What the changing marketplace and lowering barriers now allows is for people who almost certainly never would have won that lottery ticket in the past to make a decent living doing what they love: creating content [because] those who want to be a professional creator have many more opportunities to make it happen today.

[Amazon’s] tools and tricks went a long way toward giving online book buying some of the look and feel that previously had been the domain of the well-read independent bookseller … Amazon’s device prowess with the Kindle has proven to be limited. But its expertise at dealing with book buyers is off the charts. Apple mastered the mechanics of the user interface with its devices. However, the user interface of its retail environment is a potentially devastating doorway through which our industry is passing. Apple is at present simply a lousy bookseller.

True enough. But even if Apple finds a way to replicate Amazon’s “browse-ability,” that doorway will still lead to a locked cage. We need open, and open-source, ebook dealers and platforms.

There is definitely a sense that part of the reason why some folks would like to pull back on openness is to turn the internet from a platform for users towards a more controlled broadcast sort of platform. That is, it won’t be about communication, but about content delivery — and when you do that, it loses a significant portion of its value. And I think that’s where the shift from ‘ours’ to ‘theirs’ comes from.

I hope we can preserve the democratic, participatory, shared, “ours” nature of the internet.

Says Murdoch, of Google, “If they were to pay everybody for everything they took from every newspaper in the world, and every magazine, they wouldn’t have any profits left.

Bing Tries To Buy The News

Of course, Google doesn’t actually “take” anything, it just points to things. I guess Murdoch doesn’t want people to know about his news stories? Capitalize on the stream, dinosaurs! Not to mention the uber-creep factor of “exclusive indexing” of online information.

Digital books locked to individual physical devices are worse than physical books.

Ebook economics: Are libraries screwed?

Of course, if the priority is to maximize profits and other concerns are not even a distant second, then this is the expected result.

In the objection filed today, the coalition asks the court to require Google to create a robust privacy policy that gives readers as much privacy in online books as they have in a library or a bookstore and to ensure that the policy is enforceable and overseen by the court on an ongoing basis.

National Coalition of Authors Urge Rejection of Google Book Search Deal

I’m excited about Google Book Search, but the privacy concerns are legitimate and serious.

Ultimately, Doctorow argues against DRM altogether, and this speech is a concise and convincing presentation of that argument. His message for publishers in particular is that, whether or not they decide to use DRM, it should be the publishing house that makes that decision, not the distribution platform (i.e., Amazon).

Somewhat jokingly, Doctorow gives us his “law” related to DRM: “Anytime someone puts a lock on something you own, against your wishes, and doesn’t give you the key, they’re not doing it for your benefit.” Sadly, not a joke.

Here’s the link to the the speech on blip.tv. Also see EFF.org’s write-up about this speech²

1. A great site with videos and resources from the conference
2. You might also be interested in checking out my “copyright” tag on the blog and on Delicious

For one, the simple accident is always a risk. Granted, I’m more likely to screw up my own saved data than a major company is, but witness the recent catastrophic crash of Magnolia. A great company, nothing but the best of intentions, but now the hours of work that some users put into collecting, organizing, and commenting on content stored on their servers is just … gone. At least if I’m the one causing the catastrophic loss, I can only blame myself.

And even if the loss isn’t accidental, if the company goes bust, you may have a very short time to get your data out of its servers. Hopefully, the company will make that process easy, but there’s no guarantee of that, either.

On the other hand, the company might just change its terms on you. The latest Facebook controversy involves a change to its terms of use that many interpret as meaning that Facebook can do anything they want with users’ content forever, though that doesn’t seem to be a correct interpretation. Still, if a company does decide to change its terms in that way, what do you do? And when the content is more than just status messages and wall posts, when the content is a script you’ve been building for months in the hope of someday selling it to someone in the hope that it will actually get produced, have you shot yourself in the foot by using someone else’s servers to store your work?

All of these free, collaborative tools are great in many ways. I mean, I use Flickr to share my photos, I use WordPress.com to keep a photo journal, I use Facebook to keep in touch with others, I use Scribd to share some of my writings. And I believe in the principle of free and open content, the idyllic vision of people freely and easily sharing information and ideas. And yet, I blog on my own domain under an “Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike” license … What does that mean? How much is smart protection of my creations, good-business-sense planning for the future, and how much is overly-anxious guarding of what’s “mine” learned from an overly-possession-obsessed culture?

I don’t know. But for now, at least, the complexities of these issues (not to mention the great angry tangle of copyright law mutating its way across the web) give me pause and keep me tapping away at my creative writing on programs that live on my hard drive.

1. In short, you hold the copyright for anything you put in a “private” area, and you agree to select one of four Creative Commons licenses for anything you put in a “public” area: “Attribution Share Alike (by-sa)”, “Attribution No Derivatives (by-nd)”, “Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike (by-nc-sa)”, or “Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd)”. Also, once it’s public, you can’t revert it to private.

I’m encouraged by Boyle’s optimism, his assertion that this issue is important for every citizen, and his assurance that the intellectual property debate is accessible and interesting ("… at the heart of intellectual property law are a set of ideas that a ten-year-old can understand perfectly well").

But what’s most intriguing to me is this quote: "Property’s outside, whether it is “the public domain” or “the commons,” turns out to be harder to grasp than its inside."

Figuring out how to talk and think about things that are not "my property" is an important part of this discussion, and something I hadn’t thought specifically about until now.

If you’ve got an interest in this topic (and you should because it affects you, whether you realize it or not), add this to your reading list. It’s on Amazon, or available free as a PDF from the author’s website.

As a writer, English teacher, lover of film and literature, and friend of many artists, I’m very concerned about this issue (as a survey of recent posts here should indicate). However, the more I learn, the less sure I become of which position to take.

I’m semi-clear on a few things:

• The original intent was to provide incentives for inventors and artists to share their work with the public by providing a limited monopoly. This provision was not understood as a “natural” right by the founders, and the concern was more about the common good than the individual inventors and artists.¹
• Current copyright law, wielded less by individuals than by corporations, is restricting the benefits that the commons can derive from art, and it is doing so to an ever greater degree as controls tighten and copyrights are extended.
• Further restrictions on fair use only make this matter worse.
• We (the commons) should be concerned with our collective good, the right to build on the works of others, the freedom of information, and the right to “share culture” freely (as in libre).
• On the other hand, we should also be worried about reducing or eliminating incentives for artists and inventors to create and share their creations. Similarly, we should be concerned about the impact this will have on journalism and journalists.²

When I argue, I tend to argue from this last point. Art, literature, film, etc. … these are vital and important aspects of culture, though you’ll get no argument from me that too much has been co-opted by the corporations.³ Still, the artists themselves are not (and should not be) the enemy. We, the commons, should be interested in their success even as we actively fight against the legal and corporate limitations that have been built around them.

Collectively, I believe we can find a solution to these difficulties, but only if we are focusing on building solutions rather than, or at least in addition to, destroying the problems. If we just storm the walls and tear down the keep, the artists, inventors, and journalists are also likely to be crushed in the process.⁴

One example I applaud is Google’s recently-stated approach to newspapers, saying they have a “huge moral imperative to help.”⁵ I think this approach — the new industries, technologies, and markets reaching out to and working with the existing ones to help them make the transition effectively — is the most responsible one, and the one most likely to bring success to both the artists and the commons who benefit from their creations. I hope to see more examples like this.

1. Ultimately, the goal was to get artists to share so that there would be more works for the commons to build upon, thereby improving the common good. The incentive, though directed at the artist, was to indirectly further the common good.
2. The many problems with corporate media’s “infotainment” approach to journalism is also a huge problem, but one I’m not going to address here. Still, the fact that we need good journalists, and that good journalists need to be paid for their work if they’re going to be able to do it well, should require no argument.
3. The AP’s recent insanity surrounding fair use by bloggers is an excellent worst-case example of the problem.
4. And, for the frauds and sell-outs, that might be fine … but for the rest? I’m not willing to destroy the many for the sins of the few.
5. Google CEO: “Moral Imperative” To Help Newspapers – Media on The Huffington Post