New Research Shows Digitization Results In Routine Lock-Down Of Public Domain Books

from the what-about-our-rights? dept

The public domain is supposed to be what we receive in return for, and after the expiry of, time-limited, government-backed intellectual monopolies that are granted to creators. As Mike noted recently, that neat equation does not reflect today's reality for copyright, where the situation is so complicated that it requires a 52-page handbook to determine whether or not something is in the public domain.

But the situation is actually far worse than that, because the public is being denied access to many works that are unambiguously in the public domain because of new restrictions being placed on them when they are digitized. That's something that Techdirt has discussed before, but such stories have been largely anecdotal. Research from New Zealand provides us with more detailed information of what's going on:

In order to establish the extent to which digitized public domain books are being restricted, a sample of 100 pre-1890 books was selected from the New Zealand National Bibliography (NZNB). This sample was chosen on the assumption that these works had entered the public domain under New Zealand copyright law. Each book in the sample was searched for within six online repositories: Google Books, Hathi Trust, Internet Archive, Early New Zealand Books (ENZB), New Zealand Electronic Text Collection (NZETC) and Project Gutenberg. In addition, Google and Bing searches were conducted for all sample books that could not be located within these repositories.

Here's what the researchers discovered:

The findings of this research suggest that a high proportion of digitized public domain books are being restricted by online repositories. Out of a sample of 100 public domain books, only three are hosted by repositories that do not impose any form of usage restriction. Furthermore, 48 percent (24) of all digitized books [50 out of the 100 public domain sample] are hosted by a repository that restricts or blocks access, with the most restrictive repository limiting or blocking access to 91 percent (21) of sample books within its collection.

They also managed to pinpoint the key problem:

Almost all access restrictions applied to public domain books within the sample were the result of repositories using a process of estimation to assess copyright status. Within the sample, a one-minute search located accurate biographical information about authors two-thirds of the time. This task takes a fraction of the time required to digitize a book, which involves 30 minutes to scan 500 pages (Kelly, 2006).

A solution is the following:

Digitizers should incorporate the sourcing of copyright information within the overall process of digitization, and copyright estimation should only be used as an option of last resort. Furthermore, copyright estimation periods should better reflect statistical norms regarding the actual duration of copyright protection. The current estimation period of 140 years, used by Google Books and Hathi Trust, is far too conservative. If hosted under this policy, 47 percent of sample books would be restricted. This is despite the fact that all books with locatable biographical information were confirmed as being in the public domain for between 30 and 132 years.

This goes back to the problem of determining whether a work is in the public domain or not. Because that can be complex, those carrying out the digitization of works simply assume the worst, just to be on the safe side. That's something that needs to change, otherwise we risk losing not just the benefits of digitized public domain works, but also our undoubted rights to access them freely.

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Filed Under: archives, books, copyright, ebooks, libraries, lockdown, new zealand, public domain

Everything Old Is Unavailable Again: How Copyright Has Ebooks Operating In The 1800s

from the one-step-forward,-two-steps-back dept

Nothing sucks more than a great new technology with old-world thinking attached to it. Such has been the case with ebooks, unfortunately, with antiquated views on DRM, pricing, and storefront protectionism resulting in pissed off customers and libraries hollering from the nearest rooftop. What we're left with is a platform that could do much to spread knowledge and the practice of reading among entire populations being stifled by those that still think the world should operate based on analog philosophies.

Reader zip writes in about a nice write up detailing how cyclical this has made reading, with protectionist policies regarding ebooks cutting the benefit of the technology right out from underneath it.

Today, the situation has come full circle. If a student in Freiburg wants to read the hard-copy version of a book from the university library in Basel, he or she can simply order it via an interlibrary loan. But if only an electronic version is available, interlibrary loans are generally not an option. The student has no choice but to climb into a train and head to Switzerland to read the book on a university computer.

It is a paradox: Books that traveled around the world via interlibrary loan in the 20th century paper era are safeguarded locally in the Internet age. Indeed, it is the sheer ease with which electronic publications can be sent around the world that is now resulting in their being locked up behind digital bars. The book doesn't go to the reader, the reader comes to the book -- just like in the 19th century.

If that doesn't strike you as absurd, you're likely missing some significant sections of your brain. The very benefit the entire digital experience has brought most other marketplaces and forms of communication and learning in the past thirty years is being blocked by a trumped-up policy born out of fear. Just think about that for a moment: the same book I can get on loan from a far-off library is unavailable to me in ebook format, even though the transfer of that ebook is easier, cheaper, and quicker. That, friends, is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

But it gets more stupid. This doesn't simply apply to fictional entertainment, but to true knowledge platforms as well, and the willingness to be wasteful is astounding.

The issue is the core of the knowledge economy: essays, articles and books from researchers. "We have thousands of e-books that we could make available to our users via the Internet," says Harald Müller, head librarian at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg. "Be we often aren't allowed to because licenses are so restrictive."

Copyright laws often lead to "delightful absurdities," says Müller. If, for example, he wants to read an essay from an American library via interlibrary loan, "they will print it out on paper and send it over by fax -- and I will then scan it into our computers here." Sending it as an email attachement is forbidden.

In other words, everyone ends up in the exact same place they would if ebook lending was opened up, except it's slower, less efficient, costlier, and requires physical resources that nobody is actually interested in using. This is the epitome of inefficiency, and it's the answer to whether or not the originators of copyright law would support this kind of application: no they damn well wouldn't. Imagine Thomas Jefferson being showed how copyright was being used to limit knowledge and that imagining had better end with Jefferson punching everyone involved.

So, who's fault is it? The answer is the combination of governments unwilling to consider change and, of course, publishers. Most egregious are the academic publishers.

In many cases, it is the readers themselves who, through their taxes, pay the university authors whose studies they are then unable to access. It is also likely that many professors themselves cannot even afford a subscription to the journal in which their work is published. Subscription rates of up to €15,000 ($20,633) per year are hardly a rarity. The Journal of Comparative Neurology, for example, comes with a price tag of more than €20,000 annually. Authors who publish their works in such a journal usually don't see a single cent for their labors. Publishing companies such as Reed Elsevier, by contrast, regularly achieve pre-tax profit margins of over 25 percent.

"Publishers of scientific journals make so much money because they collect their product for free from taxpayers and then sell it back at inflated prices," says Günter M. Ziegler, a distinguished mathematician at Berlin's Free University.

And the suppression of knowledge is the result of all this protectionist nonsense. When we've reached the point where the researchers aren't being paid and the public can't access their papers, things need to change.

Filed Under: copyright, ebooks, lending, libraries

Rep. Nadler Claims 'You Bought It, You Own It' Is An 'Extreme Digital View'

from the oh-really? dept

We've written about Rep. Jerry Nadler a few times. He recently became the "ranking member" (i.e., highest ranking Democrat) on the House subcommittee on intellectual property, which clearly made copyright maximalists happy. Nadler has a history of heavily supporting copyright maximalist positions, including pushing for what was effectively an RIAA bailout a couple years ago, and has previously supported ridiculous dangerous concepts like a new copyright for fashion designs (and idea that is both unnecessary and likely to harm the fashion industry).

He's already off to a dangerous start, introducing a bill to create artist resale rights (something he's done before. This is an issue we've written about many times, creating a ridiculous idea that people who buy artwork no longer own it outright. Any time they resell the artwork at auction, they might have to pay some of the proceeds back to the original artist. As with the fashion copyright idea, what this does is harm innovative new artists by favoring wealthy established artists. As we've discussed, this punishes investors who are willing to support new artists, taking away their incentive to invest in those artists, while at the same time decreasing the incentive for other artists to continue producing art (since now they get paid multiple times for the same work).

Given all that, it's quite clear what Rep. Nadler thinks about basic concepts like property rights: he's not a fan at all. In fact, in a rather astounding statement to the Association of American Publishers, Nadler claimed that the idea that "you bought it, you own it" is somehow extremist:

“The ‘you bought it, you own it’ principle is an extreme digital view and I don’t think it will get much traction,” he said, referring to the mantra of proponents of the right to resell digital goods.

Oh really? The specific discussion concerned people wanting to be able to resell used ebooks, just like they can resell regular books. But, really, the idea that "you bought it, you own it" is somehow extremist? Isn't that a fundamental concept in property rights? In fact, we've highlighted how copyright maximalists are trying to destroy property rights by denying people the basic ownership rights over things they bought.

It seems extremely troubling when such a key member of the House subcommittee on intellectual property has such a negative view of our basic property rights.

Filed Under: artist resale rights, copyright, digital, ebooks, jerry nadler, ownership, property rights, you bought it you own it

DailyDirt: Publishing Digitally (For Free!)

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Publishing content digitally is a topic that comes up around here fairly regularly. If you're a longtime Techdirt reader, you'll know that we generally think digital publishing drives down the price of content to free (but that doesn't mean your work is worthless!) and giving away content is often a very effective promotional tactic for selling other things that can't be freely copied. Here are just a few interesting examples of free content you can peruse at your leisure.

• Novelist Teju Cole surprised some folks by releasing a new short story of his on Twitter, using retweets only. The story, titled 'Hafiz', is now available (for free), and it poses some interesting questions over who owns the work. [url]
• If you have a Kindle, here's a link to a list of public domain books, sorted by author last name. This list is compiled from an ebook index of Project Gutenberg books, and there's also an EPUB version available (for non-Kindle users). [url]
• All sorts of people post answers to questions on Quora, so wouldn't it be nice to read a compilation of some of the best responses in one huge book? Quora released a free pdf of over a hundred answers from 2010-2012, covering 18 different question categories and including answers from anonymous users as well as Jimmy Wales. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: books, ebooks, free, kindle, media, public domain, publishing, quora, sir, teju cole, tweets
Companies: quora

Adobe Releases New DRM For eBooks, Plans To Screw Over Anyone Using Old DRM

from the futile-thrashing-about dept

In the grand lexicon of digital economies, DRM is quickly becoming, ironically, a four-letter word. Each attempt at locking down products in this manner is one more lesson in the futility of the entire effort, with legitimate customers becoming annoyed, while cracks are provided in a matter of days. One wonders why anyone in charge of any company would continue sinking money into an enterprise that has such dismal results, but c'est la vie. Adobe is a company that's perhaps not the most storied in this arena of DRM attempts, but it has its history of failures as well.

But give Adobe credit, I guess, as it hasn't let the failures of the past keep it from taking another turn at the DRM plate. Late last month came word that Adobe was releasing a new flavor of its eBook DRM for the EPUB format, leading to applause from nobody and a general questioning of why the company was attempting to force its customers to leap into the waiting arms of the competition.

Yes, there’s a new type of DRM out there, and yes we will eventually see ebook readers and apps that support it. But for the near future the devices and apps that do not support the new DRM (and frankly, never will support the new DRM) will far out number the newer gadgetry that does. And that means that the vast body of existing ereaders and apps is going to drive the market. eBookstores will want to sell to the largest number of potential customers, so they will continue to offer the older DRM. They already know that they’re losing customers to Amazon, Apple, and B&N, all of which have a proprietary DRM schema, so they’ll do their best to avoid losing what few customers they can get.

In other words, this DRM is likely to have an adoption rate that would make Little Orphan Annie cry. That this is coming so late in the game, with the previous DRM version having been cracked long ago, and the eBook marketplace booming, makes this author wonder what the hell anyone at Adobe is thinking. With futility proven and necessity rebuked, this appears to be little more than an effort to put roadblocks in front of potential customers. Way to go.

Meanwhile, of course, the DRM scheme is already annoying legitimate customers.

There are several reports on Twitter this morning that a bug in the latest version of Adobe DE is wreaking havoc, with several users reporting that they have ebooks which could be downloaded to Adobe DE but not transferred over to an ebook reader (like the Nook, Aura, or PRS-T3). This has also been confirmed by a couple other users. According to Micah Bowers, CEO of Bluefire Reader, the bug is only affecting a small fraction of newly downloaded ebooks and it is blocking users from transferring their purchased ebooks to their ebook readers. That’s not what one user reported on Twitter:

"I had a bunch of books on my laptop & yesterday ADE wouldn’t let me access them. I purchased them 7 years ago. So NOT happy." — Rebecca (@RebeLovesBooks) January 27, 2014

So, just to put a nice little bow on all of this, Adobe is releasing a new version of its DRM which was previously cracked, with the new DRM sure to be cracked, and which has little practical value beyond annoying eBook customers and driving sales for the competition. If one were writing a script of why DRM is a silly idea, one couldn't write it up better than Adobe has.

As if that weren't enough, Adobe has managed to ensure this new DRM attempt will remind customers that, when it comes to DRM, the curse always gets worse.

The tl;dr version is that Adobe is going to start pushing for ebook vendors to provide support for the new DRM in March, and when July rolls Adobe is going to force the ebook vendors to stop supporting the older DRM. (Hadrien Gardeur, Paul Durrant, and Martyn Daniels concur on this interpretation.). This means that any app or device which still uses the older Adobe DRM will be cut off. Luckily for many users, that penalty probably will not affect readers who use Kobo or Google reading apps or devices; to the best of my knowledge neither uses the Adobe DRM internally. And of course Kindle and Apple customers won’t even notice, thanks to those companies’ wise decision to use their own DRM.

But everyone else just got screwed.

So, needlessly annoy new customers while doing zero to battle "pirates" while simultaneously spitting in the faces of the legitimate customers who have spent the past few years buying eBooks? Nicely done, team!

Filed Under: copyright, drm, ebooks, epub
Companies: adobe

Hey Everyone: Stop Freaking Out That Mein Kampf Sells Well As An eBook

from the know-thy-enemy dept

So, hey, you guys remember that Hitler guy from a while back? You know, the one who occasionally is posed as the KFC colonel, or who can be found ranting about the DMCA process, and is somehow worked into every bad argument about anyone with whom people are in a disagreement? Well, it turns out he was also a guy who, years back, was a real bastard and sometimes enjoyed writing down exactly how and why to be a bastard just like him. Those writings were called Mein Kampf, the manifesto that later became the blueprint for the Nazi party, who, as you know, were organized around the idea that a political party could, in fact, personify evil. Then America, all by themselves, with absolutely no help from Britain or Russia, dismantled Hitler's Germany and restored all that is right and beautiful to the world (history, as I learned it in American public schools...). After that period, reading Mein Kampf, or owning it, became taboo. Efforts were made in Germany, in fact, to ban the book outright. Being seen in public with a copy would be tantamount to accepting its ideals, because we humans apparently don't understand anything at all.

But now, in the era of eBooks, it turns out that Mein Kampf is a hit once more, and it has certain well-meaning advocacy groups chasing enemies that don't exist.

"While the academic study of Mein Kampf is certainly legitimate, the spike in ebook sales likely comes from neo-Nazis and skinheads idolizing the greatest monster in history," World Jewish Congress CEO Robert Singer told ABC News in an emailed statement. "We think that responsible companies shouldn't profiteer from the sales of hate books, or at least should donate the profits to help the victims of anti-Semitism, racism and other like bigotries," he said.

Put more simply, popularity of the book as recorded by sales numbers means that the Nazi movement is returning and no company should allow the book to be sold. Or, if they do allow it, they should donate all profits to those who fight bigotry. Bigot is an interesting word however, which is in part defined as "a person who strongly and unfairly dislikes other people, ideas, etc." You know, like someone who would label anyone buying a book of bad ideas and immediately decide those same people were deficient enough to not know they're bad ideas. Freedom of speech and thought is most important when it concerns speech and thought that is downright dastardly. After all, how are we to know who the bastards are if we don't allow the bastards to tell us they're bastards? Even more to the point, how are we to learn they're bastards if we don't listen to or read them? The entire phrase "Know thy enemy" apparently eludes Mr. Singer.

Which, as it turns out, is almost certainly besides the point. People aren't buying Mein Kampf on eBooks because they're neo-Nazis. They're interested in one of the most well-known historical figures of our time and they can finally read the book, while disagreeing with it, on the subway without everyone else looking at them like they were the scum you clean out of your bathtub.

"The popularity of the digital Ford translation of Mein Kampf has surged due to academic interest in the subject." Elite Minds President Michael Ford told ABC News in an email. "With digital readers, no one faces the stigma of having a copy of Mein Kampf on their bookshelf or risks it being seen on a table and having visitors make false assumptions about their reasons for owning it. They can read it in the subway without fear of being mistaken for a racist just because they want to learn about history," Ford said.

It's so obvious, I can't believe anyone actually missed that. Because guess what else became hugely popular on eBook platforms? 50 Shades Of Gray, and I'm thinking it's highly unlikely that most folks reading that novel are into that level of kinky sex. It's a controversial book that some might find embarrassing to read in public with a huge book cover broadcasting the undertaking. Just like Mein Kampf.

So quit it with the moral panic. You can't claim to understand the genesis of the Nazi party, or really even World War 2, without reading that book. Yes it's evil, yes it's wrong, and yes it was the ravings of a mass murdering lunatic. But reading it doesn't make you the same and knowing the mind of an enemy is more important than burying hateful speech.

Filed Under: ebooks, hitler, mein kampf

French Gov't Rejects Plan To Tax DRM eBooks More Than Non-DRM eBooks

from the good-idea,-severely-flawed-targeting-and-execution dept

For a moment, it looked as though France might utilize its tax system to make a point about how much DRM devalues electronic goods. A few months ago, an initiative surfaced seeking to amend tax laws in order to hit DRM-laced ebooks with a higher VAT. (Or, more accurately, lower the VAT on non-DRMed ebooks.)

A French deputy (Isabelle Attard) thinks that proprietary and DRM protected eBooks should not be legally considered books and should not benefit from the fiscal advantages enjoyed by books as cultural artifacts.

This is a good point, but this deputy's suggestion wasn't based on the ongoing removal of "first sale" rights by the addition of DRM. Rather, her amendment looked to target the largest purveyors of ebooks.

Arguing that the real problem was not a question of pricing, but rather the vertical integration of platforms like those of Amazon, Apple and Google, Attard proposed to address the problem by offering a fiscal advantage in the form of reduced VAT to sellers offering open books that consumers can read on any platform.

Although the targeting was off (and France's relationship with Amazon [in particular] can safely be described as "antagonistic"), the idea of punishing DRM-laden merchandise by hitting it with a higher tax rate appealed to many people, many of whom perhaps didn't share the same antipathy towards Apple, Amazon and Google.

Not that France wasn't already giving ebooks a cut rate on taxes. It's that this amendment would have excluded ebooks with DRM from that reduced rate, as Nate Hoffelder at The Digital Reader explains.

Under France’s [proposed] tax laws, DRMed ebooks will be taxed at a higher rate (currently 19.6%), while DRM-free ebooks will be taxed at the lower 5.5% rate.

[E]books are already sold in France with a 5.5% VAT, or value added tax, bundled into the list price. Technically that is illegal under current EU regulation; ebooks are defined as a service and thus should have a higher VAT applied. But no penalty has been applied (so far) so at this point it is really a matter of opinion.

Attard's rationale for the rate change tracks with the proper application of the VAT by differentiating between DRM-laced ebooks ("services") and non-DRM ebooks ("goods") based on what DRM does to a product.

“Yes, everything that goes against interoperability, or imposes reading constraints would be subject to a VAT of 19.6%, in the capacity of services, and not sale of a book, therefore of a product."

Unfortunately for anyone hoping France would open a discussion on the DRM issue, the amendment was shot down. Parsing this out from an iffy translation, the reasoning appears to be that while the French government feels it should make an effort to diffuse the power of "vertical markets" (Amazon, Apple, etc.), screwing with the VAT rate isn't the right approach. Furthermore, lowering the rate for non-DRM ebooks would likely subject the French government to further "condemnation" from the European Commission for "distorting" market activity.

In short: good idea, wrong tool.

But there's another factor in play as well. While Apple and Amazon sell many ebooks with DRM, they do so at the behest of publishers -- large publishers who would probably be none too thrilled to see any shrinkage in their market share thanks to a higher VAT rate, as a commenter at The Digital Reader pointed out.

[Y]ou can bet the major publishers, who license DRMed e-books for the most part and were caught unawares the first time, will not let it pass so easily this time round.

So, an amendment that targeted Amazon (the publishers' worst enemy, according to entities like the Authors' Guild) should have been the publishers' best friend, except for the fact that it targeted DRM, another of the publishers' best friends. (The enemy of my friend is my enemy, even if the enemy of my enemy is my friend?)

If the publishers did help get this amendment kicked to the curb, they're probably fine with it slightly benefitting Amazon as well. And as for Amazon, France is still hard at work pushing through legislation specifically targeting the online giant.

French lawmakers on Thursday took aim at Amazon to protect local bookshops by voting through a law that bars online booksellers from offering free delivery to customers on top of a maximum 5 percent discount on books.

Its rather telling that these actions have very little to do with protecting consumers and everything to do with protecting the status quo. The latest anti-Amazon law springs from a 1981 law passed to protect small bookstores from the encroachment of supermarket chains. Thirty years down the road, the same tactics are being deployed, which would indicate the past efforts haven't done much other than assure France's booksellers that they'll never have to make an effort to compete in the market, and that any detrimental effects of these laws will continue to be borne by French citizens.

Filed Under: drm, ebooks, france, taxes, vat

Apple Rejects Thomas Jefferson Book App, Claiming It's Just A Book... Even Though It's Not

from the this-is-not-a-book dept

Apple's legendary arbitrariness in keeping things out of its walled garden has struck again. As a bunch of folks have sent over, some professors at the University of Virginia have put together what sounds like a wonderful app for the iPad, which takes different early versions of Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia (the only full-length book he ever wrote) and allows users to compare the different versions, and to get a glimpse into Jefferson's writing process and how his thoughts changed over time. It sounds both fascinating and like a really excellent use of tablet app technology -- to do something that really would have been much more difficult to do in physical form. Except... Apple has rejected the app over and over again, claiming that it is merely "a book" not an "app" and thus needs to be formatted as an iBook, with all of the restrictions that entails. Unfortunately, those restrictions also mean that as an "iBook" it won't do what the app is supposed to do.

But when we submitted the app to Apple for approval, it was turned down. Why? The reason the App Review Team gave (again and again) was that our app was “simply” or “just a book” (their words), and that it therefore had to be formatted in Apple’s iBooks Author program in order to be distributed through the iBookstore. We decided to play along and make a good-faith effort to convert our app into an iBook, only it doesn’t work. We cannot reproduce all of the features of our app–including some of the ones that we think the app needs to be useful to anyone–and for reasons no one has been able to explain, the iBooks Author file seems to expand well beyond the maximum size for an iBook (currently 2 GB). We’re stuck with an app that does just about everything we envisioned, that has impressed the many people to whom we have shown it on our own iPads, that does something that no app or printed book out there does–but that Apple won’t allow to be listed in its App Store. So, yes, it is possible to download an app called “Burp and Fart Piano” that does pretty much what you’d expect such an app to do, but a free, edited edition of Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia that lets you compare Jefferson’s and Lafayette’s own copies and to zoom in on Jefferson’s handwritten corrections? No dice.

As they note, this is absolutely Apple's prerogative, just as it's their prerogative to point out how ridiculous this whole thing is. In the meantime, they've found another solution:

In the meantime, we’re looking for a programmer who can help us port our app to Android.

Filed Under: arbitrary, ebooks, ibooks, rejections, thomas jefferson, walled gardens
Companies: apple