[IP] Susan Cheever: Just Google 'thou shalt not steal'
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From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: December 18, 2005 2:14:53 AM EST
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Susan Cheever: Just Google 'thou shalt not steal'
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[Note: This item comes from friend John McMullen. DLH]
From: "John F. McMullen" <observer@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: December 17, 2005 11:03:11 PM PST
To: "johnmac's living room" <johnmacsgroup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Dave Farber
<farber@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Susan Cheever: Just Google 'thou shalt not steal'
From Newsday -- <http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-
etcolumn4549299dec12,0,7399981.column?coll=ny-news-columnists>
Just Google 'thou shalt not steal'
by Susan Cheever
It's late at night, and you are in the bedroom cruising auction
sites for furniture on the Internet. You should go to sleep, but
you don't. Then you see them, the pair of chairs from your own
living room. They are for sale by someone in New Jersey, but they
are your chairs. You can even see the stains on the blue one where
your son spilled some orange juice and the stitching on the
slipcover you repaired. What are they doing out there in cyberspace?
You go into the living room and, sure enough, they are gone,
leaving gaping spaces on the floor where they once stood. A table
is gone, too, the one your father built for you when you got your
own place. The bowl you had as a centerpiece is shattered on the
floor.
It's a strange experience to see your own property in someone
else's possession when they haven't asked your permission for it or
paid for it. It's disorienting and infuriating. You've been robbed.
That's how it feels when something of yours suddenly appears in
cyberspace, whether it's a chair or a book excerpt, a table or a
newspaper column.
Words are property. This principle has been upheld by the law since
1710, when the first copyright law was passed. According to the
most recent Federal Copyright Statute, passed in 1977, writers own
their words - not their ideas, just their writing. Copyright
protects writers and enables them to make money by selling their
work. Copyright makes it possible for me to get paid for writing
this column. When other newspapers reprint a column of mine, they
have to pay for it. The payments are small, usually about $60, but
the principle is beyond price.
Most writers don't leave much money when they die, but many of them
leave copyrights. My father was a writer, and his estate primarily
consists of copyrights that yield enough income to support my 87-
year-old mother.
Copyright is generally limited to the life of the writer plus 70
years. After that, the work goes into the public domain and is
available to everyone. The Copyright Statute also includes a "fair
use" clause, so that a few lines or phrases of a writer's work can
be used as illustration by someone else. The amount of words that
constitute fair use varies according to court case. At present, it
is 400 words.
Enter Google, the hip, incredibly profitable corporation whose
motto is "Do No Evil." Google doesn't like the copyright laws as
they have existed for centuries. Google wants the rights to store
all the books in the world in its Google Library program, and the
company doesn't want to pay for that right.
[snip]
Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>
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