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Sparklers!

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mr_goldenage (RIP):
I am glad to see that this turned into an interesting conversation. Actually this is about UFS over @ CB+. I for one would not dare to upload anything here by S&S that is owned by Conde Nast ( bought them out in 1953?) or over @ CB+ even because that is the rule and I obey the rule. I have just emailed Conde Nast about "showcasing" their comic work of the 1940's on one of my yahoo groups with their permission a few days ago, but of course I have not heard back from them. Go figure. JohnC makes several good points and some I even agree with even though I think the "law" is flawed in some of these cases. Just my own personal opinion. I have no interest in making money off of these books. I just want to save them. That is all. Plain and simple. Anyways a great conversation. Thanks!

RB

John C:
Oh, the law is extremely flawed.  As it stands, it allows big corporate ownership to determine what we're allowed to read (and watch and listen to) while providing very little protection if, for example, Disney integrates a bunch of fan fiction into their upcoming Star Wars movies without asking permission; the authors would have the right to sue, but it requires a lot of money to push through to the end.

(That's really what "Orphan Works" laws are about, when you see big names supporting them.  They don't want you or I preserving some obscure book that only has a few copies remaining.  They want to avoid paying you for your work because, "hey, we couldn't find you, so you must not have cared.")

Intellectual Property has also mutated (or reverted--prior to Queen Anne, publishers believed they had a perpetual monopoly and her copyright law acknowledged the monopoly but put a strict limit on it) from an acceptable-loss approach to "promoting progress" to a philosophy that artists (or, rather, the multinational corporations that employ them) somehow "deserve" to make a profit from their efforts at the expense of society, despite any poor business practices.

So, I don't support how it works, but I also don't think that it would serve anyone to bankrupt the people willing to fight against it and give the publishers examples to pitch for why they "need" even stricter laws.

On the activism front, though, it's worth pointing out that the International Telecommunication Union is meeting on December 3rd to propose a treaty they've been keeping secret, but leaked chapters show that they're trying to give themselves the same authority over the Internet that they have over telephone lines, like authorizing "kill switches" on national networks.  Expect to see a lot of sites showing the "Cat Signal" (of the Internet Defense League) this week to highlight that.

narfstar:
I had not heard anyone big was fighting for "orphan works" laws. While I may not agree with their reason for doing it, I hope some orphan laws can be passed. That would make things like Sparkman and Triple Terror even more safe. I do believe them to be very safe.


I tried to contact S&S awhile back with no response. I even tried to go through someone who was asking for assistance. They may want help but sure do not want to give it.

John C:
Unfortunately, the proposal I know that made it the furthest basically put a cap on infringement awards based (inversely, I guess) on a "reasonably diligent effort" to find the copyright holder beforehand.  That might sound nice, but "reasonable" is left open to interpretation based on the nature of the work and the identity of the copyright holder.

In other words, the New York Times can't be bothered to find out who posted a picture to the Internet, so your award is nominal at best, but you'd be bankrupted for not getting a month-long research project right, if a big company is at the end of the tunnel.

To me, the only real solution is to get rid of "orphans" as a concept, since gray areas don't "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts," or really anything.  I like what we do with Registered Trademarks and even corporations:  You pay a frequent periodic fee to keep your registration.  That solves the "diligent effort" by providing a contact every couple of years and encourages creators to "donate" anything that isn't making them money.  (Of course, that also encourages creators to sell their rights to companies that'll renew everything and anything as a cost of doing business, which is unfortunate.)

As to getting a response, of course there's no response.  They're not traditionally in the business of permission, which means that granting permission means having a lawyer draft a license, which costs them money.  There's also probably at least one manager to whom anybody you contact would have to explain the concrete economic benefits of allowing anybody to read for free what they could conceivably charge for.  It's not like borrowing a shovel from a neighbor.  It's more like borrowing a shovel (or one of those orange aprons, maybe) from Home Depot.

If I were trying to get anywhere, I'd probably try to go through the people who deal with copyrights directly, the lawyers.  Recruit the people who'd get paid to draft the license to find the people who'll pay them to do it.  Their names would presumably be on the Blackmask case about the unauthorized Doc Savage reprints.  And the more official you can look (paper letter, letterhead), the further you'll probably get.

An alternative would be something like a VP (or whatever) of Business Development.  They usually have the ear of the decision-makers and have some authority to create loss-leaders if they can pitch it as something that'll help the company in the long term.  Sounds like a fake title you give to politically-connected kids, I know, but a good one sees the big picture and has the power to act, or at least the influence to get people to act.

It's still no guarantee, since Conde Nast is an old, traditional company from a time when you clamp down on Intellectual Property because it has the word "property" in the name, and you wouldn't give away acres of land, but I think it'd be a better place to start than anybody tied to the publishing side of things.

narfstar:
Our wonderful government puts everyone at odds with everyone else. With laws based on the death of a creator rather than on a registered timeline like trademark. The government makes laws making business powerful over people and other legislation making lawyers able to sue business for other business or the government costing billions. I am wanting to write a cartoon book entitled "Only a Politician...."
much of it dealing with education. An example being "Only a politician would think that every child should take Algebra in ninth grade even though have failed math for the previous eight grades."

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