It does my heart good. It really does. Amid all the blather and hypocrisy about copyright and intellectual property, a publisher has come out and stated the bleedin' obvious - that the free flow of information helps authors, and restricting it is counterproductive and ultimately futile. Tim O'Reilly, whose company publishes a highly successful line of technical computing titles, has come out swinging against the restrictions imposed by the current copyright regimen. His comments were made before the current controversy over the Google Print program, but they could have been made in direct response to the stupid reaction of many publishers and writers, who claim that Google's attempt to digitise the contents of some of the world's libraries is a breach of copyright. Mr O'Reilly has written a short polemic which outlines the changed realities of the digital age as succinctly as I have ever seen it put [Piracy is Progressive Taxation from December 2002]. And this from a man who made his fortune through the traditional publishing model. [Quoting O'Reilly:]
Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy," he points out. This should be self-evident to anybody with even a passing understanding of publishing, but it seems most people just don't get it. More than 100,000 books are published each year, with several million books in print, yet fewer than 10,000 of those books have any significant sales, and only 100,000 or so of all the books in print are carried in even the largest stores. Most books have a few months on the shelves of the major chains, and then wait in the darkness of warehouses from which they will move only to the recycling bin.
The power of the internet vastly improves the likelihood of a reader and an author linking up. The same is true of music and film. The old distribution models favour a few top-selling authors and musicians, and the big Hollywood studios, to the detriment of lesser-known but in many cases more talented creative artists....Read his essay in full. It's a refreshing look at how clever people can embrace the internet and the new model of digital distribution. Mr O'Reilly's company still publishes books, but its business model goes way beyond print. Take a look at www.oreilly.com to see the future of publishing (and read the bleats of Google's critics to have a look at the past while it's still there).
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/01/2005 10:10:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
