Re:The Ruling That Threatens the Future of Libraries
by hilbert42 on Sunday April 09, 2023 @12:34PM
(#35504241)
"I guess a few would."
The wider issue isn't over whether authors—or anyone for that matter—should or not be paid for work done (of course they should). Rather, it's over the unfair and inequitable nature of copyright law and how sleazeball publishers take undue advantage of it.
We need to keep in mind how these unreasonable copyright laws came into existence. They were framed in the 1880s by Victor Hugo and cohorts at a time when the average citizen would have had no concept of what copyright actually was let alone have had any notion of violating it.
Aurhors such as Hugo and cohorts were principally targeting unscrupulous publishers (usually printers) in other countries who stole works holus-bolus and published them without paying any royalties whatsoever—they didn't have to as what they were doing in their own country was perfectly legal (as they weren't violating the then weak copyright laws of their own country—and no local citizen's copyright had been violated).
So when the Berne Copyright Convention of 1886 came into force is was essentially an irrelevant treaty unknown to the average citizen (most would never have even heard of it).
You don't have to be Einstein to figure out what wrong here, that is, at least as far as the public was concerned (of course, the publishers made a killing). The lobbying for and creation of the treaty was completely one-sided, the authors/publishers got everything they had wished for—and even by the standards of the day what they ended up with would be deemed unacceptable, that is if citizens of the day had challenged it.
That the 1886 Berne Copyright Treaty started from such a high one-sided base with authors and publishers in complete control 1886 meant that a small group of publishers ruled roost over copyright and publishing for the next one hundred years—until about the mid 1980s when the first 'challenges' to their rule came about with electronic data (actually, the first was a decade or so earlier when the Xerox copier became widely available).
What so affonts publishers is that they ruled supreme and without challenge (except for spats amongst themselves) for a century, so they've never had to conduct themselves in a proper ethnical and buisness-like way—they've behaved so badly for so long they don't even realize how bad their behavior is. Hence, it's little wonder they're now behaving as even bigger asholes than before electronic publishing/the internet.
Even after forty-plus years, publishers still haven't gotten used to being challenged in what they consider to be their own domain—one that they believe they have complete control over.
You also need to consider that publishers have not only been screwing the public with high prices through use of monopolistic practices but also they've screwed authors from the outset. Correct, these sleazeballs have been screwing rotten authors and content creators—those most rightfully deserving of royaltes—for years.
The wider issue isn't over whether authors—or anyone for that matter—should or not be paid for work done (of course they should). Rather, it's over the unfair and inequitable nature of copyright law and how sleazeball publishers take undue advantage of it.
We need to keep in mind how these unreasonable copyright laws came into existence. They were framed in the 1880s by Victor Hugo and cohorts at a time when the average citizen would have had no concept of what copyright actually was let alone have had any notion of violating it.
Aurhors such as Hugo and cohorts were principally targeting unscrupulous publishers (usually printers) in other countries who stole works holus-bolus and published them without paying any royalties whatsoever—they didn't have to as what they were doing in their own country was perfectly legal (as they weren't violating the then weak copyright laws of their own country—and no local citizen's copyright had been violated).
So when the Berne Copyright Convention of 1886 came into force is was essentially an irrelevant treaty unknown to the average citizen (most would never have even heard of it).
You don't have to be Einstein to figure out what wrong here, that is, at least as far as the public was concerned (of course, the publishers made a killing). The lobbying for and creation of the treaty was completely one-sided, the authors/publishers got everything they had wished for—and even by the standards of the day what they ended up with would be deemed unacceptable, that is if citizens of the day had challenged it.
That the 1886 Berne Copyright Treaty started from such a high one-sided base with authors and publishers in complete control 1886 meant that a small group of publishers ruled roost over copyright and publishing for the next one hundred years—until about the mid 1980s when the first 'challenges' to their rule came about with electronic data (actually, the first was a decade or so earlier when the Xerox copier became widely available).
What so affonts publishers is that they ruled supreme and without challenge (except for spats amongst themselves) for a century, so they've never had to conduct themselves in a proper ethnical and buisness-like way—they've behaved so badly for so long they don't even realize how bad their behavior is. Hence, it's little wonder they're now behaving as even bigger asholes than before electronic publishing/the internet.
Even after forty-plus years, publishers still haven't gotten used to being challenged in what they consider to be their own domain—one that they believe they have complete control over.
You also need to consider that publishers have not only been screwing the public with high prices through use of monopolistic practices but also they've screwed authors from the outset. Correct, these sleazeballs have been screwing rotten authors and content creators—those most rightfully deserving of royaltes—for years.