Copyright and David Foster Wallace's Commencement Address
So in 2005, the novelist David Foster Wallace gave the commencement address at my alma mater, Kenyon College. Within a couple days, everyone was sending everyone a link (it was here) to a careful transcription of the speech complete with off-the-cuff jokes and a couple [indecipherable]s.
Anyway, I really like the speech. It inspired a lot of the stuff in Paper Towns, and also I basically try to wear the glasses of the speech when looking at the world around me. To be totally honest, the way I think about the speech is not dissimilar from the way I think about, say, the Bible--i.e., a text can be flawed and incomplete and at moments [indecipherable] and still be revealed. I realize that is kind of a bold and awkwardly spiritual thing to say about a collegiate commencement address, but it's true.
Anyway, the speech has just been printed as a book called This Is Water. So now it is harder to find on the Internet (although still not quite impossible), because the book's publisher theorizes that you will not pay $15 to read the speech when you can read it for free.*
Because the speech is fairly short and people generally like to feel as if they are getting many pages of thoughts in exchange for their $15, the book is laid out like one of those books of trite marriage advice: On each page, there is a single sentence.
And then to read the next sentence, you go to the next page.
Then you turn the page, and there is another sentence.
It goes on like that for a little more than 100 pages. Unfortunately, this is (imho) a terrible way to read the speech--splitting up the sentences makes them appear more independent of each other than they actually are. It also obscures the fact that the speech was a speech before it became a book. I'm going to hazard a guess here and say that DFW did not walk up to the podium on that day in Gambier, Ohio with his speech written on 114 separate sheets of paper. The pace and rhythm of the speech's languages is totally screwed up by bite-sizing it.
I certainly sympathize with the desire to publish the speech--both so it can reach a new audience and so that DFW's family (he died last year) can have money they may need. (I don't know the particulars of their financial situation.) But it seems to me that one of the many problems with contemporary copyright law is that now we are stuck with** this weirdly cutesy and inferior reading experience. The job of the speech, after all, was not to make money. The job of the speech was to lead people toward better lived lives. (David Foster Wallace was a fan of the writer and Kenyon professor Lewis Hyde, who wrote about this at length in the classic book The Gift.)
I've never had such a visceral reaction to a copyright issue before, because generally the stuff I care about the most is either available for free or I can purchase it in a format that suits me.
Which brings me to this: I'm a little worried that I'm a gigantic hypocrite--particularly since I benefit from copyright law.
I've always justified it by saying that my books are available for free in public libraries. But what if someone would really benefit from a non-book reading of Paper Towns? Like, what if some kinetic typography version of the book*** would be a better gift to some reader than the book Dutton printed?
Is there some justification for copyright that I don't see? (I hope there is, because I do love money.) Or am I, in effect, doing the exact same thing as DFW's publisher just by copyrighting my novels? (These aren't rhetorical questions; please help me puzzle it through in comments.)
---
* Which I don't actually believe, for the record. Like, Shakespeare is still selling okay even though you can read him online. I would imagine that the first wave of people who are buying This Is Water have--like me--already read it over and over and over again.
** Except not quite, because even the hard-working lawyers at Hachette will have a difficult time scrubbing the Internet clean. This means that people who really want to find the speech will always be able to find it, but the people who might stumble upon it anew and have their lives changed forever will probably have a more difficult time finding it--which, again, I would argue actually hurts book sales in the long run rather than helping them.
*** I would be delighted if someone took the thousands of hours that would be necessary to turn Paper Towns into a seven-hour kinetic typography video (although I would probably want a share of any proceeds because I am a greedy bastard), but my publisher would be all pissed off and litigious about it.
posted by John Green @ Wednesday, June 10, 2009
38 Comments
38 Comments:
It will take me a while to come up with any useful and balanced thoughts about this. But I can get to a quip a lot faster than that:
Inspiration wants to be free.
Because if everything were free there would be fewer people creating things. While this may seem to be proved wrong by the internet (there are more writer--- bloggers than ever before...) it's because most of those bloggers can make money from the reputation and audience they build.
If your work was all given away free, you'd be an accountant, or teacher, or burger flipper for money and we'd get maybe one or two novels out of you in your lifetime. By paying you for your time and creative energy, we get to enjoy numerous works including books, (hopefully) movies, and vlogs. <3
Another nerdfighter and I were just talking about this a few days ago.
It's an interesting choice to format the book the way they did. I get that it kind of forces more introspection and reflecting (or a different kind) that way, and it fills the book, and leaves room for notes, and makes a fantastic graduation gift. But right that isn't the format it was created or intended for.
Someone reposted it on another site... here which is cool for as long as it's able to stay up.
In my graphic design class, our final project was to illustrate/present an epiphany we'd had, and I used this speech as the basis for mine. Plus some of the comments you made when you read it on blogtv. I put the final thing in a blog post if you'd like to see here
It is too bad that not as many people will have access to this, it's so big and important.
I think that there does exist a middle ground. Copyright, if it does what it is supposed to, helps encourage people to take the time and effort to create new work because after doing so they will be able to reap the rewards of their labor.
If, however, copyright becomes a bludgeon for shutting down discourse, if it becomes nothing but a means of control over how something is consumed, especially if the work was never originally intended to be sold or commodified (for example, DFW's speech, which I'm sure he didn't title "This is Water" and which he didn't charge anyone to hear and which, if you were to assume any copyright were placed on it it would be the Creative Commons license), then copyright is no longer doing what it was intended to do: protect an author's means of making a living.
If you can create a book and be paid for it, and if that same book becomes available for free in some other form, but you, as copyright holder, do not mind, then no harm no foul.
Interesting aside: Cervantes dealt with copyright infringement (though, technically it didn't exist yet). Sequels were written to Don Quixote that weren't his. It's why the second part of Don Quixote starts with a "this is the real deal, not one of the imitators" intro.
I'm not really sure what to say to you, John. I understand what you're saying about copyright, but I think I have about the same feelings toward it as you do. I can't say I've never read something online that was not supposed to be there, or that I never will again. I also can't say that if I ever publish a book I won't want to make money from it, because I will. I, too, can be a greedy bastard.
But about the speech. I've read it, it made me look at the world in a different way, and sometimes bits of it will just pop into my head for no real reason, and make my day a little better, or tweak my perspective of something just a bit. It's a good speech, and though I haven't seen it in book form (because I read it online, linked from one of your earlier blog posts, I believe) I have to agree with you. It will always be online, for people who are determined to find it, so why even bother with the copyright?
But to answer your question, I don't think you are doing the same thing as DFW's publisher by copyrighting your novels. Your novels are written for a reason, and whether or not you enjoy writing them, or having them change people's lives, that reason is money. Writing is your job. To do that job, copyright has to be involved, because that's just the way the system works right now. Whether or not it should work that way is a different matter, and one that I don't think I can get into now. The speech was written to be a speech, not a 114 page line-by-line book. It just seems different to me, and I'm not even sure I know why.
I don't know if any of this comment made any sense at all. Maybe I just rehashed what you wrote in my own words, but I hope that I didn't. I'll be thinking about copyright today, at least. If anything mind-shattering comes up, I'll be sure to let you know.
(And thank you for linking to the speech in the first place. It really did change the way that I think about other people and the rest of the world.)
I bought Stephen Colbert's I am America and So Can You largely because his speech at the Correspondent's dinner made my mascara run and gave me the hiccups it was so funny. (It's reprinted in the book with funny after thoughts.)
The first time I watched this speech was a pirated post on youtube.
I have always believed that copyright laws need to be revised because as any Starbucks executive will tell you...you make a lot more money when you give stuff away for free. (Surprise and Delight.)
I agree with your assessment of chopping up the speech into the now printed format. I'm all in favor of a future print of it in its proper format. I mean, free use aside, how many versions of Shakespeare and Homer are there? I alone have 7(!) copies of Romeo and Juliette.
seems like you are mostly mad that DFW's publishers made a shitty book that harmed the beauty of the original work.
so you aren't doing the same thing as the DFW estate, unless you plan to re-release katherines in morse-code only version.
i'm far too lazy to justify the idea of copyright right now. i think its too long under US law thanks to Disney and others, but the concept of a limited time monopoly to encourage creative works is sound. otherwise we'd end up with only people like me making half-ass low-brow stuff for kicks.
... and what's all this about people being greedy bastards for wanting to make money from their creative talents? ayn rand wasn't wrong about everything.
I had that original link bookmarked and I visited it frequently - a few times a week. It was that kind of a work of literature, I could read it again and again and always find something new to think about.
I bought the book when it came out. Correction- I bought the only copy that sold at the store in the three months since it came out. I work at the bookstore that I bought it from, that's how I know. I think it's safe to assume that if the book isn't selling in the highest-grossing bookstore in a large US city, it isn't selling much anywhere else.
My point is that Wallace's speech cannot be sold, for all the reasons you talked about (it's too short for people to consider spending money on it, splitting up the sentences to individual pages is confusing and detracts from the message, etc.)
Your books, however CAN be sold. They're MEANT to be sold, unlike Wallace's speech. And that makes it POSSIBLE for them to sell. Does that make sense? So don't feel like a hypocrite.
The delight,as well as the dilemma with all things in the world is finding balance where most can adjust to. The problem is that people will miss-use anything they can, and the internet, as great as it is, have given way to the "Free-generation" and empowered them, making them forget the time before all control went out the window.
Imagine if everything was free, but people could still earn and prosper on good work. I don't see that as reality, but I enjoy the attempt of trying to make it real.
Much said, nothing said, and so spin the world ever on.
It would be interesting if a group of authors banded offered up their works as "open source." Allowing other authors to add to, edit and create their own versions. I wonder what type of experience that could offer if, like Linux, there were multiple versions based on the same text. Intriguing, no?
Thanks for posting.
I check your blog too many times a day, and I was starting to get sad.
I agree with what people above have said about how your books are different.
1. They're intended for copyright and publication, which the speech obviously wasn't.
2. Like Alan said, you being payed for your writing allows you to spend more of your time on it and create more of it. If you had to do something else for income, that wouldn't be possible.
I read this speech a few months ago on a link from your blog here and it really put into words a lot of things I had been thinking about after reading Paper Towns (and watching your Catcher in the Rye videos). I can't imagine it still working at all in the form you describe in the book.
You're a cool frood, John. I have the same issues, really. I think music should be free. But I want to make some money off mine eventually. I want to give money to my favorite bands (Harry and the Potters so far is the only band that has ever gotten money from me directly), but I'm so cheap that I usually buy everything used. Plus, I'm always going to be MY biggest fan, but I'm probably always going to have no money. So I can't expect lesser fans to have money. I think a lot of things should be fair use, because they're almost always used fairly by fans. But as Jonathan Coulton would tell you, he doesn't make that much on the faith that there are people who want to give him money. There are no right answers. Except, "Don't sue me."
Also, I want to support you, but I want an author's copy of Paper Towns too.
I'm sorry for not engaging in this discussion but I wanted to leave a note to let you know that I've E-mailed you (at me@sparksflyup.com) my thoughts on a certain discussion we just had in BlogTV regarding numbers and choices. BlogTV wouldn't let me be as wordy and specific as I wanted to be and I didn't want my vote to go without an explanation.
The address I sent the E-mail from is I.Said.Allo@gmail.com.
Good luck with your trainer. :) DFTBA.
It seems to me that This Is Water is a particularly special case, since it's almost certain that the book would not exist without the original copyright infringement.
Without the transcription and the folks who forwarded the link around, this speech would likely have faded into obscurity.
This, to me, is an abuse of copyright.
I don't think that this makes you a hypocrite, John.
This is Water and Paper Towns are of two completely different genres.
This is Water was never intended to be a book. It was a speech that DFW made, and were he still alive, I doubt that it would ever be published--or at least, if it were published, it would not be taken off of the internet as well.
You write books, and you have always intended for them to be books. Books are copyrighted. That is how books work.
Nobody blames you for making a living. It is not unjust that you be paid for you work--after all, that's why you wrote it (I mean, I know that you also write books to change our lives and all of that [at which you succeed, btw], but it IS your career).
Also, while a kinetic typography version of your books would be COOL, I don't think that it would necessarily benefit anyone better than by just reading the book.
It's really the literature that matters.
Oh, and your point about getting books from the library is valid, too. People CAN get your books for free if they want/need to.
Okay. Well, I hope that all of that made sense.
-Manar
I think that we should all stop lying to ourselves and admit that the money is a factor, thought it may not be a big one to some, that presses us to work and create. People tend to think that artists can go on for the rest of their lives creating without being paid.
But as I say this I confuse myself at the same time: What about blogging? Why do people put quality work out fully aware of the small, if not nonexistent, material returns they will get from it?
Wow, I just created a debate within my own head instead of trying to answer this problem.
But all I could think of is this: Maybe the money one gets from being published, or being bought off a shelf instead of merely being borrowed or downloaded for free, is just a better (and more edible) version of the pat on the back. A new subscriber could mean the same, but that won't pay the rent, would it? Plus, c'mon, someone shelled out hard earned money to own something you've created. You get to swim in the glory that is Fan Love and Moneys.
In the end, artists probably wouldn't stop creating if everything were free. Well, that is until they starve to death. Copyright is justified by the sight of healthy writers, supporting a family, I guess.
Copyright wouldn't be justified if someone receives Moolah by selling something that that someone else didn't intend for Moolah making.
DARNIT THAT DIDN'T SOLVE ANYTHING. But it feels good being able to think about it, because this was never something I would have taken the time to reflect on by myself.
PS. I also sent you an e-mail concerning tonight's (today's?) blogtv session.
I'm not sure you are really asking the question you want to ask. You are critical of how the publisher has "stuck us with" an inferior layout of the work, and blame copyright law for the fact that no better-formatted version is available. But do you really think that the absence of copyright law would foster the creation and printing of a better-formatted book version of the speech? I'm thinking, what it would really foster is just a bunch of knockoff xerox-copies of the published formatting. Who would make the effort of re-designing the book when it's already available online and (in the absence of copyright law) already available from a pirate xerographer?
Copyright law is important. If it did not exist, plagiarism would be easy and unpunishable. That is not fair.
Copyright is given to anyone who creates something and can reproduce it. Therefore, if Mr. Wallace made up the speech as he went and someone recorded it on a tape recorder, the speech would actually be the property of the person who recorded it, because that person can reproduce it and Mr. Wallace, perhaps, cannot.
However, he wrote out the speech beforehand, so he can reproduce it and has prior claim.
At least, I think that's how it works out.
In any case, copyright laws are the savior of everyone who creates in any form. I am grateful for them.
hey, tho this has nothing to do with your post...tho in response to it there is an excellent documentary about copyright in terms of music at the moment called RiP:a remix manifesto - could be an interesting adjunct.
but i wanted to say that there's this really cute song by darren hanlon (excellent aussie folky-pop singer-songwriter who plays the banjo sometimes and has a weird hero worship of eli wallach) ...anyway, his song is called "funkpark fugatives" and it makes me think of "paper towns". it's off his new album 'pointing ray guns at pagans'. check it out!
I don't know. I think that you end up reaching the people in the medium the work was originally in. There's no point worrying over whether you're reaching more or less people because you decided to write a novel rather than design a free video.
Thank you so much for sharing that wonderful speech. I will work on not resting on my default setting. Especially in traffic.
First off, John, I'm glad you're back; I was beginning to worry when we didn't hear from you for so long.
Second, i don't think you're a hypocrite; what bothers you is that the speech was created to be heard for free (well, not exactly free, since those kids at the ceremony did pay for an entire college education to hear it, but you get me), yet is now available almost exclusively for a price.
However, I do think people should receive some practical reward (in this case, $$$) for their creativity, especially if it's as profound as you say (I'll look it up later, I promise).
So I guess what I think is that it's OK to have it in book form, but I do think it's a shame that they did such a lousy job just to fill some more pages rather than, say, lower the price or just put effort into marketing to convince people that it's reallyreallyreally good.
To add a practical example, consider Cory Doctorow, who releases all of his books under the Creative Commons and as free digital downloads. Now, John, I'm not saying you have to do this, but it might be worth reading here where Cory talks about why he does this, showing the middle ground mentioned by a number of other commenters --- indeed, you (and other authors) deserve to earn money for your work! Again, it's not really a "solution", if such a thing is possible; it's just another idea.
I don't think there'd be as much of a problem with the fact that the speech was published, but it's the way that it was published that annoys me - as you said, setting it out like that detracts from the reading experience.
I don't think you're being a hypocrite at all - you put hours and months into writing that book, and you deserve payment for that (time is money, after all!)
I think copyright law is highly subjective - for example, I wouldn't make a picture on pait in two minuites and the ask for royalties on it, but if someone made an amazing and intricate piece of artwork, music or literature, they deserve to be payed for it's use.
Plus, it's how you make a living - if writers didn't even have the chance to amke money off their books, then would we have nearly as many books around as we do? The same goes for any otehr art form - no matter how passionate you are about your work, you ned money to survive in this world.
Also, WOW, a NF kinetic typography collab would be the MOST jokes thing ever XD
Thats funny. I saw This is Water and immediately thought of the speech, but never picked the book up to find out that -Ta Da!!!- it was.
I think you might be a hypocrite in this instance, but aren't we all? Isn't a little bit of hypocrisy somewhat inherent? There are just too many "What if's" and hypothetical situations to not be contradictory. Minute detail plays too much a role in altering the future profoundly to be sure.
I work around the copyright laws for the government. I record and edit audiobooks that are contracted by the National Library System/Library of Congress. It's for a program called Talking Books that serves people with vision loss. It's actually how I first got into John Green, I edited Looking for Alaska. There are special deals struck with the publishers, usually the authors and their agents don't even know the book is recorded, and the final product is distributed (for free) in a protected format (currently special four track cassettes that require a special player, soon to be digital). Just one way where we've said as a society that some people should have access to literature in a different format, for free, regardless of when it came out, and the government made it possible. Just wanted to throw that out there. Not really coming down on one side or the other about copyrightness.
It's really interesting that you talk about this now, because I was just in a meeting today about taking advantage of technology and starting a micro-publishing house that will serve several purposes (including education). One of the issues we covered was choosing the right media for a project. I suspect that's what didn't happen with this speech, which probably should have appeared in more of a chapbook format, with one paragraph per page or two. (Ian Frazier's Lamentations of the Father is a good example of this sort of special project.
As a writer and an editor, I think there has to be a way to sell "product," because writers, especially those with something significant to say (this includes you!) should be able to support themselves through their writing, and I think it is also worth having something in bound form, because it is, and I suspect will long be, more permanent than electrons in silica. (Those Gutenberg Bibles will outlast the Energizer Bunny.)
It always bothers me when people use the word 'pirate' in this context. There isn't *one* copy of this speech that has been stolen away from the family. It could be said that there are bootlegs however. But making a copy of something is different from physically stealing it.
I won't argue whether this is right or wrong, moral or immoral.
But I think John has shown how data is different than a performance. A speech or a novel could be viewed as pure data. Though possibly poetic and moving data. But the public reading of that data is a performance. Which is a fish of another color.
Data can be and possibly should be copyrighted. But a performance? Maybe those should remain wild...
Its comparable to there are no records and the recording companies are dying because of musicians being able to "give their music" directly to the people via You Tube or web sites. Will we still buy CD's in ten years when all the content is on the web. I hope books do not go that way, but with Kindle someone will figure out a way to break the code and share books on the web, if they haven't already.
All I could think about when I was reading that speech was how sad it is for one to be the opposite of the human he describes. To consider yourself so unimportant for so long that you cease to think about yourself and can only look through the "other" lens. I've known people like that. I've been close to it.
Maybe this doesn't make any sense. But I can't get it out of my head.
As a reader I don't enjoy an electronic version of anything as much as a paper version. I love to jot notes in margins and sloppily underline things that pop out to me. One of the reasons I began to read your blog is that you had a list of books you were reading in one of our posts and as I hate to waste my $ I generally only purchase books that come recommended.
After stumbling on your blog looking for book suggestions I got hooked and kept on reading, I find what you blog about facinating even if I'm not in your demographic. I also love the Vlogs, as do my children. I generally pre-view them first for language and content and then the kids get to watch them if appropriate.
BTW my 3 year old calls you "peanut butter face" I can't watch youtube with him in the room or he will chant "peanut butter face!" I've wanted to email and ask you to do the Alphabet, colors, numbers....while putting PB on your face because I'm just too chicken to do it.
When you posted the link to DFW speech I read out of curiosity. Without a doubt this will remain one of the most powerful things I have ever read. I don't think I would have paid $13 to read it line by line the way you described had I not read it as it was originally online but I will now. Seems sort of silly to put it in that form-I almost feel it cheapens it, but then that's just my opinion. The whole time I read I kept thinking 'couldn't they have put it with some of this other articles/speeches/lectures?' that would have made more sense and I would have been the first in line to purchase it.
Thanks for making DFW's piece available again!
And on a completely different note. I am visiting Indianapolis and I visited Half-Price Books on 86th St. And I am unhappy to report that I found none of your books! This should change.
Coincidentally, Sheldon Richman of the Foundation for Economic Education just published on this topic:
Intellectual “Property” Versus Real Property: What Are Copyrights and What Do They Mean for Liberty?
He addresses a similar situation regarding work he has produced which is copy-righted a little way down in the comments.
Everyone needs some type of compensation, or we'd all be living inside our heads. People do things for a reaction, or a fan-base, or money, or personal pleasure.
You just happen to need money for compensation. If you didn't, you would probably not be able to live in conditions which allowed you to write more lovely books.
Also, you spend months working on these masterpieces, and we pay $17.99 (in the case of Paper Towns) for unlimited entertainment from your words. No work involved. That's kind of leaves us on the better end of the bargain, I think.
Copy-right, in my opinion, is a catalyst of artistic output. It forces people to think outside the box. And in the end, there are always loopholes.
I'm not going to lie - I've definitely listened to music, and watched movie illegally. I don't think it's a bad thing, because if you're a person, everything you put out in the world will be available to everyone, whether through secondary sources, or pirating. You can't stop it, really, unless your omnipotent, which isn't that common among human beings.
Plus, I am under aged, and dependent on my parent, and live in a country where a lot of things are just plain hard to find. Therefore, I consider my illegal actions somewhat justified.
If I can find the works, and know that I am going to enjoy them, I do spend money on it, in homage to the creator.
Also you are not a hypocrite - I don't pay you to watch your vlogs, or read your blog, or This Is Not Tom, so as greedy of a bastard you are, you could be greedier.
But the DFW commencement speech sounds ridiculous. I mean, I agree with you about the format, but OVER 100 PAGES WITH ONE SENTENCE ON EACH? How many of these books did they print? 'Cause man, they totally just deforested a nice chunk of our lovely planet with all that wood. Not practical, at all.
I second Professor Luke Moody's recommendation that you consider following Cory Doctorow's, and others', lead and consider releasing a full text version of your next work online under a Creative Commons license while simultaneously having it published in print. At this point I would wager that you have a strong enough fan base (and library must-have presence) that retail sales would see little, if any, negative effect from the work's availability online, but the potential readership for your work would be much broader. Fans could easily point others to your work by sharing links; bloggers could not just excerpt or discuss passages from your work, but actually direct readers to your work to read for themselves.
Now, your publisher might not be happy with this suggestion, but you are the copyright holder and are therefore in a great position to negotiate. You could also consider releasing the first few chapters online to whet readers' appetites and hopefully drive up sales.
As a more direct response to the most appropriate format for the DFW commencement address, whenever you are asked to give similar addresses, release the full text yourself online under a CC license so it will be available in that format, regardless of whether you later decide to publish it in a format a la "This is Water." That is the most direct way you can avoid being a hypocrit with regard to your own work.
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