Whacking Infringement
Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 by Patrick RossHave you ever played Whack-a-Mole? Satirist Bob Ricci* has a song about a child savant Whack-a-Mole player not unlike The Who’s Pinball Wizard. I picture that young genius with an odd selection of specialty when I think about user-generated online posts that infringe on another’s work.
This goes beyond the fact that the law entitles creators to rights over distribution, although they do have such rights as Chris Castle points out. It goes to the notion of copyright owners being required to chase down every infringement of their work, request takedowns, and then watch as it’s posted again. It goes to the clear fact that Congress never envisioned user-generated sites capable of such massive infringement. No legislator would ever tell the creators to whom they have given rights that they and their commercial partners need to spend all day smashing infringements with mallets.
Referring to a site that has long hosted infringing novels, Scribd, here is what bestselling science fiction author Christopher Priest told The Guardian about his own work being infringed:
“Scribd.com were very courteous and immediately took it down, but since then it’s gone up again,” he said. “It’s very annoying … I’m a writer and I write for a living, I don’t want to have to do this.”
Exactly. This is true for individual artists, who we should want to be spending their time creating, and it is true for their publishers and distributors, for the cost of endless mallet-whacking leads us to pay more for the legal work.
I’ve been following Scribd for awhile. Not everything on there is infringed. There are some authors who voluntarily post works there, and that is their choice. However, with Scribd, YouTube and LimeWire, there’s rarely an easy way to tell what has been posted with the authorization of the rightsholder and what has not.
I was speaking with an author yesterday who owns the rights to her backlist and is thinking of taking one of the older, out-of-print books and posting it a chapter at a time online. That is a great idea from a publicity standpoint; there’s no guarantee she could find a publisher willing to reprint the book, so its commercial value is not what it once was, it gives her fans a taste of her writing while waiting for the next book, and it potentially attracts new fans who might buy her next book.
There is no doubt, however, that this author feels these posts should be her decision. She would not countenance someone who still owns a print copy of that work scanning it and posting it without her permission. And anyone who thinks that behavior is acceptable is someone whose thinking I will never understand.
The issue is not whether someone’s work should be online. The issue is whether the creator and owner of that work wants it to be online. Reproduction and distribution are fundamental rights given to creators. If creators forfeit those rights the moment a work is released, there is far less incentive to create the work to begin with.
In summary: Truly user-generated content? Can be good. Requiring creators to chase across the Internet and asking infringers to please stop, only to allow them to start again? Always bad. Before we are told about that brilliant user-generated work that can’t exist without using someone else’s song or video, let us at least agree that this technology also enables flat-out infringement, and that the burden of addressing that infringement shouldn’t fall on the creator alone.
* If you want a good laugh, (legally) download a copy of Ricci’s “It Could Happen to U2.” It’s actually a good warning for any guy wearing zippered pants.
April 2nd, 2009 at 7:49 pm
Excellent post, Patrick!
The reason you have not heard much from me in several months is the fact that we here at Imageline have been forced to spend practically 100% of our time chasing down the willful infringement of our graphic arts content online. There are hundreds, even thousands, of fearless, and aggressive, moles on our playing field.
I absolutely hate litigation (that activity, too, is the antithesis of the creative person’s body and soul), but we have concluded after many years of crying “please do not do this again, Mr. or Ms. Mole”, that severe financial consequences are the ONLY thing that moles, who have apparently been taught ’selective stealing’ is okay in their online lives, might relate to. The moles I have witnessed lately actually seem to enjoy telling their friends that they have been whacked on the head by few mallets these days.
We filed four (4) federal copyright infringement lawsuits in March and expect to exceed that number again in April and May. Now let’s see if the Obama administration and the new PRO-IP Act work well together with the Judiciary. For the first time in many years I think the momentum is starting to shift away from the moles (we still call them “pirates”). I sure wouldn’t want to be a young mole wannabee these days. These new mallets have sharp teeth!
To further illustrate your point, Imageline doubled the size of our original vector illustration and designs libraries last month with the acquisition of the Image Club Graphics archives from Getty Images that I told you about in January. Let’s hope this new “enforcement” plan allows us here at Imageline to be creative and get some of these new products and services online and available at a fair price, right where they should be, so everyone can enjoy them legally. Not gathering dust while we chase down these elusive moles.
Thanks for keeping everyone up to speed on this extremely important and serious issue. After too many years of neglect, we would definitely all begin to realize the decline of new original content available from the creative communities if the mole community continues to thrive. Anyone who claims otherwise probably has never produced anything original or creative in their lives.
Keep up the good work.
George Riddick
Imageline, Inc.
April 2nd, 2009 at 8:31 pm
“After too many years of neglect, we would definitely all begin to realize the decline of new original content available from the creative communities if the mole community continues to thrive. Anyone who claims otherwise probably has never produced anything original or creative in their lives.”
That’s a very broad, negative and stereotypical generalisation.
April 4th, 2009 at 3:58 am
E-Bay seems to be a huge problem. There are even people selling the rights to resell pirated works, so some pirates honestly believe that they’ve bought rights to copy and sell ebooks.
April 4th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
I agree that people selling pirated goods on Ebay should be condoned at all, especially for people who think they are buying legitimate goods.
But there are always people who are going to abuse the system. Ebay, as a system, is not the problem.
April 6th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
We musicians still have our live show! Thank God.
April 6th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
There need to be much more severe penalties. Immense fines to anyone illegally distributing copyrighted material. This includes the bloggers.
Fines need to be large enough to finance the enforcement, and enough left over to distribute to the content creators in the form of recompense.
Those who “consume” pirated material also must be penalized severely. A copyright-clean verification system needs to be put in place, so that citizens can be assured when they are downloading or purchasing legitimately.
Why are our governments not taking this issue more seriously?
Intellectual property is the engine of civilization.
April 8th, 2009 at 1:34 am
So is innovation - and the kinds of draconian things you’re proposing would kill all of it.
April 13th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Many years ago, I invented a portable storage system that could hang over a car seat, or be worn as a tabard during rest-stops. It had pockets and nets that could hold all the stuff that usually clutters up a car or a truck. There was a version for moms, and a more manly version for truckers. I had a prototype made, and it was shown at a motor show on a “Women’s Car”.
However, I was told that even if I invested money in it, and got a contract with a factory, there was no copyright protection or trademark protection for goods made of fabric. So, basically, I gave the idea away at this car show, because I wasn’t prepared to invest more money, hopes and time, and then be ripped off.
Goodness knows how much innovation is killed by piracy, or the prospect of it. Neal, have you any idea how enervating it is to start something, knowing before you start that your efforts will enrich thieves?
You won’t agree, I am sure, but when thievery is rampant, quality is lost. If an author has a great idea, she needs to get it into print as soon as possible.
If an author wishes to make a living, she needs to write a book every quarter. Some can do that, and maintain the highest possible standards of creativity, editing and literate excellence. Some cannot.
May 13th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
Have you read about Interview Magazine using an image for online branding without permission from the artist? They have yet to make a public apology to the artist and have quickly deleted questions on their Facebook page about the infringement.
Read,
http://www.myartspace.com/blog/2009/05/interview-magazine-copyright.html