgotten, and not enriching the world one bit.
You seem to think I'm against all copyright. I'm not. But I am against extending it to ridiculous lengths (and I think we're already past that) in order that a few corporations may profit for a few more years. And that is seriously what it's about. I have no argument with creators about getting paid. I like getting paid myself.
If you want to pick a fight about the struggling artist, pick it with the publishers. They're the ones who take the lion's share of the profits, leaving only 10% for the creator (out of which we have to pay for an agent, supplies etc) if you've got a name and a good deal. Feel pity for those who have to sell all their rights up front, because they need the money.
The system is rotten, but it doesn't get better by reinforcing the old patterns.
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@Stephen
#1 mainlyI also recognise facial patterns (or what are patterns to me) seeing someone and thinking I know them, but later realising they've just got the same sort of face.
Also, I used to be in customer services (in a bank, actually) and I'd find myself at a party nattering away to someone who I thought I knew and she thought she knew me and we'd finally get to the "where exactly did we meet?" stage and it would turn out that she came in every Wednesday to do the firm's banking, which would be pretty much the end of that conversation.
I used to worry that a half-recognised face would turn out to be someone I'd had a brief half-sozzled liaison with, but I guess there weren't enough liaisons to really make it a risk :-(
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Note that neither PNH nor TNH think that publishing is dead, at all, or that they're `just middlemen' (esp. not TNH, for obvious reasons!) I'm pretty sure there's a post somewhere about what will publishing be like in the 21st century, but I can't be bothered looking.
I don't think publishing is dead either, but it has to radically change its business model. Both Patrick and Theresa are superb editors - they can help an author trim away the dross and get to the gold. The value-add services publishers can offer to both the author and the reader are going to become the most important part of their business, instead of just a process onthe road to putting out product. The point is that the author doesn't need the publisher like they used to, as it's not the only avenue to the audience. If anything, this puts more power in the hands of the author.
However, Doctorow's a crap model, because his books tend to be Hugo-nominated bestsellers written by a Locus award winning fan, who's got huge amounts of social capital behind him, who is very well tied into a particular set of SF/FLOSS networks, and has a very interdisciplinary practice.
I call "bullshit" on that. Cory's a crap model because he's successful?? WTF? He wrote before he got his first Locus or Hugo nomination, he's been publishing his books under Creative Commons since the first one, and he wasn't born plugged into a set of networks - he did all that himself. He worked hard, had vision and pioneered a system. He worked for his success, and he's paved the way for others.
The biggest problem for most creators is not people infringing their copyrights - it's people actually noticing they exist. The net offers a way out of obscurity and in a manner that you can (generally) control, as a creator.
Most tech-savvy SF authors couldn't be Cory Doctorow, let alone 60-y.o children's authors.
And most DIY handymen can't build a complete house. And most people who love cooking will never work in a restaurant. So what?
You don't need to be Cory Doctorow - you just need to learn from his experience.
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I think any decent English teacher (not my strong subject) could look at Shakespeare, Dickens, heck, a lot of classical literature and say that it's still very relevant to the current cultural environment.
So Shakespeare was the only playwright of his day? Dickens, the only novelist of his? I said "in the main" because there are always exceptions, but it was pointed out up-thread that exceptions like Rowling (and Dickens was bigger in his day than Rowling in hers) don't count. What about all the other writers and playwrights - is their work still relevant? Or is it a product of it's time and doomed to remain so?
And surely if there's a 'social good' argument for limiting the length of copyright, it's because the content _is_ relevant to the time it's released from copyright. If it has no relevancy, what's the point of releasing it?
Sorry? That really doesn't make sense to me. If there's an argument for limiting copyright it's because the content is relevant to the time it was _created_, and the further you get from that time, the less relevant is will be.
If an author aged 20 releases a stunning new book which has a huge impact on society, then lives to 103, that's 83+50 years before anyone can do more than comment on it. By which time, all the people who were moved by it and wanted to build on it are probably dead and the current culture 133 years after it was written probably couldn't care less. If copyright was limited to 50 years from date of creation, the book would enter the public domain within living memory, while it's still relevant to the people it affected.
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I don't know that anybody assume that widespread copying won't be an issue anymore (though there's the question of how much actual harm it does them), but some people seem to devote a lot of energy to trying to stop it entirely and asking for bigger and more disproportionate sticks to try to stop the tide while making as many enemies as possible in the process.
Yep, that's a good description of the RIAA for the last 10 years.
They might be better to use those resources to come up with bright business (or perhaps legal) models to use the situation to their advantage (and no, I don't what that might be).
Cory Doctorow comes to mind. He writes his books, publishes them through a with-it publisher (Tor Books) and simultaneously puts them up on his website under a Creative Commons licence knowing that people will download and share them (hell, he encourages it!). He also explains his reasoning.
Radiohead and others are doing it as well.