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copyright is not about the author, really, any more than it is about the musicians in the context of recorded music. it's about controlling the intermediary, controlling the delivery system. academic databases pay very significant money to university publishers for the rights to index and/or display full text on their products. the authors never see a dime of it. in theory academic writers operate in a symbolic capital economy, so what matters is that pieces get published and, indirectly, that they are cited (even as this is difficult to assess, the delrium that is bibliometrics notwithstanding) and they get paid indirectly, through promotions and/or speaking gigs etc. in fact, that system is a farce in a number of ways, particularly when you line it up against the nature of the academic labor market over the past decade--but that it's administrators of journals and university publishers that make all the money from rights fits perfectly in with that labor market profile. but i digress.
it doesn't particularly surprise me that righthaven's initial contract was with the unlv law journal and that their gig was to sue people who were using material owned by the journal without paying. by using here it could mean authors who decide to put their own work up on a free-access website to make it more widely available---which is more likely than any napster-y thing (though pirate e-libraries are certainly out there---and more power to them.)
righthaven is all about the cash, though. they don't give a shit about any matter of pinciple that might be involved with the distribution of information, the conflicts between proprietary claims and democracy, say, even as shallow a democracy as the american version, which relies on the free circulation of information.
righthaven sues people straight away and hopes to settle out of court.
the wired article is a commerical for these assholes.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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