Outrage and sadness

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I was checking my links for the 'Aces High' commentary earlier on and I discovered something that really angered me.

The site [a href=\'http://www.histoiredumonde.net/20_eme_siecle/sealion/\' target=\'_blank\']Histoire du Monde[/a], which was -- to my knowledge -- the only free French-speaking website dealing with History, had to close down. The reason for this is that they reproduced copyrighted material unknowingly, and that the publishing company that owned those rights forced them to shut down the site. Not just a slap on the wrist, but complete anihilation of a site that was offering culture and historical knowledge for free to those who where interested.

Sites in French dealing with culture and World History are so rare that the destruction of such a site is an outrage to those who were seeking knowledge in their own language (not everybody is lucky enough to understand English perfectly). The principle in itself is also disgusting, whatever the language of the site anyway. Everyone interested should have free access to culture.

The massacre of ethnic groups is condemned by international courts -- and very rightly so! The extermination of cultural portals is -- in my eyes -- just as condemnable! Should the crime be any less if, instead of people, ideas and knowledge of our past are destroyed?

With ethnies, we talk about genocides. This is what I consider a memocide! [!--emo&:angry:--][img src=\'style_emoticons/[#EMO_DIR#]/mad.gif\' border=\'0\' style=\'vertical-align:middle\' alt=\'mad.gif\' /][!--endemo--]
 
[!--QuoteBegin-Maverick+Oct 11 2005, 04:10 PM--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE(Maverick @ Oct 11 2005, 04:10 PM)[/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--QuoteEBegin--]Everyone interested should have free access to culture.
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[/quote]With internet being the main, and excellent, resource for millions - students, journalists, anyone - I wonder how culture can be maintained in such way. If it was really a non-profit project, this is disgusting. Business wins again.
 
I just want to say that the website might have fought back successfully, but instead chose to surrender, in historical French fashion. Brave for keeping with the culture.

In all seriousness, this is asinine. Reproduction for non profit should be allowed. I mean, chances are any Joe Le Schmo could walk into le bibliotheque and borrow the book in question without paying a cent. In fact, since this was likely an excerpt, I would put it under the realm of free advertising.

I also don't see the need for the business to launch an attack on an entire website. Simply demand that the copyrighted material be removed or properly documented. In fact, I don't understand how a non profit website can be forced to shut down for copyright reasons if portions of an excerpt are printed, especially if the owner/writer personally owns the publication in question.

Ridiculous, on all counts.
 
Here's a quick translation of what the webmaster wrote:


Mea Culpa: We got hold (through one of our contributors or by scan, I don't remember) of some pages of a book that was still subject to copyright (I know, shame on us), or published on line some texts without any knowledge of a prior copyright. We are now paying the price.

We received a mail from a large publishing company, PUF (Presses Universitaires de France), telling us that we were using a copyrighted content (only a few pages, though). We immediately took it off the site. But that wasn't enough, as their complaint was the following: "The reason for damage may have ceased to exist, but there still has been a prejudice caused to our company"
(This is a pretty vile way to look at it, but this is only my opinion. We were wrong in the eyes of the law, and I have to admit it!)
Following the pressure we received, we are now forced to close the site down.
See, to have access to culture, you have to pay. Otherwise, just stay ignorant, no one will care, or even on the contrary. This is the message that I understand here...
It seems to me a huge paradox that they should give so much importance to such a menial crime... and so little commercially-oriented, therefore theoretically without any prejudice. (May I remind you that histoiredumonde.net is 100% without any ads and that the sale of private books (out of stock, or second hand item) does not constitute any profit. Our benefits, if one calls them that, are extremely low.
Sick of the way they dealt with us, we decided to give up. And there's no certainty that this will be enough!
We still have the forum, and that's already something.
Support messages are welcome on this forum.
We apologise to the 1,500 visitors we had every day, as well as to our regular guests, for those few pages dealing with a common topic, but copyrighted (the keyword of the 21st century). This is the end of the line.
Sorry also about the spelling mistakes and accents, I really don't feel like correcting them right now... Right, that's it.

And, by the way, here's the moral of the story:
Create a free website that everybody can visit, without any lucrative aim whatsoever, then you'll hit a wall because you're not "profitable", you're not playing the usual commercial game...
... This is the world we live in. Wonderful, isn't it?
 
If only I spoke French, I would launch some sort of action to bring it back.
 
Maybe we could start an English-speaking thread on their forum to show international support?
 
I can't understand why the copyright owner would demand that a whole site be shut down if the copyrighted material was removed. It makes no sense to me. How could there possibly be any further damage to the publisher?

I get the feeling that this was caused by lawyers who simply felt like using all the power they could muster, rather than just that amount which was appropriate to the situation.

Imagine you're at home, and some burglar breaks in. You load a gun and aim it at him. He sees the gun and runs away - completely away, out of your house and off of your property. Mission accomplished. You don't need to kill the burglar.

What the publishing company has done is equivalent to killing the guy anyway just because you have the means to do it. Completely rotten.
 
I'm not familiar with French copyright law, but I don't understand how this could be at all legal...yes, if I had an email for this publishing company, I'd send them angry letters.
 
Mav, doesn't the Sorbonne have an extensive online database of historical stuff?
Though it's not anywhere near to the quality of other history sites, the Wikipedia has thousands of history articles en francais (not the same, I know)

I'll check with the French History professor here and see if she can reccomend anything else.
 
[!--QuoteBegin-LooseCannon+Oct 11 2005, 03:00 PM--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE(LooseCannon @ Oct 11 2005, 03:00 PM)[/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--QuoteEBegin--]I just want to say that the website might have fought back successfully, but instead chose to surrender, in historical French fashion.  Brave for keeping with the culture.[/quote]
This one is excellent ! Officialy offended, of course, but still...

Seriously, you people are wonderful... Tell me in which world you live in and I'll join!
It's really funy how, any time Culture is in the way, everything should be free. Culture and Knowledge are not. Sorry to disappoint you, but that's the deal.
The publishing house in question, PUF for Presse Universitaire de France (University Press), is a very well known publishing house, editing and publishing books of high quality for university subjects. Three years ago, this company had nearly closed due to very bad sales. Students are not really rich, so they copied books. This over-copying was one major reason of the lack of selling for PUF. The PUF were rescued by another publisher, but I can understand that the publishing house will go after anyone who could endanger it.
The owner of Histoire du monde is sad and angry to see his site closed. I can understand that. But, hey, he broke the law. The french law allow a "quotation" right to anyone. You're allowed to quote any books as long as the excerpt is not too long and with the indication of the title of the book and the name of the author.

Also, a huge problem when you're dealing with books, is the fact that most of the people see Culture. Well, despite its contents, a book is a product. It has a cost and you have to sell it. It is a business.
Therefore, you can't condemn PUF for acting as any company would do. They are protecting their sales.
 
Owly brings up an excellent point here. Yes, scholars write their work to disemminate knowledge because they believe in its inherent value to humanity.

That being said, they need to eat. Nobody would take a chair made by a carpenter without paying him for his work. Why should using the products of mental labour be treated differently?
Culture is the property of all, but until societies begin to properly reward the produceres of culture for their labours, people who access it have to support them.

Without protection of its assets, the publishing house would quickly go under. they wouldn't be able to publish anymore, a huger loss to culture than this entire incident.

So unless you want to make all scholars, writers, artists, sculpters, etc full-time, well-paid government employees with wages commiserate to the quality of their work, you're harming culture by providing someone else's intellectual property for free.

(yes, this includes music!)
 
I disagree that business and free access to culture and information are mutually exclusive.

I work in the so called "most respected" newspaper in my country. That attribute means nothing in international context, just in a country where free journalism started to be rebuilt from scratch a few years ago. Anyway, the paper has good sales, lots of advertisement and the company is expanding. Still, our wages could be higher and are certainly not comparable to figures earned in banking or real-estate business. (That's a difference between two worlds - if you want to make a lot of money, become a banker. But I love my job and prefer it to any other, money or not.)

In the times when the paper was about to launch an online version, there was debate about whether to allow free access to articles or not. There has even been a period when everything but short previews was on payment (as is the case in many great foreign papers, true). But today, they have found a compromise. The day's volume and some archived volumes back are for free, while some sections and older archives are on payment. And get this: the site is the most read in whole Slovakia, with the exception of a search engine. We have kilometers of discussion threads that we use in later work, blogs, many readers leave tips for things to cover. I LOVE IT.

Yes, the French site owners broke the law. I'm not even saying that it's a stupid law (as some are), of course the principle is good. But a warning would have been enough, in my opinion, and above all, a reasonable compromise.
 
The site has finally re-opened! [!--emo&:)--][img src=\'style_emoticons/[#EMO_DIR#]/smile.gif\' border=\'0\' style=\'vertical-align:middle\' alt=\'smile.gif\' /][!--endemo--]


They are re-starting from scratch and, this time, they'll try to be more careful with the copyrights!
 
I dont think legally they had any power to close the website down once the offending content was removed. Surely the site existing or not in no way has any more or less effect on their "business" once the material was removed
 
I will just throw this in, make your own thoughts about it.

My grandfather (the one who is still alive, not the one I mentioned in the "Aces High" thread) is a very renowned scholar on the field of art history of ancient India. He is an acknowledged expert in the subject of the Kushana civilization (in case anybody is interested, [a href=\'http://www.antiquario.de/webcgi?START=A50&MITES=1&AU=H%E4rtel+Herbert&DBN=AQUI&ZG_PORTAL=autor&WID=76453-1880705-62378_1\' target=\'_blank\']this[/a] is a list of 24 works he has written).

I will not brag with all the merits he has (and he has a lot), I will just mention this: He has directed the excavations of an ancient Indian city named Sonkh. Ever since I've known him, he has been writing a report of these excavations. The book was finally finished and published a few years ago (funny it doesn't appear in the above list). I remember the first time I saw it on sale in the Museum for Indian Art in Berlin- I was shocked at the price. It was about 300 DM (around 150 Euros).

He has raised five children, and all he ever lived from was the work he did for the (West) Berlin institutes. He was funded by the institutes, who in return took a lot of their money from the revenues they made- museums, books and stuff like that.

My grandfather spent many, many years learning ancient Greek, Persian, Sanskrit, Hindi, and other languages. The last time I saw him, he fluently read and translated an ancient Indian inscription from a small black and white picture in a book which was upside down. He spent many years in the university, and travelled to India. He has a huge library, which he is now gradually disbanding. I have had the fortune of receiving some of the books. They are mostly scholarly books dealing with various subjects, but mostly the ancient Orient. Should I just scan them in and put them on the internet? Should I take the books he has written and put them on the web so people will gain the knowledge he has assembled over 60 years or so with one mouseclick?
 
Of course. That's what the museum for Indian art in Berlin is there for.
 
[!--QuoteBegin-Black Dragon+Oct 16 2005, 08:40 PM--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE(Black Dragon @ Oct 16 2005, 08:40 PM)[/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--QuoteEBegin--]But I don't live anywhere near Berlin...
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[/quote]Neither do I. Do they have a website? [!--emo&:P--][img src=\'style_emoticons/[#EMO_DIR#]/tongue.gif\' border=\'0\' style=\'vertical-align:middle\' alt=\'tongue.gif\' /][!--endemo--]
 
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