What book publishers are doing today echoes the ways in which big label music companies acted at the advent of digital music:
Downloads did not kill the music business. Shortsightedness and turf-protection on the part of music business executives did. Piracy and changing distribution schema will not kill the publishing industry. Shortsighted infrastructure-protection on the part of publishing houses will.
What offed the music business — and what the publishing industry is facing — is a corporate structure built to churn out hits to subsidize an entire product line. Rather than developing artists, exploiting regional marketplaces, and building financial models that can easily support a mid-range list, both industries focus on entertainment at the expense of art and expression.
As anyone in the music business could have told you years ago, the customer is now a human being, and publishers–who still see retail as their customers–don’t know how to build products for individuals who might want to discuss, interact with, congregate around, or add their own $0.02 to the content. The customer has stepped out of the bookstore and into the foyer of the publishing houses, they are knocking on the doors of authors, and asking to be addressed as individuals. They will consent to purchase, not when coerced by a front-of-the-store display or fabulous media coverage, but when their friends start talking about how awesome/helpful/inspiring/powerful the actual book itself is. And this–the book itself–is what publishing is dangerously close to losing sight of in the attempt to build market share. To change this kind of corporate culture will require super-human “change management” to flip a mega-entity staffed by people who are petrified of losing their jobs into a business that can be one step ahead (instead of five steps behind) consumption trends.
Ultimately, the music business sacrificed music to save the business. Hopefully, publishers will realize that if books are similarly sacrificed, what will be left is an industry that doesn’t care about its product, focuses on creating grandiose supply chains instead of amplifying demand, has no idea what end-users (aka readers) want, sees value only in commodification, and has to keep spinning out hit after hit after hit just to keep the doors open. The result? A beast that consumes itself.
Here’s where the new set of DMCA-notices-as-silencers talk started:
“[T]he fact that it was removed from YouTube at all is a frustrating lesson in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Under the DMCA’s safe harbor provisions, websites are protected from copyright liability for hosting videos posted by users so long as they promptly remove the infringing material when notified by the copyright holder. WHDH didn’t want its weatherman creating a storm, so as the copyright owner of the news program it could request that YouTube pull the video from its site.
The DMCA’s notice-and-takedown mechanism puts the onus on the individual who posted the material to send a counter-notice asking that the material be put back up and usually raising some defense to copyright infringement, such as fair use. In this case there’s a fairly strong argument that the 27-second clip of Bouchard is fair. The amount of the original broadcast used is very small, the purpose of the clip is to spur public discussion, and there is arguably no effect on WHDH’s news market. It’s likely WHDH either didn’t consider fair use before ordering the clip’s takedown, or it simply didn’t care.“-Source (emphasis mine)
And then:
“[T]o use the copyright laws to silence that critique has nothing to do with protecting intellectual property and the rights of a creator to profit from his, her, or its creation: it’s unconstitutional censorship!” -Source
And then:
“The courts have tried to reconcile the question of how copyright law can possibly survive a First Amendment challenge (after all, the First Amendment says Congress shall make no law that interferes with freedom of speech… and yet that’s exactly what copyright does) by saying that a robust fair use exception is the key to making it okay. But when fair use is trampled on repeatedly, it makes you wonder how anyone can still claim that copyright isn’t a massive abuse of the First Amendment.” –Source.
Anyone can send a takedown notice for any reason — without consequence. Corporations and individuals use the DMCA as an excuse to silence speech and just when you think rulings like this one are enough, it happens at an increasing rate.
Things like this remind me why I’m doing what I’m doing.
See also EFF’s “Takedown Hall of Shame” (yes, my video is an honorable mention in The Hall)
Maybe I should rethink personal blogging and just blog copyright, free speech, fair use, etc. I never wanted to do niche blogging but it seems something’s telling me I should.
“Hey, Horwitz,” I said. “You ever pass by the lagoon in Central Park? Down by Central Park South?”
“The what?”
“The lagoon. That little lake, like, there. Where the ducks are. You know.”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“Well, you know the ducks that swim around in it? In the springtime and all? Do you happen to know where they go in the wintertime, by any chance?”
“Where who goes?”
“The ducks. Do you know, by any chance? I mean does somebody come around in a truck or something and take them away, or do they fly away by themselves- go south or something?”
- The Catcher In the Rye
Answer given: “How the hell should I know?”
… where will I focus my pop culture attention?
