And if you ask me, there's nothing wrong with non-commercial redistribution of publicly-available content.
— Shlomi Fish, Why Closed Books are So 19th-Century
Snarky response: maybe you should ask the copyright holder instead, or a legislative body in your jurisdiction, or a legal scholar.
Substantive response: how about another quote?
By making your book available online, you're giving yourself a huge publicity, and earning a lot of repute.
— ibid
Substantive response cont'd: I can't decide if this is the Lake Wobegon fallacy or the In A Perfect World fallacy. Of course it's possible that Stephen King's first novel made him millions of dollars and helped him become a full-time novelist with dozens or hundreds of other books. It's easy to point to a big success like that.
Guess what? There are plenty of other novelists like me, whose first novels didn't sell very many copies at all (if they even made it to bookshelves -- so this is not complaining on my part; I achieved my artistic goals with that book long, long ago). You hear about the one-in-a-million successes and you don't hear about the nine-hundred-ninety-nine-thousand-nine-hundred-ninety-nine-in-a-million modest successes and (mostly) failures.
Put another way: it's no surprise that Cory Doctorow, editor of a site with millions of page views, popular speaker, long-time writer, long-time activist, and effective publicist can write a book, give it away online, and get a lot of attention. He's good at getting attention, especially when he does something that's very consistent with the goals and mores and ethics of the people who pay attention to what he does.
Similarly the argument that copyright infringement didn't cost J.K. Rowling substantive money fails to move me.
If my argument here fails to convince you, here's another quotefrom an earlier essay:
Perl is very hard to learn from public electronic resources alone. I believe there may even be a clash of interests because the core Perl people also write them and so may not have enough motivation to improve the online documentation. Making them public will resolve that.
— Shlomi Fish, "Usability" of the Perl Online World for Newcomers
Good things happen not because magical candy-flavored unicorns fly over and drop sparkly glitter on projects where some hand-waving pundit said "All you have to do is make it a wiki and in mere seconds your teeth will be whiter, your waistline slimmer, your hair thicker, and all of your problems disappear." Good things happen because someone sat down and did the hard work to make good things happen.
Is the Perl FAQ materially better than it was ten years ago because it's easier to work on now? (I'm not sure it's even substantively different than it was ten years ago.)
There's an interesting discussion on the subject of mechanisms by which to encourage participation (and I do believe that liberal policies of contributions and licensing can encourage such participation), but the argument that merely allowing non-commercial redistribution summons those delicious sexy unicorns is hollow, shallow, and completely unsupported by facts and experience. (That's even laying aside the ridiculous conspiracy theory that suggests that Perl book authors are organized and sinister enough to plot to keep the core documentation skimpy and yet stupid enough not to realize that it's easier to get rich flipping burgers for a living than writing technical books full-time.)
It's easy to speculate about this stuff if you've never actually worked on it to make it better.
Or maybe Shlomi lives on a trust fund, and doesn't need an income. Personally I know that it's really really hard work to make good documentation, and really really hard work to write a book. And neither of those things would I do for free any more, unless I had a really good reason for it.
But now I'm old, and cantankerous. It was different when I was younger.
Re:In summary...
chromatic on 2008-06-20T05:57:07
It's easy to speculate about this stuff if you've never actually worked on it to make it better.That's not entirely fair. Shlomi and I don't always agree on things, but he does contribute. His arguments in this case have some flaws, but I believe his actions are consistent with his beliefs, and I respect that.
And neither of those things would I do for free any more, unless I had a really good reason for it.Me too, and I write a fair amount of free documentation and tutorial materials myself. (You might even call it a career skill.)
Re:In summary...
Shlomi Fish on 2008-06-20T11:57:24
For the record, I actually contributed a lot to online documentation. See for example my online lectures, the documentation of my CPAN modules, the patches I sent to perl*.pod, my essays, articles and blog posts, etc. Also see my Freecell Solver library which is extensively documented and all of its documentation is under the public domain.
Personally I know that it's really really hard work to make good documentation, and really really hard work to write a book. And neither of those things would I do for free any more, unless I had a really good reason for it.
I'm not asking you to work for free. By all means you can charge people for your works, for example by buying them from book stores (online or offline, etc.), or for willingly paying for online copies or for donations, etc. You may also opt to give a period of a few months in which the book is not available online free-of-charge, so anxious people will willlingly buy it.
See for example the CC-by-nc-sa licence.
But now I'm old, and cantankerous. It was different when I was younger.
I sure hope that when I'm older, I'll be wiser and more knowledgeable, but not less idealistic, hopeful, life-loving and people-loving than I am today. Refer to Psyche Death for more information. (I'm not acusing you of being cynical, just making a general remark.
Re:In summary...
Matts on 2008-06-20T13:02:38
No it's fine. I just forgot cynical. I'm old, cantankerous, and cynical.
Re:In summary...
pudge on 2008-06-26T21:09:33
I see nothing "idealistic" about saying people should give things away for free. It is, to me, "idealistic" to say that it is purely their own business whether to do so or not, and that whether that decision is good or bad can only be properly judged by themselves.
I know, I am a radical that way.
Re:In summary...
Shlomi Fish on 2008-06-28T12:26:10
Hi pudge! Thanks for your comment.
I agree with you that people should not be forced to give their property (much less their real-estate) for free. But copyrights and the so-called "intellectual property", while having implicit and explicit ownership, is not property.
George Bernard Shaw said it better than I:
If I have an apple and you have an apple, and we exchange apples, then we both would still have one apple.
But we if we both have one idea, and we exhange ideas, then we'll now have two ideas.
Copyrights evolved at the time the Printing Press became economical in order to protect the rights of the originators of works. Initially only text, but later on other forms of media. To a large extent, that's what they are still doing. If Warner Bros wanted to make a movie out of one of my original (I also have some fan-art) screenplays or stories, then they'll need to comply with my licensing terms and optionally need to pay me royalties. This will also apply to a poor Motion Pictures student, who will want to do so (it's a two-way street.).
What I was trying to say in my essay (and please read it again) is that making books available online (willingly) is good for both sides. What I said in a previous essay is that the Law must not restrict (and cannot effectively restrict) non-commercial redistribution of content that was made public and available. (I.e: something that's not personal, private, secret, etc.)
I do not believe that copyright law is invalid, and that everything should be Public Domain. I respect copyright law. However, I think that it should still adapt to the new reality of computer communication.
Back to property. In the Star-Trek saga, they have a way to replicate food (not precisely) so that such food can be free. There was also an episode where it turned out a human had been precisely duplicated (by an accident). And according to what I imagined in "We, the Living Dead", the Q Continuum is sufficiently advanced to precisely duplicate entire galaxies. (And BTW, the Qs turn out there to just be perfectly normal carbon-based lifeforms with just extremely advanced, but not omnipotent, technology. The latter is naturally a mathematical/logical impossibility.)
If we ever get to that point (and we may never do), then producers of physical objects, like cars, hammers, houses etc. may object to such duplication, like some originators of public content, object to know. But it would be ridiculus to forbid it. Similarly forbidding me (or a 10-years-old kid) from downloading, copying, or sharing a public work is ridiculous.
It just means that as a race, we have transcended beyond having to pay for music, text, videos, and other forms of content. That is not a bad thing. Note that if you wish to make commercial use, or derived use of such content then it is still economically sane to restrict it.
My Closed books article, appealed to authors, publishers and other originators and copyright-holders of public books (and to a lesser extent - other material) claiming they should make them available online. I only had secondary intentions in saying that as an originator you should expect people to copy your books, and that it won't be bad for you. I recall downloading a torrent of Ruby books, because I wanted a
.chm of The Pick Axe (whose first edition is available online) and it was a hot torrent that downloaded very quickly. The media conglomerates say they are doing what they do to protect the artists. But for example, Offpsring have always been very excited about Peer-to-Peer and making their albums available online, and yet Sony did not agree to make their new album available online. Offspring are not alone here, as many commercial artists either think the Internet is good for the Jews, or that it doesn't warrant a full-scale harassment of people and Internet services, much less irrational laws and regulations.
Nine Inch Nails have been very successful selling their Ghosts I-IV album online, which was entirely freely distributable to begin with.
And like I said, I practice what I preach and make most of my public works available under liberal or even very-liberal licences. I'm saying "most" instead of "all" because I don't want to make a hyperbole.
Re:In summary...
pudge on 2008-06-28T16:00:12
I agree with you that people should not be forced to give their property (much less their real-estate) for free. But copyrights and the so-called "intellectual property", while having implicit and explicit ownership, is not property.
So you are saying they SHOULD be forced to give their "intellectual property" for free.
George Bernard Shaw said it better than I
No, he said nothing in regards to this topic, not in the quote you provided, anyway. All he said there was that you still have your idea if you give it to someone else. That in no way implies anything about whether you should be forced to do it.
Copyrights evolved at the time
... I am in no need of a history lesson.
What I was trying to say in my essay
... is that making books available online (willingly) is good for both sides. I do not care about that, and was not responding to that.
What I said in a previous essay is that the Law must not restrict (and cannot effectively restrict) non-commercial redistribution of content that was made public and available. (I.e: something that's not personal, private, secret, etc.)
Right. You want the government to force me to give things away for free.
Back to property. In the Star-Trek saga
... I couldn't care less about what what happened in Star Trek.
It just means that as a race, we have transcended beyond having to pay for music, text, videos, and other forms of content. That is not a bad thing.
It's a STUPID thing.
The media conglomerates say
... I couldn't care less about what they say.
I also couldn't care less what individual bands CHOOSE to do. That is irrelevant. What I am talking about is your use of government to FORCE me to give things away. If NiN or radiohead want to give things away by choice, fine. If they do not: also fine.
Re:In summary...
wirebird on 2008-07-02T16:44:44
Actually, copyright is government forcing you to NOT give things away. So to speak.
It's granting you a limited monopoly, as an incentive. It's not a natural right.
Obviously, sometimes without the incentive creators wouldn't create. That's the only reason it's granted.
Re:In summary...
chromatic on 2008-07-02T16:57:36
Obviously, sometimes without the incentive creators wouldn't create.
Hamlet. Bhagavad Gita. Psalms. Beowulf. Mozart's Requiem. Vitruvian Man.
Re:In summary...
wirebird on 2008-07-02T17:24:34
Hence the "sometimes," yes.
Re:In summary...
pudge on 2008-07-02T17:13:27
Actually, copyright is government forcing you to NOT give things away. So to speak.
Government does not force me to not give anything away. I can give away anything of mine that I choose.
It's granting you a limited monopoly, as an incentive. It's not a natural right.
So you say. I agree the law does not treat it as a natural right, but that doesn't mean it isn't one.
Obviously, sometimes without the incentive creators wouldn't create. That's the only reason it's granted.
While it is true that this is the reason it is granted, I am not so sure that creators wouldn't create without it. History does not provide too many examples of this. The Internet -- where copyright infractions are the rule, rather than the exception -- sees a ton of creativity.
Re:In summary...
wirebird on 2008-07-02T17:42:56
Yes, technically the government isn't forcing you to not give anything away, hence the "so to speak." But you have to admit, it made a nicer parallelism that way. I'm just saying, eliminating pieces or all of current copyright is not the government forcing you to give things away, it's merely the government ceasing to grant an artificial monopoly on an infinite resource.
I'm not saying such a monopoly is a bad thing, I'm just saying that's what it is. After all, if it's there, we *can* choose to not exercise it. (It does need reasonable limits, so stuff doesn't end up locked up forever, and so that people who want to *base* their creativity on others' aren't handcuffed.)
But if it's not there, in order to attempt to create a non-governmental artificial monopoly we end up with insanity like DRM. (Like, for instance, my mother's embroidery machine, currently a $4k doorstop because WinXP handles parallel ports differently than Win95 did and so the dongle is no longer recognized. No, I'm not bitter.)
Re:In summary...
pudge on 2008-07-02T19:01:06
Yes, technically the government isn't forcing you to not give anything away, hence the "so to speak."
I do not understand. To me, if it is not technically doing it, it is not doing it. I don't get how the "so to speak" changes anything.
But you have to admit, it made a nicer parallelism that way.
Not for me. I don't get it at all.
I'm just saying, eliminating pieces or all of current copyright is not the government forcing you to give things away, it's merely the government ceasing to grant an artificial monopoly on an infinite resource.
I disagree. I think what I said is perfectly accurate. But we appear to disagree on whether such things can be owned. And again, just because it wasn't recognized as owned before, doesn't mean I can't recognize it as such.
Re:In summary...
pudge on 2008-06-28T16:03:50
Oh, and BTW, I do not sell content myself. I cannot recall ever having done so. When I co-authored books, the same content I wrote was available for free online (specifically, the MacPerl book is available for free in its entirety, and the chapter I wrote for the Wrox book was basically just a rehashing of perlport). All my music is available for free online. All my videos are free. Most of the articles I've written are available for free online, but all those not were written as works-for-hire anyway, so is a different thing.
And of course, almost all my code is available for free online.
So do not think this is about me personally, as it is not. This is about liberty, about people being able to make choices.
Re:In summary...
chromatic on 2008-06-28T18:03:23
Nine Inch Nails have been very successful selling their Ghosts I-IV album online, which was entirely freely distributable to begin with.
Please stop using the magic unicorn fallacy.
If you can show me a significant portion of previously-unknown creators (say, 10% of all unknown creators) who've achieved sufficient financial success to fund a subsequent creative work and have distributed their creations under liberal CC-style licenses, I'll concede your point.
Don't point to someone who was already rich and famous with a devoted fanbase as proof that you can achieve financial success with online distribution.
Re:I would've liked the original article, but...
Shlomi Fish on 2008-06-20T10:49:22
There were all these ads surrounding the text.
Well, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. I'm trying to make some revenue off the site in exchange for making it free-in-both-senses.
It made it so hard to read/understand.
I don't have any trouble reading it. In any case, you can get an ad blocker like Noscript or AdBlock Plus. Using them on my site is perfectly acceptable by me. All the ads on my site are non-animated and no-flash, .
I guess in the wonderful world of unicorns, mirroring the original article but stripping out all the ads would be ok as well?
:) You'll be surprised, but it's perfectly acceptable and legal by me. The licence of the article is CC-by, which allows you to freely re-distribute it, change it, change the licence, mirror it (while removing ads or having your own ads.). So I practise what I preach.
Re:I would've liked the original article, but...
ddick on 2008-06-20T11:21:39
fair enough. there was way too much smart-alec in my response. To my way of thinking, having a personal view that redistributing work for free over the internet is of course highly commendable and acceptable. Preaching that other people should adopt your views is acceptable. Informing your readership that there is nothing wrong in your eyes with disregarding the views of authors who do not comply with your view is not acceptable.
Hi chromatic! Thanks for your comment. I enjoy reading your blog posts, but from my impression, they sometimes suffer from large logical gaps.
And if you ask me, there's nothing wrong with non-commercial redistribution of publicly-available content.
Well, you've omitted the link there - to a previous essay I wrote titled "The Case for File Swapping", where I give many good reasons for allowing non-commercial redistribution of all publicly-available copyrighted content, and claim it is perfectly OK and should be legal. The reason I said "If you ask me", is because many people still think it's wrong.
Naturally, everyone is entitled to his opinions, but I think I've proven it conclusively and have yet to hear a good argument against what I said.
In regards to your later claims. We both agree that most of the books fail in the marketplace. If so, then why shouldn't you at least make them available online, so more people can enjoy them, learn about them, and hopefully bring you enough publicity to eventually make your present or future books a success?
I'll reply to the rest of your arguments later.
Well, you've been applying the "Unicorns" metaphor to my writing on your own. My arguments in the article was that:
I don't see these points properly addressed in your journal posts.
Re:Second Response
brian_d_foy on 2008-06-20T13:33:17
1. I haven't seen much advantage to me from having any of my books for free online.
2. Nothing guarantees commercial success, but making things free online certainly doesn't help.
3. The one book I have that's free online certainly has poorer
4. Keeping a book closed is the author's decision. There's absolutely no right that anyone has to anyone else's work.Let's see what you think once you publish your own book. Contributing to documentation in a half-hearted and incomplete way isn't the same commitment or level of work, and you shouldn't assume that your very limited experience in writing small things applies to book authors.
Re:Second Response
petdance on 2008-06-20T13:49:24
It's baffling why the concept of "respect the copyright-holder's wishes" is so difficult for people to understand. Is it that difficult to accept that someone might want to maintain control over their works?There's zero difference between holders of a GPL license vigorously policing the license, and Metallica wanting their license respected. Every argument of "You should be glad I'm making you famous by distributing your work" is a thin justification for choosing not to respect the copyright-holder's wishes.
Tell ya what, Shlomi. How about you come over and mow my lawn, and then when you're done, I'll say "I'm not going to pay you, but I'll tell everyone that you mowed my lawn. You should be glad because it's publicity for your free lawn mowing service."
Re:Second Response
chromatic on 2008-06-20T16:56:19
If the books are open, or publicly available online, it's probably not going to hurt your sales.I agree with your other points, but this is where the magic candy-flavored unicorns fly over. You can assert this point all you want, but if your only evidence is that one-in-a-million case, I'll remain dubious.
(In my mind, Piracy is Progressive Taxation is a clearer argument.)
One other point you haven't addressed is that of value. I could write my own database interface. Fortunately, Tim Bunce and dozens (hundreds?) of other people have done so for me. That's real value, amortized across thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of hours of work from people who benefit from that collective work. Collaborative development and refinement is a force multiplier.
I could write my own book. (I've done it several times.) I hope that provides real value for the reader, but the benefit I get from writing a book has no such force multiplier. It's an inappropriate metaphor.
Re:Second Response
Mutant321 on 2008-06-20T20:28:46
Have you seen the article about how releasing stuff for free can help book sales? At least, it's apparently worked for him, a reasonably successful author.
I don't think the arugment is about whether copyright holders should lose the right to choose (I certainly don't believe they should). It's about whether it's really as smart as it seems to keep everything closed. (And that's not even touching on things like DRM).
I DJ fairly obscure, underground genres of music. The sites I buy music off have no DRM, so I could easily swap hundreds of tracks with my friends. (Actually I could even if they did have DRM). But doing so would be self-defeating - I know it's a niche, the poeple making it barely scrape a living if at all, so if I really appreciate the music, it's wise to pay for it, to make sure it continues getting produced.
The market for Perl books is likely to be well educated, have a reasonable income, and even access to corporate budgets. If they find a book online for free, and find it useful, there's a good chance they'll buy it. It may even equate to sales that wouldn't have otherwise happened. (The article I linked explains this much better than I could).
Anyway, I think the "unicorns" argument is a straw man. The argument isn't "give away your books and money will drop out of the sky magically", it's "a more open approach to publishing books has been shown to help rather than hinder sales, at least in some cases". Subtle, but important difference. It's an argument with some solid reasoning behind it (which you're welcome to disagree with), not the feel-good warm fuzzies you seem to be portraying it as.
Re:Second Response
chromatic on 2008-06-20T21:41:48
The argument isn't "give away your books and money will drop out of the sky magically", it's "a more open approach to publishing books has been shown to help rather than hinder sales, at least in some cases". Subtle, but important difference.That part is fine. I agree.
The moral or pragmatic arguments ("Hoarding knowledge is wrong" or "You can't grep a dead tree" or "Hyperlinked annotations could make Finnegan's Wake comprehensible" or "Most books never earn back their advances; other economic models may work better") are fine. I can follow those. I might even believe them.
I disagree with the next leap in the argument, the one that says "It worked for Doctorow and it worked for Rowling. Therefore, you should do it because it worked for a handful of cases we've all heard of."
If it's true that unfettered non-commercial redistribution enables word of mouth appeal and publicity which can produce some degree of success, and if it's true that word of mouth appeal and publicity is a main driver of that success, isn't it true that no one's going to hear (through word of mouth anyway) about unsuccesses?
Most printed and non-redistributable books fail to produce a return on investment. I believe the failure rate is over 90%. It may be 95%. While the criteria for success may be far different between redistributable and non-redistributable books, I have seen no compelling argument that the success rate depends at all on the licensing terms of the book.
That's where the magical unicorns come in.
Re:Second Response
brian_d_foy on 2008-06-20T22:09:21
Books aren't closed in the sense that they are inaccessible. That you have to buy them doesn't make them closed. Everyone can get them. They just have to pay for them. The information is not locked up, though (and the baens-universe stuff apparently uses "fair use" in a way that doesn't match the legal definition).
I don't find that people who get Perl books for free are likely to pay for them. I might get some sales that I might not have gotten, but I think I lost more sales that I would have got if the book wasn't free. I don't see any evidence that giving a book away for free has helped sales. Do you have any examples of where this has worked? I can't think of one.
I haven't found that giving out free copies or subscriptions of The Perl Review has helped sales at all. Neither have many other magazine and newspaper publishers across all subject areas.
I think a lot of people are just guessing based on some idealist worldview they have, and they forget that they have no real experience in publishing, sales, or writing. I've tried it both ways. Free is nice, but it has absolutely no advantage to me, the guy doing the work.
I'm not sure how the PerlFAQ got into this or how you'd measure differentness, but I think it's substantially different. That's mostly because I have commit access and I post one of the answers to comp.lang.perl.misc every 6 hours. I'd estimate that I've completely rewritten 20% of the PerlFAQ in the last six years.
Most of the questions are the same, but I've added new questions too. I even added one that Shlomi suggested a week ago (and only hours after he suggested it).
Re:I think the PerlFAQ is different :)
chromatic on 2008-06-20T16:43:03
Most of the questions are the same, but I've added new questions too.My mistake. Shows what I know. I was probably thinking of the rest of the core documentation, which (in my admittedly flawed memory) hasn't changed much in the past ten years.
