From: Juan-Carlos Lerman (jclerman_at_netzero.net)
Date: Fri Oct 01 1999 - 01:27:36 EDT
Alden S Klovdahl wrote:
>
> > If book publishers would have divided the world in regions and
> > would have required that we use special glasses to read only the
> > books printed for one specific region, they would have been
> > called unethical (or worse).
>
> actually, book publishers *have* divided the world up into regions.
> american publishers have north and south america; british publishers
> have britain, australia and other english speaking countries. this
> allows them to reduce competition, charge higher prices in different
> markets, and make more money. thus, for example, if an australian
> bookstore tried to import the latest nyt bestseller into aus the u.s.
> publisher would not fill the order. this has loosened up a bit in
> recent years, but not much.
True. I just remembered that some books I bought in South America
and in Europe had a Warning! no to be sold ...etc... but I wasn't
required to wear special spectacles for books printed/sold/stolen
>from other continents. Somehow I always found "out of area" books
in some bookstores and of course in used-bookstores.
More annoying is that the same book is sometimes printed in Canada
and in USA by different publishers, with different titles and with
the same contents. There mu$t be a rea$on. Let's hope the publishers
don't get the idea from the DVDs. Imagine travelling across regions
and having to go buy "region glasses"...
> presumably, that is why hollywood, sony, and the rest wanted DVD region
> coding...to make more money.
>
> of course, the fact that the world has become more global, that someone
> using a thinkpad might wish to put a U.S. DVD in their machine when in
> the U.S., a French DVD when in France, an Australian when down under, etc.
> doesn't really fit with profit maximization aims.
That's the argument some people gave when complaining to the
IBM forum.
> the best solution is simply not to buy a DVD player or DVD disks unless or
> until a scheme more in keeping with modern global society is developed. ...
> and is guaranteed not to change to unbreakable region encrypting when
> everyone has left CDs for DVDs.
The DVD encryption to make copying impossible is contrary to the
spirit, and perhaps the letter (I'm not a lawyer) of the USA
copyright law "provisions for fair use" which allow quoting and
photocopying parts of copyrighted work (text, images, sound, etc)
for non-profit scholarly, scientific, review, criticism, teaching,
etc purposes. I'm glad the New York Museum of Modern Art has very
explicitily posted the right we all have to download its images
if for "fair use". It's also legal (I believe) to photocopy a
whole book and a whole program as "working copy" only once and for
oneself. DVD encryption doesn't allow any of the "fair uses". Now
the legal problem is:
The publishers of copyrighted material can't complain about
non-fair copying unless they can show that there was a $$$
gain by the person copying and there was a $$$ loss for the
publisher (again, I'm not a lawyer but this is what I understood
>from some reading I did). When the law(s) was(were) written,
there were no methods to limit the access to the material (like
the hypothetical region spectacles). My guess is that those who
wrote the statutes didn't have in mind that there would be
materials that would not be accessible to everybody. I think
that the laws should be ammended stating that publishers have to
allow fair use of the published materials.
Also, I believe that fair use might not be understood in
the same way elsewhere than in the USA. I see you are in
Canberra, Australia. What does Australian law say about this?
I have a draft based on the USA fair use provisions in a page in
construction:
http://members.tripod.com/jclerman/tmawg-c.htm
they can be reached also by clicking on "terms and conditions"
in:
http://members.tripod.com/jclerman/tmawg.htm
OOPS, I need to mention that all this was done on a TP770 not
to be off-topic.
JC
> regards, al
>
> Alden S Klovdahl / alden.klovdahl_at_anu.edu.au / fax: +61 2 62 49 05 25
> Sociology Arts / Australian National University / Canberra ACT Australia 0200
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