“Thanks for the feedback and thoughts. Just a side note on the Cory Doctorow example–the man does make his money from selling books. He simply finds that giving away electronic versions of his books, at this time, gives him sufficient name recognition etc. that he sells enough paper books to make up for it. I suspect if I took one of Cory’s books and came out with a print version, his lawyers would be all over me in no time.”

I think what would be more interesting would be whether Cory D could release a novel under a pseudonym and find that releasing the CC version increases his psudonymic sales …i.e., is the sales that he and a handful of others report seeing from CC-ing their works largely a net-celeb effect that is not likely to be generalizable? We’ve seen posts on this blog related to folks who CC’d their novels and didn’t exactly see sales go through the roof (though one might argue that Cory is an especially gifted writer in his chosen genre).

And, of course, we still live in a world where most people want to read P-books even when electronic versions are (relatively) easily available. I read Cory’s “Down and Out” and “Eastern Standard Tribe” on a Windows Mobile PDA, but I suspect that puts me in the ranks of e-book enthusiasts rather than any general trend (I suspect *far* more people read those novels in p-book form than e-book form even though the e-book was free).

my applying labels identifying my books as being written, say, by Stephen King, Nora Roberts and J.K. Rowling don’t diminish the ability of those authors to continue to use their own names

Not completely true. They use their names as identifiers. If you nullify the identifying factor it certainly diminishes their ability to use their names in this fashion. However, they don’t have any natural right to use their names as identifiers, so the argument is moot.

OTOH, such identification helps both the public and the author (and most people think honesty is better than dishonesty anyway) so there is a lot to gain from having some law(s) against plagiarism, and there is very little to lose. Thus most people that are against copyright are also for various forms of antiplagiarism (e.g., trademarks).

Take an MP3. Boyle argues that it is fundamentally different than physical property, like a car. My use of an MP3 does not interfere with yours. We can both listen to it. No property is lost if it is copied or shared. It is not like stealing your car. You have an MP3, and I have an MP3. No one has “lost” anything.

This is not an argument. It is a fact. Information is not the same as physical property. It never has been. It never will be. Anybody who claims differently is both lying to you and attempting to steal from you. The term “intellectual property” is just such a lie, and unfortunately, Mr. Boyle still uses this term liberally in his cellulose encased lecture.

In a nutshell, the problem is this: books contain speech recorded. If speech is Free as per the First Amendment, it cannot be restricted. Any restrictions on speech are harmful to society, like parceling out air and selling it would be. Would you deny people air in order to make a profit? Some things just cannot be private property.

To make myself clear, I believe in the idea of a compromise between author rights and public domain. I personally think the Bono extensions went too far, that we’d be better off with something like 50 years or author’s life, whichever is longer. However, I’ll say from my standpoint that I wouldn’t spend the time I do acquiring, editing, paying artists, and promoting BooksForABuck.com original fiction if I didn’t have some assurance that big publishing companies couldn’t steal my work and offer them with no compensation to me or the author.

Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com

Rob, as Brian says, Boyle is certainly not in favor of abandoning copyright. And the next great American novel will likely not be written in Wikipedia fashion (although who knows), but that doesn’t mean that it won’t be given away for free, under, say a Creative Commons license, as opposed to a traditional copyright. To take one instance among others: Cory Doctorow, who gives all his works away free online.

For example, he compares and contrasts the way that copyrights in databases are handled in the U.S. and Europe and admits he would have thought that creating a copyright in a specific database (for example, giving the publisher of a telephone book a copyright on the compilation of telephone data) would spur database development.

OTOH, the evidence is clear. The U.S. has no such copyright, while Europe has instituted once and the evidence is fairly clear that such a copyright does not encourage innovation. Of course, European regulators simply ignore their own reports showing exactly that . . . similar to the effectively unlimited copyrights in the United States that tie up pretty much everything forever in order to protect a few of the uber-popular properties (Boyle favors, if I recall correctly, requiring minimal cost copyright *renewals* so Disney can keep Mickey Mouse locked up forever while allowing orphan works to enter the public domain).

“Ultimately, what we need is a balance. Waving hands and saying that some works may be created if we abandon copyright doesn’t address the issue of whether doing so will result in a better place. Certainly I believe it will not. My copyrighting my own works doesn’t interfere, after all, with anyone’s ability to put their own works in the public domain.”

This is true but not the problem. If have a copy of book that was written in the 1940s and has been out of print since almost after it was published. The author is long dead and the publishing house long out of business. I’d love to make this book available on the Internet, but current copyright law makes it extremely expensive to determine who the current rights holder is to even approach that person or entities (and in some case ownership may literally be impossible to determine without very expensive legal investigation and possibly legal action).

Frankly, if intellectual property industries would just push for a reasonable solution to the orphan works problem instead of fighting such reform efforts at every turn, that would more than satisfy me.

The fact that tens of thousands of people, some expert, others not-so-much, have created a unique and wonderful work in the Wikipedia doesn’t guarantee that similar work will, for example, create the next great American novel.

Indeed, the Internet has nothing to do with the issue of copying. It’s always been possible to copy books (a point frequently made on Teleread). If I were to re-typeset the Harry Potter books and offer them for sale in paper copies, this wouldn’t be any more (or less) theft than if I scanned it and offered it in digital form. Similarly, my applying labels identifying my books as being written, say, by Stephen King, Nora Roberts and J.K. Rowling don’t diminish the ability of those authors to continue to use their own names.

Ultimately, what we need is a balance. Waving hands and saying that some works may be created if we abandon copyright doesn’t address the issue of whether doing so will result in a better place. Certainly I believe it will not. My copyrighting my own works doesn’t interfere, after all, with anyone’s ability to put their own works in the public domain.

Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com