Big guys try to squelch little guy’s speech again
In theory, Freedom of Speech belongs to everyone equally: a minimum wage cook at Denny’s has every bit as much right to the public mike as Rupert Murdoch. Reality, of course, tends to be something different.
You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist or an anti-globalization protester to recognize that the power of corporate money -- make that the overwhelming power of corporate money -- in the America of today extends to the field of news and commentary. Corporate America not only owns the major news media lock, stock and barrel -- it is also feeling increasingly free to use that ownership to control what news and commentary flows to the public -- even in broadcasts traveling over the public airways.
Especially when it comes to economic issues, only one viewpoint is generally heard today -- the voice of the “greed is good” set. True, the rest of us have the constitutional right to scream into the wind: we just don’t get to be heard.
There has been one small sliver of good news -- something that stands at least a ghost of a chance of returning a little diversity to the democratic conversation -- and that, of course, is the growing political power of the Internet.
And don’t think that the media powers that be haven’t noticed.
(Guardian) AP faces copyright row with bloggers
The US news agency Associated Press has found itself at the centre of a furious debate over the fair use of material by bloggers after its lawyers issued a takedown notice to a small, independent news site that it claims had quoted too heavily from its news stories. AP said six instances of copyright violation have taken place on Drudge Retort – a leftwing comment site set up as an alternative to the Drudge Report – including one post that pasted 18 words from a story on Hillary Clinton followed by a 32-word direct quote. A letter from the AP intellectual property governance coordinator, Irene Keselman, to the site on June 3 said that contrary to the site's assertion, "AP considers that the Drudge Retort users' use of AP content does not fall within the parameters of fair use".Make no mistake: what AP is trying to do here is to drive a dagger into the heart of the blogosphere. If its position is upheld, quoting even a paragraph or two from an AP story will constitute a violation of copyright laws. In other words, virtually every blogger in the world will be a lawbreaker. Up to this point, it has always been assumed that the use of brief quotations constitutes “fair use” under copyright laws. Since I don’t practice law in this field, I can’t say who’s right legally, but economically AP’s decision to push this issue makes little sense to me: I mean, blog links drive traffic to AP articles. Isn’t that a good thing? The opposing argument, as I understand it, is that the use of even brief quotations “devalue” the original work since it allows readers to rely on the extracts rather than reading the original article. What’s that word I’m looking for? Oh yeah, hogwash. This strikes me as exactly the sort of arguments high school debaters sometimes make that score points for originality, but have little if any “real world” relevance. While it’s certainly true that not every blog reader will click through to read the original article when a brief extract and link are provided, the suggestion that many of these readers, absent the link and abstract, would have ended up finding the original article in some other fashion and have read it in whole is nothing short of silly. The Internet is far too vast a place to seriously entertain such a suggestion. On the other hand, when a blogger does provide a link and a short extract, many blog readers will click through to the original article, driving up readership. Surely, this is a better than break even deal for an organization like AP. So if it’s not economics that’s driving this assault, then what is it? I won’t claim to be able to read AP’s corporate “mind,” but it’s worth noting that this isn’t the first time a major corporation has used the threat of litigation to try to silence commentary on the net. I mean, when you think about it, what’s the use of having as monopoly on the public discourse if you don’t enforce it?
* * *
End note: The AP appears to be backing down just a bit.
June 17th, 2008 at 1:19 am
I am behind AP on this one.
Forget the legal aspects (legal is simply a way of defining who has the bigger stick) don’t you think an author, be it a corporation or an individual should be able to define what is acceptable use of their own material?
June 17th, 2008 at 1:50 am
that’s what i thought, too – and i did check it (at least as well as i could)
what it is? As usual – simple and pure urge for power
it’s the same with software patents – a killing field for learning and progress, but a cash cow for the “owners”
as if you can “own” knowledge (think of patents for DNA! WHO had invented that? Soon YOU will be owned by some pharmaceutical companies and you will be impeached because you dare to use your body without paying?)
But each and every invention is based on the knowledge of the whole society, it is a fairy tale of wannabe-supermen, that they did do it on their own. I know that, because i “invented” a simple and usable definition of information – checklist-like – works fine in software, linguistics, physics, psychology, whatever… – but i know i am NOT a superman and not a mastermind, it is just the “weird” mixture of books i’ve read. So many really clever persons worked hard to understand information – and didn’t succeed for 40/50 years – since Shannon – and now tell everone that it is “not professional” to look for…
but it is “inside” the job, inside the SOA and the processes and browsers – it is “inside” language and learning and how our children grow up – it is “inside” our body and DNA and proteom
that’s my second name “scream into the wind”
but it doesn’t matter – i know that if i will not tell the world what information is – another one will do it. If Einstein would have died as child – another one would have told us about the theory of relativity
that’s how brains work, they try to learn and understand as much as possible – and a genius is born every day in an overcrowded world
it’s not about constancy, it’s about dynamics – it’s not about data, it’s about relationships – our brain is not copyable, because our knowledge is not stored in neurons, but in waves (based on neurons, of course, but waves) – with all the power of interference allowing thinking through patterns, associations…
and that’s not only the way how creativity works. It is the way how each and every information processing system works – and it depends on communication. Communication, information exchange, is the glue for each living system. PCD (programmed cell death )? Just a termination of communication – and the cell is dead. Or look at so many suicides – how often it is isolation…
in times before kings and wars and frontiers the pace of knowledge was about 18 miles per generation – from South Russia to Stonehenge you can follow the path of technologies…
so, to control communication is to control “the body” – of course, it is not about the care for “the body”, because the body always needs as much communication as possible – it is only about control…
and i guess – we all know that instinctively
PS:
i had none
June 18th, 2008 at 12:43 am
The corporate-owned media slobbers in avaricious longing over dreams of controlling the Internet. Freedom of speech is only for the wealthy and powerful, as far as they are concerned. Mind-control is their heart’s desire. Truth is anathaema to most of them. They had to quit pandering quite so much to Dick Cheney, when his numbers went practically to zero. Now, they pander to MCain. They dont want the rest of us to speak our mind. Like Dirty Deadeye Dick, they want us to shut up, sit down, buy their poison, or be silenced one way or another. Cheney is the perfect example of these corporate crooks and thugs. They wear their little American flag lapel pins; spout hot air about Democracy; but lust for Fascism.
June 19th, 2008 at 1:37 am
richl
don’t you think an author, be it a corporation or an individual should be able to define what is acceptable use of their own material?
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!)
June 19th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
Again
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.
June 20th, 2008 at 9:54 am
richl
thanks for the reply!
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?
“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…
mostly it would be impossible – not only to contact the author, but simply to check which kind of permission the author chose
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
June 20th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
I’m 60 and from the U.S. with strong libertarian bordering on anarchy leanings. The U.S. publishes somewhere around 250000 books a year (ain’t Google wonderful).
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:
â€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.â€
(this is from a September 16 2007 page posted on ‘powerofinformation.blogspot.com’ )
June 20th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Good points richl. It’ like quoting from a Mark Twain sentence or 2 that was quoted from another source, which may have come from a 3d source, and that from yet a 4th source. Also, we sometimes remember certain things from a long time ago that we can’t remember where. There are a lot of things I remember-or think I remember-but don’t know from where.
Of course I’m much younger than you , so I might get even worse.
June 21st, 2008 at 9:55 am
richl
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…
thanks – helps to understand you: Bertrands Paradox: the more information, the better the prognosis/understanding
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?
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)
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?
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
“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
and i try so hard to avoid my one fault per decade!
but nice to know my visitor! Thanks
(just kidding, not mocking
)
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
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….
June 21st, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Hi Again, that was interesting reading.
-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.â€
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.
June 21st, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Steve Again and whoever
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
June 22nd, 2008 at 3:31 am
Steve
wish i could have said it so clearly and easy to understand…