Taking Money From Our Pockets

[mabfan]

Folks who read here regularly know that I have a strong belief in upholding copyright law. Part of it is, admittedly, in my own self interest, as I've created works that have some value to them (or so I'd like to think). I would say that anyone who makes money off their creativity has some vested interest in maintaining certain rights over their work, no matter what they may say aloud.

There's also a certain level of respect for the creator that copyright should imply, but that doesn't always come along with it. A few years back, a man approached me about reprinting "Kaddish for the Last Survivor" for distribution to synagogues during Yom Ha'Shoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day). In his very first email to me, he said that he was offering no money, but that the exposure would be good for me. I pointed out to him that I earn part of my living off of my writing – in fact, there was a time when I had no other source of income – and I suggested that he pay me $100. His response was to say forget it. The irony was that if he had approached me from the start by asking how much I would charge him for the reprint rights, I would have offered the story for free. (A lesson to everyone.) But approaching me as if my work was valuable enough for reprinting and sharing, but not valuable enough to give me recompense, rubbed me the wrong way.

Of course, it could have been worse. He could have run off copies without ever telling me.

The real difficulty comes when people are either ignorant or clueless about copyright. Eric Berlin, who is a playwright among many other things, just shared an incident under the blog post title Dusting off my playwright hat for a moment. A woman who is part of a group putting on his play has invited him to attend the performance. The only problem is, it appears that the group might not have bothered to license the rights. I say "might not" because Berlin notes the possibility that they might have tried to secure the rights but failed, due to the disorganization that exists at Samuel French.

However, assuming the group did in fact not bother securing rights, it puts Berlin in an interesting situation. The young woman who is playing the lead has praised the play very strongly, and any writer would love to hear his words praised in that fashion. But...but. If we don't pay our creative class for their work – if in fact we remain ignorant to the financial value their work should have to them – then what are we as a society saying to them?

Copyright © Michael A. Burstein

Comments

[affinity8.livejournal.com]

I've actually been thinking of late of you and copyright and your earlier posts, and I'm glad you linked to Eric Berlin.

With my high school classes, I would never be able to get the headmaster to pay for license rights. Ever. I can't get him to buy soap for the bathroom. My classroom doesn't have a TV, overhead projector, or cockroach control. We have folding metal chairs at bingo hall tables and 10 year old textbooks. We don't have a drama department, of course. I thought about forming one but we'd never be able to do anything where fees came into play (no pun intended). Alas, poor students.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

As Eric points out, a large portion of blame rests with the licensing agencies, who are understaffed to handle the large number of small requests that come in. When I was in charge of reconciling the mechanical licenses for a local community chorus, it was impossible for us to find out which agency to pay for about 20% of the back royalties we owed. AFAIK, that money is still sitting in the escrow account we set up in case anyone ever showed up to ask for it.

I'm not sure the equation holds

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

As a lawyer, I keep getting back to the fact that copyright, at least in this country, has nothing to do with the actual value of the work. This off the cuff reply is subject to the same rights as my professional blogging, subject to the same rights as a book I spend years researching (at least initially).

I know a number of writers and artists who make the same connection that money=respect. But this has nothing to do with respect. We give you rights so that you cna make a living, because if you couldn't control distribution, you could not afford to produce works, others could not afford to publish them, etc.

In Europe it is a bit different. Some works are entitled to unwaivable rights given to the creator, on the theory that the creator has invested him or herself in the work and therefore inherently has some permanent, non-transferable rights. But that is not the case here.

The distinction is important because it goes to policy. If we class this as about incentives and production and so forth, we get rational economic policy. We want to provide enough incentive and control to creators 9and others involved in the creative process) while not strangling fair use or locking up works for so long that the burden of maintaining the right imposes broader costs on others.

But once we make this all about respect, it is not a matter of rational policymaking. And, as I pointed out in my recent discussion of what exactly does a license to Urinetown provide, it gets very hard to say who is contributing how much to the creative process, and how do we apportion out the "reward" and "respect" for each contribution?

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

I wonder why it is that artists (I mean of all varieties, including writers) seem to be the only professionals where people assume they should produce work for no payment. Is it because our work can be so public? Does it make a "connection" to people and therefore they feel like it belongs to them? Or is it because the stereotypical arr-teest thinks getting paid for your art makes you a hack, and a lot of people believe that stereotype?

Of course, being the snark that I can be when I set my mind to it, I also confront these people when I meet them with something along the lines of "I'm very impressed that you do X job for free." When they naturally respond "I don't!", then of course you kick in the part about "Neither do I."

[surakofb5.livejournal.com]

I thought Analog held the rights to "Kaddish"? Doesn't the publisher usually hold the rights to a work, unless you're famous enough (i.e. Harlan Ellison) to negotiate a different arrangement? That's the case with the peer-reviewed scientific journals. But it's usually not difficult to get reprint rights from them.