From Crap to Quality:
NOTE: Though I'd use the term quality sparingly, I did what was asked of me which I think was the wrong thing to do, but it is what I was required to do and so I didn't want to loose points for doing something differently thinking it was right.
Shannon Hollender
Prof. Malesh
Draft of Controv. Ppr.
Due: 3/1/06
E-books and the Distribution Factor
Intro:
Generally speaking it is thought that the internet is a very valuable tool for so many endeavours. It is a device, a concept in practice which affords a majority of the world the chance to express themselves, to hear, to be heard and to learn. The famous song: “It’s a small world after all” is one which comes to mind when thinking of the concept behind the internet. The sheer size of it and it’s all inclusive nature allows people who would not normally be bale to interact, to communicate information, knowledge and to Share with one another what they normally would not be able to share. Convenience is the name of this game; and the internet has made it convenient to find and experience new things. Writers and the literary community have seized this opportunity as their own to share with the world their words, works, names, and ideas. This brings us to the concept of e-books and their now, (or soon to be) wide-spread utilization. The concept of the e-book as it applies here is this: that a writer who would not normally be able to publish or distribute their work may do so, the other side of the coin is that with this convenient distribution is that many more writers are in danger of having their works plagiarized. This is the debate here at hand.
Community:
On a whole, the literary world is comprised of those who write and those who distribute, for the purposes here we’ll call these two the authors and the publishers respectively. The readers (or customers) are those who are creating the controversy in this community, this will be addressed later. But for now suffice to say that the community is concerned with the sharing of ideas, stories and knowledge in written form. I am a member of this community in that I am all three a reader, an author and a publisher. I love to acquire knowledge by means of reading avidly. And for my own purposes I attempt to distribute my works for exposure and I do on occasion engage in the copying and ownership of works by other authors for my own enjoyment and leisure. This sums up a majority of the people who are considered part of the literary community. Students for example read for the acquisition of knowledge, write for the distribution of knowledge – though usually for their professor’s eyes in order to acquire a good grade, and from time to time they copy and distribute their works and the works of others for their peers to review. And in the midst of engaging in these very activities, they are often engaging in the thick of the controversy addressed herein. According to the US Government and law, it is illegal to copy or distribute works of any sort to others without clear consent of the author or without paying said author compensation for use of their works.
Controversy (history too)
With the advent of computers and their software technologies there has been a considerable amount of justifiable concern surrounding the realm of copyright, infringement, and piracy or plagerism. In response to this hot topic of late, a law was passed in 1998 called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA in a nut shell serves, “among many other things, as a legal wall between digital copyright protection and those who seek to breach that protection.” –Scarlet Pruitt This means that companies and publishers are allowed to put so-called “locks” on the books they distribute allowing them only to be read by certain programs and in certain ways. Hence we have e-books. Producing and subsequently distributing any program which allows one to retrieve the text from an e-book and re-distribute it without the locks thereby has become illegal. Enter now into the debate a Russian who did just that:
“Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested in Las Vegas on July 16, 2001, and charged with trafficking in, and offering to the public, a software program that could circumvent technological protections on copyrighted material, under section 1201(b)(1)(A) of the U.S. Copyright Act, which was made law by the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (the DMCA).” –Electronic Frontier Foundation
He sold only seven (7) copies of the program in the US and one of those was bought by Adobe, the corporation whose version of the e-book encoder he had cracked. Subsequently Adobe filed a complaint and had Sklyarov incarcerated.
What the whole thing boils down to is this:
“Digital Rights Management (DRM) is controversial in part because it changes the rules of how publishing works. Publishers ask for DRM because digital books are trivially easy to copy, and in particular, to copy without paying for them. Paper books can also be copied, but putting all the pages through a photocopier is a fair bit of work, so most people don't do it.” –Brad Templeton
Perceived by others:
This debate as it is perceived by others is one which really has no bearing. If people are going to do illegal stuff, they’ll do it, and there really is no way of stopping them in this case because there really is no way of proving it. This is a big problem, one which has thus-far stumped the majority of the literary world and left free distribution unchecked. However the publishers are pouring over this problem in hopes of finding another answer relatively soon so they may retain a firm grasp on large amounts of money; authors are still publishing and still not getting paid much for it; and the public is still reading and frequently reproducing and re-distributing much of the work out there.
The publishers see these things:
It’s wrong to reproduce any literary work for any reason without giving due recompense for the work to the owner of the rights of the work.
It’s wrong to circumvent control measures placed on literary works for any reason, fair use aside.
It’s wrong to possess, develop or sell and digital tool which allows for the above mentioned circumvention.
And Lastly: To pirate unpaid-for works takes no effort, no money and deprives the pockets of legally backed corporations who justly deserve these monies.
The people (readers/customers) see these things:
If I buy a book, it’s mine to do with whatever I please.
If I want to sell a book I own, it’s mine to sell.
If I want to keep a back-up copy of a book I own in digital form, for myself, that’s my right.
If I want to share a book I own, in digital form or not, I should be able to.
After all I paid for it.
I should not redistribute that book to the population for my own profits or devices.
The authors see these things:
I wrote it, it’s getting publicity and distribution, I want to get some money for it.
You didn’t pay for it so you shouldn’t have it.
If you did pay for it; heck yeah do with it what you want, just don’t forget me!
And the shared opinions are…
A book which was not paid for is illegally gotten, all parties believe this.
If a book is distributed without consent of the author, it is still legally distributed. The publishers and the people believe this.
If te author is getting paid for their work, it’s reproduction and distribution is justifiable and right and legal. The People and the authors believe this.
In conclusion, my opinion is:
Undecided, however I cite something that I ran across in doing my research as being so very true and perhaps may be the answer to the problem:
“The publishers of ebooks need to put fewer barriers in front of the reader, not more, so it's bemusing that some have put such a strong focus on DRM. Those who release books in open formats that can be read anywhere do face more illicit copying than they would find in the paper world, but in many cases they also get more sales.” –Brad Templeton
Bibliography:
EFF, “US v. ElcomSoft & Sklyarov FAQ” February 2002 http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/US_v_Elcomsoft/us_v_sklyarov_faq.html accessed: 2/27/06
IFLA, Committee on Copyright and Other Legal Matters (CLM) “Limitations and Exceptions to Copyright and Neighbouring Rights in the Digital Environment: An International Library Perspective”, http://www.ifla.org/III/clm/p1/ilp.htm accessed: 2/27/06
Petition to Abolish the Digital Millenium Copyright Act http://www.petitiononline.com/nixdmca/petition.html accessed: 2/22/06
Dinsmore, Alan; Sajka, Janina; Schroeder, Paul; Comments to Library of Congress, 2003: AFB Seeks Exemption for Literary Works http://www.afb.org/Section.asp?SectionID=3&TopicID=156&DocumentID=1840 accessed: 2/22/06
Eamonn Neylon First Steps in an Information Commerce Economy Digital Rights Management in the Emerging EBook Environment D-Lib Magazine January 2001 Volume 7 Number 1 http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january01/neylon/01neylon.html accessed: 2/22/06
Hilden, Julie; The First Ammendment Issues Raised by the TroublingProsecution od E-Book Hacker Dmitry Sklyarov http://writ.news.findlaw.com/hilden/20010810.html accessed: 2/22/06
Hodes, Laura, “Adobe's reversal of its Position on the "Hacker" That Cracked its E-Books: Proof That The Digital Millenium Copyright Act Needs To Change” August 2001 http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20010802_hodes.html accessed: 2/27/06
Jay, S; How To Protect Your eBooks From Piracy And Copyright Infringement! http://ezinearticles.com/?How-To-Protect-Your-eBooks-From-Piracy-And-Copyright-Infringement!&id=2737 accessed: 2/22/06
Lloyd, Rich; Electronic Rights: What is a Book? 2002 http://www.publaw.com/erights4.html accessed: 2/22/06
McAllister, Neil; Thursday, August 2, 2001 Civil Rights or Copyrights? Hack an eBook, Go to Jail http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2001/08/02/sklyarov.DTL accessed: 2/22/06
McCullagh, Declan; August 6, 2001 The Struggle over Intellectual Property http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/McCullaghintprop.html accessed: 2/22/06
Moohr, Geraldine; “The Crime of Copyright Infringement: An Inquiry Based on Morality, Harm, and Criminal Theory” http://www.law.uh.edu/faculty/gmoohr/Criminal.pdf accessed: 2/22/06
Pimm, Bob; Authors' Rights in the E-Book Revolution October 2000 http://www.gigalaw.com/articles/2000-all/pimm-2000-10-all.html accessed: 2/22/06
Pruitt, Scarlet; “Four years on, digital copyright law revs up”, February 2002 http://archives.cnn.com/2002/TECH/industry/02/18/copyright.law.idg/ accessed: 2/27/06
Templeton, Brad; “An E-Book Publisher on why the U.S. Attorney should free Dmitry Sklyarov”, December 2005, http://www.templetons.com/brad/free.html accessed: 2/27/06
And with that, since that paper was kicking my ass I thusly say to it the paper: "Take that Bitch!"
Shannon Hollender
Prof. Malesh
Draft of Controv. Ppr.
Due: 3/1/06
E-books and the Distribution Factor
Intro:
Generally speaking it is thought that the internet is a very valuable tool for so many endeavours. It is a device, a concept in practice which affords a majority of the world the chance to express themselves, to hear, to be heard and to learn. The famous song: “It’s a small world after all” is one which comes to mind when thinking of the concept behind the internet. The sheer size of it and it’s all inclusive nature allows people who would not normally be bale to interact, to communicate information, knowledge and to Share with one another what they normally would not be able to share. Convenience is the name of this game; and the internet has made it convenient to find and experience new things. Writers and the literary community have seized this opportunity as their own to share with the world their words, works, names, and ideas. This brings us to the concept of e-books and their now, (or soon to be) wide-spread utilization. The concept of the e-book as it applies here is this: that a writer who would not normally be able to publish or distribute their work may do so, the other side of the coin is that with this convenient distribution is that many more writers are in danger of having their works plagiarized. This is the debate here at hand.
Community:
On a whole, the literary world is comprised of those who write and those who distribute, for the purposes here we’ll call these two the authors and the publishers respectively. The readers (or customers) are those who are creating the controversy in this community, this will be addressed later. But for now suffice to say that the community is concerned with the sharing of ideas, stories and knowledge in written form. I am a member of this community in that I am all three a reader, an author and a publisher. I love to acquire knowledge by means of reading avidly. And for my own purposes I attempt to distribute my works for exposure and I do on occasion engage in the copying and ownership of works by other authors for my own enjoyment and leisure. This sums up a majority of the people who are considered part of the literary community. Students for example read for the acquisition of knowledge, write for the distribution of knowledge – though usually for their professor’s eyes in order to acquire a good grade, and from time to time they copy and distribute their works and the works of others for their peers to review. And in the midst of engaging in these very activities, they are often engaging in the thick of the controversy addressed herein. According to the US Government and law, it is illegal to copy or distribute works of any sort to others without clear consent of the author or without paying said author compensation for use of their works.
Controversy (history too)
With the advent of computers and their software technologies there has been a considerable amount of justifiable concern surrounding the realm of copyright, infringement, and piracy or plagerism. In response to this hot topic of late, a law was passed in 1998 called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA in a nut shell serves, “among many other things, as a legal wall between digital copyright protection and those who seek to breach that protection.” –Scarlet Pruitt This means that companies and publishers are allowed to put so-called “locks” on the books they distribute allowing them only to be read by certain programs and in certain ways. Hence we have e-books. Producing and subsequently distributing any program which allows one to retrieve the text from an e-book and re-distribute it without the locks thereby has become illegal. Enter now into the debate a Russian who did just that:
“Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested in Las Vegas on July 16, 2001, and charged with trafficking in, and offering to the public, a software program that could circumvent technological protections on copyrighted material, under section 1201(b)(1)(A) of the U.S. Copyright Act, which was made law by the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (the DMCA).” –Electronic Frontier Foundation
He sold only seven (7) copies of the program in the US and one of those was bought by Adobe, the corporation whose version of the e-book encoder he had cracked. Subsequently Adobe filed a complaint and had Sklyarov incarcerated.
What the whole thing boils down to is this:
“Digital Rights Management (DRM) is controversial in part because it changes the rules of how publishing works. Publishers ask for DRM because digital books are trivially easy to copy, and in particular, to copy without paying for them. Paper books can also be copied, but putting all the pages through a photocopier is a fair bit of work, so most people don't do it.” –Brad Templeton
Perceived by others:
This debate as it is perceived by others is one which really has no bearing. If people are going to do illegal stuff, they’ll do it, and there really is no way of stopping them in this case because there really is no way of proving it. This is a big problem, one which has thus-far stumped the majority of the literary world and left free distribution unchecked. However the publishers are pouring over this problem in hopes of finding another answer relatively soon so they may retain a firm grasp on large amounts of money; authors are still publishing and still not getting paid much for it; and the public is still reading and frequently reproducing and re-distributing much of the work out there.
The publishers see these things:
It’s wrong to reproduce any literary work for any reason without giving due recompense for the work to the owner of the rights of the work.
It’s wrong to circumvent control measures placed on literary works for any reason, fair use aside.
It’s wrong to possess, develop or sell and digital tool which allows for the above mentioned circumvention.
And Lastly: To pirate unpaid-for works takes no effort, no money and deprives the pockets of legally backed corporations who justly deserve these monies.
The people (readers/customers) see these things:
If I buy a book, it’s mine to do with whatever I please.
If I want to sell a book I own, it’s mine to sell.
If I want to keep a back-up copy of a book I own in digital form, for myself, that’s my right.
If I want to share a book I own, in digital form or not, I should be able to.
After all I paid for it.
I should not redistribute that book to the population for my own profits or devices.
The authors see these things:
I wrote it, it’s getting publicity and distribution, I want to get some money for it.
You didn’t pay for it so you shouldn’t have it.
If you did pay for it; heck yeah do with it what you want, just don’t forget me!
And the shared opinions are…
A book which was not paid for is illegally gotten, all parties believe this.
If a book is distributed without consent of the author, it is still legally distributed. The publishers and the people believe this.
If te author is getting paid for their work, it’s reproduction and distribution is justifiable and right and legal. The People and the authors believe this.
In conclusion, my opinion is:
Undecided, however I cite something that I ran across in doing my research as being so very true and perhaps may be the answer to the problem:
“The publishers of ebooks need to put fewer barriers in front of the reader, not more, so it's bemusing that some have put such a strong focus on DRM. Those who release books in open formats that can be read anywhere do face more illicit copying than they would find in the paper world, but in many cases they also get more sales.” –Brad Templeton
Bibliography:
EFF, “US v. ElcomSoft & Sklyarov FAQ” February 2002 http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/US_v_Elcomsoft/us_v_sklyarov_faq.html accessed: 2/27/06
IFLA, Committee on Copyright and Other Legal Matters (CLM) “Limitations and Exceptions to Copyright and Neighbouring Rights in the Digital Environment: An International Library Perspective”, http://www.ifla.org/III/clm/p1/ilp.htm accessed: 2/27/06
Petition to Abolish the Digital Millenium Copyright Act http://www.petitiononline.com/nixdmca/petition.html accessed: 2/22/06
Dinsmore, Alan; Sajka, Janina; Schroeder, Paul; Comments to Library of Congress, 2003: AFB Seeks Exemption for Literary Works http://www.afb.org/Section.asp?SectionID=3&TopicID=156&DocumentID=1840 accessed: 2/22/06
Eamonn Neylon First Steps in an Information Commerce Economy Digital Rights Management in the Emerging EBook Environment D-Lib Magazine January 2001 Volume 7 Number 1 http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january01/neylon/01neylon.html accessed: 2/22/06
Hilden, Julie; The First Ammendment Issues Raised by the TroublingProsecution od E-Book Hacker Dmitry Sklyarov http://writ.news.findlaw.com/hilden/20010810.html accessed: 2/22/06
Hodes, Laura, “Adobe's reversal of its Position on the "Hacker" That Cracked its E-Books: Proof That The Digital Millenium Copyright Act Needs To Change” August 2001 http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20010802_hodes.html accessed: 2/27/06
Jay, S; How To Protect Your eBooks From Piracy And Copyright Infringement! http://ezinearticles.com/?How-To-Protect-Your-eBooks-From-Piracy-And-Copyright-Infringement!&id=2737 accessed: 2/22/06
Lloyd, Rich; Electronic Rights: What is a Book? 2002 http://www.publaw.com/erights4.html accessed: 2/22/06
McAllister, Neil; Thursday, August 2, 2001 Civil Rights or Copyrights? Hack an eBook, Go to Jail http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2001/08/02/sklyarov.DTL accessed: 2/22/06
McCullagh, Declan; August 6, 2001 The Struggle over Intellectual Property http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/McCullaghintprop.html accessed: 2/22/06
Moohr, Geraldine; “The Crime of Copyright Infringement: An Inquiry Based on Morality, Harm, and Criminal Theory” http://www.law.uh.edu/faculty/gmoohr/Criminal.pdf accessed: 2/22/06
Pimm, Bob; Authors' Rights in the E-Book Revolution October 2000 http://www.gigalaw.com/articles/2000-all/pimm-2000-10-all.html accessed: 2/22/06
Pruitt, Scarlet; “Four years on, digital copyright law revs up”, February 2002 http://archives.cnn.com/2002/TECH/industry/02/18/copyright.law.idg/ accessed: 2/27/06
Templeton, Brad; “An E-Book Publisher on why the U.S. Attorney should free Dmitry Sklyarov”, December 2005, http://www.templetons.com/brad/free.html accessed: 2/27/06
And with that, since that paper was kicking my ass I thusly say to it the paper: "Take that Bitch!"
posted by Shannon Hollender @ 1:55 PM
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