On his book Copy This Book! What Data Tells Us about Copyright and the Public Good
Cover Interview of December 02, 2020
A close-up
Apart from the Amazon graph depicted in the previous
section, I would love a browsing reader to encounter the photograph on page 10 of
the book showing workers perched on a steel beam, eating their lunch high above
the Manhattan skyline. Why is it so difficult to determine the ownership (or
lack thereof) of one of the most iconic photographs ever taken?
The frequent impossibility of determining the copyright
status of a work is illustrated by the twisted history of the lunchtime image
(which necessarily includes a consideration of Dr. Sheldon Cooper’s “Soft
kitty, warm kitty” song from the “Big Bang Theory”). Copyright Office data
confirms the shocking lack of public accessibility to photographic works taken
in the middle of the last century.
Copy This Book! seeks to bring home the effects of endless
expansion of copyright law on readers. Although each chapter illustrates this
point in a different way, there is something especially compelling about the
“Lunch Atop A Skyscraper” image and subsequent narrative.
Someone starting their browsing in the middle of the book,
rather than the beginning, would encounter shocking examples of “copyfraud”: false
claims of ownership of public domain works. What could be more enraging than a
publisher claiming to own the copyright in the Declaration of Independence or
the congressional 9/11 committee report? Yet, it happens all the time and
constantly deters the republication of public domain works.
Hopefully, even a browsing reader will be prompted to visit
Getty Images and learn the price people are charged to use public domain
photographs! Of course, it might be easier to just buy the book and find out.
Finally, a quick look at the last page provides a browser
with the punchline for the story, “if you simply cannot afford to pay for it
and would not have bought it anyway, please copy this book!” Reading the book
explains why this statement makes sense.
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
A close-up
Apart from the Amazon graph depicted in the previous section, I would love a browsing reader to encounter the photograph on page 10 of the book showing workers perched on a steel beam, eating their lunch high above the Manhattan skyline. Why is it so difficult to determine the ownership (or lack thereof) of one of the most iconic photographs ever taken?
The frequent impossibility of determining the copyright status of a work is illustrated by the twisted history of the lunchtime image (which necessarily includes a consideration of Dr. Sheldon Cooper’s “Soft kitty, warm kitty” song from the “Big Bang Theory”). Copyright Office data confirms the shocking lack of public accessibility to photographic works taken in the middle of the last century.
Copy This Book! seeks to bring home the effects of endless expansion of copyright law on readers. Although each chapter illustrates this point in a different way, there is something especially compelling about the “Lunch Atop A Skyscraper” image and subsequent narrative.
Someone starting their browsing in the middle of the book, rather than the beginning, would encounter shocking examples of “copyfraud”: false claims of ownership of public domain works. What could be more enraging than a publisher claiming to own the copyright in the Declaration of Independence or the congressional 9/11 committee report? Yet, it happens all the time and constantly deters the republication of public domain works.
Hopefully, even a browsing reader will be prompted to visit Getty Images and learn the price people are charged to use public domain photographs! Of course, it might be easier to just buy the book and find out.
Finally, a quick look at the last page provides a browser with the punchline for the story, “if you simply cannot afford to pay for it and would not have bought it anyway, please copy this book!” Reading the book explains why this statement makes sense.