On 2009-03-02, delancey <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
> > How much legal force does any of this have? After all: ....
>
> Sure, of course, but my impression is that a lot of these things end
> up becoming precedents of what's perceived as normal. I grant I may
> be wrong about that. And I confess to knowing very little about
> publishing or the law. But: imagine that libraries were not
> established as a norm, and someone tried to start one today. The
> Author's Guild would promptly denounce this as theft; ...
FWIW, this is not at all far-fetched: The music and industries both tried to
fight the lending of audio and visual media, respectively.
... the fellow who
> attempted to found the library would (let us suppose) cave in, and
> then instead have some rule like, I'll put your book in my library if
> you give me permission. Some authors would praise this, saying, why
> shouldn't I decide what happens with MY work? But the result would be
> that norms would get established that would effectively prevent the
> library institution from ever getting off the ground. ...
I don't doubt this as a general statement, and normally I'd just agree with
you. But this fight has never seen a dog that's at the same time as big and
as smart as Amazon. (The media industry orgs were arguably "bigger", but
they played stupid. Bezos has better publicity instincts.) What that would
mean for authors remains unclear, though.
... This is because
> most writers would be afraid to be the sole writer saying, yes, you
> can put my book in your library. And, to offer your book to the
> library, when few else would do so, would make the author worry that
> they were being chumps (a phenomenon well studied in behavioral
> economics with such games as the public goods game).
It's funny you mention that. I actually haven't read a lot of experimental
literature on that, but I have read ethnographic research, and what you say
squares very well with a feeling I've had about American society, at least,
for many years: That the most important thing to be perceived as is
"street smart." If you look at successful con games, many play on that
desire to be seen as "sharp", or clever, or tough. They play to our greed,
woudl be one way to put it, but I think it goes deeper: They play to our
desire to be *seen as* in control of our destiny.
Of course it can't be uniquely American. But I haven't spent a lot of time
outside of the US, so that's what I have experience with.
And, perhaps
> most importantly, libraries really only work when they have a big
> selection, which they might not have if the content is being
> restricted in this way. So libraries wouldn't exist in any
> significant form.
So we should be thankful that the internet (arguably the biggest library
that the world has ever known) got big enough, fast enough, and had gnarly
enough protocols to prevent this kind of restriction on it.
(Re. the analogy of 'internet as library': I think it's apt. The primary
means of assailing the analogy would be on grounds of reliability. That
argument would ignore the fact that hardcopy libraries are also plagued by
arrant nonsense, and ignore that moderately careful use of Google can help
to clue you in about most of the more egregious nonsense on the Internet.
But I'm not arguing against your point, here.)
... I fear an analogous thing is happening now; we're
> setting a social norm that (1) it's reasonable to say certain kinds of
> algorithms are theft (which, I might add, I continue to find deeply
> problematic conceptually: how bizarre to say that a function --
> literally, a mathematical function! -- can transform a legally
> purchased good into a stolen good!), and (2) content controllers seem
> more and more to get to decide every form, every iteration, if not
> every instance, that the relevant content should take.
As I say, I'm not arguing with your general point. This scares me, too,
because it opens the door to levels of control we have a hard time
imagining. The truism that I keep coming back to is that disintermediation
of control structures -- here, that's represented by saying that
creators always have control over everything that anybody
can do with anything they make -- helps the really big players at least as
much as it does the really small players. I would argue (and have argued,
many times) that it actually helps the big players more, because they're far
better equipped to exploit the economies of scale.
In terms of this debate, here's one way that would play out. Publishers (or
whatever ends up taking over from publishers) will be making
deals with authors (who just want their stuff published) that give them
greater control over the content. Big authors will get better terms.
Amazon will do what it's always done
Small authors, who are often the ones most obsessed with control in these
situations, will be the ones who get screwed. Unless they fully
disintermediate, they'll be stuck letting their books get read aloud anyway.
There's just no way in hell this is not going to happen. The only real
question is who will benefit from it.
And I'm sorry, but I see no likely scenario where any but a tiny, tiny
segment of authors benefit from speech-to-text DRM. Only the ones with the
biggest PR muscle will see any benefit at all. A Stephen King or a J. K.
Rowling can make their own terms, even start their own company. A Craig
deLancey, not so much.
I think many small authors essentially will be afraid to take the route of
full disintermediation because of success fantasies, to put it bluntly,
which are bound up with the whole top-down media publishing model and apply
to films, music and books more or less equally. ("A manuscript and a dream."
Hey, you never know...) Most of the people reading this -- the vast, vast
majority of the people reading this -- will never make a living by
publishing fiction. (Or non-fiction, for that matter, excluding those of us
who write on a work-for-pay basis.) That has almost nothing at an inherent
level very little at an inherent level to do with whether we think their
work is any good. (I won't get into objective value, or why & whether the
mythical Public 'thinks' it's good, because those lead in different and
equally fraught directions.)
--
eric scoles ([email protected])
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