I have been working on a book on how to be an Amazon seller, some of the tricks and tips that I have learned in nearly a year of selling books on Amazon. Just as I was getting into getting the proof developed with the publisher, along comes a person threatening to sue because they were quoted in the book. The interesting debate about Fair Use, permission, and the rest of it, and in looking at what passes the “reasonable person test”, the book got pulled.
Specifically this is the area that I seriously would run into trouble with. From the Copyright Office notice on what is fair use the following four rules apply in determining what is and what is not fair use. The interesting part is that I can punch holes in the argument on why you want to sue me based on these four rules.
1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
I would fail this test, as it is a book for commercial purposes, in other words, I plan on making money off the quotes that I would have used. While it would be great to call it educational, and the express purpose of the book is to educate people on how to be a better Amazon seller, it still falls under commercial purposes. The idea of writing the book is to make money.
The problem here is that this will require a substantial rewrite of the book to deal with this, and rather than directly quoting, provide the resource name, and where they can get additional information. While not optimal, this would seem the best way to work on removing potentially infringing information out of the book, and getting back into the publishing track.
2. The nature of the copyrighted work
The nature of the copyrighted work, the quotes are pulled from a forum, that has a clear copyright notice on the Amazon site, but since the quotes were pulled from there, it is possible to ask Amazon for permission to quote from the seller’s community. This would be the optimal way of getting around this, and the copyright office points out that if in doubt, seek permission, or show that you made every single attempt that a reasonable person could make in getting permission to use their content.
3. Amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
There are 4 specific quotes that need to be seriously revised to meet the substantiality portion, while the “300 word limit” was more of a secret handshake, with the nature of copyright rules, fair use in flux, with the confusing court cases around them, erring on the side of caution here is a much better idea. Cutting down or removing the quotes in its entirety would be the best way of going around this in lieu of getting permission from Amazon to use quotes from the system.
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
This one is interesting, and could go either way in terms of how it is interpreted, the effect on the potential market is negligible. There is no Amazon book that is an excerpt from the sellers community, Amazon has not monetized the site at all, no ads, and the community participants self post information there. What would be a detriment though in the longer run would be if people thought they could be or would be quoted in a book, the loss of trust in the forum. While public, the impression that I get is that people believe that they are talking in a trusted community of peers, and to have their information published in a book is a breach of trust. That would have an influence on the marketability and use of the Amazon Sellers forum in the longer run, people might stop using it, which could have an influence or impact on the 3rd party sellers system used at Amazon.
Interesting in how you can look at things to go for or against the idea of “fair use” when looking at how the publication of words and idea’s in a book is somehow more substantial than the information that is put on a public forum.
In the mean time, the book has been pulled as a just in case, and a substantial rewrite needs to take place to meet a definitive “reasonable person test” when it comes to fair use.
Utter sheer amazement, the sad part is that it is perfectly true, the music industry is all over radio right now to pay royalties for the first time ever; saying not to pay the artists for air time is tantamount to piracy.
The interesting part, read the wired story here, is that while Rome burns down to the ground, artists are playing around with new revenue models, people have completely altered how they search and consume music, the real question is just how viable is plain old radio on top of that. While independent stations might get a break in the annual fee’s, the larger radio stations will end up with the very short end of the stick if this kind of thing happens.
Many issues on how people can use their own digital media, or someone else’s digital media in what was formerly a fairly dull industry of payola, excess, and the host of other things that go along with it. One cannot but look at all these “last acts of a desperate company” and wonder where music is really going to go.
If we have to play something every time we start it off, that is going to be a real problem down the road, the money is just not there, at 99 cents or at any cost. Some will be able to afford it, but not many. Frankly, if radio is piracy, then we are all in for a very long dark night in relationship to copyright, what we buy, what we listen to, and the entertainment that we might just enjoy.
Gone will be the days of listening to the radio to hear a new band, gone will be the days of streaming radio in the office, gone will be many things that have been a way of life for everyone since the time radio was invented. So much to lose, for everyone.
Maybe the music industries issues are not all about piracy, but also a secondary confluence that we have heard of but did not really think about. The Motley Fool though comes wading into the RIAA and its minions against everyone on the planet with an interesting take on things.
Maybe it is not piracy that is the full issue much to the consternation of RIAA et Al, but another even bigger side band, independent artists, going their own way, using alternative methods to distribute music, mainly wal-mart.
With discount department stores, live event promoters, and premium coffee houses becoming the new music brokers, is it any wonder to see the majors reeling? It gets worse. Madonna, McCartney, and The Eagles proved marketable…The ability of Wal-Mart, Starbucks, and Live Nation to generate adequate promotional muscle for The Eagles, McCartney, and Madonna will make it that much easier for proven acts to snip the strings in the future. Source: Motley Fool
So while the industry burns down around the old model, the new model looks promising, sell at cost or for small profit on line, sell the albums at Wal Mart, Starbucks, and other venues including Amazon where you can really cut your own deal with some software and a lawyer. Use the on line sales to promote off line sales, to promote the concert gig or touring gig. All of this without signing to a label, or feeding the RIAA and its minions machine against everyone else in the whole world.
There will always be piracy, there has always been some form of piracy, the point where the sanity begins is when you embrace chaos and work out a path that leads to less chaos. While the RIAA and its minions are busy looking elsewhere, the rest of the world has moved on, and that is the good thing. In a few years or a decade, it just won’t matter.
Tags: riaa, wal-mart, motley fool, music, minion, money, business, model
Blue Print Ventures has a series of videos featuring the entrepreneur Gary Snoman, that are about fall down funny to read. Some of them are also out on YouTube, meaning you can cut and share them. So what it is really like being a Venture Capitalist, let Gary show you the way.
There is something elegant about a VC fund making a video like this. Of course a lot of this is also scary if you have ever worked with or known a VC person, they do act like some of this many times over. Then there is the downside, it is all work most of the time. Not for the faint at heart. In the mean time enjoy the laugh.
Have to admit, this makes for some serious humor.
Tags: blueprint ventures, vc, funding, money, humor, gary snoman, lots of laughs
Truly interesting, and thanks to CBS for allowing the embed below, but this 60 minutes clip talks about how to deal with Millenials as they hit the work force. Managers and co-workers beware, the “coddled” are just not prepared to work for your company.
How much of this is fear, how much of this is pandering to an agenda is anyone’s best guess, because while the video is a broad paintbush, parental interference is something to think about. While I have yet to have a parent call me wanting to know why Junior got canned, the potential is there.
Ahh yes, your precious snowflake is about to hit the cold harsh reality of business, where it is not merit, not everyone wins, and sometimes people get their feelings hurt. The oddity in this is that one of the interviewed says that it is ok to have four jobs in a year, guaranteed as a hiring manager, four jobs in one year is going to make a hiring person stop and think.
While it is great to have time to go do the things you want to do, and many companies are just not there, this video raises some interesting provocative ideas. Can business accommodate the millenials, and 20 years from now, who will win the change of culture?
I know it has been very quiet this week on Techwag, but what has been keeping me busy is teaching Web 2.0 to some great students over at CityU of Seattle. The video is being edited, but these are some rush photo’s from the shoot. There is nothing better than teaching students how to use a video camera, record, lights, and getting support from two program managers.
Two of the students were working out how to frame the shots when the speaker is ready to start pacing the front of the classroom. This is an excellent shot of them collaborating on how the video will be shot.
This is one of the senior faculty members giving their presentation on equity markets and debt instrument management. This looks like it will be a lot of fun, especially as they teach stock trading, debt instruments, and how to run a financial portfolio.
This is me preparing for my coverage of the information systems program at the school, in which Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 technologies are going to be a big part of the program. I can honestly say, that this is going to be a kick butt program.
Of course it is just exciting to watch someone speak through a camera.
In all you cannot beat the experience that we had over the week, from orchestrating the whole production to actually getting to shoot and capturing video. It should be very interesting to see what comes of this project. In the longer run though even if we don’t ever use an ounce of video, or the videos are so poor that they cannot be used, this is still one great learning experience. It was also fun that CityU of Seattle would let me use their facilities to do this.
Tags: cityu of seattle, web 2.0, web 3.0, video, shoot, students, learning, education, teaching, programs, fun
If you never followed the Kathy Sierra debacle then go quickly catch up on this one, then start following the saga of Ariel Waldman.
Kathy Sierra who has been silent for far too long at the hands of trolls and people who were truly evil is just one example of when otherwise good social networking goes bad.
Ariel Waldman is now on that list of folks who is dealing with a very unfriendly secret stalker who is following her via Twitter. Twitter rather than deal with the issue directly and banning the user has decided to do nothing about the issue and rewrite their terms of service rather than enforce it. That essentially means that twitter is now giving a green light to a big pile of badness that is going to descend on the service, if they refuse to reign in folks who are clearly harassing other members of their service.
The harassment continued throughout the course of 2007. Since Twitter and I had an open dialog started, I would periodically report cases of continuing harassment (some of which spread between Flickr and Twitter). Twitter would take no action while Flickr would immediately ban and remove all traces of the harassment. Unfortunately, in 2008 it escalated to a level that could no longer be ignored. Tweets were being fired off directly calling me a “cunt” amongst other harassing language. On March 14, I wrote to Twitter, giving the example URLs of abuse and stated to them clearly: Source: Ariel Waldman
While web 2.0 is generally a wonderful thing, this type of behavior is nothing new, the idea of harassment even to the point of death (MySpace Suicide Debacle) means that as community managers, regardless of how you look at yourself, service or whatever, the enforcement of the Terms of Service essentially becomes an obligation if you state what is and what is not acceptable behavior. If you say “no harassment” then you have to believe and act on what people are calling harassment. You as a community manager might think it is trivial, but to the person who is believing they are being harassed, then it is a very real issue to them.
Not saying that Ariel has thin skin, putting up with an uncomfortable situation for a year all the while reporting it is also interesting, and not saying this is bad, it just shows that she is committed to the Twitter service. Twitter stands to lose a customer because of someone else, that customer will talk, and if Twitter is perceived as a haven for trolls, trogs, and other Internet miscreants, they will have people who will drop their accounts, stop using the service, and they will lose customers.
Can twitter afford to be seen as a haven for Internet miscreants?
Do they want to be seen as a haven for Internet miscreants?
All good questions, and if they rewrite their TOS (Terms of Service) to remove section 4, then they probably are going to do themselves more reputational harm than they will be doing things well. Even the phone company will help you track down someone who makes threatening harassing phone calls so you can report them to the police. For twitter to do any less than this could cause them reputational damage that they can not afford.
Tags: twitter, harassment, ariel waldman, kathy sierra, troll, Internet, service
If you never followed the Kathy Sierra debacle then 
