Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 11:38:59 +0100 From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> To: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> Cc: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>, "Victor R. Cardona" <vcardona@home.com>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Stallman stalls again Message-ID: <20010312113859.G60399@lpt.ens.fr> In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20010311235053.00e26140@localhost>; from brett@lariat.org on Mon, Mar 12, 2001 at 12:01:55AM -0700 References: <20010305205030.G80474@lpt.ens.fr> <4.3.2.7.2.20010305125259.00cfdae0@localhost> <20010305142108.A17269@marx.marvic.chum> <4.3.2.7.2.20010306011342.045fb360@localhost> <20010306081025.A22143@marx.marvic.chum> <4.3.2.7.2.20010306092612.00b79f00@localhost> <20010306174618.N32515@lpt.ens.fr> <4.3.2.7.2.20010311230800.00e19bd0@localhost> <15020.28993.192354.986367@guru.mired.org> <4.3.2.7.2.20010311235053.00e26140@localhost>
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> In Europe, authors do receive compensation from libraries for the > use of their work. They even receive a share of the revenues from > the copying machine. Since I've written more than 1,000 published > articles, I get a small but not insignificant amount of money each > year from that pool of money. The Copyright Clearance Center sends > me a check each fall. I have been in Europe for a few months now. I do not need to pay any copyright fee for photocopying articles. Nobody keeps tracks of which articles I photocopy. If authors do indeed get compensated by the libraries I use, it is certainly not based on how often they individually get photocopied. It could well be that a blank fee is charged simply to "compensate" for possible copyright violations, just as recordable media, CD writers, etc, are being taxed now; but that simply doesn't keep track of what is actually being copied. Moreover, when I write something I'm pretty happy for others to read it, and most of my earlier writings are retrievable for free from http://arxiv.org and often from the journal's own web pages. I, likewise, download and often print huge quantities of writings by others at the above sites. It is true that I don't fall in the same category as you -- I get paid for the research, by my employers, not for the writing. But my experience with creative people is that they're more concerned that they be *read* than that every possible reader compensate them for it. It is only the really big names, who already command a large market, who tend to argue against things like online reproduction. People like that (a recent example was Harlan Ellison) are rich anyway. In his long rant (recent slashdot story), Ellison claims that he's "also" arguing for various authors who were allegedly pirated wholesale and died poor: but unless there was a mechanism for millions of people to sample creative works for free (libraries, used books, and now the online world), authors/musicians would simply not become well known unless their publishing/recording companies chose to spend money marketing them. There is plenty of evidence that Napster users, for instance, actually bought a lot of music which they wouldn't have bought otherwise. The big publishing companies seem to be blind to this obvious situation. Returning to the patent question, here's an interesting article which someone pointed me to today. It's not relevant to software as such; even so, Brett, no doubt, will dismiss the author as being another Stallman stooge. http://www.quebecoislibre.org/000902-3.htm - Rahul. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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