[LINK] Nonfiction and copyright

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

A salient plea for the reform of copyright, specially for reference works:


The End of History (Books)

By MARC ARONSON, Published: April 2, 2010
<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/opinion/03aronson.html?th&emc=th>


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.” 

» A version of this article appeared in print on April 3, 2010, on page 
A17 of the New York Times, New York edition.

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Cheers,
Stephen