RE: Re: [DDN] Intellectual Property Rights
Need to remember that academic publishers generally do very limited print runs and hence the price of their books will be high. We need to remember that just because it is in digital format doesn't mean that copyright may be violated. Especially now that information is often someone's livelihood. The propensity of people to copy and paste and disseminate information freely electronically also dissipates the authority of the information - who actually wrote it and is it correct, have authority? Copyright and authority add value to information products - why we need to ensure that this concept does not die just because the information is in electronic format rather than print. :) BC Convenor for the Transforming Information and Learning Conference http://www.chs.ecu.edu.au/TILC Barbara Combes, Lecturer School of Computer and Information Science Edith Cowan University, Perth Western Australia Ph: (08) 9370 6072 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation. Walter Cronkite This email is confidential and intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you are not the intended recipient, you are notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this email is strictly prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please notify me immediately by return email or telephone and destroy the original message. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, 14 October 2005 4:28 AM To: The Digital Divide Network discussiongroup; The Digital Divide Network discussiongroup Subject: Re: Re: [DDN] Intellectual Property Rights I agree with you on almost everything you say, Claude. The exception is the possible suggestion -- I'm not sure you mean to say this -- that because print piracy has such a long history, we should be grateful that digital piracy is less threatening Just the fact that Yahoo and Google announce that they are going to scan all the books in some eminent libraries, and don't explain (as you did) that only public-domain material can be legally digitized, does seem to give tacit permission for scanning of anything and everything. And the academic publishers have certainly been asking for trouble for a long, long time, by pricing their books and journals at a level that only research libraries can actually buy them. And yes, there are supposed legal protections in some of the worst piracy countries, and they work a bit better now than they did 20 years ago. I served as President and CEO of Harcourt Brace for several years and had the honor of being bodily thrown out of a bookstore in Taiwan because a colleague and I were trying to buy pirated versions of Academic Press titles so that we could file legal objections Nonetheless: my point is that many people have no idea that the right to copy something multiple times does not become yours when you buy a book or CD or DVD. We need to encourage people, I think, to consider the economic and intellectual consequences of this ignorance. Sarah Blackmun From: Claude Almansi [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2005/10/13 Thu PM 03:22:03 EDT To: The Digital Divide Network discussion group [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [DDN] Intellectual Property Rights Sarah Blackmun wrote: Does anyone else think it is unethical (as well as illegal) to digitize works that are protected by copyright? It can be unethical and illegal in some cases, but Taran Rampersad, whom you seem to be answering was only speaking using Optical Character Recognition with texts photographed in the library. - If the digitalized copy is for your personal use and study, it is legal. - If the work copied is in the public domain, it is even legal to distribute it or put it online. - What would be illegal would be to distribute and/or put online a work protected by copyright Don't the writers and producers of intellectual and artistic property own their works and have the right to control how they are distributed? Yes, but copyright laws allow readers to make a personal copy for studying purposes. And a text version is far more handy for studying than a PDF. Not to mention that blind people will anyway have to translate PDFs or image formats into text, by using OCR. (Don't Google and Yahoo and the university libraries know this? Of course they do!) Not exactly: the Google project was halted precisely because of the copyright issue. The Très Grande Bibliothèque Nationale of France so far has only scanned and put on line PDFs, which seem locked - and the ones I have seen are all in the public domain. I have not seen the Yahoo ones Do we have on this list any authors in the group who depend for their livings (or a part thereof) on the royalties they receive from books, music, film, etc
Re: RE: [DDN] Intellectual Property Rights
Sharon, I think you're exactly right. Books and journals sold in digital, downloadable form could be priced without the cost of paper, printing, binding, and distribution, and probably with a smaller discount to the retailer. And authors could get royalties, and publishers could receive a reasonable return on their investment. One of the big forces working against this is the academic tenure system, which at most institutions recognizes only printed books and journal articles as part of one's bibliography when applying for tenure. It would take a widespread change in academe as well as publishers to enable meaningful movement toward digitized original works. Sarah Blackmun From: Sharon V Robinson [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2005/10/13 Thu PM 12:58:47 EDT To: 'The Digital Divide Network discussion group' [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [DDN] Intellectual Property Rights I do believe that writers and artist should control how they work is distributed - but as we look forward, maybe all these works need to be digitized and the writers and artist get royalties from the digitized copies. Soon, no one will want to buy or store all the books they read or use for research. They will want digitized copies to have has a reference. Let's learn from I Pods - we still buy the music but not the record (am I telling my age - I should have said CD). We already pay for copies of reports and works of art to share with our students who may never get to the Louvre. This could be a win win. This is already starting in the movie industry too. Let wake up the educational systems and start viewing other ways of get information out then just books. Sharon Valear Robinson, Ed.D. [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2005 8:43 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [DDN] Intellectual Property Rights Does anyone else think it is unethical (as well as illegal) to digitize works that are protected by copyright? Don't the writers and producers of intellectual and artistic property own their works and have the right to control how they are distributed? (Don't Google and Yahoo and the university libraries know this? Of course they do!) Do we have on this list any authors in the group who depend for their livings (or a part thereof) on the royalties they receive from books, music, film, etc.? And will they continue to publish such works if they can't receive a fair recompense for them? What will be the long-term impact on intellectual and artistic production if everything is in the public domain as soon as it is published? Sarah Blackmun Former Senior Vice President Harcourt Brace Publishing Group From: Taran Rampersad [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2005/10/12 Wed PM 05:51:26 EDT To: The Digital Divide Network discussion group [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [DDN] Creating the $100 Laptop Actually, by doing some research on the darker side of the internet, I've found some people who scan/photograph books, use optical character recognition, and create eBooks. Apparently, there's a big underground following. Some of the server statistics show over 100,000 downloads of some books. But those folks are always shifting, and would be hard to find... David P. Dillard wrote: Scanning of books with a camera has been going on in libraries since the advent of digital cameras and to a limited degree with regular cameras before the advent of the digital camera. The drawback before the digital camera was the cost and difficulty of processing film. Now with digital cameras it is probably a widespread practice. Sincerely, David Dillard Temple University (215) 204 - 4584 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/net-gold http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/ringleaders/davidd.html http://www.kovacs.com/medref-l/medref-l.html http://listserv.temple.edu/archives/net-gold.html http://www.LIFEofFlorida.org Digital Divide Network http://www.digitaldivide.net/profile/jwne On Fri, 7 Oct 2005, Taran Rampersad wrote: You know, it's a matter of time before digital cells with cameras (or just plain cameras) are used to copy books out of libraries. Would that be a bad thing? :-) David P. Dillard wrote: Cell phones are not just getting attention on campuses in general as per your statement, but they have also been a major concern in libraries in particular. -- Taran Rampersad Presently in: San Fernando, Trinidad [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.knowprose.com http://www.easylum.net http://www.digitaldivide.net/profile/Taran Coming on January 1st, 2006: http://www.OpenDepth.com Criticize by creating. ? Michelangelo DIGITALDIVIDE
Re: Re: [DDN] Intellectual Property Rights
I agree with you on almost everything you say, Claude. The exception is the possible suggestion -- I'm not sure you mean to say this -- that because print piracy has such a long history, we should be grateful that digital piracy is less threatening Just the fact that Yahoo and Google announce that they are going to scan all the books in some eminent libraries, and don't explain (as you did) that only public-domain material can be legally digitized, does seem to give tacit permission for scanning of anything and everything. And the academic publishers have certainly been asking for trouble for a long, long time, by pricing their books and journals at a level that only research libraries can actually buy them. And yes, there are supposed legal protections in some of the worst piracy countries, and they work a bit better now than they did 20 years ago. I served as President and CEO of Harcourt Brace for several years and had the honor of being bodily thrown out of a bookstore in Taiwan because a colleague and I were trying to buy pirated versions of Academic Press titles so that we could file legal objections Nonetheless: my point is that many people have no idea that the right to copy something multiple times does not become yours when you buy a book or CD or DVD. We need to encourage people, I think, to consider the economic and intellectual consequences of this ignorance. Sarah Blackmun From: Claude Almansi [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2005/10/13 Thu PM 03:22:03 EDT To: The Digital Divide Network discussion group [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [DDN] Intellectual Property Rights Sarah Blackmun wrote: Does anyone else think it is unethical (as well as illegal) to digitize works that are protected by copyright? It can be unethical and illegal in some cases, but Taran Rampersad, whom you seem to be answering was only speaking using Optical Character Recognition with texts photographed in the library. - If the digitalized copy is for your personal use and study, it is legal. - If the work copied is in the public domain, it is even legal to distribute it or put it online. - What would be illegal would be to distribute and/or put online a work protected by copyright Don't the writers and producers of intellectual and artistic property own their works and have the right to control how they are distributed? Yes, but copyright laws allow readers to make a personal copy for studying purposes. And a text version is far more handy for studying than a PDF. Not to mention that blind people will anyway have to translate PDFs or image formats into text, by using OCR. (Don't Google and Yahoo and the university libraries know this? Of course they do!) Not exactly: the Google project was halted precisely because of the copyright issue. The Très Grande Bibliothèque Nationale of France so far has only scanned and put on line PDFs, which seem locked - and the ones I have seen are all in the public domain. I have not seen the Yahoo ones Do we have on this list any authors in the group who depend for their livings (or a part thereof) on the royalties they receive from books, music, film, etc.? And will they continue to publish such works if they can't receive a fair recompense for them? I do - to a small extent, granted: royalties on 2 anthologies I co-edited in the 80's. The rest of my writings don't produce royalties: I was/am paid a lump sum for translations, most editing jobs and prefaces. So I don't care a hoot if folks digitize these texts. Actually, I have done so myself, and banged them online, when the publishers remaindered the paper editions. Ever since Creative Commons licenses appeared, I have put what I write online under a CC license: by NC (non commercial) - at times also SA (share alike), when I felt like p...ing off some likely plagiarists. On the whole, it has worked fine: got far more paid translations to do since then. What will be the long-term impact on intellectual and artistic production if everything is in the public domain as soon as it is published? Mistaken assumption. There were pirate editions before digital age: ask Oxford University Press or any academic press whose books got merrily pirated and sold at 1/4 of the price in some countries; ask authors old enough to remember being translated and published without authorization or royalties in USSR. Well, USSR relented in the end and did give royalties: in rubles, and it was forbidden to export them. So the writers would go to USSR and have a luxury holyday on their royalties, buy some furs (though for the better ones, you needed to pay in dollars). So yes, there are digital pirates. But if anything, making pirate editions on the scale that was practiced with paper editions in USSR and other countries is more difficult in the digital age, because if they get offered online,
