Dear Joe,

Congratulations on your victory! I’m proud to have you as our new Congressperson from the 12th district here in Brookline and environs. Barney Frank has left you some big shoes to fill, and I’m looking forward to watching you lace up.

Barney did a great job representing our local interests. But our district, and our Commonwealth, has always looked beyond what’s good for us locals. We’ve always had an eye out for the larger common good. That’s why we keep electing Kennedys.

An issue has arisen that not only needs your support, but could help you make exactly the right kind of early mark. Forgive me if you are already on top of it, but, briefly, the Republican Study Committee on Friday issued a report on copyright reform that was — from the point of view of many of us on the Web — shockingly helpful. I say “shockingly” because Congress overall has been woefully one-sided and antiquarian on the question of copyright, taking laws designed for previous centuries and actually making them far worse.

That was Friday. By Saturday afternoon, the Hollywood lobbyists had forced Paul Teller, the head of the RSC, to withdraw the report on the specious grounds that it had not gone through “adequate review.” If so, perhaps Paul Teller should resign. But, I’m willing to bet 10,000 RomneyBucks that instead the young author of the report, Derek Khanna [twitter:dkhanna11], will take the fall.

Anyway, the report punctures three myths about copyright, and proposes four areas of reform:

• Statutory damages reform

• Expand Fair Use

• Punish false copyright claims

• Heavily limit the terms for copyright, and create disincentives for renewal

I urge you to take a look. Imagine a world with copyright reformed in this way. And if you think the proposals are wrong-headed, impractical, or whatever, at least embrace them as a starting point for a conversation this country very much needs.

This could be a great issue for you, Joe. You’ll find a whole lot of constituents who would be thrilled to see you take a leadership role in this important discussion.

And it won’t just be your constituents. You’ll find yourself surfing a wave — the Internet constituency that represents the future of our party, nation, and globe.

Looking forward to seeing you show the bold leadership your family is famous for and that has so many of us excited about your first term in Congress — the first of many, we hope!

Best,

David Weinberger
Constituent

Note: The original report was here, but people have put up extra copies in case the RSC physically removes the report from the Web. Here’s the copy I posted.

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A Republican Study Committee has posted a document (as a pdf) that nails three myths about copyright law and suggests four areas of reform.

Later that day: The author of the memo has put himself forward for questions at Reddit.

A few hours after that: The MPAA and RIAA have leapt into action, forcing the Republicans to retract the report. Dreams die fast in DC. Fuckwads. (Hat-tip to Jay Rosen.) (And just in case the Republicans decide to take the memo down, here’s a mirror.)

The 3 myths are:

1. The purpose of copyright is to compensate the creator of the content

2. Copyright is free market capitalism at work

3. The current copyright legal regime leads to the greatest innovation and productivity

And the four “potential policy solutions” are:

1. Statutory damages reform

2. Expand Fair Use

3. Punish false copyright claims

4. Heavily limit the terms for copyright, and create disincentives for renewal

I’ve started a thread at Reddit if you want to talk about it.

And for a flat-out statement of how the Net’s regulators don’t understand the cultural revolution they (we) are facing, here’s the statement by Amelia Anderstotter to the 2012 Internet Governance Forum. Amelia is a member of the European Parliament, from the Pirate Party:

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Brad Turcotte, AKA BradSucks, has put out his new album, Guess Who’s a Mess. It is tuneful, dark, and remarkably well done. I like not only his music, lyrics, and voice, but also his skill as a producer. He is, in fact, a one-man band++.

So, you ought to buy his album, first because I think you’ll enjoy it; you can listen for free to decide. Second, Brad’s exactly the sort of artist the Web should support: no DRM, tracks posted for remixing, continuous interaction with his listeners as he develops new songs. He trusts the Web. We should repay that trust. It’s the least we can do.

At my request, Brad sent me an unedited copy of his lyrics. He’ll undoubtedly post a better version soon. But for now, here they are.

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Just when you thought copyright extremism couldn’t get any more absurd, the Supreme Court may uphold a decision that would prevent us from reselling goods we’ve legally bought that have parts or content with foreign copyrights (which most goods of any complexity do have). Marvin Ammori has a good explanation of how this would “work” and why it is Kafka-esque in its implications.

I would say that Marvin’s opening examples would never be enforced, but I also thought that Citizens United wouldn’t trash our political system like Godzilla(c) walking through a cheap cardboard city.

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Paul Courant, one of the founders of the Hathi Trust, explains this week’s ruling throwing out a lawsuit by the Authors Guild claiming that Hathi’s scan-and-index program violated copyright.

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According to a post at TechDirt by Riaz K. Tayob, Google has released data on which organizations request certain search results be suppressed because of copyright issues.

From TechDirt:

It may be a bit surprising, but at the top of the list? Microsoft, who has apparently taken down over 2.5 million URLs from Google’s search results. Most of the the others in the top 10 aren’t too surprising. There’s NBC Universal at number two. The RIAA at number three (representing all its member companies). BPI at number five. Universal Music at number seven. Sony Music at number eight. Warner Music doesn’t clock in until number 12.

The velocity is increasing:

As it stands now, Google is processing over 250,000 such requests per week — which is more than they got in the entire year of 2009. For all of 2011, Google receive 3.3 million copyright takedowns for search… and here we are in just May of 2012, and they’re already processing over 1.2 million per month.

The requests and Google’s responses must both be generated automatically. This raises once again the problem with having robots enforcing the law: They don’t know about leeway, which means they (a) lack common sense, (b) have no way of balancing against greater goods, and (c) can’t tell when Fair Use should provide an exception. (Here’s an op-ed I wrote in 2003 about this.)

We saw this this weekend as robots blocked the use of perfectly legitimate film clips at the Hugo Awards. Ridiculous. And scary.

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I’m enjoying my friend Peter Suber’s small book Open Access. He’s a very clear and concise writer, and of course he knows this topic better than anyone.

Here are some facts Peter mentions:

• In 2008, Harvard subscribed to 98,900 serials. Yale subscribed to 73,900. “The best-funded research library in India…subscribed to 10,600.” And, Peter points out, some Sub-Saharan universities cannot afford to subscribe to any. (pp. 30-32) Way to make yourself smart, humanity!

• “In 2010, Elsevier’s journal division had a profit margin of 35.7 percent while ExxonMobil had only 28.1 percent.” (p. 32)

• The cost of journals has caused a dramatic decrease in the percentage of their budgets research libraries spend on books, from 44% in 1986 to 28% now. “Because academic libraries now buy fewer books, academic book publishers now accept fewer mauscripts…” (p. 33)

Peter’s book will help you understand better why you already favor Open Access.

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From a post by ireadfaux at Reddit.com:

So a couple of days ago Bieber’s album ‘Believe’ went platinum. Twitter blew up about it and millions of his followers were congratulating him – as they do….

But here is an interesting thought….

A platinum album is 1 millions sales….

Bieber has 25 million twitter followers….

So only 4% of his supposed fan base have bought the album.

If you look at his facebook fans, he has 45 millions, so thats only 2.2% of those that have actually bought it.

But why would he care….he is a youtube partner and has had over 2.7 billion views of his videos….paid at an average of $1.25 per 1000 views for youtube partners…. thats 3.3 mill from just youtube views.

Just thoughts.

Pre-Net, a lot more people would have said they liked an artist than would have bought the latest album. You would listen on the radio or watch when they came on TV. So it’s hard to know if much has changed, if only because as far as I know we don’t know how many people liked, say, Elton John, versus how many copies of his LPs sold.

Nevertheless, the current statistics are puzzling. Are fans getting their fill of The Biebs on YouTube? On Spotify et al.? I somehow doubt that 24M fans torrented the album. Is “Liking” Beieber more of a tribal identification thing? Compared to pre-Net, is the fan-performer relationship basically the same, radically different, or somewhere in between?

I dunno how to explain these Bieber stats. And I don’t know how to know.

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TITLE: [berkman] Brad Abruzzi on authorship and publishing
BODY:

Brad Abruzzi, author of the NJ Famous Turnpike Witch, a novel I really liked, is talking about the trajectory of authorship, at a Berkman lunch.

Brad says that he’s not a success story. If you want to know how to make millions, thousands, or even hundreds, you should write a book about how to write succcessful books. Or vampires, he says. Instead, he’s going to give us thoughts about authorship and publishing.

He says he was in his first year at law school, interested in the history of literature. He wrote a note titled “Exploitative publishers, untrustworthy systems, and the dream of a digital revolution for artists. ” It was based on Marxist historical theory and sketched three phases:

1. Feudal: pre-modern, from antiquity to production publishing. It relied upon patrons who offered a living wage, and could bring interest and favor to the works. In return, the author might offer a celebration of the patron in the work. Or, Virgil who established the lineage of Emperor Augustus all the way back to the gods. Or dedicate the work. Brad points to Sterne’s dedication in Tristram Shandy. But this arrangement produces resentment: the authors feel they are the creators, but the patrons take some of the glory. (He reads a scathing letter to Chesterfield from Samuel Johnson in response to a request for a dedication, who lived on the cusp of Phase 2.)

2. The industrialization of publishing. It put the means of reproduction (Marxist pun intended by Brad) into the hands of the publishers. Thus, authors were once again dependent. This is because there’s always a super-abundance of manuscripts trying to get into the market. This selection process has of course become highly professional. “The problem is that we didn’t choose these people to be the gatekeepers…Ultimately their responsibility is to their shareholders.” This works better than the Feudal system, but the criterion is what an editor thinks will sell. (Brad points out that his work was rejected by publishers.) “The superabundance problem persists.” There are now two barriers of entry to works of fiction: Works have to come from literary agent before publishers will consider them. “If you want to be a writer, you’ll probably be better off writing for yourself and buying scratch tickets, because you won’t be as frustrated when the scratch ticket tells you that you’ve lost.”

So, he asks, is there any hope for someone like him, who thinks his works are good but who cannot get a publisher to publish them? Yes, he says, digital publishing is the hope. “We can make our works directly available to readers. We don’t need publishers any more.”

But, readers rely on publishers to winnow away at the super-abundance of manuscripts. Without publishers, “we move the slush pile to around the ankles of readers.” “We can create a ground-based, critical reader culture” in which people can publish their own reviews, accrue authority, etc. “Amazon does this a bit of course…but we can be more substantive than that.” “Everyone has the means of reproduction. So, hooray.”

So, why did it take him 11 years to publish his own work? “I’ve got all sorts of excuses…but the truth is that traditional publishing offered a better prospect for me.” First, digital reading hasn’t been as appealing. That’s obviously beginning to change. Second, publishers put their chosen works on the fast track. If you can get two people to like your work — agent and publisher — you can cut to the front of the line. So, he tried for ten years to sell his books. His agent was very good at getting flattering rejection letters from publishers. His first novel, In Defense of Cactus Kelly in the late ’90s, didn’t get a publisher. He blogged the second book — NJFTPW — and added popup multimedia. But no one came.

Time passed. Self-publishing became a more promising prospects because of the emergence of digital marketplaces where people can find what they want to read. At certain point, he decided to just publish NJTPW. He uploaded it, pressed the buttons about royalty schemes, and it’s up on Amazon. “But then there’s the super-abundance problem.”

The book is currently at #164,296 at Amazon. A couple of days ago, it was over #300,000. “It doesn’t take much to bump up your book.” “If you can use social media to overthrow an Egyptian dictator, you can probably get people to buy my book,” Brad says, adding “These are probably at comparable levels of difficulty.” He has a handful of followers at Twitter. He’s posted some ads at Facebook, and has 421 Likes. “But Likes on FB don’t translate to sales and reading of your book. Maybe they translate at a 1% rate.” Brad isn’t willing to conclude anything about the effectiveness of social media, since he is “ham-handed” in its use.

He shows his sales from the last month on Kindle, which was his worst week: 4. But in the three days he had a promo offering it for free, he had 350 downloads. The promotions get you channeled into Kindle’s promotions. During the promo, he was in the top 20 for literary fiction, along with public domain classics. He thinks he did that well in part because he has all 5-star reviews [one of which is mine].

This gets him thinking about the reader-based review culture. People do write blog posts about books, some on book sites. “Even the reviewing culture suffers from the super-abundance problem. If you want a good book blogger to review you book, you have to pitch them.” The Kirkus Indie program wants $425 to review your book. “I stand here fairly clueless…but hopeful in a general sense that we’re on the cusp of creating a situation in which publishers are not the final answer….Readers need to believe that books that are not traditionally published can still be a good book. Readers need to look outside the walled garden.” “Writers need to trust that readers will do these things.” If so, those who own printing presses won’t get decide what we get to read.

Q&A

Q: How did you pick Kindle, and not Nook, etc.?

A: It was my choice for an initial platform. You can participate in Amazon’s free promos if you commit to exclusivity to Kindle Select for 90 days. It also lets your books be lent for free to Kindle Prime program. You get paid pro rata for those loans. I am thinking about printing on demand.

Q: In the spiritual self-help area, a lot of people promote their books via their blogs. They refer to one another mutually.

A: I experimented with posting at FB under the name of the Turnpike Witch, trying to get this character communicating with people.

Q: I appreciate your intersection of analysis and emotional experience. What you say about publishing is the same as in music. And Louis C.K. And Patton Oswald a couple of days ago gave a keynote called “A Letter to Gatekeepers,” saying that if they continue to think narrowly, they’ll kill their industry. Also, on FB you can pay to promote your post. Finally, people want to participate in things that other people are participating in. That can work for us or against us in the attention economy. Finally finally, a combination of all three of your phases: fan-funding, kickstarter.com, etc. This gets people in as patrons, and then they evangelize for you.

A: Publishers encourage you in their rejections not as a tactic to maintain hegemony, but because they’re being polite. BTW, my agent left the biz, and went back to school in anthropology.

Q: What about copyright? People can disseminate it without your knowledge. We’re looking at self-publishing because the royalties are better, but are you protected?

A: I’d take the trade in a minute. It’s not a coincidence that the first copyrights were given first to the publishers (“stationers privileges”). They wanted to avoid undercutting each other, and the Crown wanted to keep an eye on what was being published. The copyright concerns come first and foremost from publishers…

Q: Creative people are concerned also.

A: I won’t say categorically they’re not. But many of us would put it out for free, since I’m not depending on my books to make a living.

Q: [doc searls] Cluetrain is free online but still sells well. But, Brad, why not just make it freely available in an open format, and put out a tip jar? How comfortable to do you feel inside the silo that is Amazon?

A: I’m trying to understand how useful it is to have Amazon. It might be a deal with the devil.

Q: [me] How many of you here in the audience are going to buy the book? [About 5 hands go up.] Why not?

Answers: It’s not on Nook. …I’ve got too much to read…I don’t know enough about it…

Q: Publishers play an important curatorial function. I’d love to circumvent it because they look for a formula. But putting it on line isn’t enough. Where is the inter-connect?

Q: I edit an online literary magazine. Finding folks who are already reading at open mics, making a connection is great. We have gatekeepers of a sort, but they’re made up of writers and readers already in the community. Also, there are independent publishers who are not motivated by profit. Getting the novel excerpted in a journal like ours helps. Also: BestIndieLitNewEngland.org There’s something inbetween self-publishing as an individual and commercial success. There are communities.

A: Yes, my social media work was aimed at reating a community.
ti

Q: Have you tried open mic readings? Or do you need to be a published author?

A: One of the reason I write is because I do it better than I speak. A judge once told me to find a job where I write things to people, rather than talking to them, I elected to take it as a compliment. I still see myself as someone who’ll put something out and broadcast it, stand behind it. T’hat’s not getting me to where I need to be. I thought maybe I’d get NJFTPW out of the way so I could write the next thing to submit to a conventional publisher. Now I’m not sure. I’m trying throwing our more content.

Q: Your expectations of traditional publishers are overstated. Publishers often do nothing but print. Also, digital publishing has taken us to a place as bad as traditional publishing. Charlie Stross (sf writer, former sw guy) has an excellent analysis of what Amazon is doing to the market. Single publisher, single format, own their own hardware.

A: Traditional publishing has worked wonderfully for us. People can make a living as a writer. The Amazon issue is a trade-off, which I re-examine all the time. People complain that there’s too much junk at Amazon., e.g. people re-selling Wikipedia content. Rather than putting in a spam button, let people write reviews.

Q: I’m writing a book for a publisher. Even with a publisher, it’s up to the author to build a market. I’m writing a memoir of my father, a queer poet, self-published before the digital age. It was all shoe leather: printing stuff up, going to bookstores, doing readings. It was about finding community, promoting writers like himself, and putting out ideas.

A: Copyright is an incentive for people to do something creative, but I don’t think it’s anything close to the whole ball of wax. E.g., I enjoy communicating to myself — re-reading something I wrote when younger. But, more important, I want to communicate something.

Q: My new startup is trying to enable readers as reviewers. Our tech helps lend credibility to reviews. Self-publishing has grown 400% since 2010, approaching a $4B market. Your 2001 article described the problem perfectly.

Q: I’m intrigued by the two sides of your personality: button-down and creative. This book is very readable. Could you get a celebrity do the reading?

A: I think a lot of this has to do with authority. People with broader authority can move copies.

TAGS: -berkman

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The Berkman Center’s David O’Brien, Urs Gasser, and John Palfrey have just posted a 29-page “briefing paper” on the various models and licenses by which libraries are providing access to e-books.

It’s not just facts ‘n’ stats by any means, but here are some anyway:

“According to the 2011 Library Journal E-Book Survey, 82% of libraries currently offer access to e-books, which reflects an increase of 10 percentage points from 2010. … Libraries maintain an average of 4,350 e-book copies in a collection.”

“[T]he publisher-to-library market across all formats and all libraries (e.g., private, public, governmental, academic, research, etc.) is approximately $1.9B; of this, the market for public libraries is approximately $850M”

92% of libraries use OverDrive as their e-book dealer

Of the major publishers, only Random House allows unrestricted lending of e-books.

I found the section on business models to be particularly clarifying.

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