Why writers drink, Part Whoknows

[rolanni]

An alert reader sends me this link to an article at Techdirt, in which the author of the article is lambasting The Authors Guild (the mandate of which is to protect the rights of its author-members; a mandate that it tries to fulfill, with mixed results)of being anti-education and anti-learning because it’s Being Mean to some university libraries who “got tired” of waiting for Congress to figure out copyright (yet again) and decided to take matters into their own hands.

These libraries decided that if a work was, in their sole judgement (using what methodology is unclear), “orphaned” then it belonged to no one, was thus free, and the library could therefore scan it and make it available.

Mind you, I’m a fan of libraries. I have some real issues with the rhetoric of certain professors, who, snug in their well-paying day-jobs like to talk about the Evils of Copyright! and Mean Intellectual Property Holders Keeping Information Hostage! and How an Author Never Made Money from Their Copyrights! …and a whole lot of other arrant nonsense that just makes me want to go lie down in a darkened room with a cool towel on my forehead.

There are a couple of issues regarding this article, and the comments to the article.

One: The whole Orphan Works Issue that we all hear so much about and which is the total justification put forth by universities and Google and proselytizing professors? Is a red herring. There are NOT millions or even hundreds of thousands of Brilliant! Works! Still! In! Copyright! just lying around the place whose authors-or-rights-holders have fallen off the face of the earth and cannot be found, that in-force copyright therefore Robbing! The! Ages! of those gems.

One-Ay: If a work appears to be “orphaned,” i.e. the author is dead, the last publisher of record knows nothing about who might be handling the literary estate? Still doesn’t mean there isn’t a rights-holder, somewhere, who is, either willfully or through ignorance, withholding the use of the work, and the universities, and Google and the proselytizing profs are still stealing from those rights-holders by taking matters into their own hands. “We don’t wanna look for them,” and “it’s too hard!” isn’t the same as “can’t be found.”

One-Bee: Just publishing everything you (see universities, Google and PP, above) can get your hands on and saying that, if a right-holder happens to notice that they’re being stolen from, they can file a DMCA notice is…oh, breathtakingly arrogant. For starters.

Two: Big Biz Education, Google, and Proselytizing Profs really need to get out into the real world, and talk to real writers — not! academic writers; real writers, by whom I mean exactly those Evil! Copyright! Holders! who, um, do and are making money, and sometimes their sole living from those copyrights; from the mouths of whom the universities, Google and the well-paid Proselytizing Professors are taking Actual Food.

Edited to add: Link to the Authors Guild side of the story

Edited again: Link to NYTimes story regarding Judge Chin’s rejection of Google’s Grand Plan to Digitize the Known Galaxy.

And!Judge Chin’s breakout quote, which I couldn’t find yesterday: “A copyright owner’s right to exclude others from using his property is fundamental and beyond dispute.” – Judge Chin, 2011

Originally published at Sharon Lee, Writer. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[roseaponi.livejournal.com]

Are these the same people who snub "genre writing" in favor of "real literature?"

"Genre" books depend upon being bought. "Literature" seems to be a means for professors to get noticed and possibly hold jobs longer.

[roseaponi.livejournal.com]

That's what I mean - thanks :) They're caught up in the idea that Books Are Thought Incarnate and as such should be set free! and don't realize they're trampling on Books Are My Livelihood.

[liadan-m.livejournal.com]

I've been following this particular iteration of 'publish orphan works' since U Mich announced it. Some things that the tech-dirt article left out

- Works that are candidates for this program of scanning were published in the US 1923-1963. These are not current works, though they still may be relevant to some fields.

- The University of Michigan has flow charts (http://www.lib.umich.edu/orphan-works/documentation) documenting the process they are going through to determine if items are 'orphaned,' including how they are searching for rightsholders.

- Works scanned for this program are available to those with the rights and privileges of check-out at the library. They are not available to the wider public.

I don't agree with what Google Books is doing, though it's made some scholarship much easier, now that I'm no longer an attached academic. But making books already in the collection available for electronic check-out, by authorized patrons of their library? All for it. Hell, if I could have searched through texts of a third of the books that I checked out while writing my thesis, I wouldn't have made nearly so many trips across town for that one more promising book, or racked up so many late fees because I hadn't gotten to that part of the pile yet. Scanning and making available works that, due to damage of time or use, are no longer on the shelves though still in the collection? Yes, please. Making more than a token effort to see if the academic who wrote the book is still alive? Even better.

As you know, having been involved with academia recently, university libraries are entirely different animals from public libraries. Heck, it was a big deal when the two major libraries on my campus each added a standard particle board bookshelf of fiction (the first year, the two libraries had 100 'fiction or pop-sci/pop non-fic' titles between them, for a student body of 20,000. 4 years later, there are 250 titles between them, and two! bookshelves in each library cafe). As an academic, I never expect to 'earn out'. My predecessors of 50-70 years ago didn't expect their works to still be *in* copyright at this point, given what copyright meant when they created the works, and few of them would ever hope that anyone outside the university system would care to read what they had written, much less purchase said work. And given the state of most disciplines and their advancements over the last 50 years, about the only people who are going to want to work with many of these texts are those who do 'history of ___.' And I agree, it's not that there are tons of great works out there, inaccessible due to being orphans. It's a small list. But by and large, *this* iteration is about scholarly works, not fiction. And again, by and large, not taking Actual Food from anyone's mouth, since they are digitizing works already purchased and offering works in the collection to their patrons.

What I want to know is why the Author's Guild, who, afaik, do not represent academic authors (though some of their members might well be in the 70+ age range required to be effected by this program), are getting themselves involved in this kerfluffle.

[janne.livejournal.com]

Puzzled by mention of Google books -- the only readable books I've found there have been well out of copyright, searching for ones in copyright only offers links to where one can buy the books. Which I should think would be helping the writers? For myself, I'm perfectly happy to use google books to identify half-remembered titles, then buying them properly. Would have been less money going authors way from me, at least, without the possibility of googling. I've also bought books after reading them for free in the Baen free library, to give another example that making people aware of the existence of books isn't necessarily bad.

[saruby.livejournal.com]

So, I could just take something that UofM held the patent for and claim it was mine because it was too much work to get permission?

They have a pretty good law school there. Maybe they should have tried asking someone about this, because when I was in school the words "due diligence" meant you actually had to try to do something. Like contact the rights holder.

If the Hathi Trust (or anyone else) wishes to digitize and promulgate "orphaned" works, they need to have a clear definition of "orphaned" that includes what a "reasonable search" entails and keep a record of their due diligence in identifying the rights holder for every work individually. For example, they could attempt to contact the last know rights holder, search court records for wills, check real estate titles for known addresses, newspaper obits, contact the publisher for any other anecdotal information that might provide a lead. This is very expensive, of course. Maybe it's just easier to not publish "orphaned" works.

[ruthannereid.livejournal.com]

Such a wild issue. Not something I think most people saw coming.

Of course, it's even more complicated when one remembers that the evil!copyright!holders are often not the authors at all, but the publishers. Talk about getting doubly screwed. -_-

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

politely, and i hope, cogently:

the whole issue of copyright only worked as long as it was hard to make copies of the copyrighted work. (by "hard", I mean, cost a significant fraction of the purchase price to copy, or took a long time to copy, or took up lots of disk space/required specialized software to copy and use thereafter.)

when cheap, easy digitization usable by the general public became possible due to technology advances, the old way of "protecting" copyrighted material became the moral equivalent of the emperor's new clothes. and the publishing houses and music/movie industry did the moral equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears and yelling "LALALA I can't hear you!" over and over again as a defense of their (now-broken) system.

and when that didn't work, they (mostly the RIAA/MPAA then) hired legions of high-priced lawyers and started suing everyone they could lay hands on. this, instead of hiring legions of high-priced researchers to *come up with a new way of making money using the IP they had rights to*.

meanwhile, they *did* hire lots of high-priced technologists to shut the barn door after the horse had vanished over the horizon, i mean, encumber digital versions with DRM that msotly just got in people's way rather than actually protected anyone's rights.

in short, i am very sorry that you are entangled in this asinine system and dependent upon it for your livelihood. i, personally, have no intention of pirating your work; indeed, I have paid good coin for digital versions of many of your novels. BUT, i have a choice in how to spend my money, and i choose to spend it on less-restrictive digital works rather than more-restrictive ones, because I know how fast technology advances, and i'd rather not tie my sizeable library to any one technological solution. i have no intention of re-buying my electronic library when Kindle/Nook/whatever finally folds, the way i'm having to update my movie library to DVD by re-buying everything i have in VHS format. i know where this road leads.

my considered advice to you is: you have a sizeable fan base -- they will gladly buy your works with no middleman involved. *I* will gladly buy your works with no middleman involved. get some distribution channels that don't depend on publishing houses and media blitzes. you're already interacting directly with your fan base -- you'll make far more if you simply write/edit/sell than if you go through a publisher. they're dinosaurs, just waiting to be pressed into oil. they just don't know it yet.

[hapaxnym.livejournal.com]

Be it stated that
a) I completely agree with the main thrust of this post; and
b) as a librarian, I consider copyright protection among my core responsibilities;

nonetheless, I would enter a plea that the author re-consider her repeated jabs at "well-paid professors."

Because I am married to a professor and most of my friends are professors. I assure you, the vast majority of them are extremely poorly paid -- worse than the local high school teachers, in fact -- and without the pension, health care, and other benefits public school teachers and I receive as union members.

I don't want to pit teachers against professors against authors as "You have it worse than I." But even if you have the pay stub of the particular professor who has torqued you off, you may wish to consider that zie may well be the equivalent of Nora Roberts as a representative of the income from zir profession.

[(Anonymous)]

Dear Sharon,

I wanted first to say, I love your books and have several copies of all the Liaden books (to include e-books). I am also a huge fan of you making money selling books because then you might just keep writing them! I'm ignorant on the subject of "orphans" in general, but I did want to mention that I have expended a moderate amount of effort trying to find one book from my yout. The book was Star Ship on Saddle Mountain by Atlantis Hallam, and I can't find any indication he left heirs with any knowledge of the book. A couple of copies ranging $250-$750 are floating around, but that's it. From an author's perspective having singletons out there like this may be considered the price the public pays for having a system that in general works, but I did want to mention there are some (if not heartbreaking, then) sad exceptions.

Regards and Thank You!

Rob Conley (rob.conley@q.com)

Broken Record

[claire774.livejournal.com]

To my horror one commenter pointed out that the Kindle, the Nook and all those will eventually and inevitably be obsolete. Makes sense just like records, then little tapes then big tapes then CDs VHS to DVD Each time we're asked to buy everything again in the newest format....From that point of view I'd ask you to publish your short stories in books on paper. I have two Liaden Companion volumes like that from Lee and Miller. In the meantime Splinter Universe is good. Books on paper presumably published by a book publishing company also prevent Steve from having to carry around big boxes of items that need to be mailed.

Sorry, didn't understand the whole controversy involving Google, famous professors, U mich, orphaned books and so on. I hope whoever are not poaching on Lee and Miller who have gone to unbelievable lengths to make a living....Anyone listening can e-mail me to explain. But please no complicated sentences or I'm not going to understand.

Happy Late Birthday wishes.
C.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

They learn from the politicians, the "it's easier to beg forgiveness than to ask and be told NO" idea. The politicians get away with it ("we'll just 'forget' to pay taxes, and the most we'll do is pay them back if we get caught") so Google and other places think they can do the same.

As far as I'm concerned they should be charged with intentional theft and fraud when they get caught. They haven't done their research (and what a thing to say about academics!), and more they are skipping it knowingly, and they are passing off something as "public domain" which they know isn't (if it's withing the copyright period then it's in copyright, that you don't know who owns it is irrelevant).

(I have other views on things like the length of copyright term, the lack of "fair use" and "parody" rights in most countries, and DRM. But they are not relevant to the way Google and those institutions are breaking the law as currently formulated. Hint: if you don't like the law, get it changed, if you break it in the meantime you take your lumps...)

Learn from politicians

[(Anonymous)]

What I have heard called "three year old morality"... it's not wrong unless you get caught. A lot of that going around these days. Jen from CO