What Lawyers Can Learn From Manga 357
jedigeek links to this article from Lawrence Lessig, writing "This article explains the interesting phenomenon of dojinshi, and why dojinshi helps fuel the production of original manga. From a western-perspective, dojinshi breaks copyright laws, but, according to the article's author: 'The law is a rough-edged tool. It was not crafted by geniuses of economics.' In a time when laws like the DMCA exist and are being exploited, this is certainly food for thought."
Couple of things.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Apparently, slash is big in japan.. except they actually have the talent to do slash with art, rather than slash with badly-spelled-web-log-entries.
*sigh*
I was given a book on how to draw Manga.. and the
"rules" of character design, etc, are very very interesting.
Maeryk
Actually... (Score:2, Interesting)
Noo... I don't watch dirty animes... what gives you that idea...?
I'd still like to see an anime that gets it's characters from a dirty H-Dojinshi...
The law (Score:2, Interesting)
(If we could do this, cruel and blatantly odd laws that allow such travesties as the DMCA, etc. wouldn't be allowed to exist.)
Re:Couple of things.. (Score:5, Interesting)
author?
price?
review?
Re:Anime originality (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The law (Score:2, Interesting)
Fundamentally, that's what a Democracy is supposed to be doing, isn't it? Though with the idea that everyone has to verify it before it's "released" (passed). We of course live in a Representative Democracy, wherein we appoint "experts" to do this job for us.
Your suggestion sounds like something you might call a "Contributor Democracy", where anyone who wants to participates in the process of formulating the laws.
Only problem is, how does the "release" mechanism work? In open-source, you just release a program when you want to, and people use it if they choose to. That won't quite work with a law: someone says "people shouldn't be allowed to do such and such", and then those who want to follow it do so. Or cops/judges choose which ones they want to enforce. Doesn't seem like that would be too effective.
But it's an interesting idea!
Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and Freakin' Lies. (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, businesses ask themselves all the time whether what they're doing will increase profit (that's about *all* Enron, Worldcom, et al. apparently did) rather than suing over an abstraction of intellectual property theft. The DMCA and Sonny Bono Art were pushed because it was thought they would be profitable.
BTW, it is frequently represented that the U.S. has many time more lawyers than Japan, overlooking another cultural difference. Many Japanese "lawyers" work for companies and perform the sorts of tasks that in the U.S. would be done by someone with a JD. We have this in the U.S. to a lesser extent, as with accountants who are in a gray area of practicing law by interpreting, applying, and advising clients on the tax code.
I welcome the cultural comparisons. It's always interesting to see how the next guy does things. Isn't is funny, though, how quickly all the calls of the 80's for America to follow the Japanese business model evaporated several years ago? Different tactics work at different times -- and different philosophies for different cultures.
On copyright violations -- it's a shame that the maturation of fair use signalled by Acuff-Rose has been reversed by recent legislation.
Problem is..Lawyers CAN'T learn! (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's an even better example:
E-Books:
My wife loves E-books, they're cheap and she can buy and download them online (read: Impulse buy for instant gratification). What does drive her crazy though is that she can't print most of them. She has to be tied to a computer to read them. So, she winds up buying a mix of books or goes to the library.
Enter Elcomsoft...a Russian company that can fix this...which will make my wife happy so she'll buy even MORE e-books. Another thing that Elcomsoft's product can do is open up an entire NEW MARKET..the blind book market. See, the millions of blind people in the world can't USE
E-books, but with Elcomsoft's program these books can be read on a standard text reader that many of these blind people use. Instead of JUMPING FOR JOY at this innovative product that can result in MILLIONS MORE E-books being sold, the industry sues it out of existance. Now, explain to me how THAT made any sense? Like I'm a six year old.
how they make money... (Score:2, Interesting)
What I gathered from the article is that the Japanese publishers look to make money from their work and are open for different interpretations as long as it still makes them money...
Before dojinshi... (Score:2, Interesting)
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...
Okay, not so long ago and not so far away, there was another situation where copyright violation kept an IP alive. It's called Star Trek.
For those too young to remember, there was a 10 year period (1969-79) where Star Trek was just another cancelled TV series. A lame animated series showed up in 73(?) that quickly died and there were novelizations of both series, but otherwise, the only "authorized" new ST material was a dozen or so novels of varying degrees of quality. That and tons of fan fiction. The sort of stuff that Paramont gets real huffy about these days. Sturgeon's law applied to the results; most of it was crap (did anyone else run across any of the K/S stuff?), but the stuff that wasn't crap helped keep the franchise alive and Rick Berman employed. This was a time when fanzines were typed and mimeographed, mail involved paper and stamps, videotape was 3/4" wide and only used by TV stations... The point being that a cavalier attitude towards copyrights made it possible for Paramont to to make millions of dollars sucking the life and spirit from the desicated husk of Star Trek, long after their attempts to kill it failed.
Re:Of course you choose when to follow the law. (Score:3, Interesting)
Not too long ago you could have said "The person exists to get food. That is his/her sole purpose in life." And it even would have been true, for a very long time. But you know what? Somewhere along the way, we grew up a little. We saw that there is more to life than grabbing the next, or the biggest, meal. There's a whole Universe of things above, beyond, and immament in the purely material.
Maybe it's time for corporations to grow up, too. Maybe it's time for us to demand that they do, to remove the legal justifications for ones that don't, and to provide the legal framework that allows ones that do. The courts have recognized that, in certain ways, a corporation is a "person". With those rights come certain responsibilities too -- an ethics that can trascend the pure profit motive.
Not that I'm holding my breath.
Re:Producers supporting derivative works (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:For the uninitiated (Score:3, Interesting)
This is also apparent in Japan's (secretly) genetically-engineered vegetables, which are typically 5 times the size of their natural counterparts. A normal eggplant could feed one person, but a Japanese eggplant can feed a whole family.
Find good things, increase their worth.
Re:For the uninitiated (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh, certainly! I always found it interesting that the Chinese faced imperialism with a kind of "Don't change our way of life and we'll trade in the goods we're interested in," which while noble, culture-preserving, and laissez-faire ultimately resulted in the downfall of their expansive empire.
This is as opposed to Japan. When Commodore Perry fired off his cannon salute, the Japanese reaction was, "Oh, yes, we're very interested in trade. Why don't you start by showing us those cannons?"
What's the moral? When faced with a superior force, give in, become friends, conform, and hope that the last decimated shreds of your culture work its way into some kind of Greco-Romanish composite. Hey, I didn't say it was a good moral. Life sucks sometimes. :)
-Roxton, Jedi Hobbit with a Ph.D. in Necromancy
Some companies do get it. (Score:5, Interesting)
But, as was frequently pointed out in the resulting furor (the player in question apologized and took it like a man, but some players want any reason to bitch), the general policy on EQ fan sites is to let them be, and even throw them bones now and then. People post screenshots, walk-throughs, fan fics, and all kinds of other game-related content all over the web. And apparently Sony Online Entertainment and/or Verant Interactive realize that this is a *good* thing, so long as it doesn't hurt their image. They also realize that if they decide a particular work is hurting them more than helping them (as they decided with the depiction of child rape), they have the right to enforce their copyright selectively.
It seems that perhaps copyright law needs a proof of damage clause attached to it, similar to slander and libel. This could be used to expand the doctrine of Fair Use, for example. In many cases such a clause wouldn't be appropriate; you could, if it were done badly, end up with situations where someone loses their copyright because "they weren't using it." (Of course, that happens now, too... see the Darwin fish. But anyway.)
Re:General Public will not wake up until..... (Score:3, Interesting)
Auto manufacturers have tried to get Congress to allow copyright protection on auto sheet metal, but so far, Congress hasn't given in.
But the DMCA angle is a real issue in the automotive area. Ordinarily, you can't copyright a functional part. But you can add a hardware interlock to a functional part and use the DMCA to prevent attempts to break the "protection mechanism", as the printer-cartridge industry does.
As more components of vehicles are on the vehicle LAN, this may become an issue. For example, the aftermarket radio industry may be killed off.
Re:Here's one - flame away (Score:3, Interesting)
I think my husband is addicted to eBay
It all started one day when I noticed my husband, Mark, was spending a little more time than usual checking his email. I wandered into the office to see what he was up to. "What're you doing Honey?"
"I'm just surfing on eBay."
"For anything in particular?"
"Sticks. Pool sticks. Mickey found a good deal on a Huebler, so now I'm trying to find one." That's my hubby: like the matching pea in a pod, whatever his best friend Mickey had, Mark would soon possess, and vice versa.
"How much?"
"Mickey got his for $175.00. Then he found a Meucci for Carol. Some models retail for twice that."
I shook my head a little, gave him a kiss on the cheek and said, "Ok, have fun."
Just a couple of days later he was at it again. "What are you looking for now?" I quizzed.
"Sticks."
"But, I thought you found one the other night."
"I did. Now I'm looking for one for you." He looked up at me with a pleading glance, "You want your own pool stick, Honey?"
"But, I don't play pool often enough to own my own stick."
"I can get you a purple one!" he beamed as he tried to appeal his case to me.
"Honey, I don't need a stick. I hardly ever go out when you shoot pool. I can just borrow yours when I do."
The next night he was at it again. "Honey! I want to show you something!" He shouted from upstairs. Once upstairs Mark proudly turned the monitor toward me so he could display his new find.
"Look Honey, a purple one!"
He clicked the Back arrow, and then clicked on a web link he had saved. "And here's a green one. You like green, don't you?" I could already tell that I was going to be the proud owner of a Huebler whether I wanted one or not.
"I found a neat trick. Look." he said as he pointed to the monitor. "A lot of people spell Huebler wrong. So if you search for the stick using the misspelling, you'll find a bunch that hardly anyone is bidding on, because most people are searching for the real name. See, the purple one is spelled 'Hubler'. It's only up to $75.00, and there's only three people bidding on it." He clicked another link, "And here's a Meucci, but it's spelled 'Meuchie', so the search function can't find it."
"You're already bidding on the stick? But I told you I didn't want one."
"But it's a great stick. Trust me honey. Now we can all have our own."
"You can have two if you really want them, but I don't need one. And, by the way, what are all of those boxes that keep showing up in the mail?"
He flashed a big, proud grin, "Car parts."
"You're buying car parts online? Isn't that a little expensive? Can't you just go to the junkyard like you usually do?"
"But you can't find the kind of parts I need in a junkyard. I ordered ashtrays for my Monte Carlo. You can't get '87 ashtrays from any of the junkyards around here. And I found door locks for it too. They're the kind with the knobs on the end instead of the straight ones."
"How much for new door locks?" I asked.
"Fourteen bucks, plus shipping."
I rolled my eyes. "Whatever! I'm going back downstairs."
A few days later Mark called for me to come upstairs again.
"Don't tell me, eBay. What did you find now?"
"Just because I love you so much, and you're the most wonderful wife in the world..." he bribed as he turned the monitor toward me. There on the display was an enlarged photo of a diamond ring. "Do you like it?"
"Honey", I pronounced the syllables distinctly putting a little emphasis on the 'eee' part, "That's very sweet of you, but I don't need another ring." I held up my ring finger to him, presenting a seven-diamond marquee band, "You just bought me this one a few months ago, and I love it. You know I don't wear a lot of jewelry."
"But, I would get it for you if you wanted it. You know, most wives would be happy that their husband wanted to buy them a new ring."
"I leaned down to kiss him, "Then you should be glad I'm not like most wives. Please, no ring. Ok?"
"Ok. Your loss."
Over the next few weeks there were more rings for him to show me. Mark had moved onto gemstones, prodding with, "You want a birthstone don't you?" I finally caved on the birthstone, if he could get it for under $50.00, which he did. It was surprisingly nice for the money. Apparently the woman selling it forgot to put in a reserve price on the item. This meant that she would have to sell it at whatever the final bid was.
Then there was the pretty sapphire with a triangle shaped diamond on either side for $175.87. The diamonds were
I had to admit I was happy with some of his little finds for me. But the small packages were starting to show up daily. I had long lost count over the past few months. I had given up on asking about car parts and paintball guns, and had insisted on no more jewelry. Since we were the proud owner of two new (used) Hueblers, I felt safe there would be no more of those.
I was wrong. Even though each pool cue came with it's own case, Mark claimed he needed to buy a special case that could carry two sticks. Ok, I reasoned; that made some sense. But what were we going to do with the two empty single cases? Then he needed a stick just for breaking. I tried to argue that one down by pointing out that a bar cue was quite sufficient for the task, but lost to his enthusiastic and passionate energy.
After a few months and I don't know how much money, I got paged upstairs again. "Your Mom likes these, doesn't she?" he asked, as he pointed to a listing of Caroling dolls, better known as 'suffocating people' around here. That's my clever Honey's nickname for them because he says when you put them in a glass display case, they all look like they're gasping for air.
Putting his generous spirit aside, my hands were on my hips now. I had had enough. "Honey! You're buying for my mother now? Don't you think you're taking this eBay stuff a little too far?" I glared at him in a way that only an angry wife can, "Honey, I think you are addicted to eBay. You haven't stopped since you started. You've run out of things to buy (thank God!), so now your shopping for other people. You need to stop. You know I love you, but you need to stop. I don't want to see another package come into this house!"
A dark cloud seemed to settle on the house for the next couple of days. Mark moped about. He shopped, but didn't bid. I swear he was going through withdrawal. I felt guilty, but we had a deal as husband and wife. We gave each other a lot of leeway with our lives; we trusted each other completely to always do the right thing for the marriage. But if one of us decided the other was starting to cross from the gray into the black, and was called up on it, they would stop whatever the offending thing was. End of story; no arguments. Sulking, yes. Arguing, no.
Finally, I couldn't take his misery anymore. "Honey, listen: you can't possibly need anything else from eBay. You've bought it all already." He just scowled, and mumbled something I probably didn't want to hear anyway. "Why don't you look for things that you can sell, instead of trying to buy everything? Maybe you can sell the pool cases you have left over?"
A seed planted; I left.
After a few days, I noticed Mark was digging through our closets and rummaging up in the attic. He had managed to dig out a couple of items that might sell on eBay. Digital camera in hand, he photographed his items and dutifully posted them to the site. Not a bad beginning, but now he was on a new quest. If we weren't using it anymore and it contained even a nominal value, he was selling it.
He had in the garage some of his own car parts, left over from cars long gone, that he posted. Amazingly everything sold and sold quickly. I guess you need to know your automobiles, but there are some models of cars that are harder to find parts for than others. And there are silly things (to me anyway), like the fact that a 1987 Corolla was sold with small mirrors and large mirrors. Apparently the large ones are hard to find and he just happened to have a couple. He had a spare alternator from an old car that got totaled before he ever got to put it in, and it too sold quickly. Mark had only bought a couple of items for himself in the last couple of months, for which I said nothing. The tides had shifted and the balance restored. The money was coming in now instead of going out.
On one very rare day, our teenage daughter, Cherie, decided to clean her room. Two large garbage bags were placed in the garage, and I knew I would need to go through them. She had a bad habit of throwing away small items that were still perfectly good, instead of putting them in the yard sale pile. Sure enough, there were a couple of small wooden boxes stuffed in the bags along with a lot of leftover school papers and used notebooks. I pulled the boxes out and placed them on top of the trash barrels then tied the bags back up.
It wasn't too long before Mark eyed the boxes and brought them over to his workbench. Inside one of the boxes was a large plastic bag. It was filled with what looked to be pen tips, the kind that are used on old fountain pens. He asked me where they came from. I recalled Cherie was attempting to learn calligraphy at one point, so they must have come from then. But they were very old pen tips. Someone must have given them to her a long time ago.
Mark diligently went on eBay and did a little research. Lo and behold, these ???? pen tips were for sale all right, and were selling well. He found one guy who sold a dozen tips for $45.00. We had fifty tips in the bag. It turned out that they were indeed very old, and were not in production anymore.
Mark thought about this for a while. Should he sell the whole bag with all fifty tips in one fell swoop? Or should he farm them out a little at a time? If he sold them all, he might get a good price, but who would want to buy them? Possibly another dealer. But it seemed feasible to him that an ordinary person would have no use for fifty tips. His research showed that they lasted about two to three years, depending on use. So he opted to sell them in smaller quantities.
Digital photos ready, he posted his newfound treasure. He placed three separate auctions with three pen tips each. He made sure he clearly listed the name brand and model numbers, and in the photo he had one of the tips out of the box so it could be properly viewed. Wow! Who knew so many people were hot for pen tips? After seven days on auction, his top one sold for $26.00. Imagine, $26.00 for just three pen tips that were on their way out to the trash. The other two sets sold for $19.00 and $17.00. And he still had forty-one left to sell. It was nice to see the smile back.
Clearly on a different path now, Mark was always looking for something good to post. Jewelry and pool cues were no longer on his mind. The only thing he bought lately were old novels written by Norah Lofts, that his mother loved to read. Since they were written in the 70's and are very hard to find, eBay proved to be the perfect hunting ground.
One weekend we were at the closing end of a yard sale of a co-worker who was moving away. As most good yard-sellers do, they try to unload a lot of stuff at the end, or they throw it away. The man gifted Mark with a car model kit that he had never built. The box was fairly ratty, but the model kit itself was still inside its protective plastic bag. It was of a 1969 Corvette, 1/20th scale. It had all of the decals and came with real rubber wheels, which, so I am told, are supposed to be fairly rare.
Mark took his photos. He now had a large piece of wood painted a light cream color, so he would always have a clean backdrop to clearly display his items. He tried to research the Corvette model, but he couldn't find one just like it. He looked at some of the prices that other models were going for, and they auctioned for anywhere between fifteen and one hundred dollars. Mark preferred to start his auctions off with a very low bid, and let the auction take off. If he wanted $25.00 for an item, he would start it at $5 or $10 and let the bidders bring it up. He noticed if he started too high, or placed a high reserve on an item, the final sale price never really crept up. There is something about winning an auction from another person that fuels the bidding process.
A master at this now, Mark dutifully typed up the full description so it would be ready to copy and paste into the eBay auction description form. He didn't leave anything out, even describing that the original owner was into Vettes but never found the time to build the model, and that he didn't want to keep it for himself because he too, did not have the time to do it any justice. Apparently this model was also unique in that it could be built three ways: blown dragster, exciting custom and stock open 427 roadster (whatever any of that means - I just copied this stuff from his description). It also had vinyl seatbelts and floor mats, which most model makers don't bother with anymore. In addition to his detailed description, he cross-linked his advertising by mentioning to check his 'other auction' for the 1969 Corvette Model, on an old Corvette Dealer brochure that he had also picked up at the yard sale and vice versa. (Who knew old dealer brochures were collectible?)
The auction began with a starting bid of $6.00. Within one day it was up to $56.00. By the end of the third day, it had gone over the $150.00 mark. Then Mark received an email from a gentleman in Argentina. It turned out that Mark had listed that he would only ship to the United States or Canada. Mark quickly realized that it was a little silly to cut himself so short, when his auction was being viewed by the entire world. The guy from Argentina mentioned that he would like to bid on the model, but Mark said he couldn't. So, Mark quickly corrected this by sending an email back and basically saying, "Hey, if you don't mind paying the extra for foreign shipping, go ahead and bid on it." Then he posted a correction to his auction description and mentioned that he would indeed ship to a foreign country, but to please remember that it was a lot more costly to do so. And so the bidding war began.
The next day the auction heated up again and at last glance had reached $203.00. Considering the bid increments were only $1.00 each that demonstrated a fairly active day. By the end of the seventh day, Mark's new determined friend in Argentina had worked the final sale to $247.00. He was going to own that Corvette model and nothing was going to stop him. And so the story goes: a dusty little model car kit, pulled from the trash at the last minute, started out at $6.00 and ended up selling for $247.00 plus another $25.00 to ship by air.
Yes, life is good around here again. Hubby is happy. Wife is happy. Man in Argentina is happy. And the kid? Well -- we never did tell her about the pen tips.
Oh yeah, copyright 2003 by me