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["S S Tempest" <sstempest AT lycos.com>]

 I'm back, with further thoughts on the copyright debate.

The more I learn about the subject, the more I think that too many 
people are asking the wrong question entirely. Rather than simply 
"Does the use of this technology violate copyright law?" the debate 
should ask, "How can we adapt copyright law to protect people, given 
the development of these new technologies?"

The more I think about it, the more important I think it is that 
artists retain the rights to their own work, with the ability to 
license them to others and to profit from them. But the laws that 
govern how this licensing works, and what constitutes fair use, 
are not set in stone. Congress -- our own elected officials -- regularly adds 
to and adapts them. 

There's a strong lobby by the recording and publishing industry 
to have these laws shaped to their advantages. So it's really important 
for us, as the audience for music and art and writing, to make sure 
the laws that passed are in our best interest and in the interest 
of the artists whose work we enjoy. I don't think that's going to 
happen if we let big corporations determine the grounds of the debate.

I'd love to hear more thoughts on the subject. 

Here are some links:

Text of the U.S. Copyright law
http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/title17/

Charles C. Mann's article in The Atlantic, "The Heavenly Jukebox...from 
Hell"
http://www.theatlantic.com/cgi-bin/o/issues/2000/09/mann.htm

Future of Music, an organization that tries to protect the interests of both 
musicians and fans 
(incidentally, a performance by founder Jenny Toomey's band Liquorice 
was one of the best concerts I have ever attended)
http://www.futureofmusic.org

Snow T.




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Hello everyone. I'm looking for advice about a seemingly simple project that 
I can't quite solve to my satisfaction.

I'm working with some teachers who have a side business selling the curricula 
they have developed for high school literature classes. They used to print 
and mail them,  but they would like to use the internet to save them a lot of 
the grunt work. They're certainly willing to pay for it, but this is still a 
small business on a tight budget.

The hard part is figuring out how to let customers pay by the document. I 
don't think the budget allows for us to create a system from scratch, or to 
purchase Adobe's $5000 software. We've thought about going on the honor 
system and letting people pay by credit card or PayPal, but it doesn't seem 
like it should be that hard to find some way to have the documents secured 
until purchase.

For a while, I was excited about thoughtstore.com, which does, technically, 
exactly what we were looking for. However, they want to reserve the copyright 
(!) to all material posted on their site, which is ridiculous. My clients 
would much rather just pay the hosting service.
 
Does anyone know of such a service? Or, if anyone would like to start one, 
I'll be your first customer.

Snow T.




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