A recent article posted this morning indicated that the International Publishers Association (IPA) is fighting to close some selected file sharing sites due to copyright infringement concerns. One particular site (which will remain nameless in this blog) made over 400,000 eBooks available for free. Just because books are now made in electronic or "e" form, does not mean they are "free" to download, use, share, or what have you. Besides, eBooks are extremely cheap. In fact, there is controversy on what eBooks are being sold for on Amazon, versus what publishers should be selling them for. The price of eBooks do not reflect the work that is put into them. The editorial, production, and manufacturing costs...but that's another story.
Now, some of you may be reading and think, "It's online...who cares?" Well, you couldn't be more wrong. The common misconception is that "if I get it offline, it's free". Believe it or not, the Internet isn't a huge free for all of information, even though we absolutely perceive it that way. This is partly one reason why the government wants to censor the Internet with the new Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). While many users and companies are against it, you really can't blame them. Piracy is the same as stealing.
Most of you know that I am a full time editor and project manager for Pearson, (which for those of you who haven't heard of Pearson or aren't familiar with publishing at all, Pearson is the largest publisher in the world.) I work in Pearson's higher ed custom division. Basically my job is to work with universities and colleges to create custom textbooks that are tailored specifically to students in a particular course. Many times, I will get an order that involves printing something the adopter, or professor, wrote, or claims he or she wrote. In my professional experience, you'd be surprised how many times I've had to explain to one of our adopters that they cannot use a particular image or material that they claim is theirs. "But I got it off the Internet..." so? That doesn't mean you own it.
In another example, I'd also like to refer to my Baby Boomer parents, who are still very technologically behind. I had been working full time in publishing for four years at this point and was about to start my business, and I recall one evening after work my father was working on a training PowerPoint presentation for his staff while my mother was cooking dinner. He was getting frustrated with trying to find an image to use in his presentation through Microsoft Clip Art. Then my mother pipes up, "just find one off the Internet". That's precisely when I stepped in with my two cents. I then jumped in the room and said "no, you CAN'T do that!" Both of them looked up at me in surprise as if to say, "what's the big deal?" I explained that that was copyright infringement and that Dad was about to grab an image off the Internet that not only did he not own, but he was about to use that in a presentation that had his company name on it. Not to mention presenting it in front of how many people. Nowadays with "sharing" files and uploading and downloading, my innocent father's training presentation could easily end up in the wrong hands...which could result in a lawsuit, and the possibility of my father losing his job.
Far-fetched? Not quite. Intellectual property is nothing to screw around with, no matter how easily it may seem to grab content offline. Why do you think these lawyers that specialize in intellectual property make big bucks? Have you heard the story of the Kinkos lawsuit? You can read the article, but basically back in the early 90s, Kinkos used to have small locations on university and college campuses, kind of like how Barnes and Nobles manages various campus bookstores. While it was very convenient for students to make copies of assignments, compositions, etc., Kinkos also offered "course packs", which basically included illegal printed copies of copyrighted material that the students could purchase, for profit. However, once word got out, Kinkos was sued by various publishers, claiming that they were distributing and selling various publishers' and rights holders' copyrighted material. Kinkos came back and claimed that it was for educational purposes. The copyright laws back then were a little leaner, however, Kinkos was still sued, and it was at that point that copyright laws became clearly defined and the punishments became more severe.
So the next time you think, "oh, I'll just grab a picture offline for my website or blog," or something to that effect...think again. Think of what you are using the content, material, or image for, and then think of whether or not it is a good idea. You can absolutely use images, however it is best to grab them from stock image sites. There are some on sites that are available for purchase, but there are also free images that you can download and use at your leisure, however, while this is more morally sound, it is still a good idea to credit the designer where possible. Or to avoid the whole deal, take pictures or videos yourself and upload them. The only thing you should be careful for, is protecting YOUR work. You can always add a disclaimer in your description claiming that you took the photo or video or wrote your own work and that you do not permit the sharing or duplicating of content. Now while you don't have a lawyer on your side with documentation protecting your work, someone would have to be pretty stupid to ignore that and use it anyway.
The moral to this story? Just because it is available online, doesn't mean it's FREE, in every sense of the word. It doesn't mean that it's public domain, free of usage, free of an author, or free of cost. More and more sites will be shut down in the future due to this issue, however, you can do what you can and what you know is morally correct or incorrect.
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Couldn't agree more about the misconception of "free" vs. ownership. Well said.
ReplyDeleteHi Laura! Thanks for reading! Yeah, I felt this topic was blog-worthy. ;-) Hope all is well!
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