Copy rite

The rite of copyright must change to be fair to everyone who isn't digital. I believe as this New York Times Oped contributor points out. that you can reprint and link to sites on line, that are impossible to quote in print. I am in the process of publishing a book from my blogs and although I have quoted at length from many media sources online, I can't reprint them in print without paying, including reprints from The New York Times. So obviously I won't be able to reprint this blog in print. You'll only be able to read it here.

Here's the full story as it appeared in The New York times on April 3, 2010 by Marc Aronson:

TODAY, Apple’s iPad goes on sale, and many see this as a Gutenberg moment, with digital multimedia moving one step closer toward replacing old-fashioned books.

Speaking as an author and editor of illustrated nonfiction, I agree that important change is afoot, but not in the way most people see it. In order for electronic books to live up to their billing, we have to fix a system that is broken: getting permission to use copyrighted material in new work. Either we change the way we deal with copyrights — or works of nonfiction in a multimedia world will become ever more dull and disappointing.

The hope of nonfiction is to connect readers to something outside the book: the past, a discovery, a social issue. To do this, authors need to draw on pre-existing words and images.

Unless we nonfiction writers are lucky and hit a public-domain mother lode, we have to pay for the right to use just about anything — from a single line of a song to any part of a poem; from the vast archives of the world’s art (now managed by gimlet-eyed venture capitalists) to the historical images that serve as profit centers for museums and academic libraries.

The amount we pay depends on where and how the material is used. In fact, the very first question a rights holder asks is “What are you going to do with my baby?” Which countries do you plan to sell in? What languages? Over what period of time? How large will the image be in your book?

Given that permission costs are already out of control for old-fashioned print, it’s fair to expect that they will rise even higher with e-books. After all, digital books will be in print forever (we assume); they can be downloaded, copied, shared and maybe even translated. We’ve all heard about the multimedia potential of the iPad, but how much will writers be charged for film clips and audio? Rights holders will demand a hefty premium for use in digital books — if they make their materials available in that format at all.

Seeing the clouds on the horizon, publishers painstakingly remove photos and even text extracts from print books as they are converted to e-books. So instead of providing a dazzling future, the e-world is forcing nonfiction to become drier, blander and denser.

Still, this logjam between technological potential and copyright hell could turn into a great opportunity — if it leads to a new model for how permission costs are calculated in e-books and even in print.

For e-books, the new model would look something like this: Instead of paying permission fees upfront based on estimated print runs, book creators would pay based on a periodic accounting of downloads. Right now, fees are laid out on a set schedule whose minimum rates are often higher than a modest book can support. The costs may be fine for textbooks or advertisers, but they punish individual authors. Since publishers can’t afford to fully cover permissions fees for print books, and cannot yet predict what they will earn from e-books, the writer has to choose between taking a loss on permissions fees or short-changing readers on content.

But if rights holders were compensated for actual downloads, there would be a perfect fit. The better a book did, the more the original rights holder would be paid. The challenge of this model is accurate accounting — but in the age of iTunes micropayments surely someone can figure out a way.

Before we even get to downloads, though, we need to fix the problem for print books. As a starting point, authors and publishers — perhaps through a joint committee of the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers — should create a grid of standard rates and images and text extracts keyed to print runs and prices.

Since authors and publishers have stakes on both sides of this issue, they ought to be able to come up with suggested fees that would allow creators to set reasonable budgets, and compel rights holders to conform to industry norms.

A good starting point might be a suggested scale based on the total number of images used in a book; an image that was one one-hundredth of a story would cost less than an image that was a tenth of it. Such a plan would encourage authors to use more art, which is precisely what we all want.

If rights remain as tightly controlled and as expensive as they are now, nonfiction will be the province of the entirely new or the overly familiar. Dazzling books with newly created art, text and multimedia will far outnumber works filled with historical materials. Only a few well-heeled companies will have the wherewithal to create gee-whiz multimedia book-like products that require permissions, and these projects will most likely focus on highly popular subjects. History’s outsiders and untold stories will be left behind.

We treat copyrights as individual possessions, jewels that exist entirely by themselves. I’m obviously sympathetic to that point of view. But source material also takes on another life when it’s repurposed. It becomes part of the flow, the narration, the interweaving of text and art in books and e-books. It’s essential that we take this into account as we re-imagine permissions in a digital age.

When we have a new model for permissions, we will have new media. Then all of us — authors, readers, new-media innovators, rights holders — will really see the stories that words and images can tell.

Marc Aronson is the author, most recently, of “If Stones Could Speak: Unlocking the Secrets of Stonehenge.”

Fundamental shifts

At the very core of all discussions about reporting, distribution, technology, even design, of news, is the fundamental question of what has news become. A well-respected professor of journalism in England believes there are fundamental shifts afoot in the nature of news.

Here's the story:
Is news over? – George Brock tackles journalism's biggest question
SharePosted: 18/03/10 By: Alexander Walters

Journalism has become "a word wandering around in search of a definition" according to George Brock, the head of journalism at City University London.

In a speech last night entitled 'Is news over?', the former Times international editor questioned the role of journalists and the very nature of journalism in the digital world. He told the audience of students and media professionals gathered at City University that the rapid development of technology had prised the concept of news out of the hands of traditional media.

"The ability for anyone to produce something called news, circulate it, discuss it and edit it brings an oligopoly to a brutal end," he said.

"Until recently journalists could rest secure in the knowledge that it wasn't easy for anyone to claim to be a journalist unless they were in a position to use the capital-intensive equipment to publish or broadcast. That barrier to entry has of course gone."

Brock told how news, once the binding factor in so many communities in the form of a local paper, was now created by online communities which "form, congeal, dissolve and disperse" at a speed unimaginable to previous generations.


On the inevitable question of how to fund journalism, Brock was candid. "There is no law of economics which guarantees that when one business model fails, a replacement one is immediately available," he said.

Yet he went on to suggest that we should be grateful for "ever cheaper, ever lighter" multimedia devices, which allow stories to be told in the broadest possible form, with both audio and visual dimensions. With the decline of newspapers, however, he stressed the importance of maintaining the role of the written word.

"We have to find a way to make sure that words survive in the equation. Each technology tends to affect the way news is reported on that particular platform and some of the most successful ways of telling stories seem to weave words, video and sound together. I only plead that words, so beautiful and so useful, don’t get squeezed out."

Throughout his address, Brock insisted that journalists, if they are to survive, must begin reassessing how they regard themselves and their place in the new structures of the digital world.

"If journalism is to be valued, and perhaps even paid for, that worth has to be clear to people who are not journalists. Journalists have to start by accepting that they don't automatically hold the powerful place in the new information system that they held in the old," he said.

He concluded by telling the audience that journalism is indeed valuable, but reminded those present that challenging times lie ahead.

"We're entering a new communications age and making the argument for journalism all over again needs a little more critical self-appraisal than we have been used to doing. The worth of journalism is real, and its case will need to be made often in the next few years."