The Plan

Ok, as I said before, the whole issue of copyright law is kind of like a hydra. I know what I want to say ... but there is much background that needs to be established before I can even get to that. On the other hand, I don't want to leave this blog inactive for any great length of time and risk losing my (well, at the moment mostly hypothetical) readers. So for today's entry, I'm going to punt and just describe what I plan to do.

First I am going to go over a bit of what copyright law is, and isn't. As well as a number of changes that have been made to copyright law that affect how things are covered (no, I am not talking about the various term extensions -- everybody and their dog has covered those in depth). By the way, I can not recommend enough that you read McCauley's speech to Commons regarding copyright terms. (Actually there are two of them, both of which can be found in this article by Eric Flint for Baen's Universe.)

Anyway, so I plan to first cover a bit of what copyright law is and covers, and discuss some changes to it that affect what and how things are covered. Then I plan on discussing a few of the basic internet technologies and how copyright applies to them, both historically and currently.

As it may take me a while to marshal my arguments, I may also produce some filler articles on other subjects. Programming, book reviews, ebooks, and other things that may strike my fancy. However, the main focus of this blog shall still be addressing copyright law in the internet age.

So bear with me, there is indeed a Plan!

A brief side trip ...

Ok, this isn't going to be a homework assignment. I am going to point y'all to an interesting project. It is called "Openlaw".

In the mold of "opensource" it is (or was?) an attempt to get lawyers, lawmakers, technical folk (and anyone else who was interested) talking together to deal with legal issues raised by technology.

When I was involved with it, it was an email discussion list called "dvd-discuss" (the archives are here) created to deal with the DeCSS cases that were going on at the time as a result of the recently passed DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act). The act was being used to (among other things) prevent fair use access to materials (such as DVDs). More importantly it was being used as a club to stifle free speech.

As with any email discussion list, there are a number of digressions, and not everything is on subject ... but it was fascinating experience and something in which I am proud to have participated.

After the email discussion list phase, they went all-web. Apparently using a Wiki (among other techniques) to keep the ball rolling. Unfortunately I do not think that it is still active -- the only dates I can find are more than five years in the past.

The Openlaw project has provided aid to defense council in some important cases, and filed amicus briefs in others. You can find out more about these cases on their main page, here. It is written as if things are still active, but to be honest I do not see any recent activity there. It is nonetheless worth exploring both for the background it provides on a number of cases involved with copyright in conflict with technology, and as an interesting little bit of history in it's own right.

Homework Assignment

Ok, the purpose of this blog is to discuss copyright issues. I am working up piece concerning how current copyright law is in conflict with the workings of the internet at a technical level, completely aside from issues such as DRM (Digital Rights Management). While I am gathering my thoughts, I can point you to a little light reading. The problem is that for everything I bring up, I have to explain two more things. (This is like a hydra!)

Well, we have to start somewhere, so here we go...

Eric Flint is an author and an editor at Baen Books. He has written many times on the issue of publishing ebooks, covering such things as pricing, piracy, DRM, marketing, and treating your customers as criminals. Some of these writings are available at the Baen Free Library site under the "Prime Palaver" link. Since then he has been writing a regular column on the subject in the online magazine "Jim Baen's Universe". A lot of what he has to say may come as a surprise to many people.

Now, to justify why Mr. Flint's writings are worthy of consideration, a bit about Baen Books.

They have been publishing and selling ebooks for many years now. Not only that, they Do It Right.

What do I mean by that?

• they do not treat their customers as criminals


• they do not treat their customers as idiots

What do I mean by "they do not treat their customers as criminals"? Basically this: Baen's ebooks are sold completely unencumbered by DRM. You can also download them in a variety of formats. And if you decide later you want a different format, you can go back and download that later without having to go back and pay for it again.  You can copy them from your computer to your PDA to your ebook reader.  Basically you can do all the things you think you should be able to do with them.  Is this so unusual?  Yes!

Now, what do I mean by "they do not treat their customers as idiots"?  Basically we all recognize the fact that it does not cost as much to produce an ebook as it does to produce a paperback book ... much less a hardback book.  And yet, many publishers of ebooks will try to charge hardback book prices for them.  Baen does not.  They are quite reasonable in their pricing.  Individual books are $6 or less.  Monthly bundles (called "webscriptions") go for $15.  There are usually 5 or 6 books in a webscription package.  The promise is that at least 4 have not been previously made available in ebook form.

But ... they go beyond mere reasonability.  The monthly packages are called a "webscription" for a reason.   A webscription month represents the books that Baen will be releasing in dead tree form during that month.  In (or after) the month of the bundle, you can download the entire book.  The month before the bundle's release date, you have access to 3/4 of each book in the bundle.  The month before that, you have access to 1/2 of each book in the bundle.  

That's right.  You get to start reading the books two months before they are scheduled to be distributed to the book stores.  How's that for a deal?

But wait (as they say on TV), there's more!  In addition to the reasonable priceing of their ebooks, they also have made available dozens of ebooks in their entirety, free for the downloading.  This is called the "Baen Free Library" which was started by Eric Flint and Jim Baen many years ago as an expirement.  This is not just sample chapters (which are, btw, available for all of their books), but complete ebooks.  For free.  

Are these people insane?

Apparently not.  Despite all the fear-mongering about piracy by other publishers (and other industries), Baen has found that by treating their customers well, they do well.  Eric Flint discusses in Prime Palaver #6 the completely counter-intuitive result of making one of his older books available for free when they started the Free Library expirement. Here are his own words: 

The first title to go up into the Library was my own novel, Mother of Demons. That was my first published novel, which came out in print in September of 1997. At the time it went into the Free Library, in the fall of 2000, that novel had sold 9,694 copies, with a sell-through of 54%.

As of today, according to Baen Books-a year and a half after being available for free online to anyone who wants it, no restrictions and no questions asked-Mother of Demons has sold about 18,500 copies and now has a sell-through of 65%.

Did you get that?  By making his book available for free he found that sales of the dead tree edition actually increased.

Now, there is a pretty active underground traffic in ebooks.  For instance, most of the Harry Potter books were avaiable in electronic form mere hours after their release.  This, despite (or IMO, because) of Ms. Rowlings' insistance that they not be published as ebooks.  Now you will also find pirated editions of some of Baen's books ... but not so much as you might think.  Perhaps this is because it is too easy since they aren't protected by DRM.  Personally, I think this is because Baen Does It Right.  They respect their customers, so their customers tend to respect them.

Check out the Baen online book store at http://www.webscription.net/.

Check out the Baen Free Library at http://www.baen.com/library/.  

And while you're there, check out the Prime Palaver essays.  Especially #4, where he includes the text of Thomas Babington Macaulay's speech regarding copyright before the House of Commons in 1841.

Now go and do your homework!

FTC requesting comments on DRM

The Federal Trade Commission is requesting comments regarding DRM for a Town Hall meeting on the subject to take place on March 25th in Seattle. The deadline for comments, however, is Monday, February 09, 2009.

Here is a brief description of the request for comments from this form:

Digital rights management (DRM) refers to technologies typically used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, and copyright holders to attempt to control how consumers access and use media and entertainment content. Among other issues, the workshop will address the need to improve disclosures to consumers about DRM limitations. Interested parties may submit written comments or original research on
this topic.

What follows is my comment, submitted shortly before I posted here.

There are many problems with copyright law as it currently stands, and DRM in particular. I am sure that you will be getting many long and detailed comments, so I will keep this one short and try to cover only my main objection to DRM and especially the special status granted to DRM under currently copyright law (i.e. the DMCA).

First I must state that DRM is an attempt to mechanise law enforcement. This basically abrogates the presumption of innocence under the law. However, philosophical objections aside, DRM fails in two ways. In statistics, these are called “type I error” (or “false Positive”) and “type II error” (or “false negative)”.

As applied copyright protection, this means that DRM both fails to prevent the determined criminal — strike that, the even halfway competant criminal — from making copies (type II error) while at th same time it prevents law-abiding citizens from actions that would otherwise be allowed under basic copyright law (type I error).

Basically, it fails to accomplish it’s stated goal of preventing piracy, and it prevents citizens for excercising their fair use rights regarding the material. DRM is doubly deficient and the additional protection for DRM mechanisms themselves over and above the protection of the material granted by copyright is a gross violation of … well, sanity with regard to copyright.

It is past time for the protections granted to DRM mechanisms by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) to be scrapped.

There are certainly many other problems with both the current copyright law, and DRM, but you can't cover everything in one comment, and to attempt to do so dilutes the impact of the points you are attempting to make.

If you have thoughts on the subject, please submit your comments here:

https://secure.commentworks.com/ftc-DRMtechnologies/

How to read eBooks

eBooks will never replace paper books.

Well ... is that a way to start a column praising eBooks?  Certainly!  It's no different than saying cars will never replace bicycles.  For all that they are both transportation, they are completely different things.  Same goes for eBooks and paper books.

Paper books are nice to have.  They have a good feel in your hands.  They look good on the shelf.  You pretty much know how to use them already.  You can curl up in the easy chair with a book.

eBooks are strange.  eBooks are different.  It's a scary new world.  And who wants to sit in front of the computer monitor long enough to read War and Peace anyway?

Well, the first thing to understand is that you don't have to sit in front of the computer to read an eBook.  I work with computers all day and really don't want to spend most of my leisure time in front of one.  I personally read my eBooks on a Palm TX PDA.  It's screen is adequate.  It fits in my pocket.  That means it's with me when I am in line at the grocery store!  And it has a virtual library of eBooks on it so whatever I am in the mood to read is available.

Now there are dedicated eBook readers.  These are a bit larger than a PDA -- they are typically about the size of a paperback book in width & height, but usually quite a bit thinner.  The main thing though is that their screens are even better for reading than your typical PDA screen.  I would like to get a dedicated eBook reader, but don't have the disposable income for one right now.  

Which brings me to the purpose of this posting.  The good folks at BooksOnBoard are having a contest.  They are giving away a Sony eBook reader if you mention them, and the contest, in a post praising ebooks.  That seems easy enough given how much I already like eBooks.

BooksOnBoard is one of the leading sellers of eBooks.  They sell both eBooks and AudioBooks The audio books are available in mp3 format for your iPod or other mp3 player, not cassette tape ... also WMA format.    The eBooks are likewise available in a variety of formats, including MobiPocket format (one of the most widely supported of the eBook formats for personal devices).  Their prices are reasonable, and sometimes there are free eBooks so you can try a new author without risk.  Right now there are a few available here

So -- try a free ebook.  Get hooked.  Remember the first hit is free, kiddies!

Hello, World!

The standard initial program...