Publishers like to overlook the fact that authors plagarise other authors work by merely getting their authors to sign a disclaimer that protects the author. I can’t imagine it being an easy task to define the ‘originality’ of a piece of work, yet under the current scheme it strikes me as difficult to protect the original content of a book. As we move towards a greater concentration of electronic media, I expect there will be changes to the way intellectual property (IP) is controlled and managed. This will take time because authors tend to be pretty ‘self-righteous’ people and publishers have their commercial interests to protect, so we can expect any progress to be slow. Or is it inevitable? We live in a fast-track world. If I were to write a book on self-improvement, I could find 100,000 titles online, of which probably 80% of what I might write has been said before. There is no question that some people make the same point better than others.
I respect the notion of paying credit to the originators of an idea, and even ensuring that they get their royalties. However I also think there is credit (and royalties) to be paid to the author that makes the argument more concisely. The system we have now does that in a crude fashion because we are talking about hardcopies, and there is scarcely little cooperation between publishers and authors, so are not authors just inclined to act as if they are the creators if only to avoid getting ‘hang up’ on the old in the pursuit of value-add. There is a certain piety in academia that oversteps this piece of impracticality. Of course they feel powerless, and want to avoid the scandal of being ex-communicated from the establishment.
But as a more practical creature I would value a scheme that did not place pious value on ‘old content’ and freed authors to focus on the ‘new’. The best way of doing this I believe would be to recognize the value of (i) originality and (ii) style, so that established authors can be rewarded for making these old arguments, and new authors can focus on creating new content.
The scheme that I envisage is that publisher and authors would break down packets of ideas, just as computers communicate packets of information. Those packets are either original in concept or style, and depending on which determines the amount of royalty that should be attributed to the originator(s). Of course originators who write poorly will be re-written, but they will still get attribution for originality.
Aspiring writers at the frontier of human knowledge will not waste their time creating the ‘old’. When they read an ‘old’ book, they will critique it, so they can discard the ideas that are irrelevant or wrong, and merely add the value that they have originated. The ‘current’ author will get credit for the percentage of the book which is fresh, and for the percentage of the book which is ‘old’, he will pay attribution to the ‘old’ established authors. The implication is that an author of a book might only add 10-20% new value to a book, but the implication is that books will be transient and authors will only be rewarded for new content. The same concept can apply to music. So should America fear IP violations in China? No, because the content will already be dated.
The best aspect of the scheme is that old content eventually looses its value, and becomes cheap to copy for poorer countries, so they need not be left too far behind. We all know that we have learned from others, but we want to brand ideas as our ‘thinking’ not because we are the originator, but because it embodies the way we think.
I also think its important that readers should not have to pay for content that they have already read. Clearly if your computer has a record of the IP you have read, based on your reorded downloads, then it can easily credit you for those packets of information already downloaded in an earlier book.
I think this type of scheme is likely to be developed with a shift towards greater electronic content. I think we will see authors and publishers selling books in packets, just as we can imagine software programmers selling certain programming code that is a standard unit in different programs. Before we download a book we will be able to see whether it has any arguments we have not seen based on any packets of information that we have already read & paid for.
Clearly there is an opportunity for authors to work with publishers to derive more value from works. This type of model actually gives authors a greater capacity to make money from their old writings because they live on in others. It also means credit goes where it should, people are rewarded for improving, and authors are not rewarded for copying. Its easier for them to take an existing book and edit the parts they don’t like. The consequence would be faster writing for authors because they can focus on what is essentially fresh.
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Andrew Sheldon www.sheldonthinks.com
I respect the notion of paying credit to the originators of an idea, and even ensuring that they get their royalties. However I also think there is credit (and royalties) to be paid to the author that makes the argument more concisely. The system we have now does that in a crude fashion because we are talking about hardcopies, and there is scarcely little cooperation between publishers and authors, so are not authors just inclined to act as if they are the creators if only to avoid getting ‘hang up’ on the old in the pursuit of value-add. There is a certain piety in academia that oversteps this piece of impracticality. Of course they feel powerless, and want to avoid the scandal of being ex-communicated from the establishment.
But as a more practical creature I would value a scheme that did not place pious value on ‘old content’ and freed authors to focus on the ‘new’. The best way of doing this I believe would be to recognize the value of (i) originality and (ii) style, so that established authors can be rewarded for making these old arguments, and new authors can focus on creating new content.
The scheme that I envisage is that publisher and authors would break down packets of ideas, just as computers communicate packets of information. Those packets are either original in concept or style, and depending on which determines the amount of royalty that should be attributed to the originator(s). Of course originators who write poorly will be re-written, but they will still get attribution for originality.
Aspiring writers at the frontier of human knowledge will not waste their time creating the ‘old’. When they read an ‘old’ book, they will critique it, so they can discard the ideas that are irrelevant or wrong, and merely add the value that they have originated. The ‘current’ author will get credit for the percentage of the book which is fresh, and for the percentage of the book which is ‘old’, he will pay attribution to the ‘old’ established authors. The implication is that an author of a book might only add 10-20% new value to a book, but the implication is that books will be transient and authors will only be rewarded for new content. The same concept can apply to music. So should America fear IP violations in China? No, because the content will already be dated.
The best aspect of the scheme is that old content eventually looses its value, and becomes cheap to copy for poorer countries, so they need not be left too far behind. We all know that we have learned from others, but we want to brand ideas as our ‘thinking’ not because we are the originator, but because it embodies the way we think.
I also think its important that readers should not have to pay for content that they have already read. Clearly if your computer has a record of the IP you have read, based on your reorded downloads, then it can easily credit you for those packets of information already downloaded in an earlier book.
I think this type of scheme is likely to be developed with a shift towards greater electronic content. I think we will see authors and publishers selling books in packets, just as we can imagine software programmers selling certain programming code that is a standard unit in different programs. Before we download a book we will be able to see whether it has any arguments we have not seen based on any packets of information that we have already read & paid for.
Clearly there is an opportunity for authors to work with publishers to derive more value from works. This type of model actually gives authors a greater capacity to make money from their old writings because they live on in others. It also means credit goes where it should, people are rewarded for improving, and authors are not rewarded for copying. Its easier for them to take an existing book and edit the parts they don’t like. The consequence would be faster writing for authors because they can focus on what is essentially fresh.
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Andrew Sheldon www.sheldonthinks.com
