[11772] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Will We Lose 1 Million Books Today?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steve Schear)
Fri Oct 24 20:02:59 1997
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 1997 14:57:41 -0500
From: Steve Schear <azur@netcom.com>
To: PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
I've recently put together a treatment (below) to address what I feel is a
major oversight of current government and Internet thinking. Most Internet
action groups have concentrated on fending off changes proposed by
publishers (via the NII White Paper), but have not offered any significant
counter-proposals which could be used for either strategic or tatical
purpose.
--begin proposed leglislation
GENERAL
The US Constitution empowers Congress to pass laws "to promote progress of
science and [the] useful arts." Congress has chosen to accomplish this
constitutional goal by granting authors a limited set of exclusive rights
in their works. The founding fathers wanted, through copyright, to
encourage the useful arts and thereby offer to the public the fruits of
these artists. Copyright protects all original works of authorship,
including such things as personal letters and corporate memoranda, from the
moment they are first fixed in a tangible form.
About 50,000 U.S. books go out-of-print each year. The lack of continuous
availability of these works runs counter to the implicit balance sought by
the founding fathers between the needs of the public and copyright holders.
In the past, copyright holders could reasonably maintain that economics
prohibited keeping works in print, with practical, economic and ubiquituous
on-line means, this is no longer a barrier.
This being so, why should copyrights on "significant" works (e.g., written
one's with length's greater than 20,000 words) which have been
commercialized continue when the public cannot gain ready access to copy of
same? This logic follows from the use-it-or-lose-it concept of trademarks.
Changes are need to ensure the public that such "significant"
commercialized copyright works are continuously available.
Under this recommendation the works must remain available from the
copyright holder or their licensee, specialty resellers (e.g., hard to find
book locators) wouldn't count, but electronic publication would. If a
copyright holder fails to keep a work continuously available, then after a
brief interval (e.g., six months) the copyright would lapse.
SOME DETAILS
Reversion
Often, the owner of copyright (the author) is different from the owner of
theprivilege to publish of a book or item. This privilege is assigned by a
contract between an author and publisher, mediated by an agent and editor.
Once signed, the author has little influence on the decision to keep abook
in print (unless they are big-time authors, like Danielle Steele or Stephen
King.) Furthermore, changes in editors, editorial direction, management,
ownership, etc., can affect decisions on whether or not to support a book,
keep it in print, etc., none of which the average author can influence.
Usually, contracts between authors and publishers have rights reversions
clauses, returning all rights to the author, once a book goes out-of-print.
However, publishers have come up with a new term
"out-of-stock-indefinitely" which fundamentally means "out-of-print" but
doesn't trigger reversion of rights.
Therefore, a part of the provision might ban author-publisher contract
clauses with these reversion changes. This would be similar to music
copyrights/contract law which limit a composers right to sign over more
than a certain percentage (75%?) of their interest in a work to the
publisher.
Revision
An author may sometimes seek to remove a work from circulation, perhaps the
work becomes embarassing or dated and needs to be revised.
So, another part of the provision might allow the author to irrevocably
place the copyright for a work to be withdrawn in a state of "limbo" such
that no one (including the author) could publish the work until the
author's death (or the copyright's normal expiration date). Copyright for
revised works would permit the author to replace one work with another by
relinquishing the copyright for the former work (which cannot be
republished until the copyright's normal expiration date.)
--end proposed leglislation
Comments?
I plan to present this idea to the staff of my state's congressional
reps in the next few weeks, and more widely during and after their
summer recess.
-- Steve
PGP mail preferred, see http://www.pgp.com and
http://web.mit.edu/network/pgp.html
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Steve Schear (N7ZEZ) | Internet: azur@netcom.com
7075 West Gowan Road | Voice: 1-702-658-2654
Suite 2148 | Fax: 1-702-658-2673
Las Vegas, NV 89129 | economic and crypto dissident
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God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
The courage to change the things I can;
The weapons that make the difference;
And the wisdom to hide the bodies of the people that got in my way;-)
"Surveilence is ultimately just another form of media, and thus,
potential entertainment."
--G. Beato
"We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million
typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of
Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is
not true." -- Dr. Robert Silensky
