Publishers Quotes
Vladimir Lenin. Lenin was echoing criticisms that were made the world over and even by some in the United States. However, his solution to have the press controlled by the ruling party just changed the cast of characters who were propagandizing and distorting the truth. Lenin was not able to offer a better solution nor were others. However, with enough affluence the capitalist society produced enough different publishers all competing that one did not dominate public opinion. With technology of TV and the Internet, the bar to entry is so small that almost anyone can be a publisher and find an interested market. In a way technology has solved much of the problem for capitalistic and totalitarian societies alike. In the latter, even censorship is not easy or feasible on a large scale.
There was a major debate about Congress changing the copyright law. Copyrights always had a life of 26 years and could be renewed once giving 52 years of monopoly protection. However, the copyright on Mickey Mouse was running out since it had been created 51 years earlier by Walt Disney. The modern Walt Disney company lobbied heavily for a change in the law. Other publishers joined them. Their major argument was that authors and creators of material need to have a strong incentive to write and do all the creative work to produce great materials. The change they wanted was to protect the work for the life of the author PLUS 100 years. The example that was given was the great American writer Nathanial Hawthorne who could not earn much money writing and spent part of his career doing other things. London publishers ripped off his popular books, but we did not have a copyright treaty with England. Valenti, a former eloquent politician and the spokesperson for Hollywood, observed that if Hawthorne had been better protected he might have written many more great works. However, Lessig turned the tables on him by pointing out that the 100 years after the death of the author during which the industry wanted protection would have no possible effect on the writing productivity of the creator. Dead people do not respond to economic incentives. It became clear that the argument of the industry that the change would protect authors and encourage them to create more, was a red herring and the only benefit would inure to the copyright holders and controllers and the author would not benefit at all. It was pure commercial desire to use the Federal law to get something valuable that they never had and the public would have gotten. However, the lobbying campaign was one of the best in American history and a benefit was taken away from the public and awarded to a small group of companies who paid handsomely with campaign contributions. A monopoly that no one could obtain in over 200 years of American history suddenly was obtained by a change in the copyright law.
This is rarely discussed by journalists—namely that the Constitutions which gives them so much immunity and freedom from regulation, allows anyone to call him/herself a journalist, and there are no qualifications other than what individual organizations choose to impose. The same incidentally is true of politicians.
In American politics, the politicians who tend to have the most certain views of how America’s military should fight, are often those who have never served in the military themselves. The same is often true for newspaper editors and publishers. Few military officers in every war have expressed these sentiments publicly, but there are even fewer who have not thought it.
