Welcome John! Well thank you very much and thank you for inviting me. Riolo: Well we are going to be talking about intellectual property and at first this may seem like a stretch but it not really. As more and more mental health practitioners are online intellectual property becomes increasingly important for both our own creative works and the creative works of our colleagues and others. It’s been my experience that one can go to any internet discussion group whether sponsored by Yahoo MSN or any other server. On almost any group on almost any day on these discussion groups one finds entire articles cut and pasted for the benefit of the list members who often forward the cut and pasted materials to other groups as well. Rarely if ever does one see a statement that permission to reprint has been requested or granted. It should also be noted that these articles in addition to going out in the form of emails to hundreds and of members at a time can be found indefinitely on the archives of the group or list. One Yahoo list has 25% of all post since 1/01/06 are cut and pasts from news services with no indication of permission being asked or given. I have done it my myself in the past, but it occurring with such frequency that it concerns me . Should I be concerned? Gile: Well definitely. Particularly if it continues growing as it has and it is already at epidemic proportions it is a serious threat to anyone that created intellectual property. And when you speak of mental health practitioners many of them do research and perhaps want to publish that research. It’s difficult to do research and invest years of his/her life into that research with the intention of some day receiving a reward of some kind only to find that their risk is no longer protected under copyright law because someone along , takes it and puts in on the internet. It’s a problem for all creators because it also undermines our basic Constructional right under Article 1 Section 1 Clause 8 and it will dry up our reserve of intellectual property. And another thing about that is it’s not very professional. Any one who has been interviewed by a newspaper or professional reporter or even TV will know that it will take a 30 second clip of what you said and distort what you said. So A professional who pastes a piece from a news source with out contacting the person is behaving in a way that is unprofessional because the person who does that is assuming that the reporter got it right and that certainly is not the case very often. So as a matter of professionalism and as professional courtesy it would be well to contact the person for verification and address it in an original way and not just copy and paste or post something which may be disseminating misinformation. Kevin Costner once described internet as instant misinformation. So we need to be careful in areas of research in mental health that we are not adding to junk science and our we need to be careful not to impugn our peers. And attribute to them something they never said. Riolo: Well you raised a number of issues and certainly I would not be doing this broadcast if I did not agree with many of them. Certainly when I see it and I must confess I have done it myself in the past. But it’s the frequency of it new. As an example on one of these groups of clinical social workers alone about 25% of all posts since Jan. 2006 are cut and pasts from the NY Times or articles that have just been copied from one news source or another. You raised a number points about the research. In addition to articles from the Times and I would like to get back to that later but there is at least one example of an article submitted to a professional Journal for publication. It happened to have been written by a Dr. Gerald Koocher , the current president of the American Psychological Association. Dr. Koocher shared it very appropriately with some friends or colleagues, one of which put it up on one of these discussion groups. Now he was able to find out about it and get it removed fairly quickly. But one of the concerns that can happen to someone id that if they have an article that they are submitting to a journal and it winds up on the internet is that it’s no longer an original publication. It’s old news! Gile: That’s right. I can tell you as a publisher that I receive manuscripts and I can tell you that one of our considerations is the exclusivity of it . Because to publish is to invest and to risk and it impossible to invest something to which you have no secure claim to exclusivity. So that’s a devastating thing. It’s devastating for the author because one that gets on the internet it becomes less valuable to the author and the publisher. Again that part of what makes it very threatening for all creative workers who do original research etc. Because once it gets on the internet even though you can say, get it off, you can not truly get it off totally or get it totally recalled. Because once it’s out there, it’s out there. So anything that put on the internet is lost in terms of primary value to the creator. And the danger is we may have very few people who will be able to afford those risks. We live in an age where infringement and pilfering of intellectual property is easier to do but much more difficult to police. That is why the National Writer’s Union, and I am deeply involved, because of the National Wildlife Federation’s infringement on my book, The First Forest. That is why we are calling the justice Department to enforce criminal copyright law because no one take this seriously. Now we don’t want to put peoplein prision for doing something innocently and there is such a thing as fair use. We do need to point out that men and women who do research, men and women who use their education an experience to create property that is valuable and that even the Constitution acknowledges should be protected. We need to protect their right and livelihood. Right now if someone steals your car or home you would be prosecuted. But the Justice Department right now and for several decades the Justice Department turns their back unless you are a very large and powerful corporation. They have been derelict in terms of criminal enforcement of copyright laws which puts teeth in copyright law. As it stands not only large corporations can protect themselves Even in our little case we were up against a giant company that gets tax dollars and we were faced with thousands in legal fees. It is an outrage that that is why the writers association is very interested. Riolo: You know I never gave it much thought before did not see this as property protection that is constitutionally protected. I think of property as tangible. Gile: Oh yes, no as a matter of fact for many companies these days the value of the company is based on the intellectual property whether it would be copyrighted work or patented work. In the old days it may have been the factory it owned but nowadays the value of the company is as much in the intellectual property as the physical property if not more so. Riolo: Let me ask a question. It’s clear at least in my mind that the example of someone writing an article of a journal that got put on the internet without their permission that can hurt them in many ways. I think in the case of Dr. Koocher his prestige is such that I don’t think he has to worry. But if it were somebody’s doctoral dissertation or somebody relatively unknown it could have been very devastating. Guile Yes. Riolo: Clearly it was in your case where they took your book without permission because in your case you were harmed. Gile It was even more than that. They took 96% of The First Forest , (a story of love renewal) and changed the ending. They gave it a different meaning and then put my name in it. So here I am I speak at schools and conferences and it left me responsible for a message that I would never, never want to convey. And yet, here it sits with my name on it and it looks like I’m the one who said it. So it’s a devastating thing , yes, from the publishing company it’s devastating because 547,000 unauthorized copies are out there. From the perspective of the author particularly an author who has a mission, a message a purpose it’s a problem . The book is used widely in conflict resolution by counselors ; it’s used in high schools to address concerns have concerns as civic responsibility, neighborliness actions have consequences. Actions have consequences. So when I hear that someone research is put up on a website it concerns me since it may not be what the person meant at all. Riolo: And with discussion groups in particular, if you are familiar with how they use forwarding, cut and pasting, posting and replies etc. It’s easy to have some one think you said something you never did. There’s no getting back on that. Gile: No. Once it’s out there, it’s out there . That’s why I applaud what you are doing because we need to be sensitive and become more aware. This kind of discussion can accomplish that. Riolo: You know as we are talking I began thinking back. I have asked myself has my stuff ever been taken without permission and I have said, possibly it has, but what’s the big deal. It’s like free PR . Some time ago I wrote an article called “The Sexual Abuse Who Wasn’t”. It was about a discussion I had on the internet with colleagues and words that I never said go attributed to me. Nothing I could do could change things. And there was no way of taking it back. Gile : And that is the problem. Riolo I never made the connection before. I saw it as a confidentiality issue but it is also an intellectual property issue .. ( See The Sexual Abuser Who Wasn’t –Revisited ) Gile : Well that is an indication of the gravity of the problem. It’s a perfect example. And we have a lot of work to do in terms of education. Now again with respect to the National Writers Union , we passed a 19 Point Resolution explaining why it is imperative that the Justice Department enforce the law. Most people who are victims can not afford to defend themselves. We were in such an unusual situation because they took 8.5 million in value from our inventory . So that is why we are taking a class action suit to force the Justice Department to for failure to provide equal protection under the law. Riolo: Let me play devils advocate. I understand that part and hope my colleagues do about a particular piece of work or research. But any one us including myself at times might simply copy an interesting from a magazine Time or Newsweek. In fact not that long ago, a colleague and a highly respected clinical social worker and published author in his own right, posted to a popular discussion group of psychotherapists. It was an article by Anna Quindlen in Newsweek, Now the person who did this is not larcenous they did it with the intention of sharing information but if I confronted then they might say. "John what’s the harm? Anna Quinland is successful Newsweek is a large corporation. What’s the harm? If anything I am giving them a plug." How do I respond to that? Gile: Well what we have here is a failure to consider that not every victim is an Anna Quindlen. And even in the case of an Anna Quindlen sometimes we make assumptions about the level of success of someone in a given profession. And that assumption may not reflect the reality that that person is working very hard to survive. When I am doing writing workshops I always encourage my writers to realize that you can publish it multiple markets . That is you can write it in different ways so that you can write for one publication and then sell another version to another market so that you get multiple returns for your writing. When someone takes that and puts it on the Internet it deprives Anna Quindlen or someone less visible or less advanced in his/her career the opportunity to maximize his or her income from both the research and the writing . So the harm in any particular case may not be great but it is the contributing to the climate of infringement. We would not want that done to us and we should not do it to others. . Riolo: You make a very good point. And as you were relating to the Newsweek article there are times where professionals like myself occasionally get articles published in magazines or newspapers . Not long ago I think there was a situation where a Dr Richard A. Friedman, a prominent NY psychiatrist wrote an article in the NY Times that was cut and pasted to one of these internet groups. What was interesting is that he had a point of view that was not very popular with some of my colleagues and one wrote a letter to the editor criticizing his article. Now my thought was that here they were, a bunch of people discussing an article but no one bothered to actually buy a newspaper and spend a buck or whatever a copy of the NY times costs these days. Well this did not sit well with some of my psychoanalytic colleagues and one actually wrote a letter to the editor criticizing and saying that they could have treated the patient better. Putting aside the absurdity of the claim that one could do a better on a patient one has never met, what are your thoughts taking Dr Friedman’s article with out his permission and posting it to an internet listserv; criticize it but never purchase a copy of the paper? Gile: Well it is an injustice to Dr. Friedman because we are assuming that the NY times quoted him correctly and that may or may not be the case as Kevin Costner said we may be spreading misinformation on the internet. And BTW in my work with the National Writers Union one of my projects was a MENSA chapter and as I recall someone was stealing their work and presenting it as if it were their own. I finally in my work with the injured parties developed a letter to the sponsor of the website where the problem was generated and also the Internet service provider. So I created this letter for them pointing out that they are liable for civil and criminal copyright law advising of what this person was doing and letting them know that as the sponsoring organization they will be ultimately responsible. Riolo: I’m glad you brought that up . on my research seeing it on Yahoo MSN, Yahoo is very popular although I ‘m sure it goes on other servers as well but I’ll use Yahoo as an example. I often felt that a letter from the publisher whether it be the NY times or Newsweek to Yahoo will go a long way to eliminating the problem, Until that happens there doesn’t seem to be any consequence. And sadly, and I have to say I ‘m embarrassed by it, no consequence gets interpreted as it must be OK. It an indictment of my profession or perhaps people in general I suppose. Gile: I think your right it’s peoplei n general. It’s almost like if you have an epidemic, the first thing you do is wash your hands so that you don’t spread the bacteria. And what we are saying to the professionals who are doing this and to all of us examine our consciences and let’s wash our hands and not spread bacteria. Let’s try to safeguard the health of the community by showing proper respect for all the research and time writing that someone put into creating this intellectual property. To say that it’s no big deal or no one got hurt is like saying when you come out of the washroom without washing g your hands. You may not see someone getting hurt right now but if you shake hands then all of a sudden we have bacteria being spread. So I think we have to look at it that way. We can claim that no one got hurt. But you don’t know. We may not be able to totally prevent it but we can at least not help it spread. Riolo: I think that’s a very good analogy . With the couple of minutes we have left I want to go back to a term you used earlier. You said, Fair Use. Can you describe those circumstances where it’s legally and ethicallyok to take some of an author’s work with or without their permission? Gile: For example, fair use might be a teacher in a class under fair use could make a copy and distribute to the students. However even under that example if the teacher wants to do that a second time they need to get permission. Fair use is for review, for purposes of comment, criticism news reporting teaching but even there you are limited. If you are writing a book you really should get permission. It comes back to the mind set you look at this two ways. You can ask how much can I get away with or you can say how can I protect my fellow writers’ interest by following the proper procedure. If however we play fast and lose with copyright laws just as the Wildlife Federation did in the case of The First Forest we run the risk of spreading the infection. Riolo: One last question. In my work as The Insider I sometimes expose some of the problems in my profession. It’s not always easy to get permission since I am doing something that some of my colleagues would rather I didn’t. What I am asking is I have been operating the premise that if I am doing investigating reporting I can although I do try to be careful to use some stuff even without permission under fair user. I try to get permission but often people don’t respond or decline. Gile: Even in a case like news reporting, which is the equivalent of what you are doing in fact it is news reporting you don’t need to quote. You can refer to it in an oblique matter. So you do have a little latitude. Under fair use the first factor is the purpose. Is it commercial or educational? If it’s not just commercial that would put you in a far use category. The second factor is nature of the copyrighted work. Is it vital to national survival that would tend to put you in a fair use category. And the third factor would be how much did you use. In the case of The First Forest they used 96%. They had no place to hide. But if you use these three factors you would be safe. Riolo: That is helpful to know and it something that has to be constantly monitored particularly when you do a lot of reporting on trends in any field. Gile: Right. And, again it comes back to the analogy of wands your hands. Riolo: This has been exceedingly helpful. Any last words? Gile: Well if they want to know about copyrights we created a website called www.nwfpiracy.com . And in that website you will find a great of information about copyright in general not just with this case including the resolution of the writers Assembly calling for the Justice Department to enforce copyright laws. They can go to that website and there is a button to click on to contact me at my general website www.johngile.com Riolo: They can send a message to me at johnr@psychjourney.com , and I will se that you get it as well. I want to thank you again and for me this has been a great learning curve in terns of what I need to know. This is John Riolo, The Insider until next time. |
