Comment by Michelangelo11
4 days ago
> Each story is Copyright (C) 2022 to its original authors, and all rights are reserved. The book is not public domain, nor is it Creative Commons.
How is this "free online edition" distinct from piracy, in that case?
It's hosted on one of the author's sites. The collection itself is (as far as I can tell) out of print. It's falling through the cracks of "too complicated for a publisher to figure the rights out of" and "not lucrative enough for anyone to care".
It’s possible that it’s being distributed with permission of the copyright holders. Given the number of different people involved that seems kind of unlikely, but “free” doesn’t have to imply a permissive license.
I think it's normal for the publisher to hold those rights (perhaps shared with the original authors, depending on the details of their agreements), so possibly all that would have been required here would be for the publisher to approve doing this.
Or maybe Rucker and all of the other authors are friends, and keep in touch, and he just literally called all of the up and said "Hey, can I post Mirrorshades online for posterity?" and they all agreed. Who knows?
But it’s a published work. I wouldn’t expect the author to have rights to post it.
Not by default, no. But it seems entirely reasonable that he may have approached the original publisher, requested permission to post this, and received said permission. Considering that the print book has been out of print for some time, and given that the linked page does emphasize the copyright status of the works, this feels like the most likely scenario to me.
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He drew hard on his cigarette. Annoyance flickered across his face, like an artefact in the poorly-compressed bootleg movies he sold to his fellow low-lifes at The Pig and Drum.
Some Corpo-type, no doubt. Can't help seeing something good scroll across their feed tube without calling Legal.
He'd worked with a few in the past. Not bad all-in-all, at least they paid on time. That said, he could think of few he'd drink with.
He toyed with the idea of leaving a bitchy comment. Probably get downvoted to oblivion.
The dogs in the yard barked at a passing vehicle.
Irritated by the animal noise and the corpo whining, he thrashed something out. Pulling another cigarette from his pack, he hit "reply".
> Some Corpo-type, no doubt.
The opposite. Consider Harlan Ellison's views on piracy: "If you put your hand in my pocket, you’ll drag back six inches of bloody stump."
Harlan Ellison was an asshole though.
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You perfectly articulated how I felt about this thread.
Man I can only hear this in Keanu's voice.
I gigglesnorted.
The Pig and Drum.
Please tell me that is a real place! :=)
It was.
It's free to read, not free to use. As it's from one of the involved authors, they probably got permission for this release. The problem with piracy is lack of permission/consent, not the act itself.
People are making books freely available all the time, even those they sell on other platforms. Nothing wrong with this.
Consider the popular cliche, "free as in beer vs free as in speech".
The rights copyright gives you, briefly, includes: copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work. What suggests there is piracy is going on?
In 1986, it was unlikely that the original contract for the book mentioned anything about electronic rights. As it was a reprint anthology, the rights purchased would have only covered the use in the anthology as long as it was in print. Which means that to post the book online, Rucker would have to contact the individual contributors and get new permissions. Did he do that? I make a guess that he did not. It is not clear from what is stated here.
Yep he did, according to the top comment
The 'punk' in cyberpunk is intended to be punk.