Re: Responsibility, Copyright and New World Order

On 8/27/99, S. Martin Keleti <keleti[_at_]manifesto.com> wrote:
>
> On 8/12/99, Dwight Hines <hunger99[_at_]aol.com> wrote:
> >
> > Please tell us more about how reading "The Nature of the Book: Print
> > and Knowledge in the Making" by Adrian Johns (University of Chicago
> > Press, 1998) ISBN: 0226401219 made you think of copyright differently.
>
> I haven't yet read it; as I thought my posting made clear, I only read
> a review of it, which summarizes some of its main points (and at 753 pp,
> it has a few). Among them is a challenge to the conventional wisdom
> regarding the effects of the printing press, such as standardized fixing
> of words and works, and in turn what effects the "print culture" had in
> such areas as religion, politics, and science.
>
> The spin on the earliest English copyright laws is often decidedly
> negative, equating them with censorship. Yet there were other effects,
> such as standardization and scientific progress, which the laws and
> institutions tried to achieve, and did, with some success. The history
> and the ideas the book examines broadened my perspective and gave me a
> different way to look at copyright.
>
> Even before I finished reading the review, I started looking at
> parallels to the digital revolution. The earliest copyright laws
> (and even current ones) are often faulted as bad attempts to control
> the dissemination of information. This book suggests that there are
> some virtues in that. Also, printing seems to conjure up the idea of
> "fixity" of literary and other copyrighted works. Printed books last
> a long time. Similarly, information technology seems to promise
> permanence and perfect reproduction of texts and images, but not much
> thought is given to the fact that new media, and the ever-denser
> digital recording media, tend to be even more fragile and ephemeral.
> 8-track tapes? floppy discs bigger than 3-1/2"? The rapidly
> obsolescing software and hardware to use these quickly deteriorating
> media make it likely that the information will disappear.
>
> I still haven't found time to order and read the book, but I did find
> the review online so that you can read it yourself if interested:
>
> http://www.thenewrepublic.com/magazines/tnr/archive/0599/051799/burnett051799.html

I have started it. (The author is a UCSD faculty member and Martin's reference to it was one of several I had seen, so that sealed my decision.)

So far, I'm impressed by Johns's approach and scholarship. An early point he makes, and one relevant to the electronic information age, is that early in the days of print the primary issue was authenticity of the text. Piracy was rampant; Johns mention one important scientific work whose pirated edition was available before the authorized version. Imagine a world in which authenticity is your primary concern as a reader. We take it for granted today but it was not always so; nor is it always so today in some parts of the world.

We *may* be re-entering such an age. If you were to see a work (say, Stephen King's latest novel) which you could download at one of several sites, but you didn't know which version is authentic, how do you choose? Not too critical with King, but what about Stephen Hawking's latest paper in a hundred versions?

Food for thought.

David

David Wilson
UCSD Bookstore Course Materials Department Manager University of California, San Diego
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