Comment by WillAdams
1 year ago
Well, I made a comment at:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43193432
Does that count?
The thing is, if we're going to have GPL software, then we need copyright.
Yes, the terms/lengths need to be adjusted, but one can't do that by fiat/unilaterally.
To me it's not a substantive critique. I agree that copyright is useful. But I don't think it is so useful that much of the world's knowledge creation stands to be lost, which is the alternative.
And, the copyright exists because it's a societal benefit -- it is considered to encourage the creation of knowledge, art and so on -- it puts significant limitations on the rest of society. So, when we're evaluating, we need to evaluate both whether we're getting the benefit of copyright that we "pay for" and whether increasing or decreasing what society pays would be a net good.
I'd propose that in the case of books, approximately zero books don't get written because of Anna's. In fact, some pretty thoughtful authors like Cory Doctorow feel that piracy increases their net writing and impact.
So, increasing enforcement seems like it would have no net benefit on adding to our world's social capital. On the other hand, it is clear that when data (on paper or digitally) is held by only a small number of hands, it is often lost, full stop. Television archives from the first fifty years of broadcast TV, whether US or England, much less I imagine, say Poland or East Germany, are largely gone. And in places like England that had criminal penalties for illegal TV watching, I'd guess that more is gone. You can search for a recent story about this regarding Dr. Who -- the BBC had dumped a bunch of Dr. Who tape they didn't want in the (60s?). An unnamed employee saved it. Which was (and is) illegal in England. The BBC has asked for it back, but can't/won't promise there are no legal repercussions for the person who saved the data.
Enforcement like that is a net negative in my opinion; the question would be moot if we had a full archive on Anna's of every Dr. Who episode.
Why are books likely to be lost?
Any decent library has a "last copy" policy where the last copy of a given book/edition is kept in a vault for reference at need.
>Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries.
>--- Anne Herbert
Piracy directly interferes with the actual business of publishing books --- I missed out on buying _Traditional Archery from Six Continents_, and the price quickly climbed to 4 digits after it went out of print, so I made arrangements to get the rights and re-print it --- shortly before I picked up the books at the printer someone released a PDF scan of the book --- it took me over 5 years to sell out the print run and get my living room closet back.
Similarly, I'd like to arrange for re-printing J.R.R. Tolkien's _The Old English Exodus_: https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/The_Old_English_Exodus but have settled instead for binding a photocopy I was sent the second time I requested it on Interlibrary Loan because a certain archive site is handing it out for free as a poor quality scan.
If folks want books to be free, why not focus on either public domain texts, or authoring new works which have copyleft and similar licenses? Why deny authors their right to control how their work is distributed _and_ what compensation they receive.
I've done a fair bit at wikibooks.org and have put up:
https://willadams.gitbook.io/design-into-3d
and my articles in _TUGboat_ are freely downloadable --- that doesn't give me the right to take texbook.tex, edit it, typset it to a PDF and then pass out that PDF.
Dr. Who episodes are not books. Don't move the goal posts.