Copyright of the Future…

In the future, maybe even less than fifty years from now, copyright will no longer exist. That’s not to say everyone will be allowed to copy things willy-nilly, they won’t. No one will be allowed to copy anything. Period.

With the Earth’s population approaching 10 billion people in the year 2060, drastic measures will be undertaken to curb this rampant population growth.

The death penalty factors in a big way.

If anyone is caught copying someone else’s work, either on purpose or on accident, they will be executed. It doesn’t matter how old the person is or the reason for the infraction.

This will seriously hamper any creative people from wanting to create a new book, film, painting, song, or anything else. That means no more parodies, pastiches, or satire either. No new anything will be created.

The only thing that is allowed to be made is covers of old songs, provided they do not veer away from the original song and pay any royalties to the original writers of the song. But, even then, you’re not safe. If it’s revealed that a series of notes from one song are deemed to be too close to those of another song, then the execution hammer is wielded against those who sought to hide the infraction.

The world will become a creative wasteland.

This work is published under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license.

This work takes part in the Future of Copyright Contest http://indiegogo.com/Future-of-Copyright

Anatomy of a Book Release

On Tuesday, January 24th, 2012, the United States Pirate Party released their first book, No Safe Harbor. As I was the editor of the book, this is not a review, I cannot objectively critique this book, nor do I wish to try.

We released the book as an ebook in several formats, including .mobi, .epub, .PDF, and others. There was also a printed book available for those who wanted them. The book costs $9.99.

The original price of the book was set at $13.99, the price gave the USPP $2 per book. Clearly we didn’t want to overprice the book, but we did still want some kind of residual from it.

The change came about a few days before release when Createspace, the company doing the Print-on-Demand services for the book, altered their royalty and pay structure. Amazingly it was in our favor. I decided to lower the price to $9.99. At this price, no one could say we were price gouging, and it still gave us the $2 royalty rate we wanted.

Whether anyone but I wanted that, is beyond me. While Andrew Norton and a few others worked on the book, I was the “main” editor. I contacted the authors, set terms, wrote contracts, and figured out what order to put the essays in.

While it was tedious at times, I’d still do it again, and plan to, actually.

The book, both ebook and printed book, were released under a Creative Commons license, BY-NC-SA.

Sometime on Jan 24th, the website went down. Andrew, myself, another guy named Andrew, Chris, and some others rallied to fix what was wrong. We created a page on Blogger and redirected our link, http://www.nosafeharbor.com, to it.

While we waited for traffic to pick back up, we scoured the Net and saw what happened. The site was Slashdotted. A deluge occurred.

The files for the book were hosted on the PPI site, no problem there. All we needed was a page for people to get to, hence, the Blogger page.

While watching the site stats, we saw it take off. First a hundred, then two, then, not even two hours after the site was back up, we had over 2000 hits to the page.

At the end of the day, it would go up to 13,000 hits.

At the same time, we had a Torrent set up. I have personally seeded nearly 3GB of a 50MB file (of course if someone is using uTorrent or a cooler system, they could download only the files they wanted and not worry about the 40MB RTF file.

We haven’t sold many copies of the physical book, we didn’t expect to. It was actually my idea to have a physical book, as I am struck by what Whitman called, “The mania of owning things.”

Somehow people seem to care more if your book/film/album is in a physical format, that it doesn’t “matter” if it’s not in something made of matter.

Within the day of the book’s release, I found somewhere I now forget where, someone translating the book into Spanish. I did however remember the link to the people translating it into Russian.

http://notabenoid.com/book/25510

I couldn’t believe it, Russians want to translate this book into Russian!? More power to them.

I love this, I really do. I keep Googling and seeing what I come up with.

Common As Air

I recently read Adrian Johns’ book Piracy and reviewed it a few posts ago. I was a bit leery about starting on this book so soon afterward for fear that I’d get bored of reading a book that was bound to contain a lot of the same information in it.

My fear was proved to be unfounded as Lewis Hyde handles his material deftly and with a bit of humor. It’s a very educational book. I found myself making note of certain pages to recite to friends who might be interested.

On one page, Mr. Hyde makes mention of a man who set foot into a soundproof chamber only to come out annoyed that it didn’t work. He could still hear two sounds, a high one and a low one. He was told that everyone heard those sounds. One was his blood pumping, the other was his nervous system.

I had no idea the nervous system made a noise. I’ve never heard it.

This was to illustrate the fact that there is no such thing as “silence” – there’s only noise we don’t mind and noise we don’t. Even a forest in the middle of nowhere has noise, even if no trees fall.

He goes on to speak at length about Ben Franklin (a chapter everyone should read) and how he invented a pile of things, yet patented nothing. Only one item he invented went to his grave as to how he made it. Several colonial governments had Franklin print their currencies. He devised a way to prevent counterfeiting.

The book goes on and explains how the commons, or rather, the public domain is one of those precious resources that has been being drained for years. Nothing since the 1970s has been able to be made to be public domain at birth. Sure someone could sign their rights away to an invention, but, with a piece of paperwork, they could have their rights back in an instant.

Long story short, this is an excellent must-read title.

Book’s site.

Piracy

If you’ve ever wondered about the origins and history of piracy this book delivers in spades. Now, that’s piracy as it applies to the unlicensed selling of items, not on the high seas.

I had no idea about the struggles Issac Newton and his fellow scientists faced in their day as people would take their works and publish them without permission or that there was such a thing as pirate buses in London.

Seriously, buses that operated outside of the chain of command of the normal bus system.

This book doesn’t end there. It talks about the piracy problems of today from Napster and Kazaa to beyond. It’s a great source of piracy history.

Publisher website.

WIPO Magazine (August 2010)

Coincidentally, today I also received the latest WIPO Magazine, dated August 2010 (the October issue is already on the website, however).

This issue contains information about a Japanese initiative to educate people about Intellectual Property.

There is also a sweet article about a guy who created a machine that creates water from the wind. It’s totally cool. It acts like a windmill that spins with the breeze and collects the humidity in the air and converts it to drinkable water. It also does not required electricity, that’s what the windmill part produces.

WIPO Magazine website page.

WIPO Japan contest

Anime News Network recently posted information that the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Japanese office has announced a contest for people to create a manga (comic) to educate readers about pirated and bootlegged items.

The contest is in association with Kadokawa Shoten. The winner will win the equivalent of $14,000 and have their comic serialized in Japanese, English, and several other languages for six months.

ANN Article.
WIPO Page.

WoW & Philosophy

Granted, the first thing I think about when I think of “World of Warcraft” isn’t Philosophy. It’s most likely “LEROY JENKINS!”

But I digress.

For years I have said that there is more to MMOs than partying with a group of Paladins or Orcs and smiting rabbits across the lands of Azeroth or Vana’diel, or even Eorzea.

Of course there is more to it. I never started comparing in-game actions to the work of Immanuel Kant or tried to figure out if stealing a drop from a mob was right or wrong because the item didn’t actually exist.

The people who wrote this book, did however. If you like MMOs in general, this is a book you will enjoy. The editors could have totally made a book called “MMORPGs And Philosophy” but by sticking to one game, this book creates a fuller experience. A chapter on WoW and then one on EverQuest, followed by The Matrix Online would just read like a “Oh, in this game we have x, but in this other game we have y” book.

I have always felt that MMORPGs were little micocosms of people, a small integrated unit where people and cultures who may never meet in real life come together anyway and find a way to live… and try not to let the rabbits kill them.

Many people who know me or read this site know that one of my favorite fields of study in MMOs is the economy. Eli Kosminsky has a totally awesome essay on the intricacies of the economy of World of Warcraft.

The other chapters all delve into pure philosophical territory. There are issues at play that mirror things that happen in real life such as protests and temporary suspensions (what is prison if not a temporary suspension from life?) that take place in WoW and other games.

While disguised as a book about WoW, this book can be applied to almost any MMORPG, or to real life itself. Of course, not all of it can be applied to real life, after all, how often do you go to the auction house to sell that sword you no longer need?

Official link to the book’s site

Own a piece of Lucasfilm History…

…The history in question is a Cease and Desist letter sent to a Hong Kong firm that was selling a “light saber” on eBay. The firm could have just said “phooey” and taken down their “light saber” yet they did what no one expected… they’re currently selling the C&D on eBay.

As of this writing, it’s at the $800 mark.

EDIT: It eventually sold for more around $3,800.

Original Source
eBay listing

Coalition of Manga Publishers

Hot on the heels of the DOJ shutting down several comic book scan sites, comes this news, also from ANN.

A coalition comic book and manga publishers is pushing for litigation against at least 30 illegal scanlation websites.

Japanese manga is originally written in Japanese. These scanlation groups somehow get a hold of the “raw” pages of different manga and have someone translate them into English and then post these pages on the Internet.

These newly translated pages are known as “scanlations,” a combination of “scan” and “translation.”

The legality of scanlations and even fansubbing is in itself of interest to me. It is of course, illegal. The problem I have seen with both of these mediums is that it creates a demand for a product, yet, if the product does come out commercially in the country that is doing the scanlating or fansubbing, no one buys the product.

Why buy it when you’ve already read it or watched it online?

“The coalition asserts that scanlation aggregator sites now host thousands of pirated titles, earning ad revenue and/or membership dues at creators’ expense while simultaneously undermining foreign licensing opportunities and unlawfully cannibalizing legitimate sales.”

Membership dues?

That right there gives everyone who ever perused these sites plausible deniability over whether or not they knew the sites were not strictly legal. The old “But I was paying for it…” defense. But it does tell me that people are willing to PAY for content.

I can see where the publishers are coming from, but, really, there has to be an easier way to get manga to people than waiting for a company to release it over here when they feel like it.

The only manga that I’ve been reading is a series known as Loveless. Look at the release cycle on the below linked Wikipedia page. Tokyopop started releasing it at a pretty good clip in 2006. In 2006 and 2007 a good portion of the series was released. Then, in 2008, we got one volume. In 2009, nothing. In 2010, so far nothing.

Of course, if you look to the left of that page, you’ll see that there’s only one more released volume in Japan, volume 9. Odds are we’ll see that volume later this year IF we’re lucky.

Yun Kouga has gone on record stating that there will be 15 volumes of Loveless. So at volume 9, we’re more than halfway there!

But, having to wait a year, or more, between published volumes in English is plain torture. Every time a new volume comes out, I have to re-read all the volumes I have just so I’ll be able to keep up with the story.

If I wanted to, I could easily find a scanlation site that offers Loveless and read each chapter as they come available.

The demand is there, manga publishers! You just need to find a way to tap it, or someone else will, legally or not.

This is why there’s an online Anime Network, this is why Crunchyroll exists. Heck, Crunchyroll started out as a place where people could watch bootlegs of Asian titles. After awhile, they turned legit and now offer officially licensed programs. Crunchyroll now “simulcasts” new shows in Japan on its site for people to watch in the US and elsewhere.

Like I said, manga publishers, it’s up to you to find a way to satiate our demand for new manga. Why can’t there be a “Manga Channel” or “Crunchyroll for Manga”?

Heck, you could easily monetize something like that with ads or subscriptions for Premium Content (like Crunchyroll or Anime Network), or even have an exclusive shop on the site that sells bath towels or bags or whatever of people’s favorite manga.

Thank you and good night.

Original posting on this site.
Loveless Wikipedia link.

How I became the leader of a political party

Short version: I randomly walked into the meeting and by the time I walked out I was the top guy of a political party boasting at least 2,000 members in the United States.

Long version:

Where to begin? Most would say “The Beginning,” and I would say, rock on. The beginning for this story starts about a year ago. That was when I first heard of the United States Pirate Party. I was sympathetic with their aims, so I contacted the leader and was added to the “Alpha Users” mailing list. The reason behind this was because I wanted to possibly write about the Party one day in the future. The mailing list was the best way to keep up with new happenings in the Party.

Right off, most people are turned off by the term “pirate party” as though this group wants nothing more than to make it legal to download Lady Gaga songs illegally from the Internet. This is far from the truth. I liken the whole “pirate party” thing to more like pirate radio, but trying to change things from the inside, not on boats broadcasting from who knows where.

You can check out the USPP’s platforms on this webpage:
USPP Platforms

I digress.

In late December 2009, I received an email from the list saying there was an emergency meeting and that all were invited. I had nothing better to do, so I clicked the link to the chat room and joined.

The fulltext of that meeting can be found Here. The reason for the meeting was because the then-current administrator of the party was being lax in his duties and had been missing in action for a month and a half. This meeting was to call a vote for a third vote of no confidence (VoNC) and as set forth in the USPP Constitution, once someone had three VoNC’s, they were removed from office. The only stipulation was that on that same night someone had to be voted into that office.

No one wanted to do it.

After a few minutes, I said I would. A vote was cast and I was instituted as the Administrator (Pro Tempore). I was to also head up the emergency election in late January, I believe the date was January 26th. I chose not to run for re-election.

With this new post, I found myself as the only officer of the USPP. Every other officer post was vacant (well, Records Officer still had someone in it, but she was soon removed as well). My time as the Admin (Pro Tem) was mostly spent answering questions people had about the party and how they could help. I also worked to keep the party united during this time of change.

Everyone involved in one aspect or another of the Party was well informed and I really enjoyed working with every one of them.

After the election and the new Admin took over, I kind of felt like I’d lost something. There was no way I could tell the new admin that I want to be admin again, so I did the next best thing. In the February election, I ran for, and won, the Records Officer position.

When I first thought about writing a post about this, it was way more epic.

USPP Website