More from the annals of intellectual property enforcement run amok, as Reuters reports that "Police have arrested a high school student suspected of posting his own translation of the latest Harry Potter book on the Internet weeks ahead of the official French release date, a newspaper reported on Wednesday." Obviously, the Gallimard/Potter/Rowling marketing machine couldn't possibly stand up to the web-only release of three chapters worth of amateur translation by a sixteen year-old without getting the long arm of the law involved.
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Tough on Crime
08 Aug 2007 08:35 am
Comments (8)
I hear in some countries they will arrest you for just slashing one tire on a car. Can you imagine that? It isn't like you slash all of the tires, though you might be planning to do so. Really. They should let people slash all four tires, then arrest them.
I truly think that so-called "intelectual property' laws have gone way too far and copyright protection should not last half as long as the current ridiculous law. However, this is a straight-forward copyright issue. To republish whole chapters of someone's recent work without permission, should be unacceptable and has always been contrary to copyright laws. The French edition should have come out with the English version, but it's not this kid's right to rectify the situation.
Njorl's either trolling or stupid, so I won't bother, but Marv is voicing a confusion that has sadly infected copyright discourse, and so:
Let's be clear. The core of copyright surely is the exclusive right to make (or at least sell) copies of expressive works. But this is quite separable from the exclusive right to make *derivative works* from the original, such as sequels, adaptations to other media, and--yes--translations. Now, I'm an anti-IP extremist, sure, but how many people are going to tell me, with a straight face, that abolishing the derivative-works-right-to-translations is going to have enough of a disincentive effect to overcome the clear benefit in making more and better translations available?
This absurd argument requires believing that the following situation would actually happen *often*: "Gosh, I've got this great idea for a novel, and I'd be totally willing to dedicate myself over the next year to writing it, if only I could be sure that on the tiny, tiny chance that it proves successful enough in my native tongue to have prospects of commercial success in translation, only authorized ones may be made. But, alas, without that right, I guess I'll keep at carpentry."
Be serious. Christ.
I'm not a lawyer but I do look like one and more to the point, I remember getting equally snitted about a similar story back a while when Daley High School in Chicago got a cease and desist from I believe it was Warner Communications for calling their school paper "The Daley Planet." And the thing I found out from reading around a bit was something called "due diligence." Wherein owners of copyrights on things can lose control of those things if it can be shown that they don't care enough to act to preserve their rights--if they haven't shown due diligence in going after infringers. One varient of this is that at some point "The Daily Planet" or whatever starts to slide into the status of a generic term-- "Kleenex" or "Xerox" and they've lost control of it.
So to play devil's advocate, it's actually irresponsible of the lawyers not to go after infringements, because at some point there are real consequences and it's not clear at what point you've passed the threshold.
I expect I've garbled this somewhat, but I think the basic idea is along these lines.
DrBB makes exactly the same point I was going to make.
I once saw a piece on TV about a bar in Brooklyn that was calling itself "The Brooklyn Dodger", and how the the LA Dodger organization - who still own the copyright on the team name and logo, etc. from their days in Brooklyn - were suing the bar owners to 'cease and desist' in using the copyrighted name. And the basic thrust of the story was what big meanies the Dodger baseball organization were being. But what I took away from the story was the 30 second sound bite they gave the lawyer from the Dodger organization, who said in essence "Look, you don't understand. If we are aware of a copyright violation, and we do nothing about it, we risk losing our copyright. And not just for the Brooklyn part, but for the Dodger part as well, and for logo we currently use on the uniforms. We CAN'T not sue."
DrBB, Earle, it is impossible for you to lose copyright on a work. It is also impossible for anyone to have copyrighted the phrase "The Daily Planet" or "Brooklyn Dodgers". You cannot copyright a phrase!
What you can lose without due diligence, and what these lawsuits were over, is trademarks. Trademarks are an entirely separate area of IP.
Derivative works fall under copyright laws, not trademarks, and you can't lose your copyright because someone produces a derivative work (including a translation). Nor are there ANY laws which require a copyright holder to sue for violations. Copyright lawsuits are always optional.
I can't help but think that the term "intellectual property" is itself part of the problem, because it reinforces a bad analogy.
I'm not sure what the alternative is, but I think Matt should find one and use his mighty blogging power to popularize it.
Comments closed August 22, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
Matt, give us an account of last night's Giants baseball game.
Posted by steve duncan | August 8, 2007 8:49 AM