I’ve sent an e-mail to Andrew Boose, the lawyer who (I think) represents the Edward Gorey estate. I hope this brings punishment down upon the owner of the linked blog.
“Merci, non.”
Pay in Parisian clubs is notoriously low.
What’s worse, someone reading Edward Goery’s work through less than legal means, or never reading them at all since they are impossible to find?
The latter. This book is the equivalent of abandonware. It is obviously not going to be re-released and mass-published, so unless it’s distributed for free, it will vanish into the ether and NOBODY will have a chance to see it. That would be a real shame, so in this case I think it’s better that people infringe on the copyright.
I’m Robin Hood! I steal from the copyright holders to present the work to the poor starving literary public!
Hogwash. It’s theft. Period.
And it is the decision of the authors (or their estates or representatives) what they want to do with their own works. You do not get to make those decisions for them.
So it’s both morally and legally wrong.
We’ve had this discussion (I can’t call it a debate since there is no other side) many times. It always comes down to a variant of, “it’s so easy to steal that it must be right to do so.”
It’s hogwash. The proper thing to do is to notify the copyright holders and let them decide how to proceed.
Art isn’t just about dollars and cents. Art creates an emotional reaction for the people that take it in. Right or wrong, nobody should be surprised when people “steal” art that is extremely rare and difficult to find, so that more people can see it. It’s not like the people who are freely distributing this book in an online form are stealing the actual, physical books away from the 10 people in the world who are lucky enough to have an actual copy of it. I know it’s “both morally and legally wrong,” but a lot of people don’t give a damn, and nobody is being harmed. I say fine.
How about the people who own the copyright? How are they not being harmed?
You said earlier “It is obviously not going to be re-released and mass-published.” Really? How do you know this? Do you have a source on the inside? Did you have a seance with Gorey where he complained to you about this? What about the actual author of the book, Mel Juffe? Doesn’t he get any say in the matter?
I know a lot of people don’t give a damn. Tough. I don’t give a damn about those people. If you know that something is both legally and morally wrong and you go ahead and do it anyway, then I will treat them - and you - exactly as such people deserve to be treated. Which is, I’m sure, exactly how you treat people who do things they know are legally and morally wrong when you are on the opposite side.
Bingo. Round and round we go. And as long as nobody actually gets in real trouble for copyright infringement, people are still going to do it, just like people still smoke weed despite it being illegal. And one high-profile incident like the Pirate Bay thing every three years is not going to deter anyone. It may be immoral, it may be illegal, but it sure as hell isn’t going to stop.
When somebody violates a copyright, you’re supposed to do something about it. It doesn’t matter whether it’s an Edward Gorey book that’s been out of print for years; it’s a copyright and you’re supposed to do something about it. It’s bad business to let the violator get away with it, bad all around, bad for every writer everywhere.
A few hypotheticals, if you don’t mind.
What if, somehow, an author dies, and someone who passionately hated him in life gets ahold of his copyright, with the stated intention of never allowing his works to be republished? Is piracy still a moral wrong?
What if he republishes the work, but edited to make it appear that he supported things that he would have reviled in real life? Is piracy a moral wrong, if it gets out the author’s unadulterated views?
Except the ones who are already giving their work out without charging for it.
This country’s knee-jerk, inflexible–and apparently non-debatable–stance on copyright laws is bizarre. It’s also wrong in many ways. I wish I lived in a world as “morally” unambiguous as the one Exapno and Baldwin share.
And it’s bad to steal from Dashiell Hammett! According to the old law, it’s okay as long as it’s for the use of parody, but I believe you are courting the gallows under the new law.
God save us from bureaucrats and small minds.
It’s easy, really. Just forget you ever heard two words:
cultural. heritage.
There is no cultural heritage in American society. There is only product made for the market. Once product is off the market, you have no right to see or hear or enjoy it anymore. It’s nobody’s business, it never happened, forget it. Go consume something marketable.
Simplistic as Doug phrased it, he has it in a nutshell. Copyright, like patent, laws were originally only intended to protect the owner from immediate theft. They were not intended to completely stifle creativity. As an engineer I’m not pissed that my inventions will eventually pass into the public domain. I am only pissed that somebody else’s creations, requiring no more thought, are protected for generations after they die.
And the idea that someone would actually snitch on a person with a blog who posted an ancient book by Gorey that is now nearly impossible to find - that he would want to sic lawyers on him just for trying to re-popularize a great work of art that would otherwise completely fade into obscurity - is thoroughly disconcerting.
Amen.
(Please imply any sticks and apertures you wish. I’m copyrighted but hope for nothing from a copyright I abandoned decades ago except a quick “tip o’ the hat,” and expect less. Unless it’s a big hit but, unlike Mr Gorey’s masterpiece, I could never hope for it. Place my name on the first page of a Google vanity search? It is more than I could ask a few years ago, when it was superseded by hundreds of soaps (the problem with a name that is a First Name followed by a common verb) and my several cousins who lead more interesting lives.)
Since this site is devoted to fighting ignorance, let me try. Copyright violation is not THEFT. Look it up. I have. Copyright violation might be wrong, it might be illegal, but nothing was stolen. The original property still exists with the rightful owner.
I agree with your last statment though.
Oh, please. Not this old argument about how if it doesn’t say theft in the law it’s not law. Look it up? OK. Copyright Law of the United States
How about:
the Artists’ Rights and Theft Prevention Act of 2005
No Electronic Theft (NET) Act, Pub. L. No. 105-147, 111 Stat. 2678, enacted December 16, 1997.
Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act of 1999, Pub. L. No. 106-160, 113 Stat 1774,
Or how about:
Title 18 — Crimes and Criminal Procedure, U. S. Code Part I — Crimes Chapter 113 — Stolen Property
§ 2318 · Trafficking in counterfeit labels, illicit labels, or counterfeit documentation or packaging
§ 2319 · Criminal infringement of a copyright
§ 2319A · Unauthorized fixation of and trafficking in sound recordings and music videos of live musical performances
§ 2319B · Unauthorized recording of Motion pictures in a Motion picture exhibition facility
Taking of intellectual property is theft. What you take is stolen goods. You can’t get away with this as a philosophical or legal argument. You just expose yourself as someone who doesn’t understand intellectual property.
Let me dispose of this non-argument as well.
I belong to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, which spends a good amount of time, on the active behest of its members, contacting pirates to get them to take down material, and to the ISPs if they won’t. “Snitching?” Really? “Snitching?” This is the proper practice and is vigorously pursued by virtually all authors and authors groups.
Wrong again. A quick search in WorldCat finds 48 copies in member libraries. Members mean university or national libraries. You’d find other copies if you could search all the public libraries in the country. All you need to do is ask for it through ILL (interlibrary loan) at your local library. There will be a small charge, but less than the price of a new edition of the book.
Or you could buy the book legally on the used book market. As I said earlier, bookfinder.com always has a few copies for sale.
The blunt fact is that the book is probably easier to obtain today than in 1965 when only a select few bookstores were likely to carry it.
Yet unavailability is never the real argument. Art apparently belongs to everyone for free rather than being a product of an individual’s creativity. We are now somehow subverting “cultural heritage,” a concept that never existed previously as a reason to steal from artists. Publishing is suddenly not a business, not a purveyor of commodities that people make their livelihood from. The creator’s rights - my rights, to my products - are to be stripped away and the decisions over those products are to be given away without recompense.
People want whatever they want. And they want it now.
And yet - and here’s the part I find incomprehensible - they aren’t willing to put in any effort toward obtaining that work that they want so badly. They won’t put in a request for it at a library and wait for it to appear. They won’t spend the money to purchase the work at its current price on the market.
No. It’s art. It’s cultural heritage. It must be free, convenient, and immediate. And to hell with the creator.
I hope you understand why I have such contempt for this argument.