Re: "Against Intellectual Property"

On Wed, Aug 02, 2000, Marty Hayes <9ball[_at_]hostsite.net> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 31 Jul 2000, Bryan Taylor <bryan_w_taylor[_at_]yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, 27 Jul 2000, Eric Eldred <eldred[_at_]eldritchpress.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > Those of you who are not Slashdot readers might not be aware of
> > > this link,
> > >
> > > http://danny.oz.au/free-software/advocacy/against_IP.html
> > >
> > > "Against Intellectual Property," chapter of a book,
> > > "Information Liberation," by Brian Martin.
> >
> > Here's another article in the LA Times with a similar message:
> >
> > http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/20000729/t000071270.html
>
> Thanks, Bryan and Eric, for giving me the heartiest chuckle I have
> had in the last ten days or so.
>
> Did anyone else note the absurdity of these links? In the first
> instance on SlashDot, the article argues against the premise of
> intellectual property, but the preceding paragraph says (obviously
> not verbatim), "Hey, this is only a single chapter of a book that
> isn't available online, and if you want to order it, it costs
> $7.95". In the second link, the LA Times staff writer lists a
> litany of reasons that copyright law is essentially obsolete -- and
> right below the writing credits, there is a link telling me as the
> reader that I can look at the archives for free, but it will cost
> me if I want to retrieve a copy.
>
> I'm quite sure I cannot be the only one noting the irony.

Certainly there appears to be a contradiction in principle.

But I have been puzzling over a similar problem and have not yet received a satisfactory answer. Few print publishers want to publish on paper a work unless they can secure the rights to it. For example, O'Reilly and Associates did print a Linux manual that was under the GPL, but another publisher simply copied it and sold it at a reduced price. It was no longer ecoonomical for ORA to distribute it unless at a loss considering printing costs.

However, this situation does not occur in online publishing, where the costs approximate zero. Thus a GPL or public domain work can be easily published online.

The problem comes when the author wants to give the book away online but also wants to make it available in print.

I think we need a new arrangement for that. Copyright no longer is appropriate, I think, in such a case.

I have considered making the online version appropriate for online reading, but then "forking the source" so the print book is a derivative work that is sufficiently improved so it can deserve a new copyright. But it is difficult to do this. I even asked ORA but they haven't been able to help.

Anybody have new ideas on this subject?

Eric Eldred
<eldred[_at_]eldritchpress.org> Received on Thu Aug 03 2000 - 15:55:26 GMT