Tag: npr

Why is the press so bumfuzzled about copyright issues?

During a recent scan of the Authors Guild discussion boards, where I look for copyright related comments, I noticed a couple of authors mentioning how dismayed they were to hear the NPR show 1A host a one-sided conversation about the Internet Archive being sued by several major publishers. The program, which aired on December 7, hosted Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle, along with Melanie Huggins of the American Library Association and John Bracken of the Digital Public Library of America.

The segments of the show extolling the virtues of libraries and discussing their digital futures were valid conversations worth having, but my friends at AG were right to take issue with the producers at 1A in regard to the conflict between Internet Archive and the publishers over copyright infringement. WAMU had provided a forum for advocates of policy positions directly opposed to authors’ interests and did so without inviting any authors to participate. Instead, as the press often does it seems, 1A amplified the too-simple narrative about King John publishers and Robin Hood librarians, as if the writers of the books necessary to both institutions do not have anything to say on the matter.

If 1A and others don’t want to host a serious conversation about the legal doctrines implied by the theory called “Controlled Digital Lending,” or they don’t want to discuss the library associations’ hopes to amend §109 of the Copyright Act, fine. If they don’t want to invite counsel for the Association of American Publishers to debate these nuanced legal matters, so be it. But before providing yet another platform for those who promote the “evil publisher” narrative, perhaps some consideration for the relationship between publishers and writers is warranted.

I don’t know. Maybe Macy’s will never talk to Gimbels. Because it seems to me that public radio shows feature in-depth interviews with authors all the time. Clearly, somebody in the ambit of NPR understands that before publishers or libraries can make books available, writers have to write them. And writing books is what we call work. And using anyone’s work without license is what we call exploitation, which is precisely what writers feel when Brewster Kahle (who is a multi-millionaire, by the way) and the executives at library associations presume to make books available in ways that contravene licensing regimes governed by copyright law.

It is very disappointing when journalists in a position to shape public perception on background issues like copyright law are apparently so star struck by Kahle’s utopian shtick that they ignore the individuals whose lives would be affected by the ideas he and his friends are promoting. I wonder if the producers were even aware that Kahle lied at the top of the program about the publishers’ lawsuit, when he flatly stated, “They’re accusing the Internet Archive of lending books,” and then further insinuated that the lawsuit came out of the blue at the start of the pandemic.

Commenting as a lifelong liberal, I can say that was Kahle throwing red meat to a presumably liberal audience, no less bloviating bullshit than anything that ever flowed from the maw of Jim Jordan. Because in this case, Kahle omitted the crucial detail that what triggered the lawsuit was his decision to release 1.4 million books without license or restriction, describe the move as a “National Emergency Library” (NEL), and claim that it was Internet Archive’s response to an urgent need during the early days of the COVID shutdown. (See post here for discussion.)

But Kahle is not so naïve and innocent as he presented himself on the broadcast. The NEL was a stunt—one worthy of Barnum—that seized upon the emergency atmosphere of the first wave in the pandemic to advance a broader anti-copyright agenda. And he had to know it would force the publishers to sue. Like any activist, Kahle wants to control the narrative, which is an understandable tactic but should be seen as a tactic, and one that had nothing to do with responding to a public need, let alone showing any respect for authors.

Unfortunately, the producers at 1A, like much of the press, seem to remain blissfully unaware that the copyright agenda promoted by Kahle and the library associations is not narrow but would, if achieved, affect professionals across most if not all areas of copyrighted works. So, in this regard, perhaps they might take a glance at their own web page, read ©WAMU at the bottom, and ask themselves what that means in the broader conversation they are not quite having.

Neuroscience of the Gist

If I hadn’t given up regular TV watching about 20 years ago, I’d probably still be channel-surfing into oblivion.  You’ve been there, right?  Whatever you’re watching can’t possibly be as good or important as whatever you’re missing.  With hundreds of available channels, this is just mathematically reasonable in a very frustrating way.  Maybe, but it’s also an example of how technological access to more can make a person so distracted that he winds up investing time in nothing.  Thankfully, on-demand options for home viewing of filmed media have obviated the need for me ever to channel-surf, but then the Internet and social media came along and brought a whole new ADD-like experience to our lives.

Enter the Facebook feed and Tweetdecks and all those stories of great interest shared by people you love, trust, admire, etc.  There’s no way any of us is reading all of those stories unless we have nothing else to do, so do we pick and choose among them? Or do we just gloss over nearly all of it?  And is all this glossing — my friend calls it “gisting” — better than ignoring the apparently substantive content altogether and sticking to a favored news source. Is skimming over fragments of stories actually changing our brains?  According to cognitive neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf, all this gisting may be harming our ability to engage in what she calls “deep reading.”

In this interview, Wolf talks to Robin Young, co-host of the NPR program Here & Now.  To quote:

YOUNG: You had a great line. You said TV produced soundbite culture; online reading is producing eyebite culture.

WOLF: Yes, I’m afraid that what we’re becoming is so inured to seizing the most salient word that we are literally eliminating the music, the thoughts in between those words, some of the most precious aspects of written language.

Wolf wonders if we are not evolving what Young summarizes in her intro as “digital brains.”  And I think this is more than just a generic term for our times, but is rather an appropriate reference for precisely what Dr. Wolf feels may be lost if what we’re witnessing is really a stage in evolution.

If you think about what any audiophile will tell you is wrong with digital music, it’s that all sorts of nuance no longer exists for the contemporary listener to a typical MP3, for example.  Overtones, undertones, and various other sounds are far too subtle to be captured by mass-production, digital sampling; and in a very similar way it seems to me, Wolf is concerned that our own habit of sampling disparate text might make us deaf to the music of written language or at least impatient with it.  Wolf describes her own experience after a period of 5 to 8 hours of screen-reading per day and being unable to return to a favored novel by Herman Hesse.  She states that it took two weeks of purposeful effort to reform those temporarily dormant connections in her brain.

Wolf is less concerned with adults than with children who have yet to build that neurological foundation, which  enables us not only to engage with richer texts, but even to enjoy them.  To hear the whole symphony, if you will.  She is quick to say that she does not advocate turning back the clock and cutting kids off from technology.  “We have to equip our children with 21st-century skills. But at the same time, we must know how to form those reading circuits that allow what I call deep reading. It takes years to form in a child, and it takes milliseconds in us to use. And those milliseconds don’t just come naturally; we have to learn to use them.”

Citizen Journalism – The burden is on the reader.

Yesterday, I was listening to a discussion with Tom Brokaw broadcast on NPR from The Commonwealth Club.  Asked his opinion of news and information in the digital age, the veteran journalist said that he believes the variety of available content is generally a benefit to the world but that the consumer must “apply filters” to the information being delivered.  In other words, the onus is now on us to do the fact-checking we used to rely on relatively few news sources to do on our behalf; and Brokaw suggests the basic questions:  “What is the source? Who are the players?  What is the vested interest?”

We liberals are pretty clear about the manipulative puppet show that calls itself FOX News, but we are simultaneously less critical of information sources that at least appear to share our ideological views.  In general, even if the source is the New York Times or Forbes, we should pay attention to the reality that the non-stop, digital news frenzy results in a lot of self-made journalists sourcing one another.  On Salon.com, for example, Glenn Greenwald will use a word like documented that links to another article that itself provides no hard evidence for its position.  This phenomenon is literally viral, and I believe the educated, progressive class needs to be more critical of every story before feeding the disease, no matter what logo appears in the header.

Recently, a  well-educated, liberal friend of mine posted this piece from Reader Supported News, and it may well be one of the worst examples of insidious, hack journalism I’ve seen yet.  If all you read is the article, you will assume that Senator Franken voted against the National Defense Authorization Act, which is not true and can actually be documented.  The article, dated 12/17, is largely copied and pasted from a floor statement made by Franken prior to the vote (dated on the senator’s site 11/29); but Franken ultimately voted Yea for NDAA on 12/1, when the bill passed 93-7.

In addition to literally taking the senator’s words and post-dating them in order to obfuscate, somebody (we’ll never know who) wrote an introduction to the piece that begins “Yesterday, the Senate passed a bill…” thus creating the illusion that whatever date the news aggregator puts on this nonsense is, in fact, the day after a vote that is now almost a month old.

This same article, whatever its source, appears verbatim on Huffington Post and several other sites with less brand recognition.  Huff Post shows over 6,000 “Likes,” and nearly 3,000 shares — all by well-meaning, likely-liberal citizens who have literally been lied to about this story and simply assumed that it was true.

Citizen journalism can be a powerful tool, but only if those of us still clinging to rational thought in this crazy world are willing to double check before sharing.