Monday December 01, 2008 Bill Sommerfeld's Weblog
Still Under Construction. Watch for falling objects
Monday December 01, 2008 On authors having a right to unpublish
Ted posed an ethical question about the use of an unauthorized ebook edition of an out-of-print work.
(IMHO fair use includes a right to convert a work legitimately owned into a form that can be conveniently used by the owner of the copy. In his poll: I think all of options 1, 2, and 3 are ethical. 5 is clearly not ethical. And 4 is just silly).
In the ensuing discussion some people have posited that there's some sort of inherent right of authors to unpublish a published work. IMHO that's nonsense. Publication is (or ought to be) irreversible, and the irreversibility is a feature which contributes to the right of authors to say controversial things. Once you publish something, it's out there; your words have a life of their own, and nobody can pressure you to take them back because you have no ability to take them all back.
There's already enough of a problem with libel tourism. It would be far worse if a court could force you to exercise a right to unpublish.
Post a Comment:
Comments are closed for this entry.
Calendar
| « November 2009 | ||||||
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |
15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 |
22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 |
29 | 30 | |||||
| Today | ||||||
RSS Feeds
All
/General
/IETF
/IPsec
/Music
/OpenSolaris
/Solaris
Search
Links
- Team IPsec
- Bill Sommerfeld
- Dan McDonald
I asked a similar question on a songwriter's forum (and got no answers unfortunately).
The question I asked was, "What do I actually get a licence to when I buy a CD? If I get a license to a single copy of the recording, then if my CD becomes damaged, am I within my rights to download a pirated version and cut a new cd?"
We're obviously talking about personal use here for something to which I have already payed a royalty to the copyright owner.
Alan.
Posted by Alan Hargreaves on December 01, 2008 at 07:52 PM EST #
Alan: Yeah, that sort of copying doesn't trouble me.
To create another hypothetical, if a few pages in a book you own are seriously damaged, can you ethically borrow another copy from a library, photocopy the missing page, and make your copy whole again? I think you can. (To simplify the hypothetical, assume the damage happened after you purchased the book).
Posted by William Sommerfeld on December 01, 2008 at 08:26 PM EST #
I'd have to agree with you.I see nothing ethically or morally wrong with that.
Alan.
Posted by Alan Hargreaves on December 01, 2008 at 08:30 PM EST #