Posting whole articles

Chuck Munson chuck at tao.ca
Wed Jun 12 17:51:12 PDT 2002


Micheal Ellis wrote:
>
> >Without going into all the legal technicalities and four-part tests of fair
> >use, the argument is that copyright infringement involves any reproduction
> >of copyrighted materials that undermines the market or substitutes for the
> >original work. Since posting the whole article means that a person will
> >not go to the original site (seeing the advertising) or pay for archive
> >access later, the original copyright holder has been deprived of income and thus an infringement has occurred.
> >
>
> this is essentially the same as the napster thing.....posting copyrighted articles
> as far as marketing goes has a neutral effect...some may read the article without
> subscribing or paying someone but on the other hand it is also like free publicity
> for the writers as well as the publisher/paper whatever. it's common knowledge
> or at least should be that in general that people that want to subscribe or whatever
> will do so and the people that don't won't regardless of what's posted or not.
> what's going on here is tantamount to fraud...and the ones pushing this crap
> are the one's that KNOW what their publishing isn't worth what they are charging.
>
> yes i think mettalica is fully aware of exactly how much they suck!!!!

Several years ago, when file sharing was still a gleam in the eye of Shawn Fanning, there were several articles published which made some interesting observations about sharing information. The topic at the time was software piracy, which as some of us know, is why Microsoft is the software behemoth that it is today. If it weren't for office geeks like myself back in 1990, 1991, 1992, who were installing multiple copies of MS products illegally, Microsoft products would not have become so entrenched in computing environments.

Piracy and file sharing benefits publishers and artists. Some people call the the Grateful Dead effect. Metallica shot itself in the foot with its vocal opposition to file sharing, but the irony is that Metallica probably became popular because fans were making copies of ealry Metallica albums on cassette tapes and sharing them with friends.

Another analogy is putting stuff in the store window. You can do all the advertising you want, but if people can't try out your wares, or at least browse through them, they aren't going to bite.

Never piss off your fans.

<< Chuck0 >>

Personal homepage -> http://flag.blackened.net/chuck0/home/index.html Infoshop.org -> http://www.infoshop.org/ Alternative Press Review -> http://www.altpr.org/ Practical Anarchy Online -> http://www.practicalanarchy.org/ Anarchy: AJODA -> http://www.anarchymag.org/ MutualAid.org -> http://www.mutualaid.org/ Factsheet 5 -> http://www.factsheet5.org/ AIM: AgentHelloKitty

Web publishing and services for your nonprofit: Bread and Roses Web Publishing http://www.breadandrosesweb.org/

"...ironically, perhaps, the best organised dissenters in the world today are anarchists, who are busily undermining capitalism while the rest of the left is still trying to form committees."

-- Jeremy Hardy, The Guardian (UK)



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list