Open Access News

I have a bit of a dilemma here actually as I vehemently disagree with the AAP’s position. This happens to be an issue I’ve studied very closely (we have a number of books under contract on the subject of intellectual property)...and it’s not even, unfortunately, something I can just keep quiet about disagreeing with either. But I don’t want to put you or the SIP Committee in a difficult situation --in part because I believe the AAP’s position on this is particularly harmful for small and independent publishers....Is it sufficient, when publicly declaiming and doing the things I do, to simply not refer to my membership of the committee? How does the AAP handle this kind of situation (I’m sure I’m hardly the only AAP member who has disagreed with the AAP’s position on a given topic)....Over the last year, I have made a substantial commitment of my company’s time and energy to fighting what I consider to be an intellectual property land grab more significant than the actual 19th century land grab (recognizing that the expansion of trademark protections are probably more egregious than those in copyright). Fair Use is withering and its defenders are relatively few and dramatically under-resourced --I am adding Soft Skull to their number, for what that’s worth. I have several books under contract dealing with different aspects of intellectual property rights, and they would largely be aimed at, inter alia, defending fair use, expanding the use of licenses such as the Creative Commons, and returning the copyright term to the original 28 years, a la the Founder’s Copyright movement. Given this, it would be impossible for me to remain silent when my peers are adopting an approach completely contrary to what our books will be advocating. It is incumbent on me to find whatever soapboxes I can find, and try to make as strong as possible a case as I can to persuade that majority to change their position. I’ve inveighed against both the music and film industry for their shortsightedness in interviews and panel discussions in the past—I would be justifiably branded a hypocrite for failing to do so in my very own industry....[T]he long-term future of American publishing depends fundamentally on the quality of the content that we produce and sell. An excessive focus on the ownership of that content, and on restricting how others might make alternative uses of that content will seriously impinge on the value of that content over decades. A hyperbolic but nevertheless accurate example: Shakespeare’s plays would be impossible to publish under the present conditions....The fundamental goal of copyright in the Constitution is not to confer an absolute property right but rather to stimulate cultural production: a limited property right being a means to that end, rather than an end in itself. Thus we are always intrinsically talking about relative values, trade-offs, balancing acts, etc. Having the world’s books available in searchable and granular format online is a tremendous boon to the culture, and will result in more and better books. Again and again, in comments issued by publishers and authors, by the AAP and the Authors Guild, there is a profound failure to perceive that such rights are not absolute property rights, but relative property rights, issued provisionally to achieve a larger social purpose....I’m not going to address the business issues here except to note that I would love to see empirical data that suggests that the value of our intellectual property would be diminished by its availability in the proposed Google Print for Libraries format...the Amazon Search Inside and Google Print for Publishers both seem to suggest the opposite....I accept that the AAP has to represent the expressed interest of a majority of its members, I do hope that it will not be represented to the public that the AAP is riding to the rescue of its smallest members—it would be just a little too over-the-top.