3.809 copyright, cont. (38)
Willard McCarty (MCCARTY@vm.epas.utoronto.ca)
Fri, 1 Dec 89 22:58:05 EST
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 3, No. 809. Friday, 1 Dec 1989.
Date: Fri, 1 Dec 89 20:22:00 EST
From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@OAC.UCLA.EDU>
Subject: Re: 3.807 copyright, cont. (51)
The problem with looking at use from a royalty point of view is that if
you pay a royalty for a recording, you can play the recording, and it is
yours. If you access something electronically and pay, say 0001cent per
word, you have recorded it and can reproduce it, and the author is
mucho out of pocket-o. It is not as if you buy a book, from which the
author derives a royalty of say ten cents per dollar. that is why
xeroxing books or portions of books, even for teaching use is really
punishable by a fine of 10,000$ if you are caught. It is called
copyright infringement. Fair use is to copy a page or so for quotation.
The dubbing of cassettes is really illegal and is a form of highway
robbery, of the authors of music and words, because the dubbing decks
copy and the copies are sold, which is not fair use, but theft. The DAT
problem today is part of it, and no one seems to want even to charge a
royalty of say 5cents per blank tape. My congressman and the various
reps of composers like BMI and ASCAP are willing to have such a an
arrangement but the tape sellers and deck sellers wont have it. Why? I
presume they prefer theft, becaus they can sell ever so many blank tapes
for theft, and since it is cutthroat, they dont want a fixed levy per
blank tape to be added on before the item leaves the blank tape
factory. Look at the theft of copyright originating in Asia! Hundreds
of millions, for tapes, records, and, yes medical books, not to speak
of many other kinds of technical books. No, it has be resolved that
proper fees and control be set up beforehand, to try, just to try a
little, to pay the originators of what the thieves value something for
their creations. Kessler at UCLA