The societal benefits from having a fairly free flow of information in the digital age are so great that some degree of author control is necessarily going to have to disappear.

wish i could have said it so clearly and easy to understand…

I totally agree with that. I was curious as to why it should be legal to copy someones work without their permission, not in a legal sense (I’m sure that can be argued pro and con forever) but from a personal view. It is easier and more accurate seems sum it up

-The question is not why it may be ‘desirable’ but why should it be “legal” for an authors work or parts thereof to be copied without their consent.

is that really that big difference? Isn’t law thought to grant the “desirable” states of a society? At least, that was the origin of law – to defend and protect, what a society desired or declared as desirable. (Btw: that’s the reason why you can see the true colors of a society by looking at the laws)-

Yep big difference. Laws (rules enforced by the gun) are intended to protect an individual or society from aggressive harm, not to create or maintain a ‘desirable’ society. Mores (rules enforced by peer pressure) are what creates and maintains a desirable society. Though laws and mores at times overlap one should never be mistaken for the other.

-old saying of law: Ignorantia iuris nocet

law is law – look at the punishments of teenagers downloading copyright protected stuff. And if ignorantia doesn’t protect you, why should incompetence do that?-

As I understand it that term refers to ignorance of the law not inability to follow it to the letter. I seriously doubt that I should be punished should I have remembered and quoted the following “Haj opened the thick volume reverently and studied the ornamental title page.” as long as I could show that I had tried to find the origins of it and couldn’t. That quote happens to come from page 47 in a book by E.E. Hunt titled “Haj, the Law and the Prophets” that is sitting on my shelf. It was published in 1916 with perhaps a run of 800 or so being printed.

Because Mr. Hunt may have a following that I am not aware of, this would be the perfect place to put in the statement “If you are the author of this quote or know who the author is please contact me at… so that it can properly accredit it.”

As interesting and generally valid as I find your replies it seems to me that the bottom line is that you believe quoting should be legal because it makes it easier on the person doing the quoting.

From Steve: richl, let me jump in here for a second. I think the issue ultimately comes down to what constitutes “fair use,” an inherently vague term. I don’t claim to have the expertise to answer legally, but I think the law is going to have to keep up with technology. The societal benefits from having a fairly free flow of information in the digital age are so great that some degree of author control is necessarily going to have to disappear.

To me, allowing bloggers to grab two or three paragraphs (as opposed to the whole work) is “fair use,” which for the most part will actually benefit the original publisher by bringing additional attention to the work. But it makes for an interesting issue.

thanks again for the reply – i am truly honored – and guess, i have to excuse myself, didn’t want to offend you in any way…

I’m 60 and from the U.S. with strong libertarian bordering on anarchy leanings.

thanks – helps to understand you: Bertrands Paradox: the more information, the better the prognosis/understanding

The U.S. publishes somewhere around 250000 books a year

you won

(ooops – mentioning my books is meant just to explain, not to impress someone – everyone writes books nowadays)

but it is not about winning, isn’t it? It is about information and cause and effect, about originators and their rights, true?

The question is not why it may be ‘desirable’ but why should it be “legal” for an authors work or parts thereof to be copied without their consent.

is that really that big difference? Isn’t law thought to grant the “desirable” states of a society? At least, that was the origin of law – to defend and protect, what a society desired or declared as desirable. (Btw: that’s the reason why you can see the true colors of a society by looking at the laws)

As for missing author, publisher and the like information, as long as you can show that you have given it your best there should not be any legal squabble.

old saying of law: Ignorantia iuris nocet

law is law – look at the punishments of teenagers downloading copyright protected stuff. And if ignorantia doesn’t protect you, why should incompetence do that?

If someone digs one of those stories out of an archive and publishes part or all of it without my permission that’s my fault because I didn’t sufficiently annotate it with the needed information.

dare to doubt – the thing about information is, that it is not only dynamical, but both identifiable and regular. The magic of an informational universe like ours is the ability to both change and (despite of that) still be recognizable – that’s the one and only precondition for decisions, because it allows prognosis – by using memory to reproduce things

That simply means that information – each and every little bit – must be representable and that means copyable. Each reading is a copy of the written, the copies are not only on paper/net. So, to protect your writings efficiently from copying you have to encrypt it – but then, no one can read it. At the moment, it should be readable, it has to be decrypted – and is therefore copyable without protection. How hard that is – is maybe another question, but it always is possible (even without criminal intent without your permission). But if you protect your writings perfectly, you simply destroy it

btw – OTH – that is the power not only of written words, but of language in general – individually produced information, but storable/usable totally independent of the individual creators

To my way of thinking there is also the question of why, except in the case of science or law where specific word usage may be critically importantly, there is an actual need to quote. Any competent writer can paraphrase and then site the original source.

“paraphrase” means your interpretation of the words – but isn’t it much fairer to the authors to allow them their own words – and then tell your readers, what you have done with them?

“question of why, except in the case of science or law where specific word usage may be critically importantly” – because most non-prose books are based on science in one way or the other, i guess, this exception means a really big part of authorship

but i tell you why i, personally, am so eager to quote – it is the respect for the ideas of others

reading, learning, knowledge – is nothing else than information processing to create memory/to copy reality/environment to be able to reproduce its behavior to be able to foresee its reactions – precondition for your decisions and your decisions decide about your survival/success

it is not about creating truly new things, things the universe had never known before, (would be nonsense, evolutionarily seen) – it is about detecting new (better said unknown until now) states/situations/behaviors to be used for your survival/success – that is why our brain has grown so much in the last million years

and that means that everything you think depends on some input – Mother Nature gave you your fantasy not to “create” but to rearrange the input in new ways, that’s a difference for me – because it simply shows, that when YOU don’t rearrange it, someone else will do it some time later – or before

just because you don’t know where your ideas come from doesn’t mean, that they are yours

(ok, ok, since i know what information is, i think different…)

so when i remember what i have read or heard, i always try to give credit where credit is due – with his/her own words

Some people (no names named) put items like the following on their web sites without ever mentioning who the author was or where it came from.

and i try so hard to avoid my one fault per decade!

but nice to know my visitor! Thanks

(just kidding, not mocking )

True, there is a hyperlink but if the page is copied and pasted, the hyper link doesn’t show up and the information about the origin of the article is lost.

if someone would like to follow the link (s)he is on the net and the quote is long enough to be found (Debtonation: how globalisation dies)

but seriously – you are right – the site could be copied and pasted, scanned or transcribed, printed on paper, whatever…

i hadn’t thought of that

reminds me of …. ? Douglas Adams: “Oh dear,” says God, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic. (The Babel Fish)

but i prefer not to vanish in a puff of logic

seriously again….

yes, despite the fact, that i try hard to respect the originators of ideas, i sometimes forget to mention them. Even in my books it happened, but i have to admit, on the web – with the possibility of direct links and the conflict between respect and readability – in the end, i preferred simple links

so next time, i will add some footnotes, we learn by mistakes – i guess, this might be a good compromise between respect and readability

chuck

Also, we sometimes remember certain things from a long time ago that we can’t remember where.

yes – reminds me of a quote, i actually couldn’t find

as richl said: “Is it really a quote? I ask because if you don’t know who you are quoting or when or where you are quoting from how do you know it is a quote?”

it is a quote – something like “we thought they should have worn bowler hats and umbrellas” by a famous british archeologist talking about prehistoric men/prehominides – a quote i know i have read in one of my books which impressed me much because it shows how biased we all are, how our daily lifes and subconscious color everything in our heads – and often deny us to see the reality as it is….

Of course I’m much younger than you , so I might get even worse.

Having tried to dig up both author and publication information in libraries as well as on the net I can well understand where you are coming from. I think however you are missing my point, or me yours. The question is not why it may be ‘desirable’ but why should it be “legal” for an authors work or parts thereof to be copied without their consent.

As for missing author, publisher and the like information, as long as you can show that you have given it your best there should not be any legal squabble. I have had a couple of things published on the net on sites that no longer exist. They were published under the CC license but that information was not embedded in the story. If someone digs one of those stories out of an archive and publishes part or all of it without my permission that’s my fault because I didn’t sufficiently annotate it with the needed information.

To my way of thinking there is also the question of why, except in the case of science or law where specific word usage may be critically importantly, there is an actual need to quote. Any competent writer can paraphrase and then site the original source.

As a gentle tweak let me add this. Some people (no names named) put items like the following on their web sites without ever mentioning who the author was or where it came from. True, there is a hyperlink but if the page is copied and pasted, the hyper link doesn’t show up and the information about the origin of the article is lost. The information is also lost if the page linked to goes off line.

“Urban Legends

Debtonation: how globalisation dies:
”when the financial sector faced meltdown it had to rely on the state – in the form of central banks in United States, Europe and Japan alike – to intervene in order to restore a semblance of stability. In the real world, citizens and taxpayers are once again obliged to bear responsibility, and pay the costs incurred by the reckless and unrestrained greed of the world of high finance.”
(this is from a September 16 2007 page posted on ‘powerofinformation.blogspot.com’ )

thanks for the reply!

Seems simple enough to me for an author to put in a contact number of some sort so that someone wanting to quote has a way to contact the author for permission.

simple – to put, ok – but simple to use it???

how old are you – and where do you live? (no, in no way meant as disrespect/insult/offense!)

United Kingdom – Book Production Data: Number of book publications per year: 160,000 (new publications and re-editions)
Number of new publications per year: no data available.

what happens with your contact info in a re-edition? What happens after translations? Do you really believe i can ask a Chinese author – and what happens to his/her wishes, when i ask the salesmen in my country?

copyright laws protect your rights for about 70 years – what happens with the contact info, when the author dies?

and last not least – what happens with the contact info in an “allowed” quote? Copy-left or Copy-right – how to find out?

And I just gotta ask this in regards to your not being able to find a particular quote.

“to your not being able to find a particular quote”? Sorry, guess, misunderstanding

it is not about being able to find quotes – i was not able to find a particular author – ever tried to contact an author quoted in a scientific magazine (full declaration of autorship granted)? Ever tried to contact an author of a not-beststeller after 20 years?

books are not websites – they do not follow you when you change the provider, you cannot change the content when they are printed and gone…

Certainly it would be a pain compared to the way it is done now

mostly it would be impossible – not only to contact the author, but simply to check which kind of permission the author chose

but look at it like this, if it were done my way (read the correct way) then there would never be a problem finding the author of the quote

dare to doubt…

information must flow – and will flow – what you read is in your head. So i fear the only effect would be that only countries without copyright laws would continue to quote – the other ones would re-formulate it and sell it as their own…

you know – the path of least resistance

Those are fine reasons why you want them to be quotable but they do not address the reason why it should be legally permissible for my creations to be available to other authors to use at their discretion.

Seems simple enough to me for an author to put in a contact number of some sort so that someone wanting to quote has a way to contact the author for permission. For someone who writes books or articles they want quoted a simple blurb could be put in it as to permissibility to quote and for what purposes.

And I just gotta ask this in regards to your not being able to find a particular quote. Is it really a quote? I ask because if you don’t know who you are quoting or when or where you are quoting from how do you know it is a quote? I have often seen on the net and occasionally elsewhere items in quotes with an asterisk and at the end it will clearly state – this is a quote from I don’t know who or where. If you are the author please contact me at… .- Some lawyer could probably have a heyday with that but it still seems to me to be a reasonable and straight forward way of doing things.

Certainly it would be a pain compared to the way it is done now but look at it like this, if it were done my way (read the correct way) then there would never be a problem finding the author of the quote.

no

that’s the meaning/sense of rules in society – you need compliance on each and every side to be able to work efficiently (without always checking and rechecking and rererechecking you can work much more and much better!)

think of that! Each author would be able to declare: this side is allowed to be quoted, that is not (actually, in the usual internet book registries you CAN do that if you offer your own books openly and overtly)

each and every OTHER author would have to CHECK each and every quote (s)he uses (besides the usual verification, of course)

result : NO QUOTES => no author would like that (and i talk about the quotable authors)!

i know that – i wrote 5 books and had really hard times to check my quotes – one problem: there are MANY quotes of authors you cannot find any more to ask for publishing. In the end, i gave up and mentioned in the books the “Fair Use”

so either you can rely on laws allowing you short quotes with full declaration of authorship – or you have to forget it

and as author i can tell you – you WANT to be quoted – and it is not only me. Even Gerd Binnig wants to be quoted

usually, the only ones who deny you to quote – are the publishers – the ones who bought the rights, not the authors (sure, that’s a generalization, but, usually, authors write to be read – so the more quoted, the more read. We know that)

apropos publishers: the ones who deny are mostly employees who fear responsibility – because even for publishers it should be useful to be quoted as much as possible (of course with full declaration of authorship, at best including a link!)