How Cooks Source Magazine Learned That Reputation Is A Scarce Good... As Reddit Applies The Social Mores Of Justice

from the reputation-is-a-scarce-good dept

One of the key points we've made over the years is that reputation is a scarce good, and doing something bad can be quite costly. In fact, in showing how social mores can often be much more effective than copyright laws in dealing with actions where someone is "wronged" by having their work copied in ways that appear to be unfair, we've suggested that social costs are a much more effective means of punishing those who do wrong.

As an example, check out this story, first sent in by slacker525600, but also submitted many more times, about how Cooks Source Magazine copied one woman's blog post and published it as an article, without asking her permission or letting her even know about it. They did put her name on it, but she only found out after a friend spotted it and told her about it. Where the story takes a bizarre twist is after emailing with the editor of the magazine, Judith Griggs, asked the original author, Monica, what she wanted. Monica suggested a public apology (on Facebook) and a modest $130 donation to Columbia's journalism school. That's when Griggs responded like this:

"Yes Monica, I have been doing this for 3 decades, having been an editor at The Voice, Housitonic Home and Connecticut Woman Magazine. I do know about copyright laws. It was "my bad" indeed, and, as the magazine is put together in long sessions, tired eyes and minds somethings forget to do these things.

But honestly Monica, the web is considered "public domain" and you should be happy we just didn't "lift" your whole article and put someone else's name on it! It happens a lot, clearly more than you are aware of, especially on college campuses, and the workplace. If you took offence and are unhappy, I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally. Now it will work well for your portfolio. For that reason, I have a bit of a difficult time with your requests for monetary gain, albeit for such a fine (and very wealthy!) institution. We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me! I never charge young writers for advice or rewriting poorly written pieces, and have many who write for me... ALWAYS for free!"

That response not only shows a rather confused understanding of copyright law, but also suggests someone who's kinda sorta heard arguments about why copying can be beneficial, and jumbled them all together in her head. Now, we've spent plenty of time over the years showing how content creators can be better off allowing their works to be copied, but even so, Grigg's response appears totally tone deaf to what Monica's actual concerns were. But here's where social mores and reputational value take over. Monica's story made it onto Reddit and it got picked up by tons of others, leading the Facebook page of Cooks Source to be filled with angry comments from people supporting Monica.

And, just like that, Cooks Source (and Judith Griggs') reputation gets knocked down quite a bit. Reputation is a scarce good, and doing things that people don't approve of can come back to bite you.

There are a few other interesting lessons out of this. First is that, contrary to what some people claim, you don't have to be a "big name" to make these things work for you. People have a sense of when someone has been genuinely wronged, and they step up. So, Monica was able to get attention for this, despite not being "famous" in the conventional sense. Second, contrary to the claims that the various "online mobs" that hang out in places like Reddit "just want everything for free," various online communities have always shown a willingness to stand up against situations where they feel someone was genuinely wronged. And that should give you an idea of what they really think of various situations where some record label complains about file sharing. It's a totally different situation, and people react accordingly.

Filed Under: copyright, culture, reputation, scarce goods, social mores
Companies: cooks source

Why Aren't We Creating A National Digital Library?

from the access-to-knowledge-and-information dept

Justin Levine points us to a column in the New York Review of Books by Harvard's Robert Darnton (based on a speech he gave) questioning why there is no work on a national digital library in the US. There is, obviously, the Google book scanning effort, but as lots of folks are worried about putting all that info in the control of Google, Darnton wonders why others aren't working on similar efforts as well, pointing out that what Google has really done is shown that it is possible to do.

As for the reasons why, Darnton quotes extensively from our founding fathers on the importance of access to knowledge. They talk up the importance of open access and sharing knowledge -- and even highlight technology's wonderful role in making that possible. And yet, today, rather than using technology to continue that tradition, many have fought against what the technology allows -- quite the contrary of what our founding fathers were excited about. It's rather unfortunate.

Behind the creation of the American republic was another republic, which made the Constitution thinkable. This was the Republic of Letters--an information system powered by the pen and the printing press, a realm of knowledge open to anyone who could read and write, a community of writers and readers without boundaries, police, or inequality of any kind, except that of talent. Like other men of the Enlightenment, the Founding Fathers believed that free access to knowledge was a crucial condition for a flourishing republic, and that the American republic would flourish if its citizens exercised their citizenship in the Republic of Letters.

Of course, literacy was limited in the eighteenth century, and those who could read had limited access to books. There was an enormous gap between the hard realities of life two centuries ago and the ideals of the Founding Fathers. You could therefore accuse the Founders of utopianism. For my part, I believe that a strong dose of utopian idealism gave their thought its driving force. I think we should tap that force today, because what seemed utopian in the eighteenth century has now become possible. We can close the gap between the high ground of principle and the hardscrabble of everyday life. We can do so by creating a National Digital Library.

That said, I'd argue that focusing on a centralized method of doing so, whether it's Google or a university or Congress may still be the wrong way of doing it. Why not distribute the work. I would imagine that many people would be quite willing to contribute their time, their technology and their bandwidth in assisting the creation of a truly distributed, open and free digital library.

Filed Under: commons, copyright, culture, library, sharing

More Comics About Copyright

from the jolly-roger dept

We recently wrote about how James Boyle, along with two other law professors, was putting together a comic book about copyright. It looks some others are thinking along the same lines (and, nicely, using Boyle's recent book as part of their inspiration). Someone sent over a link to the Jolly Roger comic book, which goes through the history of copyright in about 60 pages. Apparently, the original comic was in French, but this version has been translated to English. It highlights how copyright originally had nothing to do with artist's rights, but was initially a tool for royal censorship via printers and publishers. It highlights how copyright changed over time, and (obviously) spends lots of time on more recent happenings in the copyright world:

It discusses things like ACTA as well:



And even goes on to discuss how these same issues are playing out not just in copyright, but in many other areas concerning censorship and user rights as well:



Anyway, at 60 pages, it's definitely a pretty quick read. It's available in a web version as well as two ebook versions. My only issues with it are that I think it still focuses too much on the whole idea that copyright is about balance. As I've said in the past, it would only be about balance if it were a zero-sum game, but the evidence suggests that content is a non-zero sum game, and it's possible to look for ways to benefit everyone, rather than looking for trade-offs. Separately, while it's great that they're using a Creative Commons license, I'm a bit disappointed that they've gone with a "non-commercial" license, which can be problematic. In fact, because of the "noncommercial" part, I hesitated about posting this story. After all, we are a commercial site, and I wanted to make sure to include some images, but technically I might be violating their CC license, and that seemed like too much trouble. However, in reading the comic, I felt that it's probably okay for me to discuss the comic in this matter... but just the fact that I had to consider it, and even thought about not posting it should, again, suggest why such licenses barring non-commercial use can cause more trouble than they're worth.

Filed Under: comics, copyright, culture

How Social Mores Can Deal With 'Unfair' Copying, Even In Absence Of Copyright

from the being-neighborly dept

One of the complaints that we hear often from various publishers is the idea that, without copyright, other sites could simply copy all content. In fact, this is the big complaint we keep hearing from newspapers these days -- the idea that they do all this expensive "reporting," and then along comes some "blog" that just copies the work, adds a bit of commentary and gets all the traffic. I tend to point out that this is a silly position to take. The thing is, I say that even though I've experienced being on the "other" side of this discussion, and not with a smaller site, but a larger one. For quite some time a publication (that will remain nameless) that is larger and more well known than us had a habit of "rewriting" stories that were found on Techdirt, as well as a few other moderately popular blogs, without any credit. It became quite obvious that this was happening -- especially on stories that I would sit on for a couple weeks for various reasons, only to post them and see a very similar story pop up six hours later on this other site. The timing was uncanny. I finally asked a writer at the site about one such story, and was told that the editor had sent him my story, but said that since he did additional reporting on it, they felt no need to credit me -- and even claimed that this was the same stance that "real reporters" took, such as the AP and Reuters. Of course, that's not quite true, and the AP just changed its credit policies, so that it will clearly credit any publication that publishes a story before they do.

Now, I can already hear critics of Techdirt furiously writing their "you hypocrite..." comments, but let me finish before declaring that. At no point did I think this was wrong, and it most certainly was not illegal. But I did think that it was not very nice and not very neighborly. One of the nice things about many blogs is that they're quite generous with "hat tips" and giving credit to other sites where they find things. Those links may not have much overall impact, but it's just a social nicety. At one point, I tried to make this point to an editor at that other publication -- again, trying to point out in as friendly a manner as possible, that it was the nice or neighborly thing to do to simply give a little "found via" or "so and so alerted us to..." link. My point wasn't that they had to do this, or that not doing it was "harming" me in any way. In fact, it was unrelated to us directly. I pointed out that from a perception standpoint, I was actually worried this would hurt that other publication's reputation. I pointed out that I wasn't the only one noticing this, and that some other sites were as well -- and that the potential "cost" of having people criticize them for "not being nice" over such a practice -- even if it was perfectly legal -- could be quite high as compared to the "cost" of providing a simple hat tip.

Eventually, two things happened. A few stories were written on other sites about this publication, falsely accusing it of "stealing" stories from other sites. I didn't think those stories were accurate or fair, because no stories were "stolen," but it did create a reputation issue for the publication, and in response that publication quickly became much better about giving "credit" to where it found the stories, even when it did significant reporting on its own. In my eyes, the reputation of this site increased quite a bit, not because it was obeying any law, or doing what it "had" to do -- but because it started doing the nice and neighborly thing to do.

I was thinking about this again, after reading Cory Doctorow's recent column for Locus Magazine, where he discusses someone who got upset with him for reposting public domain advertisements that others had scanned and uploaded to a community that discusses such things. The main complaint was that people felt (incorrectly) that Cory had reposted such things "without credit." After pointing out that there was, in fact, credit, everything was fine. Cory spends most of the article discussing why "permission" isn't needed -- but I actually think that this story, and my experience above, highlight a separate point that is really important:

Even in cases where there is no intellectual property right, social mores, social expectations and desire to keep one's own reputation, can actually solve such issues.

Believers in strong copyright act as if this is impossible or that it never happens. But that's not the case. In both my example above, and in the situation Cory faced, there were no intellectual property rights at stake. There was no legal obligation to credit whatsoever. But there was tremendous social pressure to do so. There's actually been some serious economic research on this topic, and Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Prize in Economics for exactly this type of research -- showing that social mores within certain communities can often act as a better regulator of "public goods," than any government mandated privileges or property rights.

Does this mean that copying without credit is stopped entirely? Of course not. But it does show that it is not, as some people claim, a "costless," situation. There can be a tremendous cost to reputation in doing so. It's why people have an inherent negative reaction when they hear stories about comedians "copying" each others' jokes, or any other situation where someone tries to take credit for something that someone else did before them. And, in the end, these things tend to work themselves out, without relying on an overly broad form of government protectionism.

Filed Under: copying, culture, social mores

John Mellencamp: Takes From Others, But Refuses To Give Back

from the sad dept

We recently wrote about John Mellencamp's complaints about how the internet and file sharing are destroying the music business. While the actual evidence suggests something entirely different, what may be even more interesting is Mellencamp's rather blatant hypocrisy about such things. One of our commenters, coldbrew, points us to an interview with Mellencamp from a year and a half ago, where he gleefully explains how he not just takes inspiration from the works of others, but he claims "ownership" over their works in a sense. The interviewer asked about Mellencamp's process for writing a song, and he responds:

Well you know, as I've matured as a songwriter, I realize that if it's out there, it's mine. You know, everything I see and hear, I don't care if Shakespeare wrote it, or Tennessee Williams wrote it, or if Bob Dylan wrote it, or I see it on a sitcom. If I hear words, they're mine.

And so I will take ideas from anyplace, anywhere, anytime, and life has become a song to me. I'm always looking for a song.

Now, obviously, he's talking in a symbolic way, but the stark contrast shows a rather incredible sense of entitlement. Basically, everything is "his," and nothing can be anyone else's. He wants to take possession over anyone else's work, but refuses to give back, and claims that others doing a similar process are somehow "destroying" his own work.

Filed Under: culture, inspiration, internet, john mellencamp, music

Mark Waid Explains: Culture Is More Important Than Copyright & It's Time To Look For Opportunities In Sharing

from the say-that-again dept

We recently wrote about comic book writer Mark Waid's supposedly controversial keynote speech at the Harvey Awards, where he talked about copyright, the public domain and learning to embrace file sharing. Beyond the general controversy, a lot of people apparently misinterpreted his talk to be anti-copyright and anti-making money (we get that a lot around here too). So he's now posted a written out version of his talk that seeks to clarify many of his points (thanks to Robert Ring for sending this in). It's a great read, and hits on many of the points that we normally talk about here. Specifically, copyright is supposed to benefit the public and that file sharing isn't going away, so you're better off embracing it and using it to your advantage, rather than whining about it. Nice to see more people recognizing this. It also has a great line:

culture is more important than copyright

I'm trying to understand anyone who would disagree with this statement, but so often we hear people say that they have to defend their copyrights "on principle," even if not defending them is better for culture. But the key point of his article is that fearing file sharing and attacking it doesn't help. It doesn't stop it from happening and it provides no real advantage to those doing the attacking. So he suggests it's time to figure out ways to turn it into an opportunity:

Like it or not, downloading is here. Torrents and filesharing are here. That's not going away. I'm not here to attack it or defend it--I'm not going to change anyone's mind either way, and everyone in America at this point has anecdotal evidence "proving" how it hurts or helps the medium--but I am here to say it isn't going away--and fear of it, fear of filesharing, fear of illegal downloading, fear of how the internet changes publishing in the 21st century, that's a legitimate fear, because we're all worried about putting food on the table and leaving a legacy for our children, but we're using our energy on something we can't stop, because filesharing is not going away.

And I'll tell you why. It's not because people "like stealing." It's because the greatest societal change in the last five years is that we are entering an era of sharing. Twitter and YouTube and Facebook--they're all about sharing. Sharing links, sharing photographs, sending some video of some cat doing something stupid--that's the era we're entering. And whether or not you're sharing things that technically aren't yours to share, whether or not you're angry because you see this as a "generation of entitlement," that's not the issue--the issue is, it's happening, and the internet's ability to reward sharing has reignited this concept that the public domain has cultural value. And I understand if you are morally outraged about it and you believe to your core that an entire generation is criminal and they're taking food off your table, I respect that.

But moral outrage is often how we deal with fear. It's a false sense of empowerment in the face of fear.

Great stuff. Definitely go read the whole thing. He also mentions that he's got some plans in place for how he's going to embrace things like BitTorrent and run some interesting experiments. He points out that they're experiments, and there's no guarantee they'll work, but he wants to step forward and at least try to embrace it. This is great to hear, and I look forward to seeing what kind of experiments he runs.

Filed Under: comics, copyright, culture, harvey awards, mark waid, public domain

New Book Shows How Our Common Culture Has Been Locked Up Via Copyright

from the and-that's-not-good dept

Well respected author and professor Lewis Hyde, who has done tremendous work in the past on the concept of "gift economies," apparently has a new book out that sounds quite interesting -- though may cover some well-tread ground for folks around here. It's all about how the bastardization of intellectual property law has locked up and diminished our common cultural heritage, and why that's a problem. The book is called Common as Air.

The review, linked above, explains that the book goes through the history of how cultures used to be about sharing, and how the originators of our intellectual property laws were quite concerned about it being used to lock up culture:

The United States' Founding Fathers supported far less restrictive commons than have come to pass. Hyde writes about "John Adams attacking the Stamp Act as a tax on knowledge, Benjamin Franklin encouraging skilled artisans to smuggle technical expertise out of England, James Madison explaining why unlimited copyright undermines civic and religious liberty, and Thomas Jefferson trying to get a prohibition on patent monopolies written into the Bill of Rights." Copyrights and patents originated as brief tradeoffs, minimal, transient monopolies granted to stimulate and reward invention.

Hyde charts corporate interests' erosion of these views, restricting sharing of even long-iconic creativity, the prolonging of copyright terms and the widening boundaries of exclusive ownership. These days, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, lobbied for by major media companies, assures personal copyrights for life plus 70 years and corporate rights typically enduring from 95 to 120 years.

Frankly, it sounds like an excellent companion book to James Boyle's The Public Domain. The one complaint in the review is that Hyde does a great job explaining the problem, but does little to suggest a way to fix things. The reviewer points out that this leaves the reader "saddened -- and frustrated -- by his demonstration of what's been taken." Of course, considering how frequently I hear similar feelings from folks reading this blog, I would imagine many of you might find the book quite interesting.

By the way, if you'd like to see a lecture of Hyde talking about some of the concepts in this book, the following hour-long video discusses some of the concepts that are also covered in the book:

Filed Under: commons, copyright, culture, lewis hyde

Autotune The News Becomes A Billboard Hit

from the who-gets-publishing-rights? dept

Hopefully by now, you've come across the "Autotune the News" phenomenon, where various news clips are turned into sometimes brilliant music numbers thanks to the magic of autotune and some very creative individuals. However, it seems that they're now taking it to the next level. Their incredibly popular "Bed Intruder" song taking the statements of Antoine Dodson on a newscast about his sister getting raped, hasn't just gone "viral," but it's actually hit the Billboard Hot 100 and is selling really well on iTunes: Apparently some of the proceeds from the song are going to the Dodson family, as well as the makers of Autotune the News -- which perhaps answers some of the questions I had about who gets the songwriting "credit" and copyrights in such situations. I wonder if anyone used in a clip (or a news organization) would ever sue for infringement.

In the meantime, however, it looks like the "Gregory Brothers," the team behind Autotune the News, have figured out plenty of ways to turn their success into something more. They're already working on a pilot for Comedy Central, among other projects...

From a cultural perspective, though, this whole story again shows how culture is changing in very interesting and powerful ways. When we talk about things like "remixing" and "mashups," we tend to hear from a chorus of folks who brush off such things as mere copying and not worthy of being considered art in itself. But there's a lot more to it than that. What makes culture culture is the shared experiences around that work. This song is not only musically interesting, but also calls attention to a horrible incident that happened as well. And, again, some will brush it off as being meaningless, but the power with which it has interested so many people is not something that should be ignored.

Filed Under: autotune, autotune the news, culture, remix

Treasure Trove Of Jazz To Be Blocked, Perhaps Forever, Thanks To Copyright

from the lost-culture dept

MTGlass points us to David Post's analysis of "the high cost of copyright," in reference to an article about the inability to make available a treasure trove of classic jazz recordings that the National Jazz Museum just acquired. The problem, of course, is copyright. The museum wants to make all the works available, and jazz afficianados, like Post, are eager to hear the music, but copyright law makes it almost impossible:

Mr. Schoenberg said the museum planned to make as much as possible of the Savory collection publicly available at its Harlem home and eventually online. But the copyright status of the recorded material is complicated, which could inhibit plans to share the music. While the museum has title to Mr. Savory’s discs as physical objects, the same cannot be said of the music on the discs.

"The short answer is that ownership is unclear," said June M. Besek, executive director of the Kernochan Center for Law, Media and the Arts at the Columbia University School of Law. "There was never any arrangement for distribution of copies" in contracts between performers and radio stations in the 1930s, she explained, "because it was never envisioned that there would be such a distribution, so somewhere between the radio station and the band is where the ownership would lay."

At 70 years' remove, however, the bands, and even some of the radio networks that broadcast the performances, no longer exist, and tracking down all the heirs of the individual musicians who played in the orchestras is nearly impossible.

And don't think these works are going into the public domain any time soon either. As we recently noted, sound recordings are locked away for much longer than other copyrighted works due to some quirks in copyright law.

Post uses this as an example of the "high cost of copyright," pointing out that many people who first encounter copyright understand the supposed benefits of the monopoly privilege, but it's more difficult to understand the "cost," side. Of course, I'd argue that this is more a problem of the fact that people have been taught to believe that copyright is designed to "protect the creator," rather than the much more accurate fact that it's supposed to provide for the public. The fact that copyright law is quite clearly getting in the way of this, the intended purpose of the law, suggests that such restrictions are not, in fact, legal. This is a clear case where such a copyright restriction is not "promoting the progress," at all, and in fact hindering our access to important cultural works -- perhaps forever.

Filed Under: copyright, culture, jazz, locked up

Dear Jeff Zucker, Whether You Like It Or Not, Content Will Stay Free

from the economic-confusion dept

It's sometimes entertaining when powerful executives don't seem to understand the rather basic market forces that they're facing. Take Jeff Zucker, CEO of NBC Universal, who's done a pretty good job driving the operation into the ground over the past few years. In a recent interview, he apparently said (as he's hinted in the past) that it might make sense to charge for TV content online, noting that:

I do not think that it is a foregone conclusion that content should be free on the Internet.

The problem, of course, is that we're well beyond should. Sorry, Jeff, but you don't get to decide that. The technology and the market have already decided that the content is or will be free online. It might not be authorized. It might not be legal. But the content is free. "Should" has nothing to do with it, because the technology and the market don't care about "should." Yes, this sucks for those who only understand how to run a business when they're a gatekeeper who controls things, but it doesn't mean there aren't really good businesses built on free content. NBC should know this, since an awful lot of its history was built on exactly that... And I don't recall Zucker's predecessors whining about that darn "free" broadcast TV.

Filed Under: content, culture, economics, free
Companies: nbc universal