ping?
Seth writes, "did Richard Bennett kill the lessig blog?" No, not really. Totally insane overcommitments knocked it out for a time. But classes ended today, and life returns tomorrow. Starting tomorrow for the balance of the week, Siva Vaidhyanathan will be guest blooging about his new book, The Anarchist in the Library. I'll be caught up by the weekend, and back with good news next week. Sorry for the delay.
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Comments (11)
Welcome back!!!
hello mr. vaidhyanathan,
welcome!
where can we download a copy of your book for free? the link professor lessig provided connects to amazon.com and those controlling fascists want money for a printed copy we can neither edit nor install on our linux box nor anonymously share with thousands of our "friends."
surely it cannot be a problem for you - digital copies cost nothing to make and distribute and you get to keep the original files. as you probably know professor lessig has done this with his latest book (but perhaps he trying to make a point instead of a profit.) but please no pdf files - they are so hard to edit and having to use acrobat reader is such an infringement of our rights. ASCII text files would be better.
looking forward to your positive response,
yours truly,
the three blind mice
T.B.Mice: very funny. Why don't you just wait a few weeks until the non-rights-infringing, non-pdf version appears on p2p networks, from a new friend who is just waiting there to meet you? Or maybe borrow some commercial software that does optical character recognition? There are many options that don't infringe on your rights to consume.
I got through about 200 pages of Prof. Lessig's book on my laptop screen, and then decided my eyes were sick of reading it that way and decided to wait until Amazon got my hard copy to me.
http://www.writingonyourpalm.net/column030217.htm
First off, PDF is a horrible format.
While you may not agree with anything Dr. Lessig says, he does have at least one valid point: Copyright *is* hindering innovation. I'm a mobile DJ. Compressed audio technology has presented me with a fantastic opportunity to improve my service, and I'm not talking about piracy. You see, up until a few years ago, I was limited to carrying 800 of my most popular CDs to a gig where they would get scratched, lost, or stolen. Now thanks to MP3, I can carry ALL of my music on a PC and never have to worry about skips, scratches, or loss/theft. With a PC, I am no longer forced to stand in the dark with a flashlight in my mouth trying to find (and hoping I brought) that one CD with that one requested song. Now, I simply perform a search for the requested song and have it cued up in a matter of seconds. And if I don't own the requested song, I can use my 3G cellular modem to conect to the internet and purchase the song from iTunes or Wal-Mart. This effectively gives me a music library of over 700,000 titles, which should please any customer.
I'm not stealing anything. I am paying the proper groups. The only difference between me and John Q. Public is that I am John Q. Commercial-User. As a commercial user I do not have the right to convert my legally purchased CDs to MP3. iTunes, Wal-Mart, Napster, et al downloads are only for personal use. So even though I pay my dues, I am still a criminal.
What's that? Mechanical License you say? Sure, I could get a mechanical license and obtain a legal right to archive my CDs and only use the MP3s, but Harry Fox Agency does not license anything less than 500 copies. Even the largest DJ company in the world does not have 500 DJ systems, and I only have one. Why do I need 500 copies? Sure, I still have legal recourse. I can contact each and every publisher to obtain written permission to archive my CDs, but how long do you figure it will take for me to get written permission for the 5000+ CDs I own? Plus, that still won't help me with iTunes, Wal-Mart, or Napster.
In reality, the current copyright laws have hindered the growth of not just me, but the entire DJ industry.
Sure, I may only make $50k a year, so (as a Harry Fox Agency rep told me) I am small potatoes. But let's look at some numbers. With approximately 2,327,000 marriages in 2001 (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/marriage.htm) and an assumed average cost of only $500 per wedding dance, even if only half of them hire a mobile DJ we are still talking about $581 Million per year. This doesn't count the 500,000 high school dances every year, the untold number of company Christmas parties, nor any other special event that a DJ gets hired for. And these numbers only deal with mobile DJs! As you see, in a multi-billion dollar industry I am small potatoes.
Oh, and did anyone mention that DJs in Canada have been paying a $250 fee to get this right for the last 6 years? Tell me again how perfect the US Copyright Law is? And while you're at it, tell me about that ocean front property in Arizona and that bridge you have for sale...
Tim, who are you responding to? Your post seems out of nowhere, other than the first line about pdf.
I was responding to three blind mice. No one had responded when I first started posting. I just type slower than John S. TBM had nothing good to say (but his sarcasm is humorous), ergo the assumption that he doesn't agree with anything Dr. Lessig says. I point out that Dr. Lessig does have at least one good point, and then I offer my situation as evidence of that point. I was perhaps a bit verbose and possibly went off tangent a bit, but I hope you'll forgive me since it is my real-life situation. ;)
hey, please, lessig is not a "Dr." (though I think Siva is).
oh please -- I still type with just 4 or 5 fingers. You type *more* than me. That is more accurate.
I think Dr. Vaidhyanathan is a professor of communication at NYU... that's what my memory recalls from his jacket of his first book.
Give me an e-mail to send it to you. Do whatever you want with it. Any format you want. Whatever. The printed pages are better quality than any electronic version, of course. They have been fully edited. And the battery never runs out.
If you want the best quality file and find $20 too much to pay for my book, your local public library should have it on the shelf in a few weeks. That's my favorite free culture site.
Siva
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