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The Truth About ''Some Truth About Copyright''
Posted by Ernest Miller on Saturday, October 19 @ 10:58:05 EDT Copyright
The Register has published an anti-Eldred screed by their Washington correspondent (Some truth about copyright). I'm not going to bother doing a point-by-point rebuttal of the argument. I post it simply as an illustration of the educational work still left to be done when it comes to copyright. However, I will point out one of the more glaring flaws:
I was delighted some months back to find Robert Graves' superb memoir "Good-Bye to All That" available in a cheap paperback edition, which I bought happily. Were it not still under copyright, it might not be available except on the Net.
Were this argument valid, I imagine that I wouldn't have been able to find the following public domain works for sale on Amazon: Oh, and this book by Robert Graves' contemporary (and poetic superior) Wilfred Owen:
 
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"User's Login" | Login/Create an Account | 7 comments
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Re: The Truth About ''Some Truth About Copyright'' (Score: 1, Informative)
by Anonymous (Name Withheld on Advice of Counsel) on Saturday, October 19 @ 13:36:54 EDT
I posted a response to this article on my weblog and emailed a letter to Mr. Greene. Hoepfully, the Register will publish it as a letter to the editor. Luke Francl


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Re: The Truth About ''Some Truth About Copyright'' (Score: 0)
by Anonymous (Name Withheld on Advice of Counsel) on Sunday, October 20 @ 22:04:40 EDT
I can understand why you're not bothering with a full response to this sloppy article, but how about this comment:

Five years after it goes out of print -- meaning it's not available in retail shops thanks to your agent's intelligence and experience -- you get all of your un-exploited rights back. You'll likely sit on them for a while because you're busy right now, but in time you'll try to wring some more money out of them. Or perhaps your estate will, after you've died and become even more attractive.

That's one of the stronger arguments against copyright extensions I've heard -- essentially he's saying that a shorter copyright would have encouraged him to publish and therefore a longer term actually discourages timely publishing because long copyrights are needed to help people who can't be bothered to publish their work.

While I'm definitely on the side of Eldred (and the US framers), I'm aware there are also some well informed and sometimes convincing arguments for the other side. This is definitely not one of them. I'm sure even Olsen would agree that if he had tried to make such an argument in court Lessig would have been a very happy man indeed.


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Re: The Truth About ''Some Truth About Copyright'' (Score: 0)
by Anonymous (Name Withheld on Advice of Counsel) on Monday, October 21 @ 11:31:05 EDT
He also claims that Eldred can't possibly know anything about the economics of the publishing industry. A competent journalist would have checked his facts well enough to know that both Eldred and co-plaintiff Kalmus are publishers.


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Re: The Truth About ''Some Truth About Copyright'' (Score: 0)
by Anonymous (Name Withheld on Advice of Counsel) on Monday, October 21 @ 17:31:31 EDT
I sent in this comment for publication to tcg:

If "Good-Bye to All That" were in the public domain, you could buy a paperback
edition for about $1. (How much did you pay for the authorized version?)
The technology of on-demand publishing using a satellite dish and ASDL to
download from the Internet, and cheap laser printer and binder and paper
cutter, was demonstrated in Washington [last] week by Brewster Kahle of the
Internet Archive (www.archive.org). The difference between the $1 and what
you paid goes to the publisher and distant heirs of the author, and not to
give an incentive to authors to publish more new works. If you wish to find
long-out-print World War I novels, see my website http://www.eldritchpress.org
for a few.


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Re: The Truth About ''Some Truth About Copyright'' (Score: 0)
by Anonymous (Name Withheld on Advice of Counsel) on Tuesday, October 22 @ 14:54:36 EDT
The Register seems to be having a knee-jerk reaction to the monetary implications. "They can't take our royalties away! We are entitled to them!" Of course the patent and copyright clause is specifically about encouraging creation of works, not about rewarding authors. It kind of bothers me that they didn't bother thinking about this issue at all.

Well, what else can we expect from a tabloid?


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Re: The Truth About ''Some Truth About Copyright'' (Score: 0)
by Anonymous (Name Withheld on Advice of Counsel) on Wednesday, October 23 @ 12:40:42 EDT
I also e-mailed Mr. Greene to point out that his logic was a bit flawed, since public domain works are still in stores. By the way, I also took care of preemptively answering the argument that only the most popular books would stay available in print when in public domain, by pointing out that if a book is not popular enough, it will fade out anyway, public domain or not. In that case, being able to preserve and distribute it (electronically, for example) is a definite plus. I also pointed out that the timespan of his hypothetic example of how copyright can get a writer to produce more books is at most of a few decades, not the incredibly long times we experience (here in France, the copyright can last up to 86 years after the author's death ! And yes, the heirs sue you if you try to copy a book from a long-deceased writer. Incredible, but sadly true). At the time I'm writing that, I've still no response from Mr. Greene (was it my pitiful English ? The lack of time ? Utter contempt for his readers ? I don't know). I simply hope he will think about it. The problem is not about copyright in itself, but more about the *limits* of copyright. Should we allow a reasonable protection to the authors, so that they have a chance to profit from their work ? Sure ! But I'm not so sure we should allow them to « hoard » (in Richard Stallman's lingo) their works for so long, no one of their comtemporaries will ever be allowed to build upon them...

[Side note : sorry for the speling errors. As I said, I'm not a native English writer, I've just some crappy emulation layer ;-]


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