It is nice to see books on free software finally get their day under the sun and today, Samir Chopra and Scott Dexter have announced the release of Decoding Liberation. Because it is a bit on the pricey side, try to get your library or work to order it and then when you get it, enjoy. I know I did and had the pleasure of reading early versions during an informal reading ground held in NYC 2 years ago and final versions more recently.
Among other great chapters, the one on the aesthetics of code, is, well beautiful. I can’t wait to re-read it.
If you are in the city, make sure to catch one of the book events that will be happening; your very own will help lead a discussion on October 3rd and I might write something up more formal about the book (and of course post here) then.
So, what license is the book released under?
A traditional copyright license, as far as I can tell.
Sorry if that sounds cranky, but a “pricey” book about free and open source software, that isn’t available online, and from which derivative works cannot be freely made, strikes me as having at least the potential for great irony…
I doubt the authors are going to recover their investment of effort from the money they’ll make from sales (if that’s wrong, please correct me, but it is the norm with academic books). So surely they didn’t write this for the royalties, and they aren’t going to make even minimum wage for the time they put in. Rather, I presume they wrote it because they (clearly) care about the topic, they want to spread the word, and because having written it will be a professional asset for them.
So, why the proprietary license? Why not live freedom, instead of just talking about it?
I can’t be at the session on October 3rd, but I hope someone asks them this question.
-Kranky Karl
Comment by Karl Fogel — August 25, 2007 @ 11:26 am
Karl,
Thats fair reason to be kranky. No, we are not going to recover investment of effort from sales, and yes, we didn’t write this for royalties. We really did want people to read what we wrote and we were keen to get published. We were first-time authors, not quite certain of how much leverage we had, either with the publisher who was talking to us, or with other ones down the line. The book didn’t fall into any particular acadmic niche, so we were uncertain about publishing options as well. In the end, all our discussions about price, paperback versions and licensing terms worked not to our advantage (as did other discussions about marketing etc. but I digress). So, yes, there is a great deal of irony in the fact that we have written and published a book about free sofware that is not ‘free’ in some ways (it costs money and its copyright license is restrictive (there is an interesting dicussion to be had, of course, about what freedoms are good for software and which ones for books)). But, we are hoping that early sales will quickly push the publisher into releasing a more reasonably priced version, and that furthermore, the cachet from this book will grant us the power to assert more freedom in picking license terms down the line (I think we had suggested various CC-type terms in the beginning).
Comment by Samir Chopra — August 26, 2007 @ 6:22 am
I think we’re going to meet at Biella and Micah’s soon. I’d love to talk then about what “publishing” means these days, the link between endorsement and distribution terms, how to reach intended audience, etc.
Good luck with the book!
Comment by Karl Fogel — August 26, 2007 @ 12:33 pm
I’m interested in the advantages of publishing through an academic house like Routledge. They obviously have been in the market for academic books for a long time. Since this is also both the authors first book, it sounds like they we’re unfamiliar with the process of publishing and probably the academic book network and issues of distribution, etc…
If this book had been self-published what would have been the disadvantages versus publishing through a well-known academic publisher? Do academic authors use or need editors as peer-review seems to cover the editing process?
I recently tried to convince a friend to self-publish through a print-on-demand service that could have cost him $300 USD for a full-color book and per-print costs after each purchase (with the availability of short print-runs for offline distribution purposes). There is no publicity, editing, or distribution services outside of online offerings included in this package.
It was his first book and ultimately he secured a deal with a publisher. They offered distribution, publicity, endorsement, and an advance (which for people concentrating all their efforts is very important), so it was a more secure and valuable route for him which didn’t require up-front investment.
I’d be interested in hearing academic authors take on self-publishing.
Comment by Adam K — August 26, 2007 @ 7:29 pm
[...] Fogel’s recent comment asking why Samir Chopra and Scott Dexter did not publish Decoding Liberation with some sort of open [...]
Pingback by Interprete » Conversing about Open Access — August 28, 2007 @ 3:18 am
Karl’s question really comes down to whether academic book publication copyright affects intellectual freedom in the same way that software copyright affects software engineering (e.g. in Free Software or Open Source software). I think, in a word(s), no it wouldn’t. For the purposes of re-use – which in academia basically means the ability to quote and critique (and perhaps photocopy chapters for teaching purposes) then the book would already be able to be used freely for intellectual work under a copyright license.
In any case, I don’t see why the issue of it being ‘pricey’ come into it. This is surely the point many time addressed in the ‘Free as in freedom, not beer’ statement made by RMS.
David
Comment by David Berry — August 28, 2007 @ 4:23 am
Hi David,
I think a case can be made that current fair use practices for books/articles are way way way to limited so that just being able to quote small snippets is not enough for the type of intellectual freedom you highlight. Further, photocopying whole chapters for teaching is not necessarily allowed.
Rebecca Tushnet I think argues insightfully why more full fledged copying (way beyond what we have for fair use) is key to secure certain political and democratic processes:
http://www.tushnet.com/copythisessay.pdf
Also, I think price does matter, at least for our students. I know that having a book at home to read instead of schlepping to the library makes a huge difference for the practice of learning.
I cannot assign a book with good conscience at least, that costs 90 dollars. It is just not feasible. And while the library will have 1-2 copies, again reading in 2 hours increments at the library is just not conducive for learning.. So price here matters greatly. Or am I missing something?
Biella
Comment by Biella — August 28, 2007 @ 4:55 am
For reasoned debate I certainly think that quoting and critique are well served for *written* intellectual debates within academia through fair dealing/use (but that is not to say that the limitations on imagery etc might not be a problem). It seems to me that copyright has not held back the giants of the past in their debates and encounters, and it is only the wholesale reproduction of texts in the digital age that has really raised copyright as a concern. Does it matter that we cannot reproduce huge chunks of text? – well outside of the classroom I am not sure why you would want to and if you do, the ability to loosely license the text or to get PD versions is a good compromise. Or let’s face it just buying the book from a bookshop/secondhand dealer.
Secondly I am referring to RMS’s point that he is highlighting the freedom to do things with the text (i.e. libre), not that the price should be ‘free’ (i.e. gratis). We must be very careful about mixing up freedom and price as they are two different arguments, one about say access to primary texts, ability to quote, reproduce and so forth the other about the economics of publication.
In any case, in the UK at least, photocopying from the library a chapter of a book is acceptable under UK law so students can access the text and make a copy for themselves. I really do think that one can distinguish between the needs of students and the copyright bargain that exists to assist research and study and the need (under our existing economic arrangements) for a publisher to recoup losses etc. within the wider economy. Anyway the £90.00 version of books are usually the hard-wearing texts that are made for libraries rather than private consumption.
It is at this point that I begin to wonder if the whole FLOSS arguments are being uncritically applied to everything else. Academic texts are not software and whilst I would not want to see copyright extended to prevent scholars or students from undertaking their research, I think a much more serious threat to academic work comes from the digitalization of texts (See the excellent book “Double Fold” by Nicolson Baker) and of course, then we have the problems of digital rights management to contend with too.
Books have served academic research very well over the centuries and copyright as part of the public/private bargain has also worked pretty well. In the digital age misunderstandings, technological changes, greed and some short-sighted measures are making the whole digital world very difficult for scholars. However, we need to keep our eye fixed on what it is that we are doing when we are teaching, and not get distracted by a kind of digitalist quanitification argument – namely that unless we can all collect hugh textual archives on our harddrives we are somehow unable to learn. Students *should* be going to libraries, should be taking out books, and most of all *should* be reading them… otherwise the libraries will close… and that will be a much greater threat to academic work than not being able to copy whole texts..
Comment by David Berry — August 28, 2007 @ 6:31 am
David,
I am not sure if you saw the post that I wrote today, which asserts that you can’t just compare software to books or even books to articles (perhaps you missed the post).
Of course they can’t be collapsed because they are different genres that require different sorts of licensing schemes and the economics of them are also quite distinct. This is why I advocate for copyright for books, although I think a more limited term is still appropriate.
As per cost: it matters, not due to Free Software-like arguments, but because of access, plain and simple. My university is able to afford a gabillion books no problem because it is relatively wealthy, so when I look for a book, it will most probably be there.
Most universities south of the US border can’t afford books at these prices. When a book is 95 dollars, then the University of Guyana’s of the world just don’t have funds for these books and even smaller universities in the states can’t either. And while there is a good Interlibrary Loan System in the US, it is not international.
Just like cost matters with medical drugs, it matters with books but not because of free speech ala RMS arguments but because it is a matter of justice and fairness when it comes to having access to education and medical services.
And yes students can photocopy chapters but there are limits to this in the US and especially Canada (and Canada has very restrictive fair use policies, which at the University of Alberta was announced on flyers that were splattered all over the university walls. You are not supposed to photocopy more than a certain percentage of a book and official readers are quite pricey because of licensing fees).
And while copyright and patents don’t totally determine the cost of things like books and drugs, they play a role too and so we need to think about these regimes when discussing questions of cost and access.
Comment by Biella — August 28, 2007 @ 7:00 am
Both monetary cost and freedom matter, independently of each other. Biella already pointed out why price matters.
Freedom matters because quoting isn’t the only thing one might want to do with a text: one might also want to make derivative works based on it. For example, translations! This is not a merely theoretical point: niche books and texts that are released under free licenses really *do* get translated by volunteers, see here and here, just to pick two off the top of my head.
I offer translation as the first example only because it is most familiar. There are many other things one might not think of right away, if one is used to regarding books as static objects. What if I like someone’s book, but don’t like their writing style? Why shouldn’t I just release a re-edited version of it? What if I see that it’s missing obvious references — why shouldn’t I just add them? If an argument is ill-made or incomplete, why should a reader not take matters into her own hands?
(Not referring to Chopra and Dexter’s book specifically, of course. I haven’t read it; I’d like to, but probably won’t because it costs $90.)
And just to be clear: this isn’t about attribution, but about accurately-attributed copying and derivation. Of course accurate attribution should be required, by law if necessary, though it’s worth noting that attribution problems has so far not been an issue in the free / open source world, and that’s true for the documentation as well as the software. You can have complete freedom to modify others’ works without that implying the right to steal credit.
David, when you say the freedoms to quote and critique are not infringed, that is a very impoverished notion of “freedom” I think. In the age of the Internet, of a world-wide copying and editing network, we can do much, much better.
Adam, when you say that a publisher offers “distribution, publicity, endorsement”, what you’re essentially saying is that it is appropriate for the *distribution* function to be unified with the *endorsement* function. Isn’t that a bit odd? After all, newspapers prohibit, say, their music critics from receiving payments from the performers they review. Why do we consider it a good system, that the same people who recommend the books (that’s what publicity and endorsement are) are the ones who stand to make more money if the books sell well. If anything, it would make more sense to argue for those to be separate functions. Marketing is an arms race: I understand how it might be to Chopra and Dexter’s advantage to purchase some more ammunition (at the expense of their readers’ freedoms), but the overall arms race dynamic is not conducive to objective evaluation nor creative reuse. What does a publisher offer the public that a word-of-mouth network or reviews site couldn’t offer as well or better?
Peer review? Well, why not do peer review the way we do it in the free software world: *post*-publication.
The same freedoms that are important for software are important for all creative works. The “freedom to fork” is the ultimate peer review mechanism, and should apply to all bit patterns, not just the ones interpretable as running code by machines. Where we must regulate, we should do so only to protect truly scarce resources (i.e., attribution), not artificially scarce resources (the works themselves).
I’m not saying Chopra and Dexter did something morally objectionable here, by the way. I do worry that they may have fatally compromised their book: it will probably find fewer readers this way, and have a shorter active life (in part because readers are not free to keep it up-to-date, and Chopra and Dexter will not have complete freedom to do so either, since the publisher controls release dates now). At $90, I certainly wouldn’t assign it in a class.
FWIW, I released a book about free software under a free license, and I know of at least three places where it’s being used as a classroom text now. The fact that the instructors can just point the students to a URL may have had something to do with this. Also, the text is searchable; that might help. Also, quoting from it is easy, because the text is electronic and online as well as in print and in bookstores. Also, I can keep updating it incrementally, without worrying about when someone might decide to publish a particular snapshot (anyone is free to do so whenever they want). I have volunteer translators translating it into (at last count) eleven languages. I have seen people take the book and transform it into other non-book forms that I don’t even quite understand myself (a “process description” website, in one case).
Do you see what a richer world this is than static content stuck between two covers, bound to a publishing schedule based on batching large quantities of dead tree pulp for expensive, centralized print runs?
I worry that lack of these dynamics will be harmful to Chopra’s and Dexter’s book, and therefore to them. Even if I could afford the book, it would start out with a strike against it from my point of view: the authors are writing (apparently with approval) about free software, but don’t think highly, or perhaps broadly, enough of it to apply the same principles to their own work. So why should a reader take them seriously?
That’s not a rhetorical question. I know why *I* should take them seriously: because they come recommended by Biella, whose judgment I trust. (There’s an endorsing authority unconnected to distribution, by the way.) But for other readers, whose principle knowledge of the work is its own summary, the license terms should set off an alarm.
Comment by Karl Fogel — August 28, 2007 @ 8:07 am
Hi Biella,
Sorry no I hadn’t seen your other post.
Just to reiterate my point was that questions of ‘freedom’ as in libre were being mixed with questions of social justice. You can have libre freedom without ‘free’ books, in fact look at the way in which Linux Distro’s opened up the possibility of software freedom by the very act of charging for a ‘free’ thing. That is not to condone expensive books or limited supplies of texts – I was trying to clarify that we should keep the arguments separate.
Karl, your arguments seem to lack a political economy. Computers to read all these digital texts are expensive, as are the networks to support them, electricity to run them, schools to train the readers and so on. Books are cheap, are simple to use and don’t need continual upgrades and mainainence. If I were keen to help spread literacy in the South, I think part of the strategy could be to buy up lots of second-hand books and create vast new libraries scattered around these countries. In fact, I think that would be a good idea in the North too.
I do not think that we should be using books just because they are ‘free’. I think much more important is the value of the ideas and arguments contained within them. I also see nothing wrong with ‘static’ content. In fact I am rather glad that, say, my copy of Marx’s Capital or Plato’s Republic are not morphing whilst I teach a class, and more that the ideas they contain remain historically anchored and the more interesting for it.
Comment by David M. Berry — August 28, 2007 @ 10:25 am
If being in book form adds value, then charge for that form. There’s nothing inherently un-economic about printing books whose content is freely available. I mean, my publisher is doing it. Nowhere was I arguing against books as physical objects, and if having content in that physical form is valuable, then there will be a market for that.
If you want to teach a course on the text Marx wrote, use that text. The way you speak of it, it’s like the text is a single physical object, such that if someone changes it, then it must be changed for all the readers. But it’s not like that! If I change *my* copy of Marx, your copy is unaffected. Of course any group reading situation needs to address issues of which versions of a text they’re going to use (Bible study groups have been addressing this for years).
If you want stable content, by all means, have stable content. But why should your need for stable content interfere with someone else’s freedom to change their copy of something? If you don’t want to read that copy, then don’t read it! It’s not an either-or proposition. Dynamic content is a *superset* of static content, not its opposite.
I do not understand how you can have ‘libre’ freedom without ‘free as in beer’ freedom. While the latter does not necessarily imply the former, the former always implies the latter. If everyone can share X freely with others, than the cost will always be driven down to zero (hence X will have both freedoms); if people cannot so share, then X is, by definition, not “libre” free.
Zero-cost doesn’t mean that nobody anywhere is charging for something, it just means there’s no monopoly on setting the price of a non-rivalrous good (and therefore the price will be driven to zero, for those willing to access it in the forums in which it is available at zero cost). The Linux Distros are a bogus example: they weren’t charging for the content, they were charging for the convenience of a certain physical medium with the content nicely packaged on it — exactly as I’m proposing can happen with books.
So, I didn’t make any explicit argument for political economy because it seemed pretty obvious.
Comment by Karl Fogel — August 28, 2007 @ 10:54 am
[...] mostly to David Berry and Karl Fogel, there is a debate unfolding in the comment section of my post on whether it makes sense to open source books and in what ways the model of free software is [...]
Pingback by Interprete » Open Sourcing Books — August 28, 2007 @ 11:03 am
And, excuse me, if Plato hadn’t been in the public domain, how many translations would you have (today) to choose from for your class?
(Or would you rather not have that choice?)
Comment by Karl Fogel — August 28, 2007 @ 11:03 am
David,
The argument that Karl’s argument missed the political economy boat is really moot in the face of a $90 USD book. My questions about services and value of going through a publisher we’re trying get at why this book costs so much. If its because of the expensive computers that use the expensive printers that print excessive batch runs of books, then the economy of that doesn’t make sense in our technological and manufacturing environment.
There has to be something else driving that cost, and if it’s tied up in something that’s replacable or its value has been misvalued, we should figure it out.
I pointed out an example where someone could pay $100 USD (well, I quoted the full-color cost of $300) to setup a printable b & w book with full color cover. For every book ordered through various online offerings a print charge would be assessed that would hopefully be covered by the sales price of the book (the print charge would be nowhere near $90). The economics of $90 per books just doesn’t make sense in this case. As Biella has pointed out, price does matter. So why are we paying so much for academic books? I think the best way to understand that is to go to the customers of getting these books published, The Authors.
Comment by Adam K — August 28, 2007 @ 11:40 pm
Hi Karl,
Libre does not imply gratis. As you point out in your post, Plato is public domain and therefore notionally ‘libre free’ (albeit with certain state imposed restrictions on use) but nonetheless we are still happy to pay for it as organised and structured in book form (and the public domain is maintained by taxes). You say that Linux Distros are ‘bogus’ but the point is that just because I can download the distribution for free gratis, doesn’t mean that I want to. You assume a utilitarian economic rationality that doesn’t always exist. People are forever paying for things that are notionally libre free (whether to support them, political inclinations, for the fun of it or whatever).
Your political economy then points to a certain paradox, because you want everything to be free, you assume that the network or whatever is ‘free’ and therefore there will be no cost. But there is always a cost, someone, somewhere is paying, whether through taxes, subsidy from elsewhere (e.g. telcos), public schooling and so on. We live in a capitalistic economy and unless you are advocating communist revolution to abolish all property rights then profit/loss will always appear on even the most digital of balance sheets. Your argument therefore seems to come down to a kind of Californian Ideology that fails to take into account the materiality of even the most ephemeral digital content – it has to reside *somewhere*, and be accessed somewhere else and there is a cost to it.
To be honest, I am not sure where you are getting your idea of ‘freedom’ from, is it a kind of right-wing libertarianism? Where does the concept of freedom originate? Is it from God? Some higher transcendental plane? Freedom to change an authored book is not a freedom at all, it is pointless. Why on earth would you want to edit Marx’s Capital, what possible advantage would your ‘newer’ ‘better’ versions have except destroying the very concept of his original argument and book (I presume this is what you meant rather than new translations). No, we already can quote, critique and write *our* *own* books and hence make our own arguments. If you want to write a commentary, feel free, many authors are able to do this under the copyright system without too many hassles.
I feel confident that even had Plato not been in the public domain there would still be a vast readership for such an important book. In any case you seem to be forgetting that new translations are subject to copyright – and unless you teach in the original greek – you probably rely on translation that were, at some point copyrighted and as such paid for the work of the translator and the publisher. The system of academic book copyright does not appear to me to be completely broken (but that is not to say small changes might be made), and I therefore fail to see the advantages of *your* arguments asking us to ‘fix’ it using open source methods.
Comment by David Berry — August 29, 2007 @ 1:25 am
David,
I think you are overlooking the fact that Karl did say:
“If being in book form adds value, then charge for that form. ”
When he is arguing free/libre, it is for the content not for the infrastructure that allows the content to be distributed/hosted, so I don’t think he is missing that crucial piece of PE.
He is an author who has released his books for “Free” but the publisher does charge for them and I am pretty sure he is aware that this is necessary to distribute content whether it is in digital/treeware form. But this is his point: when you make something libre: someone can charge for the distribution (and many do) but you can’t charge for or control the content (the gratis part, which does not mean total gratis, but a certain type of gratis).
Also in terms of your insistence that you would never want to change Marx, or Plato as an argument that copyright is good for books, there are different genres of works whose “collaborative” sprit, if you will, are disticnt. And you do have some types of books/genres where it makes a lot of sense to have a much more open or porous system than we have (think literature). But we have one blanket copyright system, with one blanket rule so you can’t translate, borrow, and redo for all cases of creative works and this has impeded a good deal with creativity. So when I argue against some of the issues with copyright, I can’t just take academic books in mind because copyright affects all types of books, creative works etc.
And again, this is somewhat independent issue, but Adam is right: 90 dollars does not make sense in many regards for buyers here (and especially buyers in poorer countries) and it makes sense to try to figure out 1) why this is the case 2) how to lower the cost as it makes sense to distribute that sort of book far and wide. Believe me, if it had been 35 dollars or less, I would have assigned it to my class this fall… And I will still assign it in the future, but the publisher will not be making as much money as there will only be one copy at the library here. The irony.
Finally I am interested in what you think is wrong with copyright. You mention that there are a “few” wrong things with “academic book copyright,” which is surprsing given the vast literature on the problems with a system that exists in near perpetuity and the fact that fair use, at least in the US, is quite broken. When the user has to bear the legal (read: economic) brunt of proving that something is fair use, that is fundamentally broken.
I am not fundamentally oppposed to copyright for books, I would just call for a much more limited term, one that allows the costs to be recouped for those making possible the distribution. I am not sure if the appropriate period is 3 years, 5 years, or 10 but certainly not 95!
Comment by Biella — August 29, 2007 @ 5:01 am
Hi Biella,
I am just not sure that you can dislocate form and content in that way (see McLuhan, Kittler, Heidegger etc). Nor does freeing the content through a copyright license or giving to the public domain does not change the fundamental economics of distribution of the text. Something, somewhere will need to be the carrier – and whilst currently we all pretend that the Internet is free for distribution – I am not sure how long that will go on as moves in the ITU, Telcos and so on start to lock it down (i.e. ipV6 etc). Anyway, the cost of a laptop/computer remains, as does printing, electricity, difficulty of reading on screen etc etc etc. So giving the text away, as it were, cannot be the sole answer, and certainly cannot be the answer to improving education, academic debate or the production of literature.
So what is the best way to facilitate the production of texts to contribute to the Parliament of Texts that we use in academia (which was my point of reference). It seems to me that Free licenses are *not* going to produce better books, nor is it going to produce better arguments. This is critical, and ignored by FLOSS-like arguments.
Part of the problem with your position is that you have a misconception that the £90.00 edition is in some way, meant to be bought by the public. Not at all, the first hardbacks are usually library editions – made in an expensive way to ensure they can take the thumbing and rough treatment meted out to them by students. This edition is then sold and later a paperback copy is often released precisely for students etc which is usually much cheaper. I think it is a public good for the publishers to produce these versions, good for the libraries to stock them and for the students to be able to access them. They charge a high price to recoup their losses and continue releasing books – that lets face it will only ever sell a limited number (usually only to libraries). The publishers also often supply an value-add service by proof-reading, editing and neatly typesetting the text, adding indices and so forth. These are the economics of publishing.
The question is when it comes to academic publishing does a 95 year term really cause problems? I don’t think so. Many authors of academic books automatically regain the copyright when the book goes out-of-print and at that point they can decide to distribute over the Internet, sell on POD services via Amazon or even license as copyleft or whatever.
We as academics can throughout this entire process use, critique and quote from books. Yes there are some real problems with IPR – for example trademarks can be enforced against publishers ( Sounding out the City by Michael Bull was forced by Sony to purge Walkman (TM) from the book). These can and should be addressed, however they did not stop the publication of the research results.
I just think that the arguments taken from FLOSS and then applied to books are not really thought through very well and often blindly applied.
Your dilemma over assigning expensive books is not new, well before free licenses and the Internet academics had to balance accessibility with cost, and libraries are part of that balance. However, good books are good books, and I would always assign them to a course because we should be studying the important texts. In the worst case scenario for out-of-print books or rare texts I have even contacted authors to get them to send me copies of chapters to use (and never been refused). I also photocopy chapters for the library (and they then pay the copyright fee to the publisher) if necessary.
You ask what I think is wrong with copyright. Well, I am concerned about many other mediums and their relationship with copyright, but academic books are not on the whole a major problem when being quoted, critiqued or commented upon however once we try to use them digitally, yes there are problems there (e.g. in the UK digital copies have different and harsher rules governing use than photocopies). Additionally I am rather concerned about the movement towards Journal publication, particularly the move to very expensive digital libraries – and the short-sighted librarians who are throwing out there paper copies (again see Double Fold by Nicolson Baker for a great discussion). The economics and practices of Journal publication have been rather anti-scholar in some instances, and the assignment of copyright in these instances does seem problematic (and can be addressed through Open Access publication and through web publication of drafts).
So a long answer, but it is a complex issue and I think, as I have already stated, far more complex than just treating books like FLOSS.
Best
David
Comment by David Berry — August 29, 2007 @ 5:35 am
Hi Biella,
I am just not sure that you can dislocate form and content in that way (see McLuhan, Kittler, Heidegger etc). Nor does freeing the content through a copyright license or giving to the public domain does not change the fundamental economics of distribution of the text. Something, somewhere will need to be the carrier – and whilst currently we all pretend that the Internet is free for distribution – I am not sure how long that will go on as moves in the ITU, Telcos and so on start to lock it down (i.e. ipV6 etc). Anyway, the cost of a laptop/computer remains, as does printing, electricity, difficulty of reading on screen etc etc etc. So giving the text away, as it were, cannot be the sole answer, and certainly cannot be the answer to improving education, academic debate or the production of literature.
So what is the best way to facilitate the production of texts to contribute to the Parliament of Texts that we use in academia (which was my point of reference). It seems to me that Free licenses are *not* going to produce better books, nor is it going to produce better arguments. This is critical, and ignored by FLOSS-like arguments.
Part of the problem with your position is that you have a misconception that the £90.00 edition is in some way, meant to be bought by the public. Not at all, the first hardbacks are usually library editions – made in an expensive way to ensure they can take the thumbing and rough treatment meted out to them by students. This edition is then sold and later a paperback copy is often released precisely for students etc which is usually much cheaper. I think it is a public good for the publishers to produce these versions, good for the libraries to stock them and for the students to be able to access them. They charge a high price to recoup their losses and continue releasing books – that lets face it will only ever sell a limited number (usually only to libraries). The publishers also often supply an value-add service by proof-reading, editing and neatly typesetting the text, adding indices and so forth. These are the economics of publishing.
The question is when it comes to academic publishing does a 95 year term really cause problems? I don’t think so. Many authors of academic books automatically regain the copyright when the book goes out-of-print and at that point they can decide to distribute over the Internet, sell on POD services via Amazon or even license as copyleft or whatever.
We as academics can throughout this entire process use, critique and quote from books. Yes there are some real problems with IPR – for example trademarks can be enforced against publishers ( Sounding out the City by Michael Bull was forced by Sony to purge Walkman (TM) from the book). These can and should be addressed, however they did not stop the publication of the research results.
I just think that the arguments taken from FLOSS and then applied to books are not really thought through very well and often blindly applied.
Your dilemma over assigning expensive books is not new, well before free licenses and the Internet academics had to balance accessibility with cost, and libraries are part of that balance. However, good books are good books, and I would always assign them to a course because we should be studying the important texts. In the worst case scenario for out-of-print books or rare texts I have even contacted authors to get them to send me copies of chapters to use (and never been refused). I also photocopy chapters for the library (and they then pay the copyright fee to the publisher) if necessary.
You ask what I think is wrong with copyright. Well, I am concerned about many other mediums and their relationship with copyright, but academic books are not on the whole a major problem when being quoted, critiqued or commented upon however once we try to use them digitally, yes there are problems there (e.g. in the UK digital copies have different and harsher rules governing use than photocopies). Additionally I am rather concerned about the movement towards Journal publication, particularly the move to very expensive digital libraries – and the short-sighted librarians who are throwing out there paper copies (again see Double Fold by Nicolson Baker for a great discussion). The economics and practices of Journal publication have been rather anti-scholar in some instances, and the assignment of copyright in these instances does seem problematic (but can be addressed through Open Access publication and through web publication of drafts).
So the long answer is that I believe that it is more than just assigning books free licenses and that the complexities of academic publication warrant more careful analysis than the simple equation of FREE=GOOD, COPYRIGHT=BAD. We must concentrate on the quality of the books not (just) the copyright regime.
Best
David
Comment by David Berry — August 29, 2007 @ 5:39 am
Hi Biella,
I am just not sure that you can dislocate form and content in that way (see McLuhan, Kittler, Heidegger etc). Nor does freeing the content through a copyright license or giving to the public domain does not change the fundamental economics of distribution of the text. Something, somewhere will need to be the carrier – and whilst currently we all pretend that the Internet is free for distribution – I am not sure how long that will go on as moves in the ITU, Telcos and so on start to lock it down (i.e. ipV6 etc). Anyway, the cost of a laptop/computer remains, as does printing, electricity, difficulty of reading on screen etc etc etc. So giving the text away, as it were, cannot be the sole answer, and certainly cannot be the answer to improving education, academic debate or the production of literature.
So what is the best way to facilitate the production of texts to contribute to the Parliament of Texts that we use in academia (which was my point of reference). It seems to me that Free licenses are *not* going to produce better books, nor is it going to produce better arguments. This is critical, and ignored by FLOSS-like arguments.
Part of the problem with your position is that you have a misconception that the £90.00 edition is in some way, meant to be bought by the public. Not at all, the first hardbacks are usually library editions – made in an expensive way to ensure they can take the thumbing and rough treatment meted out to them by students. This edition is then sold and later a paperback copy is often released precisely for students etc which is usually much cheaper. I think it is a public good for the publishers to produce these versions, good for the libraries to stock them and for the students to be able to access them. They charge a high price to recoup their losses and continue releasing books – that lets face it will only ever sell a limited number (usually only to libraries). The publishers also often supply an value-add service by proof-reading, editing and neatly typesetting the text, adding indices and so forth. These are the economics of publishing.
The question is when it comes to academic publishing does a 95 year term really cause problems? I don’t think so. Many authors of academic books automatically regain the copyright when the book goes out-of-print and at that point they can decide to distribute over the Internet, sell on POD services via Amazon or even license as copyleft or whatever.
We as academics can throughout this entire process use, critique and quote from books. Yes there are some real problems with IPR – for example trademarks can be enforced against publishers ( Sounding out the City by Michael Bull was forced by Sony to purge Walkman (TM) from the book). These can and should be addressed, however they did not stop the publication of the research results.
I just think that the arguments taken from FLOSS and then applied to books are not really thought through very well and often blindly applied.
Your dilemma over assigning expensive books is not new, well before free licenses and the Internet academics had to balance accessibility with cost, and libraries are part of that balance. However, good books are good books, and I would always assign them to a course because we should be studying the important texts. In the worst case scenario for out-of-print books or rare texts I have even contacted authors to get them to send me copies of chapters to use (and never been refused). I also photocopy chapters for the library (and they then pay the copyright fee to the publisher) if necessary.
You ask what I think is wrong with copyright. Well, I am concerned about many other mediums and their relationship with copyright, but academic books are not on the whole a major problem when being quoted, critiqued or commented upon however once we try to use them digitally, yes there are problems there (e.g. in the UK digital copies have different and harsher rules governing use than photocopies). Additionally I am rather concerned about the movement towards Journal publication, particularly the move to very expensive digital libraries – and the short-sighted librarians who are throwing out there paper copies (again see Double Fold by Nicolson Baker for a great discussion). The economics and practices of Journal publication have been rather anti-scholar in some instances, and the assignment of copyright in these instances does seem problematic (but can be addressed through Open Access publication and through web publication of drafts).
Best
David
Comment by David Berry — August 29, 2007 @ 5:42 am
Hi Biella,
I am just not sure that you can dislocate form and content in that way (see McLuhan, Kittler, Heidegger etc). Nor does freeing the content through a copyright license or giving to the public domain does not change the fundamental economics of distribution of the text. Something, somewhere will need to be the carrier – and whilst currently we all pretend that the Internet is free for distribution – I am not sure how long that will go on as moves in the ITU, Telcos and so on start to lock it down (i.e. ipV6 etc). Anyway, the cost of a laptop/computer remains, as does printing, electricity, difficulty of reading on screen etc etc etc. So giving the text away, as it were, cannot be the sole answer, and certainly cannot be the answer to improving education, academic debate or the production of literature.
So what is the best way to facilitate the production of texts to contribute to the Parliament of Texts that we use in academia (which was my point of reference). It seems to me that Free licenses are *not* going to produce better books, nor is it going to produce better arguments. This is critical, and ignored by FLOSS-like arguments.
Part of the problem with your position is that you have a misconception that the £90.00 edition is in some way, meant to be bought by the public. Not at all, the first hardbacks are usually library editions – made in an expensive way to ensure they can take the thumbing and rough treatment meted out to them by students. This edition is then sold and later a paperback copy is often released precisely for students etc which is usually much cheaper. I think it is a public good for the publishers to produce these versions, good for the libraries to stock them and for the students to be able to access them. They charge a high price to recoup their losses and continue releasing books – that lets face it will only ever sell a limited number (usually only to libraries). The publishers also often supply an value-add service by proof-reading, editing and neatly typesetting the text, adding indices and so forth. These are the economics of publishing.
The question is when it comes to academic publishing does a 95 year term really cause problems? I don’t think so. Many authors of academic books automatically regain the copyright when the book goes out-of-print and at that point they can decide to distribute over the Internet, sell on POD services via Amazon or even license as copyleft or whatever.
We as academics can throughout this entire process use, critique and quote from books. Yes there are some real problems with IPR – for example trademarks can be enforced against publishers ( Sounding out the City by Michael Bull was forced by Sony to purge Walkman (TM) from the book). These can and should be addressed, however they did not stop the publication of the research results.
I just think that the arguments taken from FLOSS and then applied to books are not really thought through very well and often blindly applied.
Comment by David Berry — August 29, 2007 @ 5:42 am
Your dilemma over assigning expensive books is not new, well before free licenses and the Internet academics had to balance accessibility with cost, and libraries are part of that balance. However, good books are good books, and I would always assign them to a course because we should be studying the important texts. In the worst case scenario for out-of-print books or rare texts I have even contacted authors to get them to send me copies of chapters to use (and never been refused). I also photocopy chapters for the library (and they then pay the copyright fee to the publisher) if necessary.
You ask what I think is wrong with copyright. Well, I am concerned about many other mediums and their relationship with copyright, but academic books are not on the whole a major problem when being quoted, critiqued or commented upon however once we try to use them digitally, yes there are problems there (e.g. in the UK digital copies have different and harsher rules governing use than photocopies). Additionally I am rather concerned about the movement towards Journal publication, particularly the move to very expensive digital libraries – and the short-sighted librarians who are throwing out there paper copies (again see Double Fold by Nicolson Baker for a great discussion). The economics and practices of Journal publication have been rather anti-scholar in some instances, and the assignment of copyright in these instances does seem problematic (but can be addressed through Open Access publication and through web publication of drafts).
So the long answer is that I believe that it is more than just assigning books free licenses and that the complexities of academic publication warrant more careful analysis than the simple equation of FREE=GOOD, COPYRIGHT=BAD. We must concentrate on the quality of the books not (just) the copyright regime.
Comment by David Berry — August 29, 2007 @ 5:42 am
For some reason I cannot post anything of any length to the blog… perhaps I am being blocked as SPAM
Oh well.. the difficulties of the medium of blogs…
Comment by David Berry — August 29, 2007 @ 5:45 am
This debate has become quite broad, and I’m not sure I want to engage on all of its points, especially as I think Scott and I have tried to address some of Karl’s concerns about *our book* in our posts at our blog (I’m not sure that they have). I’m also not sure that the differences between the the general political economy (and the role of economies of reputation within it) of academic books and those of software are being understood.
May I ask, Karl, how much of an established reputation as a developer you brought to your conversations with O’Reilly about release terms for your book? I ask because I specifically mentioned that neither Scott or I came into this negotiation as an established writer/researcher on free software (we also work at a public university – perhaps you don’t think thats
relevant, but it is, believe me, it is). Frankly, I don’t think anyone would have given two hoots about our writings on this subject had we not gotten it published by a traditional publishing house. Our editor took a
punt on us. Did O’Reilly take a punt on an unknown? What did you write about? Managing FOSS projects. What was your prior background? Let me guess – managing FOSS projects and writing FOSS code? My background was in
logics for artificial intelligence (some journal articles and conference papers), the legal theory of artificial agents (2 conference papers); I’ve
also published a book on military history about a part of the world that no one particularly cares about. Similarly for Scott’s work in multimedia and security (he is also the author of a book on Java). The idea that some publisher would have let us negotiate terms of our own for a contract on a book on free software seems pretty far-fetched. I will bet you though,
that negotiations for my next book on free software will be greatly helped by the reputation that we hope to acquire through this book. It takes some power to be able to negotiate terms to our liking. We didn’t have that. I dislike the price, and I dislike the terms of the license. But plenty of libraries will stock it; we are optimistic that translations will happen (an Italian academic is already talking to us about one); and in 18 months time, we expect a lower-priced paperback version.
I also want to address the following: “Even if I could afford the book, it would start out with a strike against it from my point of view: the authors are writing (apparently with approval) about free software, but dont think highly, or perhaps broadly, enough of it to apply the same principles to their own work. So why should a reader take them seriously?”
Why should they take us seriously? Well, consider the following situation: I’m a Philosophy Ph.D and have just scored a job in a hostile job-market in Long Beach, California. I have to drive a car to work, given the location of my college, and where my wife wants to live, and where my kids have to go to school. I’m a passionate believer in public transportation. Whenever I get a chance, I car-pool, I bike all over the place to my friend’s places and send checks to public transportation advocacy groups. I also write a small newsletter advocating for more public transportation
in LA and ask my friend in LA to join me in my efforts. Should someone now say “Why should we take you seriously? You chose to live in LA, you drive a car, you pollute the environment, why should we take you seriously?” Do you think this response moves the debate about public-transportation and environmental concerns forward? Or does it do something else?
Secondly, I find your comment about not wanting to read DL *because* of the price interesting. I grew up in India, and I don’t think I ever bought a book because quite simply, my allowance didn’t let me do that. However, I got three library cards and usually had 12 or so books out at a time. Had I taken the attitude that I wouldn’t read books because of the price, my
intellectual career would have been considerably impoverished. Perhaps you meant that the price is excessive? What would your price cutoff be? Surely, you do pay for books once in a while, so I’m guessing this is what you meant. But the book will be available in a library. Will you still not read it? If not, then I’m guessing you are saying “I refuse to read this book because of the terms of its license, and because its priced too high”. To respond to this, see my example about the public transportation advocate.
Comment by Samir Chopra — August 29, 2007 @ 11:37 am
So far I’ve heard reputation and the willingness of other’s to read a text published through a reputable publishing house as primary motivators for not self-publishing. Indexing and type-setting services were cited as other reasons.
Reputation is highly-valued in this case it seems.
I think the reason I’m pretty interested in this is that my much of my youth interest was in music self-publishing, essentially DIY ethics. As I got older, peers tended more toward the route of letting others publish their trade and art whether that was music, books or visual arts. Sometimes it meant a paycheck, other times it was wider distribution. In this case, it didn’t seem that those were factors so I was interested in the personal motivations of authors to work with a publisher that could essentially do as they wanted (with price, copyright, licensing) through ownership of the author’s work. I don’t think I really got a straight answer out of anyone which is disappointing but perhaps I missed the mark.
Comment by Adam K — August 29, 2007 @ 10:37 pm
Adam,
I think Samir and Scott gave part of their answer here:
http://decodingliberation.blogspot.com/
Not sure if you had a chance to look it up.
Personally I am going the very traditional academic publishing route because I need it for… yep, job security/tenure. Plain and simple. I also like the idea of the peer review process that happens with publishers. THey have been doing this for a very long time and know what it takes to make a book good. I have been meeting with publishers over the last 1.5 year and have learned a lot about the process, which again has been hammered out for centuries…
While Karl says have peer review happen after, I am not sure that it would work so well in academia (especially on books that are not on geeks, as geeks love to give copious comments, but otherwise, the topic is usually too small to get any significant feedback).
There is a set of norms and practices already in place that ensure feedback happens via peer review/academic publishing and it would take a lot of work to change these entrenched norms. In geek circles, informal peer review as it happens in free software grew out of an existing tradition that was only magnified by the net.
I can’t speak for Samir and Scott, but they too seem to have gone through traditional channels because of the academic cache it brings. They don’t need the book for tenure (Samir already has it and they are in a CS dept, so this sort of book is not a requirement) BUT having this book can certainly help their academic career’s in many many ways, from pure symbolic capital to cold hard cash.
I would still like to see more flexible licensing, whether it is shorter copyright terms, or the flexibility that comes from digital circulation as I think having 2 mediums (tree and digital) increases the circulation of a book, which in the eye of the author is never a bad thing.
Also, while we can rely on the exisitng library system to make sure people have access to books, we must not cling to old institutions and technologies, especially in the face of new ones. And accessing stuff online just means a lot more people can read/have access to our material, both here and internationally.
I remember when I was teaching at University of Chicago, I was told that unless the readings are online (or unless I made them purchase a book) students will probably not read the material. Sure I can make them do everything the old fashioned way, but at a certain point, trying to fight new technologies and the norms and practices they bring, is fighting a losing battle.
Also, with proprietary educational software, like Blackboard, there is massive piracy going on in all universities, at least in the US. Professors are routing around copyright fees and just sticking scanned chapters behind gated walls. So I do think publishers either need to keep costs low so that it makes sense for individuals to buy books or find a way to provide digital access and still make money. I am not sure what these are, but new technologies have put new pressures on old models.
Ideally, I would love my book to be published in paper and after a few years, have an online version available.
Anyyyyhow. Those are my thoughts for the day!
Biella
Comment by Biella — August 30, 2007 @ 5:41 am
The extant hierarchy insists that academic credibility comes only through “proper” old-style publishing, which made sense when dead trees were the only way to get knowledge out, but make none now.
Young academic authors must decide: do they wish to be widely read and influential? Or merely to conserve the existing academic hierarchy? Constraining your text to a few thousand hard-to-copy copies for 95 years seems heavy price to pay for academic respectability and credibility. The point is to communicate!
Literature is rhetoric: don’t you want it to be as effective as possible? (Intellectual efficacy = quality of text * number of readers) Authors have to take care of the quality bit; the internet can provide the numbers (and lots of feedback).
Underlying motivations sustaining the status quo: the (almost certainly forlorn) hope that perhaps, maybe, your book will be a bestseller and you’ll be rich (ha!); and senior faculty’s existing interest in maintaining the current network of peer review structures (so much easier to review than create…).
Come on people, let’s not be dinosaurs: we face unprecedented environmental challenges. If the free software crew, who presumably fully grasp the implications and benefits of freedom of knowledge can’t actually act according to their beliefs, what hope in other fields? Get it out there!
Comment by Dougie Carnall — September 9, 2007 @ 8:28 am