Lexicon Update: Of Professors and Parasites
Still no news about the Lexicon. The long vigil continues.
I just saw this article by Professor Alastair McCleery of the Scottish Centre for the Book, Napier University:
Dead Hands Keep a Closed Book
No, don't worry - that rather startling title doesn't mean he is advocating death to writers, but hoping that the descendents of deceased writers will allow more freedom for academic writers to use the published works of the departed. He is complaining about copyright "extension" which allows nearly perpetual copyrights for heirs to a literary estate.
And yes, that would mean a loosening of the copyright laws in some cases, and he goes through quite a bit of the history of copyright, and UK legislation. But methinks the Scottish professor contradicts himself and sounds a bit like an intellectual snob when he singles out the HP Lexicon as a special case because he sees it as "nakedly parasitical." Come on . . . really?
First McLeery writes:
. . . "Intellectual property must at some point become available to all so that it can work to the public good. This is not a legal principle that must be fought for but one that must be exploited without reservation."
. . . instead of welcoming the opportunities to stimulate interest in an author's work and thereby to increase the revenues derived from it, literary estates can block them out of an kneejerk conservatism towards an unfamiliar medium and a fear of loss of control of the heritage they are protecting.
Our academic perspective privileges the generation and transmission of new ideas and learning conducted in an atmosphere of liberty of action and freedom of expression. The viewpoint of the literary estates (and their publishers) is based on a desire to control use of copyright material and exploit it to the full commercially. Both positions are reflected in copyright law itself; yet only that of ownership is stressed and promoted.
No mention of whether the original author or copyright owner should decide how "creative" a work is in order to bestow the privilege of quoting and summarizing. No - even a dry history book, biography, or literary analysis should have "freedom of expression." But then he switches his opinion on the HP Lexicon, which is a special case undeserving of such "liberty":
About the Lexicon: "Other derivative works that have been challenged using copyright have tended to be much more creative responses to existing works rather than so nakedly parasitical."
Sorry, Professor. I think you are being a bit hypocritical there. Don't collegians and academic writers create indexes and lexicons? Don't they actually get tenure based on publishing works about other works? Of course they do. I would never call an academic writer a "parasite," though, because criticism is the rock core of understanding and analyzing literature.
The word "parasitical" is reminiscent of phrases used by the Plaintiff side in the course of the Lexicon trial, and it's a nice echo coming a fellow Scot. However, McLeery cannot have it both ways. Either Fair Use protects all sorts of works, or it protects none. It shouldn't be up to the author or the Court to decide what is "creative" and what is not.
I daresay, in the U.S., most juries would probably rule that most academic writing is not "creative" but "factual" and they might even find it to be a form of parasitical green algae growing on the upper crust of Higher Education. That may be untrue and unjust, but there could be alot of strange rulings if the legal choice is between "creative worship" and "parasitical crap."
If things were that simple, this case would already be over.
I just saw this article by Professor Alastair McCleery of the Scottish Centre for the Book, Napier University:
Dead Hands Keep a Closed Book
No, don't worry - that rather startling title doesn't mean he is advocating death to writers, but hoping that the descendents of deceased writers will allow more freedom for academic writers to use the published works of the departed. He is complaining about copyright "extension" which allows nearly perpetual copyrights for heirs to a literary estate.
And yes, that would mean a loosening of the copyright laws in some cases, and he goes through quite a bit of the history of copyright, and UK legislation. But methinks the Scottish professor contradicts himself and sounds a bit like an intellectual snob when he singles out the HP Lexicon as a special case because he sees it as "nakedly parasitical." Come on . . . really?
First McLeery writes:
. . . "Intellectual property must at some point become available to all so that it can work to the public good. This is not a legal principle that must be fought for but one that must be exploited without reservation."
. . . instead of welcoming the opportunities to stimulate interest in an author's work and thereby to increase the revenues derived from it, literary estates can block them out of an kneejerk conservatism towards an unfamiliar medium and a fear of loss of control of the heritage they are protecting.
Our academic perspective privileges the generation and transmission of new ideas and learning conducted in an atmosphere of liberty of action and freedom of expression. The viewpoint of the literary estates (and their publishers) is based on a desire to control use of copyright material and exploit it to the full commercially. Both positions are reflected in copyright law itself; yet only that of ownership is stressed and promoted.
No mention of whether the original author or copyright owner should decide how "creative" a work is in order to bestow the privilege of quoting and summarizing. No - even a dry history book, biography, or literary analysis should have "freedom of expression." But then he switches his opinion on the HP Lexicon, which is a special case undeserving of such "liberty":
About the Lexicon: "Other derivative works that have been challenged using copyright have tended to be much more creative responses to existing works rather than so nakedly parasitical."
Sorry, Professor. I think you are being a bit hypocritical there. Don't collegians and academic writers create indexes and lexicons? Don't they actually get tenure based on publishing works about other works? Of course they do. I would never call an academic writer a "parasite," though, because criticism is the rock core of understanding and analyzing literature.
The word "parasitical" is reminiscent of phrases used by the Plaintiff side in the course of the Lexicon trial, and it's a nice echo coming a fellow Scot. However, McLeery cannot have it both ways. Either Fair Use protects all sorts of works, or it protects none. It shouldn't be up to the author or the Court to decide what is "creative" and what is not.
I daresay, in the U.S., most juries would probably rule that most academic writing is not "creative" but "factual" and they might even find it to be a form of parasitical green algae growing on the upper crust of Higher Education. That may be untrue and unjust, but there could be alot of strange rulings if the legal choice is between "creative worship" and "parasitical crap."
If things were that simple, this case would already be over.