What's Right, What's Copied

So far in my time as a wordguy, I've signed three contracts in the course of getting my work to publication - even if only one of those works has been published at this point. Every time I read one over, I count myself as thankful I'm not active in some part of the organized entertainment industry: music, for instance, or comics. Because at the core of all those contracts I've signed is something simple, yet precious - aside from the right of the purchaser to publish the story in a given time period and in a given manner, all rights and copyrights remain with me. I mean, that's only fair, isn't it? I was the one who sweated over it, I was the one who built it out of nothing, they should stick with me, right?

The sad thing seems to be that writing, where it's pretty much just between the author and the publisher, seems to be one of the only creative arenas where this is in fact the case. Look at the music industry, where artists who've signed with a record label see the rights for their songs go to the label and not themselves. Look at comics, in some respects - on the one hand, you can't expect a new writer coming in to have any control over stories written about Superman or the Incredible Hulk, seeing as how those are already corporate properties, if you're a comics writer or artist working with pretty much anyone except Image, you can forget about having any intrinsic right to what you produce. It's parasitism taken to a grand scale; a lot of these big companies don't produce anything insofar as they enable things to be produced, by financing studio time and advertising budgets and things like that.

But that's not incompatible with creator-owned material. There's no reason I can think of that a music label couldn't allow artists to retain ownership of their own works while reserving the exclusive right to publish them - except for, y'know, the will to control and to own.

What's more, what we've got today is in some ways better than what came before; back in the day, even the sort of writing I do fell into this trap. Plenty of pulp authors had to sell the rights to their work entirely; I'm not entirely sure if my 1930s issues of Wonder Stories did the same, but if they did, it's ridiculous in another way - if their copyrights were renewed on first expiry, the tales on those crumbling and yellowed pages will not begin entering the public domain until the 2030s. 2030s!

It's all about control. A property owned by one of the parasite conglomerates can be distorted, spindled, reticulated, or whatever else is necessary to repackage it in a new box and reap fresh dollars. If the rights remain with the person who actually created it, well, that makes things complicated: there would have to be negotiations. A two-way street might have to be paved, and in the end, the answer might nevertheless be "no." That sort of uncertainty ain't good for business, is it?

The worst thing is that I wouldn't be surprised for this model to re-emerge, at least to some degree, in the writing field. The rapidly maturing ebook market is set to shake things up in the next few years - if some company comes across what they think might be the next Harry Potter in its beginning stages, who's to say they might not just buy the idea outright in the hope it could be enriching - for them - down the line?

An Inability to Consider Implications

"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
- Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

As has been said in many places by many people, the most difficult part of creating science fiction is developing the future - and there's a reason for that. Science fiction is unnatural. Humans are not meant to think about the future. In the old days, speculation about tomorrow wasn't an absolute survival trait - every minute you spend thinking about what's to come is a minute you're not assuring your own survival in the present. Even when people are actively trying to project the course of the future, they're hamstrung by these limitations and end up creating worlds where everything is the same except for one shiny, new technological advance.

This is the sort of science fiction that's increasingly becoming associated with the modern intellectual property enforcement movement. The big corporate rightsholders push for more and more regulations, more and more restrictions_ under the guise of openness and economic freedom, but they do not appear to consider that they're not pushing in a vacuum. Witness the United Kingdom's Digital Economy Bill, a law that not only reflects the sheer detestability of a government rushing out a law without giving it proper debate - partially because, I believe, they wanted it to pass under Labour government and not die with the prorogation of parliament, but mostly because Big IP was pushing it forward with all the strength it could muster - but changes the game.

I believe that Cory Doctorow is right - the Digital Economy Bill represents a shift in the winds of the modern copyfight, that the idea of "a negotiated peace... between the thrashing entertainment giants and civil society" is more unlikely than ever, if not impossible - but with the controllers continually working to frame copyright infringement as "theft" when it is, in fact, copyright infringement (you see, we already have a perfectly good term for it, such a shame it's not as sexy), it may be a long time before we hear whispers of a cease-fire, let alone armistice.

The Digital Economy Bill was just the first shot in what will likely be a long war. If you listen carefully, you can already hear the rumble of artillery in the distance. The only problem is that they're being fired by people who can't conceive of the damage that may be wrought once their shells explode, the heirs of those who decided that bombarding Passchendaele until it was a quagmire of muck was a good idea well worth pursuing. The document that the people at the RIAA and MPAA, among others, presented recently to the office of the United States Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator is a case in point. I suggest you read it, and read the Electronic Frontier Foundation's commentary on it. Consider what they suggest could be useful in going after copyright infringement: "technologies to detect, monitor (and filter) traffic or specific files based on analysis of information such as protocols, file types, text description, metadata, file size and other "external" information" and "consumer tools for managing copyright infringement from the home."

Yeah. Because I would certainly love to download something that polices my own computer and "manages copyright infringement" - and what does that mean? Would it lock down the computer if it found something that was pirated? That it thought was pirated? If I have a legitimate file that sets off a false positive, would it react anyway? What if it's a legitimately scanned childhood photo that the software decides is an infringement?

These questions, and questions like them, are absolutely important questions. We cannot afford to not ask them. We need to consider the implications, because our governments are not willing to do so on our behalf. The big problem is that people, even the people behind ideas like these, aren't generally evil. That would at least make it easy. No, most times when you're dealing with issues like this, it's because the person or people promulgating them are just too stupid to look past the ends of their own noses. It's something I'd rather believe - I'd rather be dealing with people who are ignorant than those who are actually malicious.

Can't You Hear, Can't You Hear the Thunder

Music has been an elemental touchstone of humanity for tens of thousands of years, a cultural force that helps bind us all together. Before there was such a thing as literature, and when art was nothing more than stylized animal paintings within cave, humans made music. The concept is something special, practically something sacred. That's why I'm so dismayed at the recent news to come out of Australia.

Back in 1981, the band Men at Work found they had a hit on their hands with the song "Down Under," an intensely Australian piece that's since become a patriotic song. Incorporated within it is a short but memorable flute riff, and it's that riff that has been causing problems now. On Thursday, an Australian court ruled that Men at Work plagiarized this riff from "Kookaburra," an Australian folk tune written by Marion Sinclar and which was the winner of a 1934 Girl Guides competition. Today, of course, it's owned by a corporation, Larrikin Music, and corporations aren't too shy to release the legal hounds.



I'll admit that, on the face of it, it's understandable. I've listened to "Down Under" and "Kookaburra" both, and the flute riff does significantly echo the opening of the earlier song. The problem in this case, though, is that there seems to have been no thought by the ruling judge about the implications of this. I've thought about them, and I certainly don't like them.

I suppose that the charge of plagiarism gains its energy from the fact that "Kookaburra" seems to be shorter than "Down Under," and so a comparatively large portion of it was incorporated into the song as the flute riff - though due to its age and nature as a frequent choir song, it's not particularly easy to get an official running time. "Down Under," for its part, is three minutes and forty-one seconds long. I listened carefully to the song, and I heard the flute riff at four separate points: 0:13 - 0:15, 0:54 - 0:56, 1:56 - 1:58, and 2:01 - 2:03. Eight seconds. By my reckoning, this amounts to four percent of the song.

What's ridiculous is that the Star article where I learned about this references Larrikin's lawyer as saying that the company "might seek up to 60 per cent of the royalties 'Down Under' earned since its release." I find this offensive for two reasons - first, as I said, the "Kookaburra" flute riff occupies a tiny fraction of the song. Second, in what I think is a far more damning turn of events, Larrikin Music did not acquire the rights to "Kookaburra" until 1990, following the death of Marion Sinclair in 1988. To me, this is yet another example of a corporation overreaching common bounds and common decency because it's picked up the scent of money in the water. If anyone other than Men at Work should be getting royalties for this, it's the estate of Marion Sinclair or the Girl Guides, the two entities that actually owned the rights to "Kookaburra" when "Down Under" was written.

Beyond that, though, what this really comes down to is yet another assault on the perceived public domain. The average person has always had a different view of copyright than the law does. Even a song as basic and fundamental as "Happy Birthday" is thought to be under copyright - not, of course, that anyone actually cares, and any serious attempt by a claimed copyright holder to assert rights would practically fire off a revolution. Songs like these are held by people as part of the culture and the common trust, something that is owned by everyone and no one, regardless of what corporations might think.

Creativity has always been about incorporation and remixing. It's not possible, after tens of thousands of years of human culture, to create something truly original anymore. Memes migrate through minds and are installed as patchwork into new creations. When I see cases like this, I see corporations trying to build paddock fences around these concepts and keep them out of the common. It's a concept that can't be allowed to continue, or our culture will inevitably be the poorer for it. Copyright is a means to help ensure that artists can make a living on their work - it was never meant to be a method to keep essential cultural memes under lock and key.

Copyfight, Win, Prevail

Copyright will be the struggle of our age. Twenty-five years ago, no one except for video pirates like Marty McFly in the first draft of Back to the Future would have had reason to care about it. Today, the implications of copyright are everywhere, and as it gains in scope and influence, copyright maximalists have begun coming out of the woodwork to channel it like water in a Sumerian irrigation canal.

I think that's a valid comparison. Just as the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt were hydraulic empires, deriving their authority from control over water, the issue of control over intellectual property may well be one of the defining struggles of the twenty-first century. Steve Jackson Games' Transhuman Space series explores this issue in detail - and, to be honest, it was seeing its presentation of copyright in 2100 that galvanized me to work towards something fairer, something more equitable, in the here and now.

Yesterday, Cory Doctorow over at Boing Boing wrote about Access Copyright, a copyright license agency up here, attempting to throw its weight around in the current copyright law consultations being run by the Canadian government - which will, more than likely, completely ignore the outcome and just pump electricity into Bill C-61's corpse, but that's neither here nor there.

Their broadside paints the project to its membership as "[taking] aim at your livelihood," and claims that the consultations are "dominated by individuals who do not agree you should get fair compensation for digital and other reproductions of your works." What's really telling about Access Copyright's intentions, though, is in the message sample they provided as a means of getting their members to record videos and circulate their perspectives.

"When someone reproduces my work for free, it destroys the market for it, and I suffer the consequences."

This may be one of the single most ridiculous sentences I've ever read. An author's greatest challenge is obscurity, not piracy. When I think of "reproducing work for free," I think of Jonathan Coulton and Cory Doctorow and Paulo Coelho, creators who wholeheartedly embrace free sharing through Creative Commons licensing or otherwise and who have seen their awareness among the public increase greatly as a result.

This is what copyright needs to recognize. When I read Access Copyright's post, I was galvanized, yes - but probably not in the way they intended, as I made a video and posted it on YouTube, detailing why I disagree with what they're doing.



That room is like an echo chamber.

PDP #64: This Seems Oddly Familiar

In east Toronto - or maybe East York - at the intersection of Danforth Avenue and Linnsmore Crescent, there's a two-in-one restaurant with a sign I couldn't believe: Sir Greek and Sir Sub. They're conventional, if odd, names, but what really drew my attention is how suspiciously similarly the sign follows the signature fonts used by Mr. Greek and Mr. Sub franchises in Canada.

This is hardly the only time I've come across this kind of signage, either. I mean, come on. Really now.


I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. This applies worldwide. In case this is not legally possible, I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.

Fahrenheit -451: The Temperature At Which Paper Freezes

It's a fact of life that technology advances. Tools and methods which are bleeding-edge in one decade will be ubiquitous and unsung the next, and obsolete shortly thereafter. In a civilization like ours, with greater and greater threats presenting themselves with each passing year, technological progress may be the only thing that keeps us from being rammed back into the mud, waiting for a lucky asteroid to do unto us what its cousin did unto Chicxulub.

That's not to mean, however, that all technological progress is inherently good. Far from it, in fact. "Science Is Bad" is a trope that's come to dominate much of modern popular culture, though in my evaluation it's confined to a handful of key issues - genetic engineering and nanotechnology are two major ones. The problem comes when the potential downsides of progress aren't even remarked upon in the stampede to take advantage of it.

To wit, the Amazon Kindle. This machine has been stirring up a lot of controversy lately in the Author's Guild's halls of power over whether its text-to-speech synthesis is trampling over audiobook rights. Authors more experienced than me have already weighed in on that, so I'm not about to. What fired my recent concern over what the Kindle represents was an opinion piece in the March 5 edition of the Globe and Mail, "Come on, Kindle, light my fire" by Margaret Wente.

Wente's piece sings the praises of the Kindle, how users "will find it irresistible to carry several tons of books around with them," and that it is "the future." Granted, ebook readers have been a fixture of sf predictions for decades now, though from my understanding those predictions tended to be background details; I don't know of any stories that focused specifically on the rise of ebooks and the social results.

The article is, to my mind, flighty and ungrounded, focusing on nothing but how awesome it is that Kindles provide "instant gratification. Want to read Outliers right now? You can download it in 45 seconds." Buried deep within it is the core of the issue, one sentence that made me colder when I read it.

"It will make hard copies largely obsolete." Emphasis mine.

I'm not disputing Wente's assertion that the market for physical books will contract once reliable ereaders become ubiquitous. What I am concerned with is the total lack of concern about the negative results of a culture in which the majority shifts their reading habits from physical to digital media. In the stampede toward convenience and instant gratification - which, really, is rarely a good thing - the majority won't realize what's been left behind until it's too late to do anything about it.

The security of stored data is just one of many issues. Should the worst happen, should our civilization fall in some disastrous calamity, and should archaeologists from some new society return to exhume our ruins, we're building a foundation for them to find a Dark Age. Hard drives are fragile things, vulnerable to data corruption, magnetic scrambling, and old age. In light of the risks we face today, we should be striving to make our foundations less vulnerable to disruption, not more so. Still, that angle has been covered already - it's one of the most obvious, in my mind.

What wasn't so obvious is the current trajectory of digital restrictions management in the Western world. The ubiquity of future ereaders which are to Kindles as the Tesla Roadster is to the Model T would only strengthen the cries of the content controllers, and further the push to lock information down tight and monetize every facet of the process. I have three full shelves filled with books, magazines, and sundry, enough that one of the shelves is actually spillover into the living room. Having trekked down to the store and paid for a book or two, I can set it down on one for however long I want, pick it up and read it when I feel the need, and then let it rest again all without one extra cent leaving my account.

What devices like the Kindle make possible is a society where books aren't truly owned by anyone other than the entity that's publishing it. What they enable is a market where you only view licensed works, works that could theoretically be yanked back by the rights holder at any time, works where if you wanted to read it twice, you would have to pay for it twice. I'm sure Harlan Ellison would love a world like that, but as for me, I find the concept disturbing.

With our Kindles and our blinders, we may end up stumbling into a world where less and less is really our own.