NotCon 04 - Copyright part 2

Participants
• Chaired by Danny
• Brewster Kahle
• Rob H
• Cory Doctorow
• David (public-domain.org)
• James Wallace - writer and ex-publisher

1999-2000 - Within 6 weeks someone had scanned the whole books and it was on Kazaa. Saw 20% drop off in orders. Maybe retailers were aware that it was being pirated? and lowered orders.

CD doesn't count on making a living as a SF writer (and there aren't many that do). William Gibson makes money because he is William Gibson. Larry Niven told CD that he was getting paid by the CIA to build scenarios! So CD decided to maximise his usp by releasing stuff online, will try and figure out how to make money off books online before anyone else does.

(JW) Fans think that they are doing a public service but are damaging the thing they love.

(BK) Has suffered take-down notices from movie studios. They send out 1000's a day. could be complete crap. Get into large $$$, gets scary. What do you do?

(CD) Asks whether we the need for copyright take-down process. Why not use traditional methods? Go to the coppers. Why not use the law? Why is it any different from damaging *real* property? Change the law.

(D) WIPO UN organisation responsible for organising treaties on IP rights. Little acocuntability to public. Funded by big coms, very rich. Treaty slanted in the direction of the broadcasters. Would limit use of stuff that us already in the public domain. Want a 50 year copyright on the web. Webcast definition so braod that it covers anything on the web. Sounds bad. Also would outlaw anything that could decrypt stuff that is DRM'd. err...that means computers. WIPO is low on radra, low news, but evvvviillll.

(BK) Starting to become illegal to be a librarian. Why not focus on some more people being paid? (authors etc). Examples of people putting stuff online ups revenues. Book publishers are bad at finding audiences, online could help. Worked at Amazon for a while, not many books are commercially viable. That's bad. Use print on demand close to people. SFWA got angry with BK (cus they're rubbish) (CD) Stuck in the 80's.

(CD) Signed to Tor. Found great ways by doing small publish runs. 90% of royalties gets delayed for a yearish in case that stuff is not really bought(?!).

Questions