The Puget News

I saw a comment piece over at The Guardian entitled “You can’t use the O-word” and was persuaded to click through. What was this mysterious “O” word? First thought? “Oprah.” Yeah, that has to be it, she’s got a big name and needs to protect it. Then I thought, maybe this has nothing to do with trademark and everything to do with censorship. “Orgasm.” Yeah, that must be it.

Even before the resulting commentary could load, I was experiencing negative emotions about the word - most likely a legitimate word with legitimate literary associations that was about to be removed from that pool of words we can all liberally use. As it turns out, the word is “Olympics,” especially if you use it conjunction with “2012″ as a title. I kid you not.

How did we come to this? I doubt the original organization committee of the Olympic Games cared much about where their moniker was used. In fact, that’s probably what passed as “word-of-mouth” advertising. Somehow, however, now that we’ve reached a time and place where the Olympics truly are the world games, somebody (or at least certain entities) seems interested in controlling these associations. I guess nobody wants to hear about “Jihad at the [insert trademarked phrase here] Games” or “Terror Strikes the [insert trademarked phrase here] Games.”

I keep wondering what can be done about the privatization of language (and if you have thoughts on it, please eel free to add them in the comments section below). It seems too steep a cost for artists to produce meaningful and the be required to change it, often in substantive ways so that private and corporate interests are protected. The worst part of all of this is that the self-censorship has already begun. You will never see a murder novel entitled “The Cleaning Company [facial tissue brand] Killings.” What a shame.

Uh oh. Oh no you didn’t! Harper’s has gone and “done it”, granting access to 157 years of Harper’s Magazine content as part of their normal subscription price. Take that New Yorker! Infowhores unite!

(click the image for a larger look at what it looks like when you sign up and have access to 157 years of material)

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Walt Mossberg, technology writer for the Wall Street journal, wrote and filmed a piece (see embedded video below) today which makes a really great point about copyright. The current legislation, [PDF], was written by the record labels and the media industry. Internet companies have since added a clause to it, protecting some of their own rights. The only audience not reflected in the legislation is the audience of the consumer, and that needs to change.

This is an issue I have been discussing at length with several friends recently. Specifically, we’ve been discussing what changes when libraries go digital (as Google, Amazon, etc. are helping them do with scanned texts, etc.) and how the library’s goal of information availability is at direct odds with those of corporations whose goal is to maximize payment for those resources. A blurry line is being crossed right now and nobody know how to respond 100% appropriately yet.

Walt boils this down to the right conversation that needing to happen at the national level and ultimately the legislation which needs to be written on behalf of the consumer - complete details on what constitutes acceptable use of the material we buy. Certainly part of my enjoyment of my media is sharing the experience of listening, watching, or reading with my friends. At what level does that cross the line? The current DMCA does not allow for, or detail, the bounds for reasonable use. It instead focuses on making all users feel a bit criminal, even when we’re just mimicking old use cases - recordable cassette tapes, creating mixed CDs for friends, etc.

Now you’ll notice that Walt begins his article and video using the recent Viacom lawsuit against Google’s YouTube as an example of the current ambiguity and debate. Demetri Martin on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central (a Viacom owned property) summed up the whole debate in a more humorous, although no less effective way.

On a completely ridiculous note, showing just how out of touch Viacom is with all things internet related, the Comedy Central video clip above expires on 4/22/2007. Maybe it should have been all of us on the bottom of Demetri’s shoe.

Watch it while it’s available, I guess…

There is an absolutely fascinating article in the New Yorker related to Google’s Book Scanning/Search project and the pending furor over the copyright issues that this project is bringing to light. The results of this debate will have an impact on how you and I, dear readers, can expect to be able to find and access information in the future.

In this debate, we find authors and publishers pitted against search giants such as Google. Authors and publishers are frightened that they may be carved out of a potentially lucrative business and are insisting on a model which will allow them to receive royalties for their works. They’re also really scared that Google is scanning entire books (which makes sense given that they’re creating a searchable index of all the world’s knowledge) as opposed to the excerpts an academic might use in a research paper which are covered by “fair use”.

For their part, Google states that their use of these works is “transformative” and therefore not covered by copyright. Even in a search, Google only shows the pages surrounding the resultant selections. In their eyes, it’s the equivalent of a really detailed card catalog with the ability to search a selection and see if it meets your criteria before wlaking over to the shelf and picking up the book. You certainly cannot read the whole book through. Google also places restrictions on the number of pages that can be viewed/read by any one person out of any one work. Certainly these restrictions make it too much work to try and subvert them.

So where do I come down on this? I happen to think that creating digital copies of these books is incredibly important - books are ultimately temporary after all. History has taught us not to rely solely on one copy. Alexandria anyone? Have you ever lost a work on the computer while working on it? In my opinion, any enterprise taking on the task of scanning media and making it available more broadly is worthy of our admiration and support. It’s the potential monetization that puts everyone into a tizzy.

I am extremely concerned with what happens if Google manages to settle this lawsuit with the other parties. What will that mean for the other entities who are busy trying to make the same thing happen? Where will this leave competitors like Amazon in the discussion? Will smaller efforts be able to succeed or will they be priced out of the market by the precedent that this judgment would set? Must we accede all content to the mighty Google index?

Notice that nowhere in this debate have we yet spoken about what users/readers actually want and deserve. According to the New Yorker article, about 20% of all the books in existence are in the public domain. Let’s dismiss how ludicrously small this is for a moment and focus on what these constitute. These are generally older titles where the rights have lapsed or twhere there was never a copyright in the first place. Nobody fights over these and there are numerous efforts to bring this group of books into ready availability online. Another 10% of books are covered by copyright and currently in print. Nobody debates these much either since they typically constitute newer titles and represent precisely what copyright is intended to protect - the right of artists to make money off their works. It’s the other 70% that are the real buggers. The large majority of books are covered by copyright and not currently in-print. This leaves booklovers like myself in a position of having to track down a physical copy of an asset which is no longer produced. Thankfully, this has become easier in the age of the internet, but it has also built unassailable marketplaces around the truly rare and hard to find items. Why should we all not be able to benefit from knowledge which is failing to produce commercial value any further for the artists and publishers?

And so, the solution seems to me to be quite simple. We should enforce a “use it or lose it” policy on copyright holders. If, for instance, a book is no longer in-print and new copies fail to be circulated or made available to the market for some period of time at a reasonable cost, the copyright would be removed and the item would pass into the public domain, made freely available to the world - everyone with equal opportunity to profit off the work if they so desire. Why not? How many people still sell copies of “Moby Dick”, even though it is freely available in digital form in the public domain

The appeal of a “universal library” of all the world’s information is almost too much for me to bear. I want, I want, I want. It hurts me to think the reason we won’t such a thing is a relatively small cadre of people who wish to reserve the right to profit off their copyrighted material at some point in the future. Either you accept the business risk of making knowledge available or someone will do it for you, that should be our motto. It’s what the world deserves.

Go see what all the hubbub is about, check out

Other takes on this story:

• Techdirt: If Google Gives In On Library Scanning — Will It Hurt Everyone?
• The Last Podcast: Google’s Book Search