Books don’t digitize themselves, though. I would assume that publishers have the full text of their recent publications in some accessible electronic format that they could use to create an eBook, but something that’s been out of print for years likely exists only in print. (Or print plus some obsolete electronic format.) There are costs involved in digitizing print books that go beyond just paying for the server space, and I imagine that a lot of out of print books wouldn’t sell well enough as eBooks to break even.
As a student I made $9 an hour digitizing books and other documents for my university’s digital library. It’s not particularly difficult work, anyone who’s reasonable careful, patient, and possesses basic Photoshop skills could do it, but it takes time to do it properly. Someone also needs to handle the metadata, or people who actually want to read the eBook will have a hard time finding it. As far as the actual scanning process it speeds things up a lot if the book can be sliced up and the pages fed through a scanner automatically, but this requires that the paper be in pretty good condition and that intact copies of the book not be particularly rare or valuable. We didn’t deal with a lot of books like that, presumably most books that aren’t rare or valuable enough to be worth keeping intact also tend not to be worth bothering to digitize.
Since books from the 1940’s are more likely to be relevant today than books from the 1910’s, the interesting statistic OP cites is unfortunate, and does suggest that adjustment to copyright laws is in order. Those arguing otherwise are missing the forest for a tree.
Whenever this topic comes up, I get sick of the whining “I’m an artist or an author, and you want to take food out of my children’s mouths. Shame on you!” Yes, that point is very obvious and has some validity. But it doesn’t tell the whole story. Much of the money paid in copyright fees goes to big corporations like Disney. When you pay extra for a doll of Eeyore are you helping to provide food for A.A. Milne’s [del]children[/del] great great-grandchildren? No, quite to the country: IIRC the Milne family eventually took Disney to court (and lost) claiming they’d been defrauded of their copyright rights.
What about the copyright fees added to the cost of every blank CD in some countries? Fair compensation for artists whose work is stolen? Maybe, though I guess most of the funds are drained away before the actual artists see any. * But if fairness is the issue: Why is it fair for me to have to feed your children, if I’m only going to use the blank CD to back up my own non-copyrighted data?*
It may be irrelevant, but I had my own copyright issue as I reported at SDMB. (Why did Ellen Cherry need to close that thread?) I never did recover more than my advance from that book. In hindsight I’d have been happier to publish freely and ask for donations. (But please do feel free to defend and applaud Company X for generously trying to prevent thieves from stealing food from my children. :smack: )
But the publisher OWNS the right to publish that book. The author gladly gave them that right because it was in the author’s best interest (a major publisher is far better at marketing the work).
Note that when you accept a book advance, you don’t have to spend a cent in marketing, and you get the keep the money even if the book sells poorly. If you self publish, you have to spend money marketing the book and you’re very likely to be in the red.
Because you signed a contract granting them the rights. You can’t just unilaterally break a contract. When you sign, you are trading guaranteed money for the possibility that the book will remain under their control, leaving you unable to sell elsewhere.
That’s a decision the author has to make. They can’t take the money and then complain they don’t like the terms. The time to do that is before you sign. If you object to the possibility, don’t sign, but, in the real world, the amount you can make by self-publishing will nearly always be less that what a publisher is willing to pay you. It’s a smart business decision to take the publisher’s terms, even if those terms aren’t ideal.
Here, let me solve the problem for everyone (no, I don’t expect this would actually solve the problem for everyone):
Copyright lasts for the life of the creator or 25 years from first publication, whichever is longer. During that window creator (or heirs) have all the rights and ability to assign those rights they have now. If John Grisham lives another 100 years he gets to keep owning what he himself did. If I write publish a book tomorrow and kick later that day my wife has 25 years to wring out every penny (or hide the embarrassment from the world if she so wishes).
When copyright expires it converts into creatorright for whatever term fills out 100 years from initial creation. During this period anybody can use an creatorrighted work for any purposes they want but any revenue-generating activity has to kick a royalty (percentage fees defined by statute) to the creatorright holder. If such fees aren’t paid, creatorright holder can seek civil relieve (including not just recovery but enough penalty to incentivize being up front).
If the user does not know who holds creatorright they can submit the money to a government agency that will keep track of such things and if it is not claimed by the creatorright holder within X years of expiration of the creatorright, the money goes to the general fund (or targeted expenditure such as the arts).
After 100 years the item is entirely in the public domain and Disney can make a movie out of your novel, make a billion dollars, and not give a penny of it to your great grandchildren
That said, I’m expecting my retirement to be augmented nicely (though by no means self-sufficiently) because my father-in-law (who I only met once) successfully wrote music in the '60s in Japan. So yay copyright.
That’s a very good question, and one I brought up when this issue was being debated in Congress some years ago.
A friend of mine was scheduled to testify in favor of the bill that added the surcharge (I’d call it a tax, but the end recipient isn’t the government). My point was exactly the same as yours; most of my usage of recording media was for original material. The solution Congress implemented was to allow a refund for such uses.
Sounds fair, but to obtain a refund, there is undoubtedly red tape and bureaucratic meshugaas to plow through. Not worth it unless you are a very heavy, industrial user. The pennies that shouldn’t have been imposed but aren’t worth rebating add up to millions. The only way anyone gets fed is if they* already* have royalties coming, so they just get more. It’s another way for the rich to get richer.
If Disney purchased all merchandising rights to a property, all “copyright” payments go to them, just like the contract says.
Yes, Disney owns and jealously guards (and did not necessarily acquire through spotless ethics) a hell of a lot of properties. But saying “most copyright fees go to big corporations” is close to being meaningless.
I wrote “much” not “most” and did not specify “books only.” Still, I’m willing to be proven wrong.
I’ve got many other items on my To-Do list however, so if I’m under a moral obligation defend the claim personally, please just ask the Mods to delete that portion of my post.
Merchandising rights are normally a completely separate entity from book royalties. I’ve never heard of one including the other. The Milne case referred to above certainly did not. That’s a statement totally detached from the facts, which can be found at the first Google hit. Disney did lose the case, but lost to the estate of the illustrator, who held merchandising rights for Pooh’s image. The Milne estate retained the literary copyright, which was not at issue. The case was not about Disney vs. the Milne Estate at any time that I can see.
And here we leave the tracks of reality.
BTW, could your To-Do list include a defense of your statement about the Milne Estate and copyright?
I won’t quote the whole thing (link) but, yeah. That’d work. Maybe some minor tweaking. I’d extend it to past the creator’s lifespan by a fixed amount, rather than from the date of first publication, but that’s small potatoes.
I like the “creatorright” middle step. (But, ugh, what an ugly word. We need a new coinage!)
I’ll add that there are certainly other business properties, that earn money on an on-going basis, that are allowed to be inherited by heirs. Rental real estate properties, for example. No one is insisting that the kids shouldn’t inherit those properties and make money from them. In fact, if the building survives long enough, it might get passed down through multiple generations. The main difference is that IP is one of very few businesses that can continue to make money with little active involvement on the part of the owner/rights holder. So perhaps it’s more akin to inheriting stocks, which quite frankly I have no idea how that’s handled.
I think it is reasonable to have a time limit, but it should be life of creator plus something. Since copyright covers not just literary works (and some literary artists are pretty prolific, themselves), as a photographer it would be an ENORMOUS pain in the ass to, after a certain career length, basically have to positively affirm / renew copyright on THOUSANDS of images every year. That’s a lot of administrative work, not just for the creator but for the Copyright Office. Somebody’s got to rubber-stamp all the renewals. The overhead would be huge, and I imagine the cost would go up to reflect that. I think it can be safely assumed that a creator wants to retain ownership of his/her stuff, unless they positively affirm otherwise by officially releasing the copyright. I think “action required” should be applied to the rarer of the two events. Creators will always have plenty of new stuff to register, I don’t see the point in making them do it over for old stuff, too.
Anyone who agreed to that is foolish and had a bad lawyer. For the purposes of my argument, I’m speaking of people who didn’t sign away all their rights.
There should be some form of standardization, yes. Otherwise “case by case” becomes an administrative nightmare.
The author/copyright holder. When you have an individual vs. a huge mega-corp backed with a phalanx of really expensive lawyers, that tends to affect the balance of power.
That was pretty much my point. A publishing house agrees to certain terms when it signs that contract too, one of which is actually publishing and marketing the book. If it’s doing neither, than it should not be some enormous hurdle for the author to point this out and take his IP license back so he can do something with it himself, if he wants.
I’m not talking about “public good” at all here. I’m talking about the rights of the author/creator, specifically the right to make money off their creation. Their ability to do so shouldn’t be hampered by a publishing house that isn’t holding up their end of the deal. If the publisher doesn’t want to sell a work anymore, the author should have the rights to sell it himself at that point.
You’re conflating two different issues here. On the one hand, Publisher, use it or lose it, and that the author should have a right to take-back if they don’t use it (keep it in print). On the other hand, Publisher, why are you not using it when you could still be making money from it? I’m not suggesting both be done simultaneously. I’m saying that one or the other would be an option for continuing to allow the author to profit from continued demand for his book. (Which one the author chooses to agree to is up to him/her, and he/she should have a good lawyer to take a hard look at the pros and cons of each.)
So yes, if case by case re-negotiating for digital rights is too much of a headache, by all means let’s go with author take-back. There’s my “why,” so thank you.
I only need to quote this much to substantiate a statement that you’ve never in your life signed a creative contract or dealt with any part of the creative contract process.
If you’re not Stephen King or Tom Clancy, you sign what’s offered or you just put your manuscript back in the desk drawer. This is even more true for nonfiction publishing. Very few authors have any leverage and “all rights” is not usually negotiable.
I admire your idealism, but you’re going on way too long about matters you are in pretty deep darkness about.
Incorrect. I’ve written and signed several, and wouldn’t sign something which gave away all my rights. When I create contracts for photography shoots I am VERY clear that 1> the other party is only getting a non-exclusive license, not copyright, and 2> they don’t get that license before I’m paid in full.
I’ve made a few mistakes early on (read: agreed on a handshake instead of a written contract – don’t do that), so now, yes, I’m VERY careful about what I agree to. I’m also not so desperate to win the approval of a big publisher or whatever that I won’t go indie to get what’s fair to me. I’ve gone that route a LOT of times, and have a few pieces of media out there and selling to show for it. I may not become Stephen King rich doing it that way, but neither would I by signing away all the rights I have. The publisher might, though.
You may do things differently, but I’d be surprised if you made much money doing it that way.
These days, for writing specifically, the self-publishing option makes it so the Big 5 have somewhat less power to compel lopsided contracts than they used to.
I work in arts, do currently and have for years, so yes, I have a clue. I’d be hard-pressed to find ANY artist that I know who’d be willing to hand over their copyright wholesale like that. They’re all really careful about it too.
Making money in arts is a long game. The short-term gain will ultimately cost you.
Photography is an entirely different game from publishing.
(Frankly, I think people who contract with photographers for commercial shoots [including weddings] and don’t get ownership of the materials under WFH are idiots. I speak from both sides of the lens and contract on this.)
ETA: You need to draw a distinction between art and commercial work in this debate. If you shoot a pretty butterfly and sell prints, that’s one thing; if you contract to shoot for a client, that’s another. Like the difference between commercial publishing and contract writing.
At least one did, even after signing a contract giving copyright to me, as I reported in the thread I linked to above. (Even in the contract giving me “copyright”, publisher took exclusive publishing rights.)
Perhaps I should have held out: Stick to the contract or give me more money. Instead, lacking any business sense or negotiating skill, I yielded just for the thrill of seeing my book in print, and right there in the middle of the Worst Sellers’ List. :smack:
Wrong! No commercial publisher* ever demands all rights. As Exapno points out, years of precedence have set up so that the standard contract only licenses the copyright.
Stephen King, when he sold Carrie, still owned the movie rights and was able to sell them to Hollywood. At the time he sold the book, King had absolutely no clout whatsoever. But the standard publisher agreement only licensed the publication of the book. This has not changed.
If a publisher tried to grab all rights, the author’s agent would never agree to it. Even if they suggested it, word would get out and the big name writers would never sign another contract with that publisher, even if they were able to waive the “all rights” clause.
*The only people who demand it are some small presses and academic publishers.