Copyrights and the net

[Lars Albinsson-2]

(This was brought up the quest for the Archer text.)

 

In Sweden there is a huge debate on copyrights vs sharing on the Internet.
(Swedes managed to both start the Pirate Bay, allegedly the leading
peer-to-peer service, as well as introduce very strong regulatory
legislation against it.) The trail of the pirate bay people this spring was
one of the most internationally covered events in Sweden for years. The
pirate lobby also started a political party and managed to get a seat in the
European Parliament.

 

There are mainly two sides in Sweden; roughly summed up as:

 

* Mainly record companies and some artists claim that the creative industry
is dying because of internet piracy

 

* Other artists, many “intellectuals” and IT industry people claim the
internet offers huge potential for creative businesses and people

 

What are the thoughts on the list about this issue (or issues)?

 

 

/Lars

**************************************
Lars Albinsson
 <mailto:lars@...> lars.albinsson@...
+ 46 (0) 70 592 70 45

Affiliations:
Maestro Management AB www.maestro.se
Calistoga Springs Research Institute  <http://www.calistoga.se/>
www.calistoga.se
School of Business and Informatics
University of Borås  <http://www.hb.se/> www.hb.se
Linköping University  <http://www.liu.se/> www.liu.se
**************************************

 

[davelab6]

2009/6/26 Lars Albinsson <lars.albinsson@...>:
>
> There are mainly two sides in Sweden; roughly summed up as:
> * Mainly record companies and some artists claim that the creative industry
> is dying because of internet piracy
> * Other artists, many “intellectuals” and IT industry people claim the
> internet offers huge potential for creative businesses and people

As I see it, there are three sides to the "copyfight": The public, the
authors/artists, and the publishers.

Computer networks are built to share data, and the public Internet is
the ultimate publishing system. Trying to prevent the public sharing
data over the Internet is impossible, unless you create an intrusive
police state.

Copyright conceptually starts with everything published being in the
public domain. The public then grant authors a limited time monopoly
over some aspects of published works in order to encourage
publication. Authors do not have a natural right to control their
work, this control is granted to them by the public so that the public
may benefit. Note that the phrase "intellectual property" is designed
to confuse this, suggesting that authors have natural rights akin to
physical property rights, and lumping together laws which have almost
nothing in common (patents, copyrights, trademarks, database rights,
attribution rights, etc). That phrase must be avoided to have a
meaningful discussion of the issues it is associated with.

The public used to trade away its natural right to copy published
works to encourage the publication of more works, when it didn't have
widespread copying machines. Now that computer networks are here, the
copyright bargain makes less sense for most of the public, and it
seems they would rather have file sharing - even if this means that
there are less works being published, which can not be assumed,
although it is asserted by publishers.

Generally the political process of western democracies is dominated by
corporate interests, and in this area, by publishing corporations.
Therefore while the actions of the public support p2p file sharing,
their governments have worked to support publishing companies. The
Pirate Party is the end result of this; if the public are
disenfranchised by corporate lobbyists enough about some issue, they
will start political organisation to oppose the lobbyists.

So the question is, can authors/artists continue to make a living
while allowing the public to share complete copies of their works, non
commercially, on P2P networks? Or will the public taking back its
right to share published works mean that great authors stop publishing
new works and do something else?

In 2009 there is plenty of evidence that artists who are independent
of publishers can make plenty of money when they respect their fan's
desire to file share; and indeed, there are examples of authors who
assert they now make MORE money when the full texts of their novels
are posted online.

This leaves little room for publishing companies, since artists are
interfacing directly with the market over the net, and since the most
famous authors and artists are contractually tied to publishers, as
the publishers' ship sinks, those artists who are going down with them
have quite loud voices. However, famous artists are now actively
leaving their publishers (Madonna, Radiohead, etc) and implementing
the kind of mature and sophisticated "direct marketing" to monetise
their works that newer artists who weren't able to get publishing
contracts have been perfecting.

Here in academia, the question is, can academics make a living while
allowing the public to share complete copies of their articles, non
commercially, on the web?

I suggest that they can.

Cheers,
Dave

[Charlotte Magnusson]

One aspect of publishing (I am mostly familiar with the music industry) to which one would have to find some alternative is the fact that music companies actually act as banks who lend artists money (so called advance) to allow them to spend time on composing. This is paid back as a share of the future profits - and if the product fails the artist does not have to pay back at all. Few ordinary banks do this.....

Currently the IT providers are making big money (as well as those keeping services like pirate bay) on the file share - and I personally think it is fair some of the money made thanks to the artists go back to the artists. One could consider other payment models than the present.....which would also work for those of us not famous - a cathegory most researchers fall in I guess;-) - but it would be interesting to see some more suggestions on good ways to do this:-)

/Charlotte


Charlotte Magnusson
Associate Professor
Certec, Division of Rehabilitation Engineering Research
Department of Design Sciences Lund University
Lund
Sweden
tel [phone]
fax [phone]

-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:PHD-DESIGN@...] On Behalf Of Dave Crossland
Sent: den 26 juni 2009 10:44
To: PHD-DESIGN@...
Subject: Re: Copyrights and the net

2009/6/26 Lars Albinsson <lars.albinsson@...>:
>
> There are mainly two sides in Sweden; roughly summed up as:
> * Mainly record companies and some artists claim that the creative industry
> is dying because of internet piracy
> * Other artists, many “intellectuals” and IT industry people claim the
> internet offers huge potential for creative businesses and people

As I see it, there are three sides to the "copyfight": The public, the
authors/artists, and the publishers.

Computer networks are built to share data, and the public Internet is
the ultimate publishing system. Trying to prevent the public sharing
data over the Internet is impossible, unless you create an intrusive
police state.

Copyright conceptually starts with everything published being in the
public domain. The public then grant authors a limited time monopoly
over some aspects of published works in order to encourage
publication. Authors do not have a natural right to control their
work, this control is granted to them by the public so that the public
may benefit. Note that the phrase "intellectual property" is designed
to confuse this, suggesting that authors have natural rights akin to
physical property rights, and lumping together laws which have almost
nothing in common (patents, copyrights, trademarks, database rights,
attribution rights, etc). That phrase must be avoided to have a
meaningful discussion of the issues it is associated with.

The public used to trade away its natural right to copy published
works to encourage the publication of more works, when it didn't have
widespread copying machines. Now that computer networks are here, the
copyright bargain makes less sense for most of the public, and it
seems they would rather have file sharing - even if this means that
there are less works being published, which can not be assumed,
although it is asserted by publishers.

Generally the political process of western democracies is dominated by
corporate interests, and in this area, by publishing corporations.
Therefore while the actions of the public support p2p file sharing,
their governments have worked to support publishing companies. The
Pirate Party is the end result of this; if the public are
disenfranchised by corporate lobbyists enough about some issue, they
will start political organisation to oppose the lobbyists.

So the question is, can authors/artists continue to make a living
while allowing the public to share complete copies of their works, non
commercially, on P2P networks? Or will the public taking back its
right to share published works mean that great authors stop publishing
new works and do something else?

In 2009 there is plenty of evidence that artists who are independent
of publishers can make plenty of money when they respect their fan's
desire to file share; and indeed, there are examples of authors who
assert they now make MORE money when the full texts of their novels
are posted online.

This leaves little room for publishing companies, since artists are
interfacing directly with the market over the net, and since the most
famous authors and artists are contractually tied to publishers, as
the publishers' ship sinks, those artists who are going down with them
have quite loud voices. However, famous artists are now actively
leaving their publishers (Madonna, Radiohead, etc) and implementing
the kind of mature and sophisticated "direct marketing" to monetise
their works that newer artists who weren't able to get publishing
contracts have been perfecting.

Here in academia, the question is, can academics make a living while
allowing the public to share complete copies of their articles, non
commercially, on the web?

I suggest that they can.

Cheers,
Dave

[Gavin Melles]

It's actually very simple in Australia we're going to get hammered as academics if we're found in possession of and worse distributing copyright protected material. Simple really
-----Original Message-----
From: Charlotte Magnusson <charlotte.magnusson@...>
To: Magnusson, Charlotte <charlotte.magnusson@...>
To:  <PHD-DESIGN@...>

Sent: 26/06/2009 7:13:45 PM
Subject: Re: Copyrights and the net

One aspect of publishing (I am mostly familiar with the music industry) to which one would have to find some alternative is the fact that music companies actually act as banks who lend artists money (so called advance) to allow them to spend time on composing. This is paid back as a share of the future profits - and if the product fails the artist does not have to pay back at all. Few ordinary banks do this.....

Currently the IT providers are making big money (as well as those keeping services like pirate bay) on the file share - and I personally think it is fair some of the money made thanks to the artists go back to the artists. One could consider other payment models than the present.....which would also work for those of us not famous - a cathegory most researchers fall in I guess;-) - but it would be interesting to see some more suggestions on good ways to do this:-)

/Charlotte


Charlotte Magnusson
Associate Professor
Certec, Division of Rehabilitation Engineering Research
Department of Design Sciences Lund University
Lund
Sweden
tel [phone]
fax [phone]

-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:PHD-DESIGN@...] On Behalf Of Dave Crossland
Sent: den 26 juni 2009 10:44
To: PHD-DESIGN@...
Subject: Re: Copyrights and the net

2009/6/26 Lars Albinsson <lars.albinsson@...>:
>
> There are mainly two sides in Sweden; roughly summed up as:
> * Mainly record companies and some artists claim that the creative industry
> is dying because of internet piracy
> * Other artists, many “intellectuals” and IT industry people claim the
> internet offers huge potential for creative businesses and people

As I see it, there are three sides to the "copyfight": The public, the
authors/artists, and the publishers.

Computer networks are built to share data, and the public Internet is
the ultimate publishing system. Trying to prevent the public sharing
data over the Internet is impossible, unless you create an intrusive
police state.

Copyright conceptually starts with everything published being in the
public domain. The public then grant authors a limited time monopoly
over some aspects of published works in order to encourage
publication. Authors do not have a natural right to control their
work, this control is granted to them by the public so that the public
may benefit. Note that the phrase "intellectual property" is designed
to confuse this, suggesting that authors have natural rights akin to
physical property rights, and lumping together laws which have almost
nothing in common (patents, copyrights, trademarks, database rights,
attribution rights, etc). That phrase must be avoided to have a
meaningful discussion of the issues it is associated with.

The public used to trade away its natural right to copy published
works to encourage the publication of more works, when it didn't have
widespread copying machines. Now that computer networks are here, the
copyright bargain makes less sense for most of the public, and it
seems they would rather have file sharing - even if this means that
there are less works being published, which can not be assumed,
although it is asserted by publishers.

Generally the political process of western democracies is dominated by
corporate interests, and in this area, by publishing corporations.
Therefore while the actions of the public support p2p file sharing,
their governments have worked to support publishing companies. The
Pirate Party is the end result of this; if the public are
disenfranchised by corporate lobbyists enough about some issue, they
will start political organisation to oppose the lobbyists.

So the question is, can authors/artists continue to make a living
while allowing the public to share complete copies of their works, non
commercially, on P2P networks? Or will the public taking back its
right to share published works mean that great authors stop publishing
new works and do something else?

In 2009 there is plenty of evidence that artists who are independent
of publishers can make plenty of money when they respect their fan's
desire to file share; and indeed, there are examples of authors who
assert they now make MORE money when the full texts of their novels
are posted online.

This leaves little room for publishing companies, since artists are
interfacing directly with the market over the net, and since the most
famous authors and artists are contractually tied to publishers, as
the publishers' ship sinks, those artists who are going down with them
have quite loud voices. However, famous artists are now actively
leaving their publishers (Madonna, Radiohead, etc) and implementing
the kind of mature and sophisticated "direct marketing" to monetise
their works that newer artists who weren't able to get publishing
contracts have been perfecting.

Here in academia, the question is, can academics make a living while
allowing the public to share complete copies of their articles, non
commercially, on the web?

I suggest that they can.

Cheers,
Dave

[garciamotta]

*I completely agree* with Mr. Crossland's point of view (and i think we can
discuss this subject for years).
Rafael Garcia Motta
Buenos Aires, Argentina


2009/6/26 Gavin Melles <GMelles@...>

> It's actually very simple in Australia we're going to get hammered as
> academics if we're found in possession of and worse distributing copyright
> protected material. Simple really
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Charlotte Magnusson <charlotte.magnusson@...>
> To: Magnusson, Charlotte <charlotte.magnusson@...>
> To:  <PHD-DESIGN@...>
>
> Sent: 26/06/2009 7:13:45 PM
> Subject: Re: Copyrights and the net
>
> One aspect of publishing (I am mostly familiar with the music industry) to
> which one would have to find some alternative is the fact that music
> companies actually act as banks who lend artists money (so called advance)
> to allow them to spend time on composing. This is paid back as a share of
> the future profits - and if the product fails the artist does not have to
> pay back at all. Few ordinary banks do this.....
>
> Currently the IT providers are making big money (as well as those keeping
> services like pirate bay) on the file share - and I personally think it is
> fair some of the money made thanks to the artists go back to the artists.
> One could consider other payment models than the present.....which would
> also work for those of us not famous - a cathegory most researchers fall in
> I guess;-) - but it would be interesting to see some more suggestions on
> good ways to do this:-)
>
> /Charlotte
>
>
> Charlotte Magnusson
> Associate Professor
> Certec, Division of Rehabilitation Engineering Research
> Department of Design Sciences Lund University
> Lund
> Sweden
> tel [phone]
> fax [phone]
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
> research in Design [mailto:PHD-DESIGN@...] On Behalf Of Dave
> Crossland
> Sent: den 26 juni 2009 10:44
> To: PHD-DESIGN@...
> Subject: Re: Copyrights and the net
>
> 2009/6/26 Lars Albinsson <lars.albinsson@...>:
> >
> > There are mainly two sides in Sweden; roughly summed up as:
> > * Mainly record companies and some artists claim that the creative
> industry
> > is dying because of internet piracy
> > * Other artists, many “intellectuals” and IT industry people claim the
> > internet offers huge potential for creative businesses and people
>
> As I see it, there are three sides to the "copyfight": The public, the
> authors/artists, and the publishers.
>
> Computer networks are built to share data, and the public Internet is
> the ultimate publishing system. Trying to prevent the public sharing
> data over the Internet is impossible, unless you create an intrusive
> police state.
>
> Copyright conceptually starts with everything published being in the
> public domain. The public then grant authors a limited time monopoly
> over some aspects of published works in order to encourage
> publication. Authors do not have a natural right to control their
> work, this control is granted to them by the public so that the public
> may benefit. Note that the phrase "intellectual property" is designed
> to confuse this, suggesting that authors have natural rights akin to
> physical property rights, and lumping together laws which have almost
> nothing in common (patents, copyrights, trademarks, database rights,
> attribution rights, etc). That phrase must be avoided to have a
> meaningful discussion of the issues it is associated with.
>
> The public used to trade away its natural right to copy published
> works to encourage the publication of more works, when it didn't have
> widespread copying machines. Now that computer networks are here, the
> copyright bargain makes less sense for most of the public, and it
> seems they would rather have file sharing - even if this means that
> there are less works being published, which can not be assumed,
> although it is asserted by publishers.
>
> Generally the political process of western democracies is dominated by
> corporate interests, and in this area, by publishing corporations.
> Therefore while the actions of the public support p2p file sharing,
> their governments have worked to support publishing companies. The
> Pirate Party is the end result of this; if the public are
> disenfranchised by corporate lobbyists enough about some issue, they
> will start political organisation to oppose the lobbyists.
>
> So the question is, can authors/artists continue to make a living
> while allowing the public to share complete copies of their works, non
> commercially, on P2P networks? Or will the public taking back its
> right to share published works mean that great authors stop publishing
> new works and do something else?
>
> In 2009 there is plenty of evidence that artists who are independent
> of publishers can make plenty of money when they respect their fan's
> desire to file share; and indeed, there are examples of authors who
> assert they now make MORE money when the full texts of their novels
> are posted online.
>
> This leaves little room for publishing companies, since artists are
> interfacing directly with the market over the net, and since the most
> famous authors and artists are contractually tied to publishers, as
> the publishers' ship sinks, those artists who are going down with them
> have quite loud voices. However, famous artists are now actively
> leaving their publishers (Madonna, Radiohead, etc) and implementing
> the kind of mature and sophisticated "direct marketing" to monetise
> their works that newer artists who weren't able to get publishing
> contracts have been perfecting.
>
> Here in academia, the question is, can academics make a living while
> allowing the public to share complete copies of their articles, non
> commercially, on the web?
>
> I suggest that they can.
>
> Cheers,
> Dave
>

--
Rafael Garcia Motta

[A.B.Thorpe]

Dave,
This is an interesting perspective. You mention the "mature and sophisticated 'direct marketing' to monetise artistic works that newer artists who weren't able to get publishing contracts have been perfecting." Have you got any good references for this?

I'm interested from the standpoint of how design practice might function as a social enterprise where currently "intellectual property" is often seen as the basis for the "enterprise" part of the equation.

Thanks,
Ann

Ann Thorpe
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Dept of Design, Development, Environment & Materials
Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, United Kingdom

Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London
Wates House, 22 Gordon Street London WC1H 0QB, United Kingdom

ann@...
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
book: The Designer's Atlas of Sustainability (www.designers-atlas.net)
& blog: http://designactivism.net
discussion list: SUSDESIGNTEACH



Date:    Fri, 26 Jun 2009 09:44:07 +0100
From:    Dave Crossland <dave@...>
Subject: Re: Copyrights and the net


As I see it, there are three sides to the "copyfight": The public, the
authors/artists, and the publishers.

Computer networks are built to share data, and the public Internet is
the ultimate publishing system. Trying to prevent the public sharing
data over the Internet is impossible, unless you create an intrusive
police state.

Copyright conceptually starts with everything published being in the
public domain. The public then grant authors a limited time monopoly
over some aspects of published works in order to encourage
publication. Authors do not have a natural right to control their
work, this control is granted to them by the public so that the public
may benefit. Note that the phrase "intellectual property" is designed
to confuse this, suggesting that authors have natural rights akin to
physical property rights, and lumping together laws which have almost
nothing in common (patents, copyrights, trademarks, database rights,
attribution rights, etc). That phrase must be avoided to have a
meaningful discussion of the issues it is associated with.

The public used to trade away its natural right to copy published
works to encourage the publication of more works, when it didn't have
widespread copying machines. Now that computer networks are here, the
copyright bargain makes less sense for most of the public, and it
seems they would rather have file sharing - even if this means that
there are less works being published, which can not be assumed,
although it is asserted by publishers.

Generally the political process of western democracies is dominated by
corporate interests, and in this area, by publishing corporations.
Therefore while the actions of the public support p2p file sharing,
their governments have worked to support publishing companies. The
Pirate Party is the end result of this; if the public are
disenfranchised by corporate lobbyists enough about some issue, they
will start political organisation to oppose the lobbyists.

So the question is, can authors/artists continue to make a living
while allowing the public to share complete copies of their works, non
commercially, on P2P networks? Or will the public taking back its
right to share published works mean that great authors stop publishing
new works and do something else?

In 2009 there is plenty of evidence that artists who are independent
of publishers can make plenty of money when they respect their fan's
desire to file share; and indeed, there are examples of authors who
assert they now make MORE money when the full texts of their novels
are posted online.

This leaves little room for publishing companies, since artists are
interfacing directly with the market over the net, and since the most
famous authors and artists are contractually tied to publishers, as
the publishers' ship sinks, those artists who are going down with them
have quite loud voices. However, famous artists are now actively
leaving their publishers (Madonna, Radiohead, etc) and implementing
the kind of mature and sophisticated "direct marketing" to monetise
their works that newer artists who weren't able to get publishing
contracts have been perfecting.

Here in academia, the question is, can academics make a living while
allowing the public to share complete copies of their articles, non
commercially, on the web?

I suggest that they can.

Cheers,
Dave

---------------------------------
The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).

[davelab6]

Hi Ann,

2009/6/27 A.B.Thorpe <A.B.Thorpe@...>:
> Dave,
> This is an interesting perspective. You mention the "mature and
> sophisticated 'direct marketing' to monetise artistic works that newer
> artists who weren't able to get publishing contracts have been perfecting."
> Have you got any good references for this?

Marillion are the single best case study of pioneers in this area I
know of. Then, Magnatune and Jamendo are record labels that permit P2P
sharing of all the tracks they publish, and the artists hey sign have
been pioneers; then we have Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, and Advance
Patrol releasing their tracks on the net in the same way. Fleet Foxes
recently spoke out in support of P2P; the Arctic Monkeys let their
fans do 100% of their marketing, they didn't even know what MySpace
was when they were #1 in the charts. And then Oasis, Jamiroquai and
Madonna have all quit their publishers to sell direct, albeit without
permitting P2P.

> I'm interested from the standpoint of how design practice might
> function as a social enterprise where currently "intellectual property" is often
> seen as the basis for the "enterprise" part of the equation.

Design is integral to all kinds of businesses, so I'm not sure which
kinds of design practices you mean.

Here, though, are some more general thoughts on a lazy Satuday morning :-)

Fundamentally we have two kinds of businesses, product businesses and
service businesses. Product businesses have the potential for massive
profits compared to service businesses, because services involve
charging for individualised-customer processes in some respect, and
this limits their ability to scale up. However, they don't need
capital investment to design the product and mass produce it, they
just start proving a basic service and improve how good they are over
time; the journey of apprentice to mastery.

So the gas man who came to fix my central boiler this year makes a
good living, being self employed and good at what he does, but he's
hard pressed to double his income; he could start a firm and hire
other gas men and work on his marketing and cream profit off the gap
between his wage costs and his charges, like British Gas do, but then
he's likely to be outcompeted by people like his former self who
provide a more personable service for cheaper. Doctors and lawyer are
the high end of this kind of work; all are about hourly wages, and
reseller margins on products supplied during the service (pills,
boiler parts). Typically the money curve starts at zero (you got a job
as an apprentice), tapers upwards with experience, and levels off (no
doctors on the billionaire list, plenty of very rich doctors though.)

Product businesses, on the other hand, can scale up because they don't
customise their products for individual customers; they made generic
items that lots of people want. They have a money curve that follows
an inverse bell shape, where they need to borrow a lump sum, spend it
on R&D, and then start selling the product.

Here's a napkin drawing: http://dave.lab6.com/acid/dump/2009/biz.png

A key aspects of makes product business owners rich is that physical
products are "rival"; they can't be duplicated, and if you want your
own, you have to buy one, or borrow mine in which case I no longer
have it. But information itself is non-rival; it can be duplicated.
Obviously, when I tell you something, I don't forget it, but since
owning and operating a printing press isn't cheap and easy, there was
an illusion for a long time that a novel or a LP was a product; when
information is instantiated in physical media, it takes on the rival
nature of physical goods.

In the three-player game of authors, publishers and readers, the
publishers were the ones who converted information into physical form,
and reaped massive profits; typically they followed a product money
curve, paying authors and artists a lump sum to write/record the
novel/tune, and then started selling it as product.

In the 1970s the personal computer shows up, and changes the game:
Digital information is non-rival; we can share copies. This slowly
undoes the illusion that the physical media IS the work, and means
that the service of developing new works comes to the fore. Its taking
30-40 years, of course, but that's the overall trend as I see it.

Now, if you wanted to get rich, you don't want to hear this. You want
to pretend that a digital copy is like a physical copy, and can not be
duplicated by users at no cost. Copyright law makes it illegal to not
pretend, copy restriction features in software try to keep up the
illusion, and there is a huge propaganda campaign to persuade people
to accept the notion of "intellectual property."

But, of course, the publishers can duplicate copies at no cost. This
is what Mark Getty, chairman of Getty Images, meant when he said
"Intellectual Property is the oil of the 21st century" - who wouldn't
want a monopoly over a product which costs you nothing to produce...
And this is precisely how Bill Gates got to be the richest person on
the planet in record time. Gates first became famous when he got angry
that early personal computer owners wouldn't play along with the
charade and wrote "An Open Letter to Hobbyists" to all the computer
hobbyist magazines in 1973. The letter remains a lucid argument for
this position today, but stands in stark contrast to GNU/Linux and
companies like Red Hat 35 years later.

The reality is that digital information is not rival like a physical
product. In fact, it is "anti-rival," so that there is an overall
benefit when it is freely shared. This is what the Fleet Foxes guy is
on about - http://www.zeropaid.com/news/86428/band-praises-p2p-for-helping-artists-discover-music/
- more people listening to wider range of music encourages demand for
new music. Wikipedia grows on the same principle; as it got more
pages, the desire to add more pages increased.

In this way, a collection of service businesses can cooperate in the
creation of anti-rival digital information; no particular one has the
majority of the money flowing around the good, but there isn't the
same limit on scaling up. The napkin looks something like this:

http://dave.lab6.com/acid/dump/2009/antirival.png

Generally, I believe that approaches that discern the natural
properties of reality and work with them instead of against them win
out in the long term, and that while illusions can form concentrations
of power, that power will eventually wane because it has a hollow
base. I think that's what we're seeing with Windows vs GNU/Linux, and
what we will see in other areas over a long term.

I do think that it will take A LONG time to play out though.

[Ranulph Glanville]

I thought that academics published in order that others should know  
what we have found (and test it). The whole idea is to make work  
freely available. Most of u who are academics are anyhow paid for our  
research and writing as part of our jobs. So we shouldn't be trying to  
get paid a second time (not that many of us succeed, anyhow!).

Of course, copyright gets in the way of free availability. But, in my  
view, it's not really copyright (which I consider an absurdity today:  
we need a different mechanism, which we won't get while we keep trying  
to serve copyright) that is to blame. Who, I ask, demands the  
copyright of what we publish, including all future forms it might  
take? The publishers. By doing this, they are essentially undermining  
the attempt to make what we have found widely and freely available.

Of course, this doesn't help the discussion of copyright etc. But I  
hope it provides at least a viable perspective for why we should  
resist copyright (and publishers).

We could, also, resist the absurd requirement to publish. I don't  
believe I'm the only person who reads this list who believes they  
publish too much, though I may be one of the few who will admit this.

I suggest we stop talking about copyright, and get on with promoting  
publication that, while respecting (and, I hope, improving) standards,  
moves towards better and cheaper access, even if this does destroy the  
publishers.

Ranulph



On 27 Jun 2009, at 12:42, Dave Crossland wrote:

> Hi Ann,
>
> 2009/6/27 A.B.Thorpe <A.B.Thorpe@...>:
>> Dave,
>> This is an interesting perspective. You mention the "mature and
>> sophisticated 'direct marketing' to monetise artistic works that  
>> newer
>> artists who weren't able to get publishing contracts have been  
>> perfecting."
>> Have you got any good references for this?
>
> Marillion are the single best case study of pioneers in this area I
> know of. Then, Magnatune and Jamendo are record labels that permit P2P
> sharing of all the tracks they publish, and the artists hey sign have
> been pioneers; then we have Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, and Advance
> Patrol releasing their tracks on the net in the same way. Fleet Foxes
> recently spoke out in support of P2P; the Arctic Monkeys let their
> fans do 100% of their marketing, they didn't even know what MySpace
> was when they were #1 in the charts. And then Oasis, Jamiroquai and
> Madonna have all quit their publishers to sell direct, albeit without
> permitting P2P.
>
>> I'm interested from the standpoint of how design practice might
>> function as a social enterprise where currently "intellectual  
>> property" is often
>> seen as the basis for the "enterprise" part of the equation.
>
> Design is integral to all kinds of businesses, so I'm not sure which
> kinds of design practices you mean.
>
> Here, though, are some more general thoughts on a lazy Satuday  
> morning :-)
>
> Fundamentally we have two kinds of businesses, product businesses and
> service businesses. Product businesses have the potential for massive
> profits compared to service businesses, because services involve
> charging for individualised-customer processes in some respect, and
> this limits their ability to scale up. However, they don't need
> capital investment to design the product and mass produce it, they
> just start proving a basic service and improve how good they are over
> time; the journey of apprentice to mastery.
>
> So the gas man who came to fix my central boiler this year makes a
> good living, being self employed and good at what he does, but he's
> hard pressed to double his income; he could start a firm and hire
> other gas men and work on his marketing and cream profit off the gap
> between his wage costs and his charges, like British Gas do, but then
> he's likely to be outcompeted by people like his former self who
> provide a more personable service for cheaper. Doctors and lawyer are
> the high end of this kind of work; all are about hourly wages, and
> reseller margins on products supplied during the service (pills,
> boiler parts). Typically the money curve starts at zero (you got a job
> as an apprentice), tapers upwards with experience, and levels off (no
> doctors on the billionaire list, plenty of very rich doctors though.)
>
> Product businesses, on the other hand, can scale up because they don't
> customise their products for individual customers; they made generic
> items that lots of people want. They have a money curve that follows
> an inverse bell shape, where they need to borrow a lump sum, spend it
> on R&D, and then start selling the product.
>
> Here's a napkin drawing: http://dave.lab6.com/acid/dump/2009/biz.png
>
> A key aspects of makes product business owners rich is that physical
> products are "rival"; they can't be duplicated, and if you want your
> own, you have to buy one, or borrow mine in which case I no longer
> have it. But information itself is non-rival; it can be duplicated.
> Obviously, when I tell you something, I don't forget it, but since
> owning and operating a printing press isn't cheap and easy, there was
> an illusion for a long time that a novel or a LP was a product; when
> information is instantiated in physical media, it takes on the rival
> nature of physical goods.
>
> In the three-player game of authors, publishers and readers, the
> publishers were the ones who converted information into physical form,
> and reaped massive profits; typically they followed a product money
> curve, paying authors and artists a lump sum to write/record the
> novel/tune, and then started selling it as product.
>
> In the 1970s the personal computer shows up, and changes the game:
> Digital information is non-rival; we can share copies. This slowly
> undoes the illusion that the physical media IS the work, and means
> that the service of developing new works comes to the fore. Its taking
> 30-40 years, of course, but that's the overall trend as I see it.
>
> Now, if you wanted to get rich, you don't want to hear this. You want
> to pretend that a digital copy is like a physical copy, and can not be
> duplicated by users at no cost. Copyright law makes it illegal to not
> pretend, copy restriction features in software try to keep up the
> illusion, and there is a huge propaganda campaign to persuade people
> to accept the notion of "intellectual property."
>
> But, of course, the publishers can duplicate copies at no cost. This
> is what Mark Getty, chairman of Getty Images, meant when he said
> "Intellectual Property is the oil of the 21st century" - who wouldn't
> want a monopoly over a product which costs you nothing to produce...
> And this is precisely how Bill Gates got to be the richest person on
> the planet in record time. Gates first became famous when he got angry
> that early personal computer owners wouldn't play along with the
> charade and wrote "An Open Letter to Hobbyists" to all the computer
> hobbyist magazines in 1973. The letter remains a lucid argument for
> this position today, but stands in stark contrast to GNU/Linux and
> companies like Red Hat 35 years later.
>
> The reality is that digital information is not rival like a physical
> product. In fact, it is "anti-rival," so that there is an overall
> benefit when it is freely shared. This is what the Fleet Foxes guy is
> on about - http://www.zeropaid.com/news/86428/band-praises-p2p-for-helping-artists-discover-music/
> - more people listening to wider range of music encourages demand for
> new music. Wikipedia grows on the same principle; as it got more
> pages, the desire to add more pages increased.
>
> In this way, a collection of service businesses can cooperate in the
> creation of anti-rival digital information; no particular one has the
> majority of the money flowing around the good, but there isn't the
> same limit on scaling up. The napkin looks something like this:
>
> http://dave.lab6.com/acid/dump/2009/antirival.png
>
> Generally, I believe that approaches that discern the natural
> properties of reality and work with them instead of against them win
> out in the long term, and that while illusions can form concentrations
> of power, that power will eventually wane because it has a hollow
> base. I think that's what we're seeing with Windows vs GNU/Linux, and
> what we will see in other areas over a long term.
>
> I do think that it will take A LONG time to play out though.

[Swanson, Gunnar]

I agree with pretty much everything Ranulph and Dave Crossland have said. One note on Ranulph's comment:

> Who, I ask, demands the copyright of what we publish,
> including all future forms it might take? The publishers.
> By doing this, they are essentially undermining the
> attempt to make what we have found widely and freely
> available.

In my limited experience, book publishers' contracts are often not as overreaching as academic journals' are. I have published much more in commercial/trade magazines than in academic journals but academic journals have sent me absurd copyright transfer forms that give them everything. The commercial press has always asked for something limited like first North American rights, the right to use my name in promotion, and (more recently) the right to use the article on their website.

Even though many people have told me that no academic journal will ever publish without my signing over all of my rights, I've always refused to do so and simply thrown away the forms. Strangely, most haven't followed up at all. MIT Press called and told me that they were just saving me the trouble of handling copyright clearance for myself and I said that I didn't mind doing it. The others didn't even ask for the minimal stuff to protect themselves--like my permission to publish.

Some publishers may be more insistent than the ones I've dealt with but my suggestion to academics is to remember that the publishers need them as much as they need the publishers--No. Make that: The publishers need us and ultimately we do not need the publishers--and that most legal forms are written by lawyers who don't know the issues and spread by bureaucrats who don't even know what the forms say. Adults need to learn to choose what contracts they are willing to enter into. It's part of being an adult in developed society. Academics need to stop being so damned scared of everything and everyone and start doing their jobs--the creation and sharing of knowledge--which means taking responsibility for the agreements they choose to make.

Gunnar
----------
Gunnar Swanson Design Office
1901 East 6th Street
Greenville, North Carolina 27858

gunnar@...
[phone]

at East Carolina University:
[phone]
swansong@...

________________________________________
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [PHD-DESIGN@...] On Behalf Of Ranulph Glanville [ranulph@...]
Sent: Saturday, June 27, 2009 10:27 AM
To: PHD-DESIGN@...
Subject: Re: copyrights and the net

I thought that academics published in order that others should know
what we have found (and test it). The whole idea is to make work
freely available. Most of u who are academics are anyhow paid for our
research and writing as part of our jobs. So we shouldn't be trying to
get paid a second time (not that many of us succeed, anyhow!).

Of course, copyright gets in the way of free availability. But, in my
view, it's not really copyright (which I consider an absurdity today:
we need a different mechanism, which we won't get while we keep trying
to serve copyright) that is to blame. Who, I ask, demands the
copyright of what we publish, including all future forms it might
take? The publishers. By doing this, they are essentially undermining
the attempt to make what we have found widely and freely available.

Of course, this doesn't help the discussion of copyright etc. But I
hope it provides at least a viable perspective for why we should
resist copyright (and publishers).

We could, also, resist the absurd requirement to publish. I don't
believe I'm the only person who reads this list who believes they
publish too much, though I may be one of the few who will admit this.

I suggest we stop talking about copyright, and get on with promoting
publication that, while respecting (and, I hope, improving) standards,
moves towards better and cheaper access, even if this does destroy the
publishers.

Ranulph

[Klaus Krippendorff]

while i agree with ranulph's sentiment.  things are more complicated

many publishers ask authors to sign a copyrights agreement as a condition
for publishing.  if you don't sign it, your paper will not be published and
doesn't gain the circulation we authors hope for.

one way to circumvent this is to publish in journals that do not ask for
copyright ownership.  cybernetiucs and human knowing is one journal that
lets authors own the copyright of their work.  i think constructivist
foundations is another.

recently, i encountered the following problem.  i was invited by george klir
to submit my paper written for the 100th birthday of ross ashby in the
international journal of general systems he edits.  i used a line drawing by
roger conant, published years ago in the same journal, now owned by taylor
and francis. george warned me of the potential copyright.  taylor and
francis wanted to charge me $100 for taking an image from their journal and
put it back into that journal.  i was furious and simply redrew it with
improvements that made it sufficiently different.

but my fury against taking advantage of authors' legal weaknesses persisted.
and so, in he spirit of free flow of information, i proposed in the
international communication association, which owns several journals
published by publishers, to demand an end to this practice of charging
copyright fees for sections of previously published work.

the copyright charges are quite excessive indeed and we all need to oppose
them.  i edited a reader (on content analysis) published this year.  i
understand that republishing articles  by other authors amounts to making
money by one publisher from work owned by another.  the total copyright
expenses were nearly $10,000.  our publisher took care of half of it leaving
my co-author and myself with a bill of $5,000, which royalties will not pay
for by the most favorable estimation.

the point is that we authors are letting us being exploited by a system we
need to oppose

klaus

-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:PHD-DESIGN@...] On Behalf Of Ranulph
Glanville
Sent: Saturday, June 27, 2009 10:27 AM
To: PHD-DESIGN@...
Subject: Re: copyrights and the net

I thought that academics published in order that others should know  
what we have found (and test it). The whole idea is to make work  
freely available. Most of u who are academics are anyhow paid for our
research and writing as part of our jobs. So we shouldn't be trying to get
paid a second time (not that many of us succeed, anyhow!).

Of course, copyright gets in the way of free availability. But, in my view,
it's not really copyright (which I consider an absurdity today:  
we need a different mechanism, which we won't get while we keep trying to
serve copyright) that is to blame. Who, I ask, demands the copyright of what
we publish, including all future forms it might take? The publishers. By
doing this, they are essentially undermining the attempt to make what we
have found widely and freely available.

Of course, this doesn't help the discussion of copyright etc. But I hope it
provides at least a viable perspective for why we should resist copyright
(and publishers).

We could, also, resist the absurd requirement to publish. I don't believe
I'm the only person who reads this list who believes they publish too much,
though I may be one of the few who will admit this.

I suggest we stop talking about copyright, and get on with promoting
publication that, while respecting (and, I hope, improving) standards, moves
towards better and cheaper access, even if this does destroy the publishers.

Ranulph



On 27 Jun 2009, at 12:42, Dave Crossland wrote:

> Hi Ann,
>
> 2009/6/27 A.B.Thorpe <A.B.Thorpe@...>:
>> Dave,
>> This is an interesting perspective. You mention the "mature and
>> sophisticated 'direct marketing' to monetise artistic works that
>> newer artists who weren't able to get publishing contracts have been
>> perfecting."
>> Have you got any good references for this?
>
> Marillion are the single best case study of pioneers in this area I
> know of. Then, Magnatune and Jamendo are record labels that permit P2P
> sharing of all the tracks they publish, and the artists hey sign have
> been pioneers; then we have Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, and Advance
> Patrol releasing their tracks on the net in the same way. Fleet Foxes
> recently spoke out in support of P2P; the Arctic Monkeys let their
> fans do 100% of their marketing, they didn't even know what MySpace
> was when they were #1 in the charts. And then Oasis, Jamiroquai and
> Madonna have all quit their publishers to sell direct, albeit without
> permitting P2P.
>
>> I'm interested from the standpoint of how design practice might
>> function as a social enterprise where currently "intellectual
>> property" is often seen as the basis for the "enterprise" part of the
>> equation.
>
> Design is integral to all kinds of businesses, so I'm not sure which
> kinds of design practices you mean.
>
> Here, though, are some more general thoughts on a lazy Satuday morning
> :-)
>
> Fundamentally we have two kinds of businesses, product businesses and
> service businesses. Product businesses have the potential for massive
> profits compared to service businesses, because services involve
> charging for individualised-customer processes in some respect, and
> this limits their ability to scale up. However, they don't need
> capital investment to design the product and mass produce it, they
> just start proving a basic service and improve how good they are over
> time; the journey of apprentice to mastery.
>
> So the gas man who came to fix my central boiler this year makes a
> good living, being self employed and good at what he does, but he's
> hard pressed to double his income; he could start a firm and hire
> other gas men and work on his marketing and cream profit off the gap
> between his wage costs and his charges, like British Gas do, but then
> he's likely to be outcompeted by people like his former self who
> provide a more personable service for cheaper. Doctors and lawyer are
> the high end of this kind of work; all are about hourly wages, and
> reseller margins on products supplied during the service (pills,
> boiler parts). Typically the money curve starts at zero (you got a job
> as an apprentice), tapers upwards with experience, and levels off (no
> doctors on the billionaire list, plenty of very rich doctors though.)
>
> Product businesses, on the other hand, can scale up because they don't
> customise their products for individual customers; they made generic
> items that lots of people want. They have a money curve that follows
> an inverse bell shape, where they need to borrow a lump sum, spend it
> on R&D, and then start selling the product.
>
> Here's a napkin drawing: http://dave.lab6.com/acid/dump/2009/biz.png
>
> A key aspects of makes product business owners rich is that physical
> products are "rival"; they can't be duplicated, and if you want your
> own, you have to buy one, or borrow mine in which case I no longer
> have it. But information itself is non-rival; it can be duplicated.
> Obviously, when I tell you something, I don't forget it, but since
> owning and operating a printing press isn't cheap and easy, there was
> an illusion for a long time that a novel or a LP was a product; when
> information is instantiated in physical media, it takes on the rival
> nature of physical goods.
>
> In the three-player game of authors, publishers and readers, the
> publishers were the ones who converted information into physical form,
> and reaped massive profits; typically they followed a product money
> curve, paying authors and artists a lump sum to write/record the
> novel/tune, and then started selling it as product.
>
> In the 1970s the personal computer shows up, and changes the game:
> Digital information is non-rival; we can share copies. This slowly
> undoes the illusion that the physical media IS the work, and means
> that the service of developing new works comes to the fore. Its taking
> 30-40 years, of course, but that's the overall trend as I see it.
>
> Now, if you wanted to get rich, you don't want to hear this. You want
> to pretend that a digital copy is like a physical copy, and can not be
> duplicated by users at no cost. Copyright law makes it illegal to not
> pretend, copy restriction features in software try to keep up the
> illusion, and there is a huge propaganda campaign to persuade people
> to accept the notion of "intellectual property."
>
> But, of course, the publishers can duplicate copies at no cost. This
> is what Mark Getty, chairman of Getty Images, meant when he said
> "Intellectual Property is the oil of the 21st century" - who wouldn't
> want a monopoly over a product which costs you nothing to produce...
> And this is precisely how Bill Gates got to be the richest person on
> the planet in record time. Gates first became famous when he got angry
> that early personal computer owners wouldn't play along with the
> charade and wrote "An Open Letter to Hobbyists" to all the computer
> hobbyist magazines in 1973. The letter remains a lucid argument for
> this position today, but stands in stark contrast to GNU/Linux and
> companies like Red Hat 35 years later.
>
> The reality is that digital information is not rival like a physical
> product. In fact, it is "anti-rival," so that there is an overall
> benefit when it is freely shared. This is what the Fleet Foxes guy is
> on about -
> http://www.zeropaid.com/news/86428/band-praises-p2p-for-helping-artist
> s-discover-music/
> - more people listening to wider range of music encourages demand for
> new music. Wikipedia grows on the same principle; as it got more
> pages, the desire to add more pages increased.
>
> In this way, a collection of service businesses can cooperate in the
> creation of anti-rival digital information; no particular one has the
> majority of the money flowing around the good, but there isn't the
> same limit on scaling up. The napkin looks something like this:
>
> http://dave.lab6.com/acid/dump/2009/antirival.png
>
> Generally, I believe that approaches that discern the natural
> properties of reality and work with them instead of against them win
> out in the long term, and that while illusions can form concentrations
> of power, that power will eventually wane because it has a hollow
> base. I think that's what we're seeing with Windows vs GNU/Linux, and
> what we will see in other areas over a long term.
>
> I do think that it will take A LONG time to play out though.

[Terence Love-2]

Hi Ranulph,

Thanks for your message. It made me think.

The discussion  of copyright, publishing and IP ownership seems to benefit
by looking deeper into the whole context.

As you say, we are publishers and employ publishers.

<snip> I don't believe I'm the only person who reads this list who believes
they publish too much... even if this does destroy the publishers. <endsnip>

Self-publishing is still publishing and runs to the same economics,
including the economics of scale.

What destroys commercial publishers also destroys self publishers.

Whatever offers opportunities for self-publishers,  offers even more
opportunities (reduced transaction costs) for larger business publishers.

If professional publishers can't make money out of a publishing media, why
would one expect authors (without scale or expertise) to do better?

As you know, the rough economics of publishing are as follows.

Out of the final sale price of a book, the money divides roughly three ways,
i.e.

Retailer 33%
Distributor 33%
Publisher 33%

From the publisher's 33%, this divides roughly, and very variably depending
on book run (for short run university texts, proofreading/typesetting and
printing tend to dominate the costs) into:

Printing 10%
Promotion 5%
Typesetting 2%
Administration overheads 5%
Author royalties 5%
Losses (books that don't go anywhere)  5%
Profits 0%

For electronic format, add website continuous rebuilding cost, security
issues, financial management (almost zero if supply books via a
distributor), and reduce retailing and logistics costs.

Also there is a natural market limitation. Texts like films and music are
serial communication media  and the amount individuals can read is limited
by time. This limits take up of texts regardless of how cheap they are sold.

Not actually much to play with profitwise!

Is it viable to self publish online? At the moment, profitable publishing
onlione seems to depend on the value being achieved elsewhere, or getting
someone else (e.g. the universities) to foot the bill.

Getting universities to foot the bill is interesting. As universities move
to a business model, most universities become aware that their income
primarily comes from teaching and that research is done at a loss (which is
how universities have bribed businesses to let academics do research for
them). Recent government funding metrics focus on academics creating a small
number of high quality academic papers rather than funding bulk publication.
In addition, universities have not typically been good at running publishing
businesses and many fail or are quietly closed (its very easy for that 0%
profit to become negative)

These factors suggest that funding academics to create publications is
likely to reduce in the near future.

Overall, the situation seems to point to an increase in need for
professional publishing businesses with the reduced transaction costs being
reflected in reduced costs to readers much in line with the Kindle model.

In this mix, copyright is a funny thing and unclear where its boundaries lie
if we argue that digitalizing media makes IP redundant, i.e. if it's assumed
anyone can freely and without control copy and distribute anything that can
be converted via digital media.

That leads to interesting questions such as,

"Is therefore acceptable for me to publish a journal article by you under my
name?" (the words are copyable by digital media and IP is irrelevant).

On reflection, it seems in general that the argument for free copying is an
opportunistic one!

Warm  regards,
Terence
____________________

Dr. Terence Love
Praxis Education
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks
Western Australia 6030
orders@...
Tel/fax: [phone]
www.praxiseducation.com
____________________
 

[Terence Love-2]

Hi Klaus,

You wrote,
<snip> taylor and francis wanted to charge me $100 for taking an image from
their journal and put it back into that journal.  

Wow. Cost centring to the point of absurdity.

Would be interesting if academics could charge universities the same way!

Cheers,
Terry

[Ranulph Glanville]

A pot-pourri of comments.

A quick reply to Terry:

"Is therefore acceptable for me to publish a journal article by you  
under my name?"

That's normally called plagiarism. I'd have thought you knew that! I'm  
certainly not condoning plagiarism, or theft—or even flattery. The  
academic world is based on honesty: we may not always achieve it, but  
that's the ultimate academic standard for behaviour.



My point is that publishers actually PREVENT the dissemination of our  
findings. They sell at outrageous prices, demand (in rights) what is  
not theirs, and have (often) tiny readerships. However we do it, we  
should move away from these people who actually mitigate against what  
we are supposedly involved in. I loved Klaus's comment about his  
publisher charging themselves! Typical and quite wonderfully inventive.

Klaus talked about not completing copyright agreements as presented to  
us. I recently rewrote a copyright agreement with a particularly  
restrictive and unpleasant US publisher before signing it. The CEO of  
the company concerned spent a lot of time telling me what a good job  
they did, then sent the book with printing outside the margins. It was  
dreadful. Eventually, I signed the copyright agreement because the  
editor had put in a lot of work, and have told myself I will never  
publish with them again.

Copyright is a catastrophe. It doesn't do what it was intended to do,  
any more. Perhaps once. Now, it's just a mess. We should abandon it.  
We who have academic jobs are supposed to publish. It's not a matter  
of making money: we were paid to do our research. We need to find  
something else.

And here's another point: if we are going to support journals, then we  
should support the small ones. That means, all those with a reputation  
should avoid publishing in the big journals, to increase the  
credibility of the small journals. Leave the big ones for the up and  
coming, who need the recognition. And develop good relationships with  
smaller journals, so we have more options and also more influence.

I think that's enough from me.

Ranulph

[Jeremy Hunsinger]

I think we have to be careful to differentiate the actual bases of  
academia versus the idealized norms.  Given a recent report said a  
significant number of scientists, upwards of of 50% admitted to lab  
practices that may have undermined results and something like 6%  
admitted to some for of falsification of data, academic honest I would  
argue is much like general honest, we'd prefer the situation where it  
was generally promoted, and less prefer the situation where it was  
generally practiced.   This I think you can roundly see to be true  
when you look at the stories of just about any technological  
revolution, you find ideas flowing quite freely, plagiarized and not,  
for short periods as people become familiar with the changes.  I think  
the history of the concept of plagiarism is particularly informative  
to the question of contemporary copyright.  The majority of the works  
that I teach in some of my classes(as i teach ancient and medieval  
political theory, machiavelli and other things sometimes).... have no  
citation that was not entered after the fact.  Citations and  
plagiarism came into being somewhat together, and for a very  
particular reason that had nothing to do with honesty, though today  
they seem to have to do with concepts of 'honor codes' and 'honesty'  
than their original goals of enabling research, and specifically  
enabling the finding of research.

[Ranulph Glanville]

Of course, honesty is an aspiration, and not an actuality. But the  
point of an aspiration is it's what we aspire to. We need to learn to  
be more honest. This is good for us as people and for the subjects we  
work in.

My point is that it's honest to say where we got ideas and insights. I  
was responding to Terry, suggesting that it was ok for him to publish  
something I wrote under his name (something I'm sure he'd never do).  
That was his conclusion at the end of an argument he made about  
copyright. I don't think I, anyhow, wrote anything about citation.

For me, citation is more a matter of signing into the community:  
acknowledging sources and inspirations, (which gives us the ability to  
check breadth of coverage, as an incidental) and accepting that we've  
joined a club and there are rules. But an honest person would anyhow  
realise that it's decent to say where ideas and so on come from,  
rather than claiming to invent them; and that to so acknowledge beings  
with it re-inforcement both of community and of evaluation.

Ranulph




On 28 Jun 2009, at 09:05, jeremy hunsinger wrote:

> I think we have to be careful to differentiate the actual bases of  
> academia versus the idealized norms.  Given a recent report said a  
> significant number of scientists, upwards of of 50% admitted to lab  
> practices that may have undermined results and something like 6%  
> admitted to some for of falsification of data, academic honest I  
> would argue is much like general honest, we'd prefer the situation  
> where it was generally promoted, and less prefer the situation where  
> it was generally practiced.   This I think you can roundly see to be  
> true when you look at the stories of just about any technological  
> revolution, you find ideas flowing quite freely, plagiarized and  
> not, for short periods as people become familiar with the changes.  
> I think the history of the concept of plagiarism is particularly  
> informative to the question of contemporary copyright.  The majority  
> of the works that I teach in some of my classes(as i teach ancient  
> and medieval political theory, machiavelli and other things  
> sometimes).... have no citation that was not entered after the  
> fact.  Citations and plagiarism came into being somewhat together,  
> and for a very particular reason that had nothing to do with  
> honesty, though today they seem to have to do with concepts of  
> 'honor codes' and 'honesty' than their original goals of enabling  
> research, and specifically enabling the finding of research.

[Ken Friedman-2]

Dear Jeremy and Ranulph,

Two footnotes to the current thread:

1) For some of us, these issues are actuality as well as aspiration. One of my teachers used to say, "Be true to your sources and your sources will be true to you." As I see it, she meant two things by this. First, care with sources leads to better and more fruitful research. Second, care with sources creates a better scholarly and scientific community.

All of us occasionally make mistakes on citations, quotations, titles, and the like. In a recent article, for example, I got the title wrong for a published source I was critiquing! But the standards still obtain for many of us. In many fields, this is a matter of professional care. In theology or psychology, for example, care with sources is fundamental. One issue that annoys me mightily in design research publications and in engineering, for example, is the matter of what many in other fields label "indirect quotation," paraphrasing an idea that appears somewhere in a source text without giving the explicit location. In a central guide to publishing in psychology, the authors admonish us to show as much care in indirect quotes as in direct quotes because they permit readers to check and query the source rather than forcing them to trawl through hundreds of pages of text to see if the source actually says what the paraphrase claims. I enjoy reading theology simply for the rhetorical clarity and attention to detail -- great scholars often present scholarly apparatus and documentation as large as the core text. This level of care is anchored in two thousand years or more of careful text work, the core of hermeneutics and exegetics.

So I do not see this as an "aspiration." It may be an aspiration to people in some fields. For many of us, it is fundamental.

2) In many of the discourse community producing ancient, classical, and medieval texts, there were no citations for two reasons. First, most educated writers knew the key classics well. Second, there was a sense that the discourse belonged to a community rather than to individuals. This sense was so strong that in some cases, texts were attributed to the masters rather than to the actual author (or editor-author) of a document.

The new discourse emerged in the wake of the printing press and grew stronger following the Humboldt university reforms.

I find the current emphasis on citation as the antidote to plagiarism unfortunate. I prefer the "be true to your sources," approach. That makes for better scholarship -- and it reduces plagiarism as a beneficial side effect. What I used to teach my students was simple: it is silly to run the risk of plagiarism when you can gain kudos for superior scholarship by sourcing and citing carefully. As all scholars know, it is enough to bring one or two truly strong new ideas forward, and to do so, we must usually build on the work of those who precede us.

This, of course, is as true of the print world as the net world.

Yours,

Ken

Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS
Professor
Dean

Swinburne Design
Swinburne University of Technology
Melbourne, Australia

--

Ranulph Glanville wrote:

Of course, honesty is an aspiration, and not an actuality. But the point of an aspiration is it's what we aspire to. We need to learn to be more honest. This is good for us as people and for the subjects we work in.

Jeremy Hunsinger wrote:

The majority of the works that I teach in some of my classes (as i teach ancient and medieval political theory, machiavelli and other things sometimes) .... have no citation that was not entered after the fact.  Citations and plagiarism came into being somewhat together, and for a very particular reason that had nothing to do with honesty, though today they seem to have to do with concepts of 'honor codes' and 'honesty' than their original goals of enabling research, and specifically enabling the finding of research.

[Chris Rust]

Klaus Krippendorff wrote:
> while i agree with ranulph's sentiment.  things are more complicated
>
> many publishers ask authors to sign a copyrights agreement as a condition
> for publishing.  if you don't sign it, your paper will not be published and
> doesn't gain the circulation we authors hope for.

I'd like to suggest that this discussion is lagging a long way behind
the current debates on academic publishing. You can find a lot of
publications and debate if you search for "open access academic
publishing" "Budapest open access initiative" or similar. The
sherpa.ac.uk website has some good resources and advice for academics on
this matter and it's worth looking out for anything written by Stevan
Harnad of Southampton university who has been one of the pioneers in
this field, advocating and developing resources for self-archiving.

Harnad and others argue that you should just refuse to sign the
copyright agreement or modify it to allow you to retain the right to
archive and share copies of the work on the internet. If you haven't
tried it don't assume it's not possible.

I did a summary of some of the issues a few years ago for a workshop at
the European Academy of Design Barcelona Conference, you can find a copy
here:
http://chrisrust.wordpress.com/2003/04/30/rich-media-open-access-publishing/

The "briefing" document is partly a proposal for something that didn't
happen and maybe should not have happened, but it contains an overview
of some key ideas and sources about open access.

best wishes from sunny Sheffield
Chris

[David Durling]

On 28 Jun 2009, at 9:05 am, jeremy hunsinger wrote:

> Given a recent report said a significant number of scientists,  
> upwards of of 50% admitted to lab practices that may have undermined  
> results and something like 6% admitted to some for of falsification  
> of data


Can we have a reference to this report? Sounds interesting.

David
.........................................................................

David Durling FDRS PhD   http://durling.tel
.........................................................................

[Jeremy Hunsinger]

i tweeted it the other week. yay twitter..... heh.  let me see if i  
can find it.  it isn't that great because they don't give much more...

found it: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0005738 
   i over estimated 33->50% quite sorry about that, i've been walking  
a bit far the last few days and should have looked it up.

On Jun 28, 2009, at 6:10 PM, David Durling wrote:

> On 28 Jun 2009, at 9:05 am, jeremy hunsinger wrote:
>
>> Given a recent report said a significant number of scientists,  
>> upwards of of 50% admitted to lab practices that may have  
>> undermined results and something like 6% admitted to some for of  
>> falsification of data
>
>
> Can we have a reference to this report? Sounds interesting.
>
> David
> .........................................................................
>
> David Durling FDRS PhD   http://durling.tel
> .........................................................................

[David Durling]

Jeremy,

Thank you for the link to the report. It does indeed make interesting  
reading.

I asked for the report because, having seen individual reports in the  
past, I did not believe that the figures you quoted were anything like  
correct. This report describes a serious systematic review of previous  
studies. In summary they say:

It found that, on average, about 2% of scientists admitted to have  
fabricated, falsified or modified data or results at least once –a  
serious form of misconduct my any standard – and up to one third  
admitted a variety of other questionable research practices including  
“dropping data points based on a gut feeling”, and “changing the  
design, methodology or results of a study in response to pressures  
from a funding source”.

So - rather than 6 per cent admitting to falsification of data, the  
reported weighted average is actually 1.9 per cent.

Rather than 'upwards of 50 per cent' admitting to questionable  
practices, the reported figure indicates up to a third admitting to  
questionable practices, some of which may be small but nevertheless  
were felt by those individuals to be worth reporting.

Many more did say that they knew of others who were guilty of dodgy  
practices. There is no indication of what any of this has to do with  
plagiarism.

Most of the dodgy scientists were in medicine and pharmacology.

I wondered how I might fare in answering such a survey. I have never  
knowingly falsified data, though if asked about others I might say  
that I have known of several cases where design researchers' data were  
worthless due to ignorance of process rather than deliberate  
massaging: these would include not controlling [or having too many]  
variables, inconsistencies in data collection, poor questionnaire  
design, bias, and hopeless optimism.  Of course it might be argued  
that one dodgy practice is misreporting the results of surveys.

I should also point out that my interpretation of this report is also  
partial and aimed at making a point, but does (I hope) state the  
figures accurately.

David

.........................................................................

David Durling FDRS PhD   http://durling.tel
.........................................................................



On 28 Jun 2009, at 9:05 am, jeremy hunsinger wrote:

> I think we have to be careful to differentiate the actual bases of  
> academia versus the idealized norms.  Given a recent report said a  
> significant number of scientists, upwards of of 50% admitted to lab  
> practices that may have undermined results and something like 6%  
> admitted to some for of falsification of data, academic honest I  
> would argue is much like general honest, we'd prefer the situation  
> where it was generally promoted, and less prefer the situation where  
> it was generally practiced.   This I think you can roundly see to be  
> true when you look at the stories of just about any technological  
> revolution, you find ideas flowing quite freely, plagiarized and  
> not, for short periods as people become familiar with the changes.  
> I think the history of the concept of plagiarism is particularly  
> informative to the question of contemporary copyright.  The majority  
> of the works that I teach in some of my classes(as i teach ancient  
> and medieval political theory, machiavelli and other things  
> sometimes).... have no citation that was not entered after the  
> fact.  Citations and plagiarism came into being somewhat together,  
> and for a very particular reason that had nothing to do with  
> honesty, though today they seem to have to do with concepts of  
> 'honor codes' and 'honesty' than their original goals of enabling  
> research, and specifically enabling the finding of research.