[Web4lib] Amazon's Kindle e-book reader

[Dan Lester]

Hello Tim,

Monday, November 26, 2007, 2:32:23 PM, you wrote:

> First, a quick-question: Was it a Greek edition or an English
> translation? If the former, a very strong case can be made that
> copyright is simply impossible. Plato himself lost it. All that's new
> in a modern edition are choices about the text which are too short to
> copyright, coposed of centuries of other scholar's guesses and
> intended to recreate as closely as possible the out-of-copyright
> original.

It was in English, and a translation published in last ten years or so
(don't ask which one, have no idea) and I did check that it was in
print.  Of course those didn't have her annotations (which I found
mostly unreadable anyway).

> Second, a point. Yes, if it was a translation, she was breaking the
> law. But answer me this. What percentage of Classis books published
> every year make the author=97the copyright holder=97anything other than a
> token amount of money? My guess is five, although ten is possible.

I have no idea, but is that the point?  The point is that the law was
being broken quite flagrantly, and since it was on a university
webserver, the university was, at least theoretically, being opened to
a lawsuit.  Maybe the odds were long, but try to tell that to the
University Counsel (who I did NOT bring in on this).

> Academic publishing in Classics, whether on the monograph or the
> article level, is done to advance a career. In the case of journals,
> schools pay thousands for journals written, edited and even typeset by
> professors and students who are entirely unpaid or receive only a
> token. I think the publisher's contribution is the glue. In the case
> of monographs, the publisher is often a University Press without
> strong profit motives. Down deep, they want to be important and
> respected. Selling books is how they do it; it's not why they do it.

Understand that the money isn't a large amount....but she was fanatic
that "it would cost the poor students twenty dollars" to buy it.  (or
some such amount).  Of course the student had already spent hundreds
of other dollars on books....

> This crazy system is going to end sooner or later. In a digital world,
> where the fundamental motives are all non-monetary it makes no sense
> to continue.

Yes, it will end.  Yes, I may live long enough to see it end.  But,
until then it seems that a university should be obeying the law.  I
don't think any of us want to be a test case, do we?

--=20
Best regards,
 Dan                            mailto:dan at riverofdata.com