On 2009-03-03, Dave Henn <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 8:42 AM, Eric Scoles <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >> >> On 2009-03-02, delancey <[email protected]> wrote: >> > [snip] > >> >>> ... I fear an analogous thing is happening now; we're >>> setting a social norm that (1) it's reasonable to say certain kinds of >>> algorithms are theft (which, I might add, I continue to find deeply >>> problematic conceptually: how bizarre to say that a function -- >>> literally, a mathematical function! -- can transform a legally >>> purchased good into a stolen good!), and (2) content controllers seem >>> more and more to get to decide every form, every iteration, if not >>> every instance, that the relevant content should take. >>> >> >> >> As I say, I'm not arguing with your general point. This scares me, too, >> because it opens the door to levels of control we have a hard time >> imagining. The truism that I keep coming back to is that disintermediation >> of control structures -- here, that's represented by saying that >> creators always have control over everything that anybody >> can do with anything they make -- helps the really big players at least as >> much as it does the really small players. I would argue (and have argued, >> many times) that it actually helps the big players more, because they're far >> better equipped to exploit the economies of scale. >> > > Copyright is all about control over works by owners of rights in the works. > The law surrounding it tries to balance the rights of the copyright owners > against the public interest. Sometimes the balance tips toward owners, > sometimes toward public. Sometimes there is huge inconsistency between how > rights are handled as between two different types or forms of works. As you > say, those equipped to exploit economies of scale have advantage. So do > those equipped to lobby members of Congress to change the law in their favor > a la Disney, at least in effect, extending copyright law to protect Mickey > just before the copyrights were to expire (simplification, but many agree). >
No argument from me about the Sonny Bono / Mickey Mouse act. I think it's a travesty. The practice-precedent that it sets is that as long as some entity has the money to lobby for it, all works created after the birth of Mortimer Mouse will be copyrighted forever (or at least until the last entity with a right expires). In terms of this debate, here's one way that would play out. Publishers (or >> whatever ends up taking over from publishers) will be making >> deals with authors (who just want their stuff published) that give them >> greater control over the content. Big authors will get better terms. >> Amazon will do what it's always done >> >> Small authors, who are often the ones most obsessed with control in these >> situations, will be the ones who get screwed. Unless they fully >> disintermediate, they'll be stuck letting their books get read aloud anyway. >> There's just no way in hell this is not going to happen. The only real >> question is who will benefit from it. >> > > Big entities have been enjoying advantage over little forever. I generally > like it when the little gain. > As do I. I'm saying that I don't see that happening from text-to-speech DRM. And I'm sorry, but I see no likely scenario where any but a tiny, tiny >> segment of authors benefit from speech-to-text DRM. Only the ones with the >> biggest PR muscle will see any benefit at all. A Stephen King or a J. K. >> Rowling can make their own terms, even start their own company. A Craig >> deLancey, not so much. >> > > Probably. You know what, screw it. Why should I pay for any of the extra > forms of works I do? Why don't I just have a machine transform the cheapest > forms into a different form and enjoy the alternate forms for free that way? > Stephen King and Rowling will never feel the difference, and the smaller > authors are going to get screwed anyway. So, buy used copies of books, have > a machine convert the books into digital text, then have the digital text > converted into audio, and boom. I can have my audio books for half the > price, probably much less if I'm willing to buy used copies whose covers are > in bad shape. True, right now converting the book into digital text is time > consuming for those of us who don't have the kind of automated book scanners > used by Google and the Library of Congress. But technology changes. > This is what I would call 'throwing the baby out with the bathwater.' I also think this misses many of the points that have been made over the past many messages in this and the other thread. Audiobooks produced by conventional means are not simple transformations, but rather, new performances -- to the extent that they resemble simple transformations, they are failures. Look to music IP law for the apt analogy. What does music IP say about this? That's the real issue in music piracy: Performance. (That's what drives the fact that Jonathan alludes to, below: Artists get jack shit from the RIAA because the performances are owned by the studios.) To the extent that audiobooks don't work that way, it's an inconsistency with song publishing, and I have to wonder if the inconsistency is at the level of precendent or practice. Aside: I do believe teh analogy is apt. If the digital performances are equal to the human, then why would I not just listen to MIDIs of Ravel piano, instead of going for a nice Ruth Laredo? Why not get the Slim Whitman version of "Bowling Green" instead of Neko Case's awesome cover version? Hey - isn't Google transforming legally-obtained and authorized copies of > works into an alternate form using an algorithm? > You mean by scanning print books -- or by caching web pages? Nobody here has really argued in support of either. My understanding is that the whole book-scanning thing is a major, major gray area and is essentially just being papered over with "google IS not-evil" happytalk. Kind of a legal time bomb waiting to blow up under Google, and they're just assumign that they're big enough for it not to hurt them more than the scanning helps them. But I haven't followed it really closely, so that could be a totally off-base impression. It is significant, though, I think, that they cache the hell out of everything they crawl, and we mostly just let them do it. We have the option to avoid it (which is what I think makes it a legal non-issue), but few people do. -- eric scoles ([email protected]) --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
