[WEB4LIB] RE: "Piracy is Progressive Taxation"

[Edward Wigg]

On Thursday, December 12, 2002, at 06:15 PM, Karen G. Schneider wrote:
>
> I read his article and grasped what he meant--all too well. I was not
> merely reacting to your post.

I'm happy to accept that you did read it but you did include the 
statement "Please, spare me from 'information wants to be free, as long 
as it's yours,'" which was emphatically _not_ his point. As a publisher 
he's _far_ more likely to be hurt by large scale unrestricted copying 
than you are.

It should be noted that he is mostly talking about the general 
publishing/music/movie industries, the source of the vast bulk of the 
collection in a public library, which is why we should care, rather than 
the journal articles most of of are likely to write, so his points are 
likely to be expressed accordingly. He obviously thinks that creators of 
content should have their chance to be paid for their work and that 
there is a natural role for publishers (though not necessarily using the 
same business model they currently have).

The article is potentially confusing in that he some places he uses the 
term piracy to include informal file sharing, and in others draws a 
distinction between file sharing and wholesale "illegal commercial 
activity." I don't think there is any disagreement that republishing 
works in whole or in new collections is rightly illegal. He is talking 
about file sharing by _end users_ which is a rather different animal. I 
guess that people sometimes copy your articles and pass them around 
among friends and co-workers -- whether or not this constitutes fair 
use, this does not really constitute "republishing" unless it is done on 
a large and formal basis (the Kinkos class packet issue comes to mind). 
I agree that it is unlikely that your fans will pass your articles 
around among each other and create demand for back issues of AL (though 
it might enhance your reputation), but that _is_ exactly what can happen 
with music. He also talks about unauthorized on-line mirrors of work as 
a BAD thing, one that he finds his legitimate customers trying to help 
stamp out.

The idea that an author has or should have "control" over their work is 
also a somewhat loaded term subject to confusion. Copyright gives 
control over publishing, commercial copy-making, it gives no control 
most other aspects. An author has no control over purchasers of the 
legally published work liking, disliking, copying for personal use, 
lending, misunderstanding, quoting out of context, using the ideas in 
the work to convince others to believe things to which the author is 
adamantly opposed, and so on. He is not suggesting any real change in 
this balance.

The companies that currently control the distribution of mass media, and 
make a lot of money doing so, are trying to ensure the maintain or 
increase their dominance even as technology and the market moves 
underneath them. They are spending a LOT of time, money and effort in 
the fight. In their world view both libraries and authors of journal 
articles are basically irrelevant, we neither consume enough nor produce 
anything of enough value for them to care about, but we _will_ have to 
live with the fallout of their battle. The pay per view, digital rights 
management, total control (in every sense) world they would love to see 
would have _huge_ social costs. There is some doubt that their ideal 
world could ever be effectively forced on the rest of us, but that won't 
stop them from trying. Part of their argument is that without such 
controls publishing is impossible, which is why it is important to hear 
from others, especially publishers, who do not believe the sky is 
falling.

It is the way of such articles as this to make some seemingly 
controversial statements, usually headings and bullet points,  to get 
the reader's attention. While I don't agree with everything he says, 
most of the article is in fact rather uncontroversial, except from the 
MPAA/RIAA perspective.

Edward