From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]> Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2012 20:36:29 -0500 Just to be clear, I was talking about "piracy" in the more narrowly defined sense that Joe advocates here. For examples, see this article about some recent cases: http://www.law.com/jsp/cc/PubArticleCC.jsp?id=1202545430299&Publishers_Mount_Strategies_to_Target_EBook_Pirates Sandy Thatcher > From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]> > Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2012 08:08:35 -0700 > > I recommend that this thread make some distinctions about different > uses of copyrighted material, as the word "piracy" can be a blunt > instrument. > > I personally only use the term "piracy" when someone uses copyrighted > material without permission and then attempts to monetize this in some > way. An example of this would be local coursepack companies. There > probably is a lot less "piracy" of this kind than many would suppose. > > I use the term "unauthorized use" instead of "piracy" when there is no > direct monetization. A professor who takes a copy of a paper he or > she has written that was published by a traditional publisher and puts > that paper on a personal Web site may indeed be an unauthorized user. > Obviously, this varies with publishers' policies and how one construes > the privileges under fair use. > > There is a third undefined category where the monetization, if any, is > indirect. Google's mass digitization project is an example here. > Google was not planning to sell the copied texts, but it benefits from > those texts in it data-mining initiatives. Of course, here again fair > use may plan a role. Leave that one to the judges. > > Most of the time when people talk about piracy, they really mean (in > my terms) unauthorized use. I am not making a case for unauthorized > use, but there are differences here that should be acknowledged. > > Joe Esposito > > On Mon, Mar 19, 2012 at 6:13 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >> >> >> From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]> >> Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2012 22:50:24 -0500 >> >> That there is a lot of piracy of scholarly monographs there can be no >> doubt any longer, now that scholarly publishers have been tracking >> illegal postings for years. (Penn State Press, which I headed, had its >> best-selling book--a translation of a Buddhist text by Columbia >> scholar Robert Thurmann, father of Uma--repeatedly posted without >> permission at multiple sites.) What is more difficult to measure is >> what impact this has had on actual sales, since people who download >> from such sites may not have had any interest in buying these books in >> the first place. Do teachers assign these books to students by >> providing URLs to these illegitimate sites? Who knows? >> >> My guess is that the problem is greater for one-offs like books, >> movies, and music than it is for journals, however. I doubt that any >> pirate is going to find it very profitable to try posting every >> article of every issue of a journal over a long period of time. >> >> The greatest danger of piracy for movies, however, is not the theft of >> Hollywood blockbusters but rather the films produced by independent >> filmmakers, who rely on advance funding from overseas distributors who >> need to be guaranteed that movies won't be stolen before they are even >> available for licensing in foreign markets. Without that assurance, >> foreign investors won't provide the funding that is needed even to get >> a new movie project off the ground. hence it is not so much a matter >> of lost sales as it is, for these filmmakers, of inability to make >> movies at all. Read more about this problem here under "Copyright >> Piracy and Its impact on the U.S. Intellectual Property Community": >> http://www.ifta-online.org/issues. >> >> Sandy Thatcher