[NB: Note to admitted students: I am in no way suggesting that you decline or defer your offers of acceptance to the IWW due to this situation. I am confident the students will win this fight, and in short order, because I happen to believe--per the below--the law is on our side. Because I expect the University will be forced to capitulate (one wonders why their Legal Department is absolutely asleep at the switch on this) within the next 72 to 96 hours, if you want to hold off on accepting your offer that's wholly understandable, but by no means base your final decision on this situation. As far as I can tell, the entire IWW opposes this move by UI, and certainly the entire student body of the IWW does. Don't take this debacle as reflecting on the program; in fact, if anything it's a sign that IWW poets, novelists, and non-fiction writers take their art and their principles every bit as seriously as committed artists should].
The sad story behind the current situation can be read here. Or, you can access the Chronicle of Higher Education article here.
The following is not intended as legal advice to any person, group of persons, or institution. It is merely the present-sense impression of the author, a private citizen affected by the legal situation described above, and therefore a possible litigant in any class-action suit filed with respect to the illegalities discussed at the link above and in the blog-post below. Nothing said here should be relied upon by any reader, in any manner or to any degree, as legal counsel, nor is what is written here written in my capacity as a licensed attorney (retired/inactive), but rather as an aggrieved party--a private citizen with the same rights of civil suit as any other citizen, ruminating openly on his own legal options under the circumstances.
When the University of Iowa made me an offer of admission in February of 2007, I took that offer, presented to me in writing by the University of Iowa, as a contract proposal for which my agreement was sought. Upon accepting the University's written offer of admission--which acceptance was made with an understanding of the degree requirements for the Master of Fine Arts degree, as laid out in the University's own sanctioned, publicity-related materials--I entered into a contract with the University of Iowa. Had the University retracted its offer of admission without cause (and without an allegation of breach)--say, in June of 2007, after I had detrimentally relied on its offer of acceptance by turning down pending offers of admission (and, as with the offer at UI, employment) at two other universities--I don't think either they, or anyone, would have been surprised if I had immediately brought a civil suit against them seeking injunctive relief.
Yet whatever my (or anyone's) view of that hypothetical situation, one which thankfully never arose, my detrimental reliance on the offer made by the University (and accepted by me) in March of 2007 was extant beyond any shadow of a doubt as soon as the University took tuition from me, assessed (and got me to pay) miscellaneous student fees, prompted me to move to Iowa from New Hampshire, prompted me to seek and secure housing here, caused me to accrue an identifiable "opportunity cost," offered me employment in one of its departments, and prompted me to borrow thousands of dollars from the United States Department of Education (a federal entity). I might even go so far as to add that the University's offer of admission (via USPS mailings) enticed me to cross over state lines in order to perform upon the contract I had entered into with the University--and not merely to perform upon that contract, but to give consideration (to the tune of thousands of dollars of federal monies) to the University as part of my doing so.
All of this was done based upon there being clear terms for my graduating from the University of Iowa: if I paid tuition and maintained passing grades, I could predict, based upon the University's written assurances (as codified in its own sanctioned, self-published materials) precisely how many credits I would need to graduate, as well as any other requirements for graduation (for instance, the completion of a thesis to the satisfaction of the Iowa Writers' Workshop faculty, and the completion of an additional second-year [analytic] written assignment to the satisfaction of the self-same faculty).
Now I understand that the University wishes to amend its offer of admission to change the terms of the offer, such that the performance that I must engage in, in order to graduate and receive the consideration for which I entered into the contract (to wit, a degree), will now include me signing over first North American serial rights to any creative work I should produce as part of my attempts to meet one of the previously-known-to-me requirements of my contract with the University--to wit, the completion of an MFA thesis as a requirement for graduation. I am being asked, that is, to give up an additional right--the right to my own intellectual property, and to my own copyrighted materials--in order to receive the previously-promised consideration of a contract I've already signed (via a letter of intent to the University).
Politely, and with all due respect, I hereby decline (and will do so again in writing if need be) the University's proposal to amend its previous offer, which I accepted approximately a year ago when I began to accrue what is now thousands upon thousands of dollars of legally-cognizable detrimental reliance. I also hereby express my willingness to join any class-action suit against the University of Iowa, as the University's actions are so clearly in violation of contract law (in my personal opinion, as a private citizen and prospective litigant) that I can only imagine a class-action suit will be initiated shortly, seeking injunctive relief against the University the moment it attempts to deny a graduate student an MFA degree (the most important consideration to be provided its contract-acceptees/students, under the existing offer-of-admission agreement with them) for failing to accept in writing the University's proposed amendment to the said pre-existing contract.
I am not a rabble-rouser. I genuinely admire the University of Iowa as an institution and am usually the sort to mind my own business and not make waves. But as an artist, and as a citizen, I will stand up for myself. I will cry foul when the circumstances are, as they so evidently are, foul. I am disappointed in a University I admire greatly, and feel--as I know all current and former students of the Writers' Workshop do--betrayed by the administration of this great educational institution. Betrayed not merely as to a matter of little insignificance, but as to a matter touching upon my very soul: my art. So to the extent this blog-post is firm, resolute, unyielding, and even confrontational, it is only because injustices must be confronted, and when confronted must be confronted firmly, resolutely, and with an unyielding demeanor.
What I find stunning is that this issue has even gone this far. I think that if someone tried to tell, say, eminent [poet] Rita Dove, or eminent [novelist] Tobias Wolff, that their next manuscript would be confiscated by their respective educational-institution employers (and let there be no doubt here, prematurely publishing a manuscript of poetry or prose destroys the entirety of its commercial and publication value, as publications/publishers will not re-publish work already available for free on-line) any such proposed policy would have died an administrative death within 48 hours.
Within 48 hours.
The fact that it has not happened here at the University of Iowa is a testament, I suppose, to the fact that when it is merely a student who is seeing their prospective publishing career destroyed, and their art effectively stolen by a multinational corporation, there is ample time to vacillate and hem and haw and procrastinate in attempting to find an immediate solution to the dilemma.
It's not merely that the University of Iowa is, in my own view, acting illegally here, and it's not merely that the University is attempting to force its students to donate their creative product for free to (as I noted) a giant, multinational corporation (who will then make a profit off it via the advertising on its Google Print website)--it's that these actions are so egregious I'm not sure merely reversing the current [reprehensible and morally-bankrupt] policy is enough anymore. It would have been enough if (as would have happened if anyone who counted was seeing their creative work threatened) the policy had been reversed almost immediately after the error had been discovered. But now, I think, we've gone beyond that point, and the University of Iowa must not merely reverse the policy or face (I can only imagine) a hugely embarrassing class-action lawsuit, must not merely apologize to all its graduate students for the insult of not consulting with them en masse on any of this, but must, in addition, explain to the University community why it is that the rights of students are not worth a bucket of warm spittle in the view of those [as-yet unidentified] University administrators who allowed this scandal to happen--and those [identified] administrators who now refuse to speak to the media, or student groups, and will converse only with selected delegates from the specific graduate schools affected (i.e., all of them)--and even then, only in closed-door, non-public meetings.
At stake now is not merely the good standing of the University in the eyes of its most important assets--its students--but also the very reputation of some of its most august, respected, and popular graduate school programs, such as the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. Right now dozens of poets and writers and memoirists across the country who have been admitted to the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop (or the nonfiction program) are deciding whether to attend this institution--deciding, in light of this ongoing scandal, whether or not they can any longer presume that Iowa has a unparalleled and even historic reputation among the 200+ MFA programs now operating in the United States. These students have until April 15th to make their decision, and I am certain that the vast majority of them are now waiting for an answer from the University on this pressing, time-sensitive question.
They are waiting for a reversal of the policy at issue. They are waiting for an apology to the affected students. They are waiting for an explanation as to why any student who comes to the University now should place his/her trust in an administration which has shown itself so singularly disinterested in the fate of its graduates once they've received their degrees. It is not the place--or the responsibility--of a student body to go begging to its administrators merely to preserve rights granted them under the law. It is the place of administrators to protect those rights. Or, to face the inevitable and dramatic consequences when they do not.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
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29 comments:
Does the creative writing faculty agree with you? I would imagine they would. And are they still the ones who sign off on a thesis? If so, I suggest a little bit of protest and guerrilla theater.
Since you describe this in terms of contractual obligations, how about this? When Van Morrison was locked into a bad contract which required him to produce 36 original songs within a year, he went into the studio one day, recorded 36 pieces of impromptu nonsense, and was done with his contract. He then moved on to a different company.
So why not have a "real" thesis, and a piece of absurd tossed-off garbage submitted as a thesis which your sympathetic faculty could sign off and then allow Iowa to post on the web to their heart's content? In fact, the "poems" or whatever they are, could consist largely of rants against the stupidity of this policy.
However... despite my total agreement with you about the odiousness of this policy and the need for it to be overturned of thwarted by other means, I'm somewhat doubtful about the substance of some of your reasoning.
I don't believe that to accept an offer of admission at a university is to enter into a binding contract which entails a frozen, immutable set of requirements for a specific degree. Requirements, I mean, that are the same as when you enroll.
People like me who agree completely with you on this particular issue will rebel on this point because it's extremely routine for departments and universities across the country to review and adjust degree and graduations requirements all the time. Usually there are grandfather clauses involved so newer students can abide by previous rules if they consider them more beneficial, but I can also understand a backlash against codifying such allowances as "legal" requirements.
Other issues, such as the nature of possession of intellectual property, seem far better arguments to me, and I think that's a better tactic.
Oh my. This is a distressing turn of events. hard to belive that *Iowa* could be so hard up for . . . what? money? power? fame? prestige? that it would do such a thing.
I am with you, Seth. I would rather not get a degree than turn in two years of my hard work. Or, as you suggested, translate it to klingon and turn in that rubbish.
I am really anxious about how the meeting will go tomorrow.
Paul:
So what you're saying is a university should be able to constantly shift and/or add to the requirements necessary to obtain a degree? If they did that no one would ever graduate. True programs make changes, but usually a person is held to the catalogue on which he or she enters. I totally agree with that point...you are entering into a contractual agreement with the college. And often giving them a lot more money then you would spend on, say, a car.
Seth: you think the students are the most important thing to the University? Bah- it's a total corporation and they're interested in profits, and there's nothing that will make it so that students will stop coming here. If they cared about producing the best students, you all wouldn't be giving half of your funding back to them in tuition (maybe not half, but you get my point). They're interested in making more money more and making sure they preserve everything they can without having to seem totally unwilling to realize they're in the business of education. Or they were..
Seth - It's my understanding from conversations with a few university library directors that the movement that you're talking about here is an idealistic movement to make research and academic information more widely available, for free, so that other researchers may access it. For years academic researchers have clamored for this kind of open exchange of information. Maybe they took this bizarre change of tact as enthusiastic participants in this kind of idealistic experiment with information. Of course, creative writers can't be the only ones who might object to this; people who might want to publish their thesis data in a prestigious journal in any field would have objections. Just a conjecture.
I was just reading one of the on-line articles on this issue, in which an administrative official associated with the UI library system says--I'm sure with the best of intentions (I really don't blame the library for this at all)--that there are no "plans" to put creative theses on-line "for the foreseeable future," and so therefore all this worry is for naught.
That doesn't wash.
Second-year students have until April 4th--approximately three weeks from now--to sign a form with legal language in it that UI refuses to amend. It simply does not do for UI to now say, "Well, you should just sign the form as is, and trust us, because we're going to make a completely non-binding non-legal assurance to you that we don't plan on screwing you." Really? If they don't plan on screwing us, rip up the old form and replace it with a new one on Monday--or else give all MFA students official sanctioning to cross out that legal language on the form. Non-binding assurances don't cut it.
The "no plans"/"foreseeable future" line coming from the UI library system falls under the following principle: "Fool you once, shame on me, fool you twice, shame on you." And the reason I say that is because all UI's current position indicates is that:
a) UI legally reserves the right to put MFA theses on-line;
b) UI will require MFA students to sign a form saying UI has that right, under the non-binding "understanding" that UI has no "plans" to do it in the "foreseeable" future; and
c) once the form is signed, the rights have been signed away, and if UI changes its mind down the line students will have no legal recourse (I conjecture here, as a private citizen thinking about my own standing in such a situation).
Unless that portion of the form is crossed out, all UI's assurances mean absolutely nothing and are in no way binding on the University.
S.
Seth, is there anything that outraged artists can do to help? I have no interest in Iowa, but I think it's ridiculous. Anything I, or anyone else, can contribute?
Academic publishing in the online era: What Will Be For-Fee And What Will Be For-Free? by Harnad, S., Varian, H. & Parks, R. (2000) Culture Machine 2 http://cogprints.org/1700/
Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum
I don't think you want to play the "employment" card with the University, Seth. If you and all graduate students truly are "employees" of the University, then any works that you produce are so-called "works for hire" and the copyright automatically falls to the University. Indeed, there is quite a bit of case law that suggests that graduate students are not "employees" of their universities and are not entitled to the protections of various employmet law statutes, including, but not limited to, Title VII, the FMLA, etc.
I would stick to your breach of contract, promissory estoppel, unjust enrichment type arguments.
(The above should not be contrued as legal advice....just the opinion of Seth's close friend that happens to be an employment lawyer.)
By the way, this isn't just Workshop folks: this is everyone. From lowly bio kids to folks working in history. Everyone is under this policy.
There are other departments at Iowa :)
Hi Matt,
Just to be clear, there are actually two contracts in this scenario--an employment contract (for teaching, with consideration of a stipend) and a contract relating to matriculation (with consideration of tuition and a degree, depending upon which side of the transaction you're looking at it from). A student's creative endeavors are not within the scope of his/her employment as a TA, and so could never be claimed by the University undr that theory. I only mentioned the employment contract as a way of emphasizing the opportunity cost of accepting an offer here rather than elsewhere, as well as the fact that the offer of admission was indeed specific as to terms, and did indeed constitute a meeting of the minds and a binding contract. So, I meant to indicate that the employment issue is subsumed into the breach issue.
I'm not sure the unjust enrichment analogy would be apt here, as the University is quite consciously trying to renegotiate an existing contract for its own benefit, rather than experiencing a sudden windfall of some sort (via the MFA theses) that they now must make restitution upon due to the enrichment being unjust (e.g., for it being both outside the scope of the contract and also unanticipated/unintentional as to both parties). This strikes me as a straight breach case, easily resolved with an equitable legal action and an injunction--one both ordering the University to confer degrees to all students who have earned them under the initial terms of the contract, and prohibiting the University from publishing students' copyrighted work on-line (and for free) without prior written authorization.
Needless to say, if the University wants to change the terms of its matriculation contract going forward--by changing its Student Handbook, and all promotional materials--it certainly can (as prospective admittees would then have been forewarned). Doing so would, I think, merely destroy the University, as opposed to leading to immediate legal action.
Talk to you soon, buddy,
Seth
This is such bullshit. Google couldn't manage to undermine the publishers, so now they're targeting the place where the writing is done. Go to the source, I guess.
I used to work in publishing, and let me tell you: No publisher is going to touch your manuscript with a ten foot pole if it's available in full online. I've turned down book manuscripts for this very reason countless times before.
This is not simply about losing a $1,000 advance on your work, it's about not even being able to get your manuscript published in the first place. It's about a career dead in the water before it begins.
In some ways, in theory, I agree with open-source access. But NOT when it devalues already undervalued creative resources. And certainly this is not without bureaucratic maneuvering on Google's part. Universities are substantially easier to buy off than publishing companies, especially when the authors are beholden to the university, (for employment and education) as opposed to the other way around (although, realistically, where would Iowa be without its thinkers, its writers?)
Ooh, this whole thing just stinks to high heaven.
Sadness lingers. : (
Seth, it's not first NA serial; it's electronic, which is more serious.
Part of the problem is that the admin doesn't understand what we do, and doesn't genuinely understand that the Workshop is not an academic unit, despite the degree attached. The art/academy pasting-together is awkward, and this is one way it's showing up.
Keller, for instance, is a biologist. Scientists have an interest in OA; their careers run on a citation-and-credit economy, and their salaries don't come from publication. The more widely their work is disseminated, the better (so long as it's published first in a high-prestige journal). Only the publishers are hurt there (and, evenutally, the scientists, as high-prestige venues suffer, but that's a long story).
Anyway, this will eventually have to be brokered at the CIC level, and a lot of people will learn a lot about publishing, creative work, and the nature of writing workshops along the way. It's going to cause problems for MFA types who want t-t jobs in English depts and are already feeling insecure because the lit types sniff at their lack of scholar cred. I think the net effect will be to drive the promotion of PhDs in CW for those who want academic careers -- a split between a "professional" track for actual writers and "academic" track for people who want to write novels while being professors. Which would be stupid, but it's a way for the academy to save face and retain the workshops as nominally academic units.
Then you'd have the problem that acting MFA programs have, where superstar actors have problems getting teaching gigs because it maks the academic-track theatre people insecure, but that's for way down the line, and it's not my fight anyway.
Anyway, I miss Frank and I hope Sam will manage this. I hope she's a dirtier, meaner SOB than she looks.
"Scientists have an interest in OA; their careers run on a citation-and-credit economy, and their salaries don't come from publication."
I should be clearer: their salaries do in part come from publishing, but not primarily from copyright sales and royalties.
The best analogy is probably patents, but the timescale is different; scientists have to patent quickly to justify embargo, and it's not reasonable to tell a novelist to hurry up with that book. We don't have the same kind of career structure. Mostly because there's actual money in science, though I think some of the difference in timescale is cultural.
At the risk of trolling -- I promise I am in good faith here -- let me put the other side.
Access is good. I would love to be able to access the work of Iowa graduates online to my heart's content. I think it would improve the poetry world. We do this in science all the time; even though technically places like Nature bitch about it, it is S.O.P. to upload your paper to a preprint server (we use the arxiv.)
Would a publisher shy away from an Iowa graduate whose work was already available in an archive? My guess is probably not, once they got used to the idea. Poetry publishers do not make money selling books. They make it from subsidy (University, grants, contest fees.) Anyway, in the case of books, electronic availability, even gratis, helps sales (this counterintuitive result is common knowledge among technical publishers, but don't expect the old school to grasp it anytime soon.)
I don't want to start a flamewar on this, so I'll cut it short. But many, many other intellectual endeavors have gone over to a "give it away free" mentality. Creative Commons has had enormous success, and science fiction writers have benefitted hugely from going that route.
Yes, you can argue legality -- can Seth be forced to do this? Probably not? Definitely not? I doubt it will go through. But here are some reasons to think maybe you'd want to.
"Scientists have an interest in OA; their careers run on a citation-and-credit economy, and their salaries don't come from publication."
I know of no poet who can survive on book royalties alone. A massive runaway bestseller is 10,000 copies. Assume the royalty is $5 a copy (that's generous) and you write a book every four years (you're not Ashbery) -- that gives you a base salary of $12,500, before tax.
The average salary for an academic -- I'm going to ballpark this, sorry, from science and adjust down -- is $50k. If you can advance your career faster with OA, it's probably in your economic interest to do so.
Simon, to a literary writer, $12,500 is good money. I'm 40 years old, a single mother, and have never broken the $20K mark on my taxes. You have to understand that writers work on a very different money scale than scientists do. Scientists are routinely shocked when they find out how cheaply we live.
I would not, for instance, look for a tenured faculty CW spot paying $50K, because a) it'd take too much time away from writing; b) the odds of finding my writing constrained by university politics are too high; c) it's not necessary to work within an institution in order to be a writer.
You're also forgetting how long CW careers last, and how long they can take to get off the ground. Again, it's not like science, where you have to produce early or get out. A writer who suddenly finds critical acclaim at 50, or even 70, will find that early books can earn very good royalties, even if they went OOP immediately at the time.
As for publishers "getting used to it" -- I think you're mistaken on the economics of literary publishing. If they could afford to get used to it, they no doubt would. But literary publishing is an expensive business with very small markets, and the copyrights are jealously guarded. A single book that gets big ten or 15 years after the fact can support the rest of the list. So again, there's no reason for a press to invest very scarce money in a book that's half-out for free already.
Scientific publishing is a very different animal with much larger, and more varied, markets; scientific careers are very different from writers' careers. While spreading it around for free can be helpful and help you find useful contacts -- I do it myself -- at some point you have to treat the copyrights as the property they are.
Amy -- if you're a poet, and you're getting $12k/year in royalties from book sales, I very much doubt you're not in a very short list of poets. I would imagine that the contest prize money (of a few thousand) far outweighs what most authors get back in royalties over the lifetime of a book (which generally won't go into a second printing anyway.)
In any case, my larger point is that a number of publishing fields, including people in science fiction, are going to an OA model and doing very well at it. You should read up on the Creative Commons model; Cory Doctorow is a pretty good evangelist on things.
Hi, Simon. I make my living as a writer; it's not as rare as you might imagine. (No, I'm not a poet.) Yes, I've been following the CC model, Lessig's work, and Stallman's copyleft for several years. For many people, and in many circumstances, it's a good model. It may even be a good idea to spread around certain creative pieces (at the writer's discretion, not a university's). However, in general, given the variability of writing careers, I think it's wise for creative artists to hang onto copyrights. You can work a long time in this business making nothing, so if it's possible to cash in down the line, you'll want to be able to do it. It does require being forward-looking.
I find that over the last 7-8 years or so, the culture of blogs and billion-plus people online has encouraged an awful lot of people to believe that the main thing is self-promotion, and avoiding getting stuck in that long tail. And there's some interesting network-theory work along those lines. However, I suspect it's not really that important for art, in part because you don't need to catch the ear of the millions, as another blog has it; you need to catch a very few ears, and some of them will do your promotion for you, when the time is right. (That is in fact how the Workshop works.) And that means you can spend a long time working in obscurity and have it pay off. That's partly because in art there is no leading edge to miss, and you can't get dumped from the career just because you aren't, say, bringing in grant money, prestige, or something else that's an immediate payoff.
Anyway. I agree, there's plenty of good in the "_____ wants to be free" idea. But if you're a SF fan, you know there's no such thing as an unmitigated good; it all depends on timing, proportion, circumstance.
Incidentally, Simon -- what I found most disturbing about not just the CIC move to OA but the response to MFAers attempting to preserve their copyrights: There seems to be a profound lack of understanding of the difference between _yours_ and _mine_. My work is mine. It is not yours, and not the University's. Should I decide to hand it out for free or sell it, fine. Otherwise, it remains mine.
I have a preschooler, so I've recently been over the subject. I'm sure most university types got it as children too. The yours/mine distinction does not get fuzzier just because there's grownup attempts at prestige attached.
This is why I was so angry about Dean Keller's attempts to smooth things over by talking about "balancing the rights" of writers and the public. The public has no right to my work. That right is my property. That's what copyright and IP law are all about. Nor is the University entitled to hand it out for me.
Yes, governments may occasionally usurp property rights in the public interest; that's what eminent domain is about. However, the university is not an arm of government, and even government may not simply take what it pleases. There's quite a bit of law hedging in eminent domain.
Anyway. Just to hammer it in firmly: Rights to art belong to the artist. Not to scholars, not to universities, not to the interested public. Only to the artist, until she sells or gives them away. It does not, in the end, matter why the artist wants to keep the rights, no more than it matters why she wants to keep her money or a picture of her grandma. They're hers, and that's the end of the story. If you don't like it, go write your own novel.
Hi Amy --
I'm quite aware that writers can make a living selling their works; as I repeated numerous times, I'm talking about poets, where this is not the case.
Meanwhile, having given away all the work I've done -- either as a scientist or an artist -- I'm quite used to it by now. The fundamental reason why poets would be upset about this OA issue is not that they are going to lose money, it's that they won't get picked by a (subsidized) publisher and thus won't have the item on the CV when it comes time to apply for jobs.
There are two ways to fix this. One is to not go OA. The other is for publishers to chill.
As for "who has the right" to your work. Well, yes, under certain models (e.g., the current copyright regime) you own your work forever (even if, technically, it's not forever, it just keeps getting extended.) Under other models, you own the right for a limited time -- something I'm far more in favor of. "Intellectual property" is a misnomer; it is similar to, but certainly not identical to, material goods.
Anyway, it's not my intention to get into the particular legal issues here -- changing the rules of the game halfway through is not really OK by any measure. But if Iowa announced that new poetry MFA classes would go OA, I'd cheer them on. Because I like experiments, partly, and because poetry has inherited a model that is at this point completely disconnected from the reality of creative production.
"Well, yes, under certain models (e.g., the current copyright regime) you own your work forever (even if, technically, it's not forever, it just keeps getting extended.) Under other models, you own the right for a limited time -- something I'm far more in favor of."
I don't mind "author and heirs" myself. However. It's disingenuous, I think, to say 'under certain models', since this is the only model that's germane. It is the law, and has been for a long time. The law does not prevent people from donating their work to the public, but it certainly doesn't compel them to do so in some governmentally-defined public interest. For that you need Snowball & co.
'"Intellectual property" is a misnomer; it is similar to, but certainly not identical to, material goods."
I think we can handle the abstraction. It's property in the sense that it can be owned.
"Because I like experiments, partly, and because poetry has inherited a model that is at this point completely disconnected from the reality of creative production."
Well, I disagree with the latter, but I understand enjoying a good experiment. However, think carefully about what it means to compel people to be part of your experiment. I suspect you'd be much better off with a voluntary model. Which, as it happens, already exists. Back to Stallman we go.
I think we can both agree that the way copyright is currently handled in the United States is dictated by corporate interests very distant from the actual practices of our writers and artists and readers. So it's distressing that you consider this model to be the only one that's "germane" to the discussion.
As for the standard model being relevant to poetry. If copyright is meant to allow authors to profit from the sale of their works, and if poets do not profit from the sale of their works, I fail to see how theory follows reality in this case.
Simon,
Poets don't profit from the sale of their work because the market for serious poetry is approximately six people. (Jewel, on the other hand, has done quite well by selling rights to her poetry.) This is a cultural problem, not a legal problem. What you're suggesting they do isn't primarily to do with copyright; it's to do with the academy and how writers make their living. You're suggesting that they become academics and draw university salaries in order to support their writing habits, and of course if they do that, giving away copyright is a good bet. And
some have managed it.
To a scientist, I imagine this makes considerable sense. The days of the gentleman scientist with the private lab are dead and nearly forgotten; all of you give away rights for the privilege of doing your work. If you're in academia you get to keep patent rights; if in industry, maybe not.
You're missing a couple of crucial differences, though, between poetry and science. Science depts, in universities, are tremendous moneymakers. Sci/eng companies are moneymakers. There is a public need, and a public demand, for science and engineering, and the money flows accordingly. Now that perception's been very well managed, but still, at bottom, we really do want computers and vending machines and climate control and drugs. The same demand is not there for poetry. And what that translates to, on the academic side, is that there is a limited number of berths for academy poets. Yes, some minority of poets will profit from having copyright yanked. But most will not, and of course industry won't sop them up. (As far as I'm aware there are no industrial poets, unless you count copywriters.) So I don't think the parallel is very good.
There are other differences, too, involving groups v. authorship, but this is already getting too long, so I'll skip it.
Anyway. Because writers can work independently, and because the overhead is so low, there is often very little value in going after an academic career. It can be much more efficient (and pleasant, and feasible, given writers' temperaments) to live cheaply and work part-time at jobs which are nice enough but have little meaning to the writer. Now it is true that if you're amenable, political, and housebroken enough to be a university writer, you'll have an easier time getting published in reasonably prestigious journals. Again, though, because it's not possible to get kicked out of the career, the prestige isn't necessary. If the writer is primarily concerned with making fine art, and is less concerned with prestige, there's little penalty for staying outside that university system, and, say, maintaining friendships with those inside. Or not. And if the work is very good, then a copyright held tight for 40 years may turn out to benefit not only the poet but any children he's been improvident enough to have.
Your comments, btw, prompted me to get my _Free Culture_ off the shelf and have another look. And I realized that Lessig has primarily mass-market creative IP in mind; the index has no mention of poetry, novels, literary fiction, paintings, or other forms of what may reasonably be called elite or minority art forms. And it occurred to me that Lessig is not an artist, and has rather a romantic view of "creativity". I don't think it had occurred to him that an artist might reasonably want to control representations of his work. I've written about that, wrt _James and the Giant Peach_, at lablit.com(http://forums.lablit.com/viewtopic.php?p=11754&sid=2ea734d5822d562c24b7cb0a009d7452#11754 ), so will not ask you to scroll more here.
Anyway, it's an interesting conversation. Thanks for that, Simon.
Seth,
It's really interesting that you bring up copywriters as an example of "Industrial Poets" because it brings up the fact that there are forms of poetic language that are used for profit, such as greeting cards.
If all poets released their work freely what would stop Hallmark from putting words written Billy Collins, Louise Gluck, or someone who never profits from publication on a card and profiting from it.
Additionally, copyright is not just about money but being creditied for and having control over the uses of your work.
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