Jim Baen’s Universe

by Eric Flint | Jun 9, 2021 | Salvos Against Big Brother In my last essay, I ended by saying that the claims made today on behalf of DRM—that stands for “Digital Rights Management”—can be summarized as follows: The advent of digital media makes it so effortless to copy an intellectual creator’s work that traditional notions of “fair use” have to be abandoned. In today’s world, any sort of “fair use” will inexorably and inevitably lead to wholesale violation of copyright. Therefore, fair use must be banned entirely—or, at a bare minimum, have tremendous restrictions placed on it. And I concluded by paraphrasing Mary McCarthy’s famous quip that every word in the above statement was a lie, including “the” and “and.” Let’s start with “makes it so effortless.” What’s being claimed here, by the proponents of DRM, is that because digital data can be processed by computers all of the traditional practical obstacles that made it difficult for somewhat to infringe copyright have vanished. “Online piracy” has therefore become rampant. If someone wants to produce a “pirated” version of an electronic text, they no longer have to have access to printing presses, nor do they need the financial wherewithal to operate them or pay someone else to do so. They can simply duplicate the text on their own home computer and thereby completely circumvent the need to pay the creator of the work under traditional copyright laws. For this reason, DRM supporters claim, all electronic text must be carefully encrypted. That forces the prospective user, whether he wants to or not, to pay the creators of the product the money that is legitimately owed to them. Without the code to open the encryption—to get which, he must pay for the legitimate product—the “pirate” is out of business. Furthermore, in order to prevent anyone from producing an illegal code-cracking mechanism, severe penalties must be levied against any such activity. And finally—oh, they’re a thorough lot, these…

by Eric Flint | Jun 9, 2021 | Salvos Against Big Brother I ended my last essay by presenting the general principles needed to answer the question, how long should copyright terms last? For those of you who didn’t read or don’t remember what I said, here it is: First, authors need to have enough protection to enable them to be able to make a living as full-time writers. Second, that protection has to be long enough to provide them with a motivation to write for the public, and see doing so as a possible profession. But that’s it. Those are the only two legitimate concerns. Any term of copyright which exceeds that minimum necessary length, as Macaulay put it in the quote I cited in my last column, has no legitimate purpose. Once you cross that line, a necessary evil has simply become an evil—and the farther past that line you go, the more evil it gets. Now let’s get into the details. The first thing I need to establish are some facts. I need to do that because I’ve found that many people, including many authors, have very unrealistic notions about how long copyright actually protects anything. What happens is that they look only at the law—ignoring all social and economic realities—and say to themselves, “Oh, wow, anything that gets written—including anything I write myself—will be protected by copyright for seventy years after I die.” Uh, no. In the real world—except for intellectual property owned by giant corporations—here is what really happens: The longer copyright lasts, the less likely it is that 99.99% of anything ever written will ever get reissued. What excessively long copyright terms actually do is destroy writing. They don’t protect writing, they ravage it. Why? Well, it’s simple—if you look at writing as a professional craft, subject to economic imperatives like any other form of work, instead of a legal or philosophical abstraction. Here is the cold, hard reality. I call it the ninety-nine percent rule:…

by Eric Flint | Jun 9, 2021 | Salvos Against Big Brother Originally published in Jim Baen’s Universe, Vol 1 Num 2, August 2006 I want to continue my discussion of copyright, which I began in last issue’s column, before turning my attention to the issue of so-called “Digital Rights Management” itself. The reason I want to do so is because what lies at the heart of DRM is one set of answers to a few simple questions: 1) What sort of protection do authors require, to make sure that they can and will keep engaging in their labor? 2) Why do they need a particular sort of protection, as opposed to another? 3) For how long do they need it? I’ll address the first two of these questions in this column, and the third one in the next. Let’s start with the first one, whose answer is obvious. If you don’t figure out a way to pay people to do labor such as writing fiction, one of two things will happen: a) Some potential writers won’t do it at all. b) Most will, simply because they feel a personal urge to do so. But, because they can’t make a living as authors, they will—certainly on average—never get all that good at it. The second point, by the way, is much more important than the first. The number of people who set out to become writers for the purpose of making money is miniscule, and always has been. To be blunt, only a moron would take up being an author as a way to make a living, much less a good living. As careers go, for all but a tiny percentage, it is either impossible altogether except as a part-time occupation, or pays dismally and erratically even if you can manage to do it full-time. I know a lot of authors, and I’m an author myself. I do not know a single one who set out to…

by Eric Flint | Jun 9, 2021 | Salvos Against Big Brother I’m going to be writing a regular column on the subject of electronic publishing, and the challenges it poses to modern society—as well as the opportunity it provides. This column will take up a number of related issues, including such matters as the proper length of copyright terms, the nature of Digital Rights Management and why we are opposed to it, and the largely mythical nature of so-called “online piracy.” We decided to keep this column separate from my general editor’s preface for each issue—see “The Editor’s Page”—because we think the issue is important enough for a separate column of its own. Furthermore, there will usually be a number of specific matters relevant to each issue of the magazine that I will need to address in “The Editor’s Page” that would simply get in the way of this discussion. We’re calling the column “Salvos Against Big Brother” because that captures the key aspect of the problem, so far as Jim Baen and I are concerned. Both the publisher of this magazine and its editor believe that so-called Digital Rights Management (DRM)—by which we mean the whole panoply of ever more restrictive laws concerning digital media, including the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)—are the following: First, they represent a growing encroachment on the personal liberties of the American public, as well as those of citizens in other countries in the world; Second, they add further momentum to what is already a dangerous tendency of governments and the large, powerful corporations which exert undue influence on them to arrogate to themselves the right to make decisions which properly belong to the public; Third, they tend inevitably to constrict social, economic, technical and scientific progress; And, fourth, they represent an exercise in mindless stupidity that would shame any self-respecting dinosaur. As this column progresses, in issue after issue, I will wind up spending most of my…