[WEB4LIB] RE: "Piracy is Progressive Taxation"

[L. E. Puckett]

Hello again.
>From the music angle, if you click on the Prime Palaver link, and go to
PP#11 posted in Sep 2002, you will see Janis Ian's take on Internet
pirating of music - she is a musician and singer who's been in the
business since the 1960's, and her opinions are quite emphatic <grin>.
Prime Palaver is a link on the Baen Free Library site at
http://www.baen.com/library/
No, I don't work for Baen. They publish a lot of very good science
fiction, which I read.
I don't know enough about their policies to know what they'd think about
other people putting Baen stuff on non-Baen servers, although if you
check out the What's New link they now have some stuff from other
publishers.
Lynne

Joseph Murphy wrote:
> Yes, but there's a significant difference between the publisher putting
> material online for publicity purposes, and either free but
> unauthorized file sharing or for-profit piracy. I think Baen's doing
> the right thing in every way, and has the numbers to prove it, but
> let's remember that one of their motives is profit.
> 
> Publishers like O'Reilly, Baen, and the National Academies Press (
> http://www.nap.edu/ ) also have a major benefit over the music (and to
> an extent, video) publishers: good e-book technology isn't ubiquitous
> yet. They can take a strategic view, and experiment with economic
> models and building brand recognition while there's still time. (And
> kudos to them. When the technology matures, they should be kings of the
> hill.)
> 
> It's interesting to note, though, that I can't easily find a clear
> rights statement on any of these sites. None of them make clear how
> they'd feel about me grabbing these files and putting them on my own
> server. Good candidates for Creative Commons licenses... (as, I might
> point out in an attempt to stay on-topic, are a number of libraries'
> digitization projects).
> http://www.creativecommons.org
> 
> -Joe Murphy
> Librarian and Technology Consultant
> Library and Information Services
> Kenyon College
> murphyjm at kenyon.edu
> 740/427-5120

-- 
L. E. Puckett
Reference & Electronic Systems Librarian
Parmly Billings Library
510 North Broadway
Billings MT 59101
406-657-8258