Archive for April, 2007
Today is the 26th of April. The UNESCO celebrations of books and copyrights still resound all over the world. It’s been a happy party of books, writing and reading.
But today, there is another sound in the air. The sound of ‘intellectual property’, of ‘my creativity is my castle’ — it’s the WIPO’s ‘Celebrations’ for the World Intellectual Property Day. Their topic is actually creativity.
Quite rightly they note in their press release that “the word creativity conjures a world of artists and music makers, of poets and problem solvers. Whereas intellectual property all too often summons images of gray-suited lawyers, locked in litigation. But look more closely, and it quickly becomes clear that it is the intellectual property system itself which sustains and nourishes those creators.”
It is the intellectual property system that not only nourishes creators but, oddly enough, every so often also reduces them to mere content suppliers to the all powerful engines of the commercial IP explitation industry. Encouraging creativity to supply the pockets of publishers, distributors, marketeers … ?
Hence, I come back to number 3 of our postulates: Authors need to be free to make a choice on licensing their works for reproduction, communication, distribution, interpretation, and modification in any form and medium of their choice without pressure or interference from others.
Texts Don’t Grow en Trees! — Creation is 10 % inspiration and 90 % transpiration — we need to make sure it does not become 99 % exploitation.
The activities of the World Book and Copyright Day 2007 are well under way … for example in Switzerland, where Roger Lévy blogs live from Zurich main station (in German).
WIPO went to see a group of 16-17 year old students at an international school to find out, how they think about downloading music from the Internet. The first point went to WIPO — the students actually believe that downloading is illegal (which it might or might not be, depending on national legislation). But the downloaders scored all the other points — and I’ll cite only a selection, the whole story is here — “I wouldn’t steal a car. I wouldn’t steal a DVD. But I might borrow a DVD from a friend. And what’s the Internet these days, but a big group of friends sharing stuff?” — “Downloading seems kind of unreal compared to other crimes,” — “They’ve [the music industry] got to find ways to make money other than selling CDs, because stopping people from downloading illegally is, well, extremely hard.” — “they should work harder on making us want to pay for it.”– “We’re always being told: ‘don’t smoke, you’ll get caught; ‘don’t do this, you’ll get caught’… the messages just don’t affect us any more.” — “Just give us simple facts and figures.”
So the message is very clear: downloading is understood as the online equivalent of borrowing, not of buying. It is a reality. And the “kids” are not stupid, they bloody damn well understand the way the business works. Only that some do not seem to be noticing that. I feel that this is the really big chance we get with “Texts Don’t Grow on Trees!”, to campaign intelligently, to listen to our clientele, to understand how they think about the Internet.
Monday is the UNESCO world book and copyright day. And that is our message:
1. Authors must never be pressured into waiving their rights to be named as the authors of their work.
2. Authors must never never be pressured into allowing their works to be treated in a derogatory manner.
3. Authors need to be free to make a choice on licensing their works for reproduction, communication, distribution, interpretation, and modification in any form and medium of their choice without pressure or interference from others.
4. Authors must be rewarded by a conforming and timely execution of the licenses by their licensees.
5. Authorsmust be remunerated in fair relation to the profits arising from the licensed exploitation of their work.
Some might say that this is a complicated message. But I am sure the “kids” will get it.
The “Nederlandse Mededingingsautoriteit” — the Dutch cartel police — is mainly powerless in face of megafusions in the energy, health or banking sector. But now they have found another group of criminals: translators. Illegally they have set a minimum fee, e.g. 5,9 Eurocent per word for translations from English or Hungarian. But this has now led to interventions, first an article in the NRC Handelsblad by Maarten Huygen (31. March). Now Mei Li Vos, Labour MP, asked the staatssecretaris van Economise Zaken 10 questions: if she was aware of this problem, aware of the (economic) pressure freelancers work under in the media, aware of the new regulations in Germany, where exactly such minimum fees are legal, and if she was prepared to introduce similar changes to the regulations in the Netherlands.
see also Mei Li Vos’ website and the report on boekvertalers.nl
“I’ve always wanted publishers and organized crime to swap.” This strapline caught my eyes this morning when I was combing through my already spam-stripped inbox. Some semi-intelligent robot out there on the net must have picked it up in order to fulfill one of my requests for up-to-date knowledge. (Yes, I admit, I am interested in organized crime).
But what it brought up today is a completely different story. It’s the musings of Dusk Peterson, fiction writer, history writer, editor and journalist, on the not-so-delightful world of e-book publishing.
I spent nearly four hours researching whether I should make my online fiction available in e-book form at Lulu.com. While I’m still not sure whether anyone would actually buy my stories – I wouldn’t buy an electronic text if it was available for free – I decided to go ahead and try the experiment. It can’t hurt. At this stage, even a couple of extra dollars would help.
However, set-up fees, buying ISBNs — “which is more money than I’ve earned annually since 1992″ — and the time (and nerves) spent on preparing the cover art make this experiment a rather serious experience. Is this the brave new world of self-determined, self-controled, self-publishing authors?
In den vergangenen Tagen und Wochen gab’s wieder mal seltene Klänge in Rotterdam. Erst am 28. März ein Film Screening von Pilgrimage from Scattered Points — Luke Fowlers Dokumentarfilm über das britische Scratch Orchestra, danach Konzert mit Scratch “Haus-Marxist” Keith Rowe:
Download der Datei auf die eigene Festplatte:
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Dann am Samstag vor Ostern erst noch mal John Buijsman’s Public Animal aus Texten von C. B. Vaandrager, dem Rotterdamer Punk-Poet der 60er. Danach Levende poëzie met Jazzmuziek hard-op:
5th April 2007 — fire on the roof, Beukelsdijk 74 B … the fire brigade succeeded to control the fire just seconds before it was able to spread into the whole house.
Picture: artist’s impression, using an image by mailsparky … since nobody was home to take pictures
Aus dieser Mischung entstand zwar kein eindeutiges Bild vom Auto der Zukunft; doch spannend war es allemal, über das Potenzial von Fahrassistenzsystemen zu hören, über die Bedeutung von Design für das Auto als Life-Style-Produkt, oder über die unsichtbaren Optimierungen durch die Anwendung von Nanopartikeln. Wichtig auch, wahrzunehmen, dass nicht nur Maschinen- und Motorenbau wichtige Beträge zum Automobil liefern.
PS (10. 04. 2007) — Ein ausführlicher Bericht findet sich im ETHlife.
It addresses topics such as
- Generation of synthetic gas from biomass and gas cleaning
- Transport fuel synthesis from synthetic gas
- Bio-fuel use in different motors
- Biomass potentials, supply and logistics, and technology, cost and life-cycle assessment of BtL pathways
Target audience:
- Master thesis and PhD students, post-docs, researchers and academic teachers in the field of automobile and transport fuel technology, engineering, agriculture and economics
- Professionals from automobile and chemical industry and from agriculture
- Interested persons from other sectors dealing with automobiles, fuels, renewable energies or agriculture.
More details on www.renew-fuel.com
