Author Archives: Jason Alley

Response to Lab

After watching The Making of a Renaissance Book it was a nice review of what we have learned and seen how printing presses are used.  It was similar to the EPI demonstration we viewed at EPI but with some broader details.  However, in my opinion it didn’t portray how long it takes to put all the type in and how precise it is.  The only way to truly understand that is to actually do it or view it.

One topic it did cover was how the type was made which is something I have been wondering.  It takes longer than even putting the type in and I had been wondering how they make it so precise.  My questions about this were answered in this video.  Once again the art of print making has been made clear how difficult an art form it is.

Copyright Jobs

This article is about an employee of a university library that was hired with the sole purpose of managing copyright laws with the library materials.  This is a curious way of looking at copyright as it is usually not associated with gaining jobs.  The laws could however benefit some professions such as attorneys because of the constant changing of the laws due to advancements in technology.

Furthermore this also shows what a huge impact copyright has on our lives.  It is such a huge aspect in media that a university actually had to hire a person to manage it all.  This also begs the question if the copyright laws are too much now which is why it has become such a large part of society.  Personally I am fine with it because I would rather have too many copyright laws than too little which leads to people being taken advantage of.

http://0-ehis.ebscohost.com.libcat.lafayette.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=6&sid=bd425eb4-9977-4ae3-a8b7-5069efd856e3%40sessionmgr11&hid=4

Tablets vs. eBooks

In class and on the blog we have mostly been talking about how eBooks are negatively effecting the market of print books.  This article however talks about how eBooks are getting their sales taken from them due to the development of Tablets.  Tablets are products such as the iPad that have developed into a more reader friendly product.  The article says that it has taken about 20% sales from tablets.

I find this interesting that alsready another form of technology is starting to eclipse eBooks.  Although it may not surpass them it certainly present competition.  It also puts into perspective how timeless print works are.  They were the only form of print for hundreds of years and eBooks only had about a ten year run before developing competition.  It is vital to look at the development how the consuming of books is developing.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/28/tech/gaming-gadgets/tablets-replacing-e-readers/index.html

Blog prompt week 6: I think I stole a book

I read today about a supreme court case involving college textbooks and what technically constitutes theft. The court case centered around a student who purchased his textbooks in southeast asia (where most of the books are printed) for dirt cheap prices, in effect circumventing the american publishing companies and saving money. The controversy arose when the student attempted to re-sell the books online undercutting the price of the books had they been purchased domestically by a wide margin. The student then used this method to sell $900,000 worth of books and made $100,000 in profits. (not a bad way to make some cash)

The case centers around the concept of copyrights in the law and the chain of profits to be made off of books. now to be clear the same book is being purchased the only difference is the country in which the book was purchased and the price paid for it. To me it seems that this is a case of the american publishing companies taking this guy to court because they didn’t get their full profits off of the books in question. To me this seems like petty corporate vengeance. Keep in mind that these are college textbooks that most people don’t read for pleasure but are instead instrumental in gaining an education. The price of college textbooks is absurdly high (as we all know) however it is my personal belief that these books should be as low cost as possible. Textbooks are part of getting an education but capitalism has stepped in the way and private publishing companies are using the need based textbook market to drive the price up astronomically. For some this makes higher education unattainable. thoughts?

Copyright Infringement Today

Where do you buy your textbooks? From the college store? The bookstore? Or perhaps online? If you buy them online, do you know where they are printed? If you buy textbooks printed outside of the United States, you may have a problem when you want to sell them back.

Just last year, a university student in America found himself sued for copyright infringement for selling his textbooks. As a Thai student, he had relatives who sent him textbooks from abroad; he then sold these textbooks while in America to pay for his education. Although normally one would be allowed to do whatever one wants with a legal copy, like selling it, the Copyright Act has a loophole for international copyrights. The first-sale rule which allows owners of copies a lot of freedoms with that copy does not apply to internationally copyrighted material, which American law deems as being under control of the copyright holder regardless of who owns a copy.

This is similar to the discussion of ASCAP in the Copyright’s Highway, where Goldstein writes a little on the freedom of owners over their own copies. In seeking greater control over how their music is used, the ASCAP targeted dance halls and restaurants which played without direct permission from the group. Though we are granted enough freedom with our own copies, when it becomes public or for profit, someone needs to pay. ASCAP won in determining that such performances are for profit. In the same way, Mr. Kirtsaeng’s selling of textbooks is clearly for profit, placing him in violation of copyright law.

Speaking of art books…

Yes, this is mainly a space for non-professor types, but following the discussions about our art books visit last week, this exhibition review of Ed Ruscha’s legacy in making and depicting books was too good to pass up.  Ed Ruscha is one of the granddaddies of American conceptual art (he has his own catalogue of his work online), and one of his big claims to fame is making simple, cheaply produced, almost “dumb” art books, usually involving photography.  This was a challenge to the “fine press” approach that dominated the rise of the art books (remember those fancy, large-format books on the first table last week?), and as desktop publishing became widely available for private individuals in the 1980s, this approach to books has stayed widely popular.  There’s a lot of sending-up, ripping-off, mashing-up, etc. in this area, maybe even more so than in the “regular” artist’s books we saw last week.  This probably makes such books more vulnerable to copyright lawsuits and criminal charges.  But let me ask: what is the social value of Ruscha’s style of book?  And what in copyright law (check out Goldstein here) might give his kind of work some protection?

Books and Art

On Tuesday I was particularly interested in the version of Dracula the library had for us. The find of the original manuscript was interesting to say the least but what caught my attention were the images that accompanied the book. The Images were striking but they reminded me of Nosferatu, FW Mernau’s 1920 film based on Dracula. (its also by far one of the more accurate adaptations of Dracula)  Because the images were added to the text so far in time after the publication one has to wonder how much other work has influenced the artist and how has that changed a viewers perspective?

Tuesday’s Class

Our most recent trip to the library was by far the most interesting one. Many of the books displayed on the tables were unorthodox to say the least. Their construction and content goes against most people’s basic definition of a modern codex. However, in a way, these pieces seemed to be sort of a throwback to the early days of manuscripts. Back in those times, books were seen not as just a form of technology used for sharing information or telling stories, but were in many ways an art form. That was clearly the goal in mind with the production of the books viewed in class. It was blatantly clear that a great deal of labor went into the creation of these pieces, and the results were beautiful works of art. I will try and keep an eye out for such artistic works in the future whenever I am in a place that sells books. Perhaps I will run into one of the examples we viewed on Tuesday.

Recent Developments – Germany

In the past few days, a major development occurred in Germany that will have a profound effect on copyright laws over the internet going forward. Originally, the German parliament was sponsoring a bill that would have negative effects on internet search engines, particularly Google, who has links to various news sources scattered across websites all over the internet. The legislation would allow for newspapers and other news sources require search engines to stop showing these links unless the company agreed to pay licensing fees to the new source. However, heavy lobbying by Google has resulted in the bill being severely watered down. Now, the bill states that while news sources can now require charging search engines for the printing of full texts, the search engines still have free reign in using small snippets of text in advertising links. The bill has passed in the lower house of the German parliament and is awaiting a vote in the upper house. Google is calling this a victory for the free internet movement, but what effect this development actually ends up producing remains to be seen.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/02/technology/german-copyright-law-targets-google-links.html

Lab Assignment

During part 3 of “The History of the Alphabet”, I was surprised to learn that there are modern scribes. Initially it came as a shock that there are people today who would chose to participate in such tedious work. However, it later made sense when considering that, like many other obsolete technologies, it has survived due to transitioning into an art form. Arguably, modern scribes have it tougher than those who lived during the Middle Ages. As the video says, they often now work independently on all of their projects, unlike the scribes of the Middle Ages who worked in larger teams. Other interesting facts included the concept of using a knife to “erase” ink off of a piece of parchment.

Other than that, the video was great for reinforcing the topics discussed in class and the readings. Several main points in the video, such as the part discussing the different route that Italian fonts took from north German fonts, were also heavily discussed in The Book. So, this video essentially summarized what we have been doing these past few weeks.