More copyright drivel

Steve Poling sdpoling at attbi.com
Tue Jul 30 18:43:18 CDT 2002


I'd just as soon you NOT personalize the matter of me getting paid. But
since you mentioned it, let's look at artists getting paid: For the most
part, we don't. Talk about copyrights is generally meaningless to
artists because artists never exercize copyrights, they sell them to
some publishing mega corp. Let's name some names and see if you
recognize them: Plato, Aristotle, Socrates. They're not well known
because the Sicilian mentions them in the copyrighted work entitled "The
Princess Bride." Their work did quite well.

I have written two novels and a couple dozen short stories. I've sold
three short stories and one non-fiction article. If I get a book deal,
that may get me some royalty income. But given the fact that I don't
have a book deal, the best for me now is get my work pirated wide and
far to build a constituency, a public following who'll want me to do
more writing. It's like the garage band who can't get an "in" with Sony
records, so they post their MP3s on the web.

Your comment assumes that production is a big part of the printing
business. It is not. (Maybe it was in 1650, but in 1650 you would be
better off reading John Bunyan than me. BTW, that's still true.)
Marketing and distribution are the mainstays of the publishing business,
not printing. Look at the Sweet's catalog. If it wasn't freely given
away to architects, no manufacturers would advertise therein. Printing
those green books was completely secondary. Often manufacturers would
drop-ship printed copy to the binding plant. MGH didn't even bother with
printing, their entire emphasis was on marketing and distribution.

Copyrights allow publishing companies to maintain a stranglehold on
marketing and distribution. (Any idiot can make money running a
monopoly. Look at Rapistan.) This gives the publishing megacorps enough
cash to pay Clintons zillion-dollar advances that will never earn out.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Matthew.Heusser at mks.net [mailto:Matthew.Heusser at mks.net] 
> Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 2002 5:53 PM
> To: sdpoling at attbi.com; grand-rapids-pm-list at happyfunball.pm.org
> Subject: RE: Meeting
> 
> 
> 
> >If I understand the Constitution rightly
> 
>   If I understand enlish law correctly, one of the big
> benefits of copyrights was to make Publishing _Profitable_.
> 
>   In other words, say it's 1650 and Steve Poling has 
> something he wants to have published.  He probably can't 
> afford to order a print run himself - he has to go to a 
> business that does this routinely, and pitch his book.  The 
> business needs to believe that it can make $$$ publishing his book.
> 
>   Now, if the business has to pay Steve L 5,000 for the 
> document, then prints it ... the next day, a different 
> publish can buy a copy of Steve's book for L 5, set his 
> presses, and run copies.  So why would anyone want to publish 
> as a business?  Unless those companies paid a pittance to the 
> authors ... so why should the author bother to write the book?
> 
>   Enter CopyRights.  Now the company can have a lock on the 
> book long enough to make a few $$ for themselves and the 
> author.  Over time, these publishers become very big.  Big 
> enough to have lawyers on staff.
> 
>   So, IMHO, Poling's right - CopyRights were actually used to 
> reward sharing.  Now, with the cost of reproducing documents 
> down to the time it takes me to press Control-C Control-V, 
> we're going to need a new system to deal with the change in 
> media formats.
> 
>   Or, we could just prop the old system up on it's end 
> through restrictive OS controls.  Enter Microsoft, enter the 
> RIAA, enter Digital Rights Management.
> 
>   My conclusion:  With all the dotCommers talking about 
> Paradigm shifts over the past 5 years or so, this is one area 
> that's actually due for one.
> 
> my $0.02,
> 
> 
> Matt H.
> 
> 




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