[ExI] intellectual property again

[Dan]

Some funny things happen with copyrights. For instance, the folks at mises.org found that many economics classics by Austrian or related economists now deceased were published by small presses that went under. This is partly because, among the Establishment, these economists were unpopular, so they rarely got approved for the bigger presses. The windfall is that the copyrights were not renewed, so a lot of this stuff is public domain and mises.org has taken to making them available online for free. Had these same writers been taken up by the bigger publishing houses, they might have enjoyed a little more money, but given the small audience and brief press runs, they would now be out of print and likely unavailable for free download if they were available in any form at all -- certainly, the copyrights would've been renewed. In other words, the failure to renew copyrights has actually given these works a new life.

Regards,

Dan


----- Original Message ----
From: Sarah Wood <wood.sarah.m at gmail.com>
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Wed, March 3, 2010 2:37:52 PM
Subject: Re: [ExI] intellectual property again

On Mar 3, 2010, at 12:07 PM, spike wrote:
> I will start it: I now think that society is justified in providing a legal
> means of protecting information as property; in most cases current
> intellectual property law is adequate and not overly restrictive.  I
> recognize there are absurdities with protocol patenting, but I don't see a
> better way.
> 
> Your turn.

Additional problems arise when a copyright-holder takes an inconsistent approach towards reproduction of its material.

Take, for example, the Bundesarchiv - the German national archive, which is one of the most digitized archives in the world. The BA has an agreement with Wiki to make available hundreds of thousands of large, high res photographs without watermarks. Now, if I want to publish one of those same photographs in a photo-journal, I must first purchase a print, and then further purchase reproduction rights, for a total cost of about €50 per image. This of course all has a significant impact on my COGS. When my book is printed and I send out review copies, a kind reviewer will then promptly inform his readership that these images may be seen for free at such and such a URL. Ouch.

I am of two minds about this. As a graduate student in LIS, I was virtually indoctrinated to believe that information wants to be free, and I still do cling to the notion to a certain extent. As a publishing professional, however, I also want to sell books -  and I want to sell books with pictures that people have seen before. Now, if I think an image is so indispensable to my subject matter that it's prior dissemination ceases to be relevant, well .... then why should I have to pay for it when others do not?

As a counterpoint, the United States NARA has no charges whatsoever associated with copying its images. However, it is also barely digitized - so getting images means traveling to DC and digging through dusty boxes of moldering documents while wearing white gloves. I guess everything has its price!