Organization Theory Now Available Again
Organization Theory's back on sale at Amazon now, with a new cover.
For those who can't read the tiny writing, the yellow banner at the top of the new image reads "Original cover image under copyright lockdown. FIGHT COPYRIGHT NAZISM!" The caption below it reads "For details, see: http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2009/09/organization-theory-to-be-republished.html."
Thanks to Gary Chartier for kindly helping me revise the cover at this difficult time.
posted by Kevin Carson | 12:08 PM
8 Comments:
Too bad it is still being published by BookSurge, a company that effectively shuts out all competitors of their parent corporation, Amazon. As co-owner of an independent bookstore, there is no way for me to offer your titles on my shelves :(
New cover looks great though!
I see that on the Amazon website if you select the "Look Inside" option it still has the old front cover on it...
Good to have it back, Kevin.
So you think getting caught stealing that stealing someone's artwork and then being told to pull it down Nazism?
How is that?
From what you posted here you used an image that you didn't own or pay for and you got caught doing so and they are the bad guys.
You posted that the owner of the original image was nice enough to not sue for damages but you still prosecute them on your new cover.
That isn't right, no matter who you looks at it.
I don't believe you can "own" an image, any more than you can "own" a human being. I don't enforce copyright on anything I publish--not because I'm being a "nice guy" or doing anyone a favor, but because I believe it would be immoral to do so.
A major part of my writing is on the illegitimacy of "intellectual property" and its pernicious effects. I do in fact believe that the political forces behind digital copyright law, the DMCA, and all the rest of it, are morally repugnant and I call them "Nazis" every fucking chance I get.
So your use of "stealing" is just an intellectually lazy exercise in question-begging.
And it takes a bit of a stretch of the imagination to say I'm "prosecuting" someone when I've never even given a hint as to their identity.
Consider also: that image is reproduced in thousands of places, all over the web, with absolutely no indication of its authorship or copyright. And most images available on the Web have similar "orphan" status. So as I found out, it doesn't matter how universally available some image is, it's not safe to use anything outside of WikiMedia Commons or istockphoto.
Even if you believe in the legitimacy of copyright, it's a wildly overblown law when it doesn't even require filing an actual claim (as with patents), or the posting of ownership data.
Also, just in passing, I can't get over what an abysmal business model copyright lockdown is. That's one of the most virally popular images on the Web, and from what I've seen some 99.9% of the iterations are up "illegally." If everyone literally obeyed copyright law, nobody in the world would have the vaguest idea that image even existed. So instead of using that free viral advertising to make himself famous as its creator and get new work for himself, he (sporadically) suppresses it. It's about as dumb as the newspapers prosecuting people for linking to their stories--the equivalent of making it a criminal offense to tell someone where your store is.
And even though I believe copyright law is morally repugnant and the MPAA/RIAA/Microsoft are a bunch of filthy Nazi pigs, I do believe that guy was being decent. Most people in this society believe in copyright, and for someone who believes in copyright he was behaving in a reasonable manner. He didn't act at all like a copyright troll.
If I were looking to "prosecute" him, I'd have included his name and the name of his firm (with contact info) in my original post, turned it into a big story about how my cover image was suppressed, circulated it far and wide, and done my best to get Boing Boing and the EFF to go after it like they just did Ralph Lauren. Ever hear of the "Streisand Effect"?
I agree with you that IP is not a property right, but referencing nazis on the internet is automatic fail. See Godwin's law
Nah. I'm not literally appealing to Nazism as an analogy, just using the word in the same sense as "Soup Nazi."
Anyway, Bill Gates called us communists, so there.
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