"Free is not fair" won't make authors richer, but fixing publishers' contracts will

Australia is about to radically expand its copyright and the publishing industry has forged an unholy alliance with authors' groups to rail against fair use being formalised in Australia, rallying under the banner of "Free is not fair."

Rebecca Giblin (previously), one of Australia's leading copyright scholars and the founder of a project to examine the way that authors' interests diverge from their publishers' interests.

She points out that giving Australian authors more copyright won't do them any good if the highly concentrated publishing industry simply demands that all that copyright be transferred to corporate balance sheets as part of their standard contracts. It's like giving your bullied kid extra lunch money: the bullies will simply mug them for the extra money you've handed over.

Because even though writers' median incomes have fallen, publishing's profitability has risen. The publishing industry does not have a profitability crisis: it has a fair distribution crisis, and additional copyrights that make publishing more profitable just make them bigger and better situated to win contract negotiations with publishers.

Instead of giving writers more lunch money for the publishers to take off them, Giblin talks about measures that will gives authors negotiating leverage, like rights reversions and European-style "bestseller clauses," as well as more accountability from the collecting societies that take in money on behalf of writers.

Canada is going through a similarly backwards process to "fix copyright" that is headed on a collision course with the same bad outcomes that the Australian process is creating. Read the rest