A colleague on Twitter was celebrating the successful takedown of one of his books from a Spanish blog today. The book appeared to have been scanned and uploaded to a popular fileshare site and the blogger had linked to it. The link was now dead. At the time I was faintly pleased, having engaged in the same activity myself once or twice.
A long Twitter exchange followed, involving quite a few people. Two sides, obviously – the ‘information wants to be free side’ arguing that books are prohibitively expensive for a lot of teachers and that new models of production and distribution are called for, and the ‘we don’t get much from our books but we’d like what we do get after all the effort that goes into writing and producing them’ bunch.
Both have merits, of course – and I’m not going to get into too much detail here – but the big question I asked (without hope of an answer in a public forum) was whether all those supporting the takedown are completely unblemished in their records. I urged them to look at the music on their iPods, their copies of Windows, Office…, their DVDs, the materials they take into class. Do they own legal copies of them all? Do YOU? Do I???
We could all do with asking ourselves these questions:
- Do I own all the software on my computer?
- Did I buy all the music I have (mp3, cassette, CD…)?
- Did I buy all the DVDs I possess?
- Do I use copyright material in class without permission?
- Have I used images from the Net without permission (in presentations, etc.)?
- Have I ripped or used commercial movie clips in class or in presentations?
- Etc….
If we can answer ‘yes’ to even one of those questions then our moral outrage is at best a tad dubious… Hand on heart, I’m afraid I am not unblemished with regards to the above list, so let me be the first to lead the way and say I won’t, in the future, be morally offended at finding copies of my books online (I reserve the right to be economically offended, however) and if I feel the urge to go after the offender, I will also turn myself into the police for any copyright infraction I may have committed over the years. It’s only fair, after all.
Far be it for me to suggest that anyone I follow on Twitter has nothing but fully licensed copies of everything they use, though that would make them the exception rather than the rule. So what is it about books that makes them so special – is it the ‘sacred printed word’, or is it personal? Is it a case of ‘Oh, that Microsoft can afford it, but I’m a struggling writer’, or is it something else? I’d like to know. But then, can’t Cambridge University Press or Longman or Oxford University Press afford it too?
In cinemas around the world we’re subjected to the ‘you wouldn’t steal a car / bag / phone / film’ adverts, but what about books? Do those who ‘steal’ music, films and software have a different attitude to books? Or is it, as I say, personal?
Whatever the reason, I suspect that some of the people expressing outrage at the lot of the poor writer may just have one illegal copy of a song, or a piece of software – and if they do, then they have no moral right to their outrage. So where does that leave us?
Clearly it’s very cheap to scan a book and make it available online – in many countries where copyright is viewed somewhat, shall we say, more laxly than in, say, the UK this is not considered an issue, and once you’ve had a takedown, you move it somewhere else. So this is not going to be easy to stop. Equally clearly there are a lot of people involved in the writing and production of a book and that has to be recouped somehow – but the current distribution model is so outdated it beggars belief. If your products are going to end up as bits and bytes then you might as well control it to an extent, and make some money…
There was one curious aside and that was that ‘nine times out of ten’ a commercially-produced book will be better than a ‘home made’ one due to editorial process, etc. I wish I could go along with that, but I’ve seen some cracking online publications, blogs and collections of essays that would put some ‘professional’ writers and books to shame. I somehow doubt the statistic is that high, and I’d suspect it’s falling as time progresses.
As someone with a couple of books to my credit (and a further couple on the way) I appreciate the time and effort that goes in to writing one, and all the people behind it that make it happen. It takes time and it takes money and those have to be rewarded, absolutely. I also agree with many that books are too expensive for many people and that we need to address that point. Equally, electronic books allow for quick searching, annotating and mobile reading – and these are things which I miss in print books these days. So it seems to me that cheaper electronic versions are attractive for all sorts of reasons – the trick, of course, is to make them as profitable as those dead tree coursebooks undoubtedly are (at least for some writers).
I have a great idea for how to address all these issues, but I’m not saying – it’ll cost you!
Gavin you raise some interesting points about the discussion on Twitter yesterday. There were two threads going on – one was about copyright and the other about the ills of publishing. I think there is also a lot to say on the second issue, but maybe somewhere else, although discussing one without cross overs of the other is almost impossible.
I think you are right to highlight the blind spots that people often have about copyright issues i.e. I get cross when it’s *my* book but I am OK about “taking” other stuff when it suits my needs. Fundamentally what this proves is the inevitable chasing tail nature of this issue if we start from the position of the moral superiority of any individual and how squeaky clean they might be. Too often this individualisation of things just puts the brakes on any sort of fruitful discussion. It is not about anyone’s right to earn their crust – who is going to argue against that. And who cares if you burnt a Michael Jackson CD – I say this to be purely topical as I myself would never perform such an abomination : )For me it is about looking at the whole machinery of how it works and seeing where its going wrong and recognising the behaviour is a result of inequality, not personal character flaws (as was hinted at yesterday in the “I’m out to try and get something free” characterisations of those who download bootleg stuff) – like people sit in their homes being all miserly and tight pocketed. In a world where everything costs so much….etc etc. I think we need to remember our social conscience a bit more in these discussions. For anyone reading who has the income to support buying every book they read, every CD they listen to, every film they watch etc, maybe you should be giving a bit more of your income to a worthy cause! There are millions in this world, including teachers and students, who don’t own a single book, CD, Film. I mean…
I think Teachers and Writers are in the same team and we should be trying to influence our profession together as the way materials are produced and distributed is all wrong. Maybe edited books are better “quality” but it depends what you mean by that – a lot of them are also culturally inappropriate in some of the place they end up in the one-size-fits-all approach. I think its worth really thinking about what we mean by “quality” as this word is used a lot without any reference to criteria. It is worth taking some time to consider how you are implicated in this process, as we all are, and which “bits” you feel uncomfortable with. Now that would be dynamic and interesting – a mass response to the way things are in ELT publishing with a view to changing it. As a footnote to that statement though there are probably those who make really vast sums of money out of writing (of which, in ELT, there are quite a few) who may cease to really feel this as a “survival” thing anymore, and approach it from a purely moral outrage point of view? But then when people earn more money, they often have a tendency to explain that away and forget about those who have less – right? Michael Jackson case in point – all the bleeding heart lyrics in the world don’t change the fact that he didn’t give any of his fortune to those in need and led a completely over-indugent lifestyle. Facts that seem to be overlooked in the cult celebrity he is now surrounded by – could it be that some ELT personalities show similar signs?
The fact is that knowledge/music/art/words/thoughts are impossible to straight jacket into rules and there will be many times when those rules don’t apply. I fully admit I am someone who has photocopied some books in my time – firstly cos I was absolutely broke and couldn’t afford the huge cost of buying books in Greece where tax on imported books is v. high and because there are no decent library facilities in Thessaloniki for anyone studying linguistcs based subjects at anything higher than a DELTA level. So, what should I have done? Taken out a mortgage to furnish my own mini-library. As it is I have far too many books for my liking and am continually trying to find ways to share them with other people who are doing similar courses as I really don’t like the idea of book collections never being read by more than one person. That is not the point of knowledge for me. It should be a public thing. People need to be aware, and I say this to those from the UK/US primarily, that nice big juicy university libraries are not something we all have access to – in those places knowledge *is* free so to speak. I also resent paying some of the silly prices that are charged for so-called academic books (rationale being that they have a smaller pick up rate and so they must, for some reason, begin to be sold at 35GBP). I have also had my training materials which I give out freely to all those who attend my development courses plagarised on more than one occassion by other trainers. It upset me. But I try to stay focused on the fact that most of the classroom teachers who came along are just using the stuff I did in their classrooms and that’s OK. Maybe being a writer means having to accept that some of your work will be read and seen through channels you hadn’t expected? In my case it was being passed off as someone else’s work – at least in the illegal downloads the name is still on the work – the recognition is still there? Food for thought??
Teachers who cannot afford to buy books copy them. Students do the same. ELT Books are priced way above the prices that anyone can afford outside the countries in which they are produced and the number of components (S book, companion, workbook, exam maximiser, class CD, home CD, in the bath CD, while asleep CD….) means it has increased massively. This is ethically wrong. As Gavin said, e-books should have been picked up as this would provide a solution to distribution problems and keep costs down. Qs were raised by Graham yesterday (and I asked him a few which he didn’t answer) about the fact that publishers are behind the times. It was suggested that they need to catch up and that perhaps they are just old dinosaurs. They are, but I don’t think this is the only reason they are not keeping up with the times in terms of distribution. I think they are deliberately turning a blind eye as they make more money the way things are. On a global scale, we are talking about a billion pound industry. If it ain’t broke (for the privileged few who are at the top of the tree) why fix it?
Finally an observation: almost everyone I know who works in writing is afraid to express opinions that may appear critical of publishers. Truth or not? Those who work in writing know better. I often feel like I am talking to people involved in MI5 when discussing writing projects with people as they will say “ooh I can’t talk about that as its still under discussion, and its confidential”. I also know people who have been struck off for working for rival publishers despite the fact that all the work is contractual and piece meal with no permenancy anymore so noone can really “afford” to show the kind of loyalty that is being demanded. I also know people who feel the books that end up on the shelf are a far cry from those that were their dream ELT course book and those changes were pressurised by marketing departments to ensure greater sale rates. This must create a strange feeling in people and perhaps explains why these discussion are always a bit fractured and paranoid. The reason is competition between publishers – and the desire to make more money – very little of which, in the final equation, goes to most ELT writers. Well there lies the answer to the problem. If it wasn’t all a big massive huge way for (some) people to make vast quantities of money, would the copyright thing be an issue???
OK, I’ll stop now!
Sara
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OK, I’ve read the blog and Sara’s reply (and was involved in the twittersation yesterday about copyright). I celebrate the fact that thanks to Scott Thornbury’s intervention, illegal fileshares of THE WHOLE of one his books and one of mine has been stopped. On the other hand, and like almost everyone on the planet, I am not 100% squueaky clean myself about the use of copyright material – although I almost always buy music from e.g. iTunes except for the few occasions when, say, a daughter burns a copy of a CD she likes for me onto my computer. And yes, to pick up on one of the points raised, I have (and do) use pictures in presentations which i find on the net. But I no longer copy software, a point I will return to later.
In my last tweet on the subject I called for a nuanced approach to the issue of copyright. It seems to me that there is a difference between photocopying a page or two of a book and copying a whole book. Writers in the UK are remunerated for this (occasional photocopies) anyway, thanks to the ALCS. But if you are running a website which you want people to patronise and you copy 100% of someone else’s work, well that’s just not on. You are not a ‘poor teacher’. You are appropriating the whole of someone else’s work for your own benefit.
See I don’t think anyone would disagree that ripping off someone else’s work and then selling it for your own benefit is wrong. Yet it happens all over the place. And the reasons that I don’t make copies of software anymore is that people like me (well not like me, I’m not clever enough) worked to create it and they deserve to make a living.
So the nuance I am looking for? Well teachers use each other’s ideas all the time, and that’s a very good thing. But if you had a good idea which you could say, hand-in-heart, was 100% was yours and someone went round the world saying it was theirs and not acknowledging you in any way, that would rankle, I think. Same with books.
But all of this becomes ‘academic’ when we are talking about teachers who simply can’t afford books. No one, I think, is going to start prosecuting them for occasional infringements. It’s the people who can afford books but want everything for free that are worth pursuing – though that may be an out-of-date view in the new ‘free’ IT world.
And two other things: language is important here, and can be overdone. In all of the tweets on the subject yesterday I saw no sign of ‘moral outrage’, only fairly measured discussion, I thought. Words like ‘outrage’ don’t necessarily help.
As for authors and publishers, oh yes we an be critical of our publishers – and are, and have our own Society of Authors to help us. Still it can be tricky. But that’s another story, perhaps.
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A few q’s for Jeremy:
Jeremy you said:
“But all of this becomes ‘academic’ when we are talking about teachers who simply can’t afford books. No one, I think, is going to start prosecuting them for occasional infringements. It’s the people who can afford books but want everything for free that are worth pursuing – though that may be an out-of-date view in the new ‘free’ IT world”
Can you describe who you think the “want everything for free” people are? It would help me to understand where you are coming from better. Who are they as you refer to them as a distinguishable group.
I take your point about the term ‘moral outrage’ which I also copied on from G’s post. I think it is just blog talk and is not meant to cause offense. I also felt though that the discussion on Twitter was measured and respectful as it should be (although a bit frustrating in terms of word limit). And hopefully this discussion will remain so as it will go much further.
Why do you think being critical of publishers can be tricky?
Thanks
Sara
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Sara & Jeremy,
Thanks for your comments so far. I used the term ‘moral outrage’ in the sense that anyone who has used one item of copright material for which they haven’t paid has no right to feel outraged about their own materials being nicked (and, as I said, that very much describes me – and, to make it clear, I wasn’t for one minute suggesting it described anyone else involved in the conversation).
But Jeremy (inadvertently) makes a point which interests me, and that is he sometimes accepts music from his daughters, knowing full well that someone will have sweated blood and tears to produce it. So I think I need to return to my original question, and reframe it: if someone feels it’s sometimes alright to copy music (and you can replace ‘music’ with ‘software’ or ‘a film’), what makes them consider it inaappropriate to copy a book (and you can replace ‘book’ here with ‘software’, ‘music’, ‘a DVD’, etc.)?
That’s a nuance which is hard to unpack, I think. Jeremy talks of ‘ripping off someone’s work and selling it elsewhere’, which was not the case in yesterday’s initial discussion – somebody had merely linked to a freely-available copy of a book. Are they more sinner than the person who originally posted the files? Is it the person who originally posted them? Would anyone downloading the files have actually bought the book (or had the money to do so)?
I’m getting more confused as this discussion goes on. That nice Mr. Cameron of the ‘compassionate’ Tory Party in the UK often asks after the whereabouts of Gordon Brown’s ‘moral compass’ and I wonder where everybody’s moral compasses point in this debate?
Again, I want to stress that I’m not without sin in this discussion, but I am interested in the hot reaction to ‘our books’ when compared with the odd copy of a music CD or copyrighted image in our media collections…
Gavin
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I think Sara’s point about accessing work outside the UK/US is valid. Libraries are the perfect (and long established) file sharing system. But…if we live outside the world of easily accessible libraries then how do we get hold of material? I’d love to do a PhD, but basically I’d have to move to a town with a English language library to do one. So, it’s buy or nothing (and you actually can’t buy books online in Romania for the most part, as Romania tends to be on the online “don’t sell to this country” blacklist)
Now this is not to say I’ve downloaded books – I haven’t, and in fact would have no idea of how I’d even go about starting to do that. But I think some much more accessible, open, and transparent system of online lending would be the way forward here. (Though, when it comes down to it I’m still one of those “Luddites” who’d rather have a book in front of me than a screen)
I think “Moral Outrage” is just a Dudeneyism designed to attract comments/debate. See also: Luddite
By the way, “From Teacher to Manager” has, to my knowledge, never been available for illegal download. Should I be happy or disappointed by this?
Andy
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Oh, and I like the way that some publishers offer locally printed versions of some of their work cheaper in some parts of the world. (I know CUP and OUP do this in South Asia for example).
Not sure if that’s relevant to the conversation, but I think it’s an important piece of the “access” puzzle
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Andy,
I shall lobby to have ‘dudeneyism’ included in the next editions of all major dictionaries (both online and off, legal and not), with the following definition:
dudeneyism (n) – inflammatory word or phrase designed to drive traffic to a poor-quality blog posting. See also: Luddite
I thank you for the work you’ve put in to this
With regards to your own inestimable tome, it’s a bit of a conundrum, isn’t it? Is my audience so small that nobody can even bother to scan it and post it online? Or am I lucky that I haven’t been copied, thus guaranteeing my (albeit not immense) income from this publication?
As for access, downloadable books would work in your case, even if it is less comfortable than a paper-based one…
Gavin
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I think it could result in the term “Dudeneyesque” and if you are really lucky, in the future “Dudeneyists”
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The solution to some of these questions lies in creative commons licensing, otherwise known as copyleft materials.
An artist creates a piece of work – book, images, music, video (whad’ever) and then states specifically that it’s not to be violated, used or copied in any way by using the (c).
However not all artists, authors, musicians want their material to be only used for personal profit -some of us delight in the fact it’s used at all.
If we can adequately populate knowledge about the alternative to this, creative-commons, then those who don’t mind sharing their work, can… most people prefer stuff that they don’t have to feel guilty about taking and will stop using copyrighted materials.
In my case, while guilty of a number of charges listed above in the past, which is why I refrained from twitconversation (but was also very busy creating my own cc-sa-nd materials) I can say with hand-on-heart, much much less in recent years. LOL.
Pretty much this is why the whole opensource, freeware etc area is growing so fast.
I have even paid for updated versions of initially free software because after using it saw the incredible value and wanted a fancier version & in one case, with an e-book, I didn’t even need the book (I’d bookmarked and made notes throughout the free course) but bought it because the author had supplied me with so much knowledge for free prior to releasing it (Darren Rowse of Problogger).
Copyleft / Creative commons is (for those on your page who don’t know) –
a. cc-by (use it as you like but keep my name on it)
b. cc-nd (use it but don’t change it in anyway + a.)
c. cc-sa (use it and license it in the same way I have)
d. cc-nc (use it but do not re-sell it or make any money from it)
You can combine any of the letters (there are alternative symbols).
For a more information and sites which offer the ability to strictly select to use work based on creative commons licensing see my posting:
href=”http://kalinago.blogspot.com/2008/11/commonly-creative.html”>uncommonly creative.</a
Take care,
Karenne
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Karenne,
Thanks for your comments. I agree that CC is potentially useful, but it is also fraught with inconsistencies and a lack of clarity and doesn’t solve all the problems – your summary doesn’t take the ‘nuances’ into account, and these have causes great problems in some cases.
These are just two links with discussions which are worth a read:
http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0610/msg00025.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_licenses#Criticism
Gavin
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Yes, there is a lot of misunderstanding and misuse but perhaps less so than with (c) materials.
They are trying to work through these issues. A good handle to follow on twitter is @creativecommons
btw – wikipedia is going CC-BY-SA.
It’s a ‘new’ concept but I have faith they’ll work it out in the end!
K
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Yes, very interesting to point out the hypocrisy….we do all use material that we aren’t strictly entitled to, so can we kick up a stink if it’s our work that’s ripped off? If I draw paralells to music, I’d say that it is generally positive to disseminate material online as it gets the stuff out there and noticed. I have quite a bit of *ahem* acquired music, but this is stuff I would never have heard otherwise. If I like it, I’ll go and buy it to support the artist. I`m not going to buy an expensive book by an unknown author sight unseen, but if I think I really need it after having a look (either in the library or through less established channels)then that’s probably good for the author.
Besides, what about this? I’m not a name (yet, ha ha) so I`ve written book chapters, reviews and articles unpaid. There are plenty of publishers and journals out there who don`t pay their (established or otherwise) authors in cash, only in kudos. Someone is making money somewhere….I want as many people as possible to see my work ESPECIALLY if I’m not getting paid for it.
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[...] 06.07.2009, 13:58 Filed under: debates Last week, Gavin Dudney from That’sLife poised some questions to ESL authors stemming from a debate on piracy and illegally copied EST books: “Do I use copyright material [...]
One of my Korean students said she is employed by Creative Commons. Still can’t work out how it is an organisation that pays people
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Another possibility for funding is angel investors. eg. http://www.kickstarter.com/
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[...] he talks of the wide availability of published material on illegal download sites. I’ve also not avoided this subject in the past on this blog, and copyright was also the subject of a cafe-style debate at the British [...]