Copyrighted Dharma books

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randomseb
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Re: Copyrighted Dharma books

Post by randomseb »

I wonder if Marpa the Translator charged Milarepa, and his other disciples, for access to the dharma texts and teachings he went and acquired in India and translated into Tibetan!

I wonder if Bodhidharma charged anyone in China for translated teachings and texts.. Or Dogen in Japan?
:stirthepot:
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Yudron
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Re: Copyrighted Dharma books

Post by Yudron »

randomseb wrote:I wonder if Marpa the Translator charged Milarepa, and his other disciples, for access to the dharma texts and teachings he went and acquired in India and translated into Tibetan!

I wonder if Bodhidharma charged anyone in China for translated teachings and texts.. Or Dogen in Japan?
:stirthepot:
Mila gave his entire life (and a pot) to Marpa.

As I understand it, the student would usually physically copy the text from the teacher's original. Lama Pema Dorje has described to me, additionally, the process of making the ink, making pens, making paper, making the cover, and so on. Getting your text together would take months.
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Re: Copyrighted Dharma books

Post by Huseng »

randomseb wrote:I wonder if Marpa the Translator charged Milarepa, and his other disciples, for access to the dharma texts and teachings he went and acquired in India and translated into Tibetan!

I wonder if Bodhidharma charged anyone in China for translated teachings and texts.. Or Dogen in Japan?
:stirthepot:
Acquiring Indian religious knowledge and scriptures was a financially intensive process for Tibetans, which is why they were something akin to funded expeditions.

As Yudron said, in the old days you could copy your own versions of scriptures, which is what historically monks did as a primary part of their profession, or pay a scribe to copy them. I imagine in Tibet this was a lot more difficult than in China where ink, brushes and paper were readily available. Tibet had to import materials.
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PadmaVonSamba
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Re: Copyrighted Dharma books

Post by PadmaVonSamba »

Huseng wrote: We need not be under the illusion that abstract patterns of language, either reproduced on paper or in digital form, somehow constitute the property of someone.
You didn't post this.
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Re: Copyrighted Dharma books

Post by PadmaVonSamba »

Huseng wrote: Technically the song "Happy Birthday" is "owned" by someone according to law, but that doesn't mean I have to believe that.
You have to believe it if you want to use that song for commercial purposes. You almost never hear this song sung in movies.

This topic is about the issue of copyrighting the works of the Buddha or other teachers, which, technically, is public domain material. The same can be said about the Christian Bible. But the dialogue has morphed into a discussion about copyrighting in general. This is an area with which I am familiar (mostly in the area of image licensing) and I'd like to share some thoughts on this, keeping in mind how it relates to the Buddhist context.

I'd like to refer to as an example, the book Manual Of Zen Buddhism by D.T. Suzuki, one of my favorite books.
it is now published by Pacific Publishing Studio, who copyrighted it in 2010. The copy I own was published by Grove Press Evergreen Editions in 1960 (my copy is the seventeenth printing, 1982).

This is a good example, because the publishers own the reproduction rights to the book,
but the book itself contains three elements which one might argue the "rights" to:
--translations of Buddhist texts,
--reproductions of old Japanese woodblock prints and paintings,
--the author's own commentary.

Now, there is something called fair use, which applies to artwork as well as written material, which mean that material may be borrowed for the purposes of discussion or in some application toward the expression of a secondary thing. Permission to use is not legally required, but it is always nice to ask, and to credit the source where the material came from. So, I'm not going to go into that.

What copyright is meant to do is to protect both the non-tangible material (images and words) created or compiled by one entity from being misused or sold without permission by another. The fact that images and words may not have any "real existence" in the Buddhist sense doesn't really matter. In the Buddhist view, the thought of a book is no different from a book itself. So, it isn't about the material itself, but the time and effort, scholarly accomplishment, research, and various costs that the material represents, because here in the human realm of samsara, all that stuff takes a lot of time and money. People who just take it and copy it may not realize that, because running stuff through a Xerox machine doesn't seem like a whole lot of work and isn't very expensive.

My dear lama found a picture on the internet of a particular diety, a photograph of a thangka and asked me to copy it hand have it printed up. What I explained to him was that while the painting itself may not be copyrighted, and the subject in the painting, the deity, is of course not owned by anyone, the photograph taken of that painting is owned by someone, and to reproduce that photograph I would need permission.

But getting back to Manual Of Zen Buddhism, Suzkuki wrote an overview of various aspects of the Zen tradition, including excerpts from various sutras, some writings by Chinese masters, and many images. He published what is essentially an academic publication, and he used all of the material included in the book as examples of what Zen Buddhists might study or recite. For example, the book includes a short rendition of the Heart Sutra, which "belongs" to everybody. If the people who owned the original source material, perhaps an old scroll with that Heart Sutra block-printed on it, or silk paintings of the Ten Oxherding pictures, they could claim that they also owned the rights to reproduction of that specific material even if conceptually it belongs to everybody, and they would have a legitimate claim, and then they could demand some payment for using it in research work. Suzuki, on the other hand, could claim that the Heart Sutra belongs to nobody and everybody, and that referring to a particular printed item for the purposes of copying does not require compensation.
Fortunately, these kinds of battles are both rare and usually unnecessary.

However, the publisher who has produced the book in print now has the full rights to the reproduction of any part of the book, meaning that you can't legally reproduce it and sell it or give it away, because the book is now more than the sum of its parts, but is an entire "body of work". I will continue later but right now I am out of time.
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Re: Copyrighted Dharma books

Post by Sara H »

That's a very thoughtful reply PadmaVonSamba.

I think the issue is, that copyright as a concept may be a briefly burning star, historically-wise.

For most of history it didn't exist, and now, we've entered into a period where technology and reproduction digitally have made it obsolete, and unenforceable, as there no longer is any scarcity.

The reason why people need these things in the case of Dharma books is for spiritual need.

They need to hear what the Dharma says to help them with something.

For a long time, copyright was viewed as a form of ownership of an abstract idea, or concept.

But now it's unenforceable.

The gradual trend seems to be a popular opinion that these things are less and less private property, and more in the public domain, going back to what it was before copyright ever existed.

Whether that's right or wrong, in a moral sense, I can't say, but it does seem to be helping our population.

A single newspaper today contains more writing than the average person in the middle ages read in their entire lifetime.

Now, with access to international films, Dharma books available to everyone, etc etc, people are able to access art, culture, and education without any cost to them.

Which is the way it should be. In my opinion. It make things much more truly equal opportunity, and less dependent upon one's economic circumstance.

In the case of the Manual of Zen Buddhism, I own a physical copy, that I bought at a used book store or on Alibris or Abe books.

But even at the discount I bought it at, it might be too expensive for someone from the inner city or in less fortunate economic circumstance to afford to pay for.

Yet, they should still have access to the Dharma. The Dharma is not just an exercise of indulgent luxury of the middle class who can afford to pay copyright and publisher fees.

It's for everybody, for all living things.

So while copyright may have been a useful economic tool at one time, I think it's going the way of sailing ships and steam engines, as far as something that's a novelty or obsolete, or simply regulated back into a minority like people who own sail boats.

The benefits of spreading education, culture, and Dharma, I think outweighs the economic costs.
And may actually end up being more beneficial to the economy in the long run.

-Sara
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PadmaVonSamba
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Re: Copyrighted Dharma books

Post by PadmaVonSamba »

randomseb wrote:I wonder if Marpa the Translator charged Milarepa, and his other disciples, for access to the dharma texts and teachings he went and acquired in India and translated into Tibetan!
As I recall, Milarepa had to pay a lot in order to get the teachings. By today's standards, paying a few dollars for a paperback book is much easier than building a 9 storey tower.
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Re: Copyrighted Dharma books

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Sara H wrote: For a long time, copyright was viewed as a form of ownership of an abstract idea, or concept. But now it's unenforceable.
Well, that's hardly a justification for drowning kittens. And I don't know why you'd want to. It's cruel.
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Re: Copyrighted Dharma books

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PadmaVonSamba wrote:
Sara H wrote: For a long time, copyright was viewed as a form of ownership of an abstract idea, or concept. But now it's unenforceable.
Well, that's hardly a justification for drowning kittens. And I don't know why you'd want to. It's cruel.
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What?? :crazy: :D
Last edited by Sara H on Fri Mar 29, 2013 5:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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PadmaVonSamba
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Re: Copyrighted Dharma books

Post by PadmaVonSamba »

Sara H wrote:
PadmaVonSamba wrote:
Sara H wrote: For a long time, copyright was viewed as a form of ownership of an abstract idea, or concept. But now it's unenforceable.
Well, that's hardly a justification for drowning kittens. And I don't know why you'd want to. It's cruel.
What?


AAAAhhhh...that isn't the point you were making, was it?

But that's the whole point of copyright., to protect the integrity of what you write or create. To keep someone else from using your words without permission. If you say that there is no way to enforce intellectual property rights, then what you posted belongs to me, and i free to do with it what I want, including distort the meaning.

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Re: Copyrighted Dharma books

Post by Sara H »

PadmaVonSamba wrote:

That isn't what you said at all, is it?

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:?
*head desk*
No, no kitten drowning is not what I said at all... :shock:
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Re: Copyrighted Dharma books

Post by Sara H »

PadmaVonSamba wrote:
But that's the whole point of copyright., to protect the integrity of what you write or create. To keep someone else from using your words without permission. If you say that there is no way to enforce intellectual property rights, then what you posted belongs to me, and i free to do with it what I want, including distort the meaning.

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Yes, that's true.

But you're able to do that anyway.

That hasn't changed. People distort other people's words all the time.

As a way of verifying originality, or an "authorized work, or version" copyright may have some use, like certain kinds of open source licenses, that say you can use and modify, as long as you don't use the logo's or brand image of the original, or call it "Firefox".

But as a tool to ensure economic compensation for the author or publisher, the tool is broken, and no longer works. Or rather, the tool didn't break, but technology made it obsolete.
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Re: Copyrighted Dharma books

Post by Sara H »

So I guess you could say the new model is: Copyrighted, but free to distribute.
Donations gratefully accepted. And ethically encouraged.
More or less.
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Re: Copyrighted Dharma books

Post by PadmaVonSamba »

Sara H wrote:The gradual trend seems to be a popular opinion that these things are less and less private property, and more in the public domain, going back to what it was before copyright ever existed.
Sara H wrote:Now, with access to international films, Dharma books available to everyone, etc etc, people are able to access art, culture, and education without any cost to them.

:rolling:
Yeah, but there is still a lot of cost to the people producing it!
:rolling:
If the popular trend were to walk into a grocery store and just take stuff, because it would cost less that way, soon there would be no more grocery stores! That's because all things are interconnected. That's basic to Buddhist understanding. You can apply this to dharma books as well. If you don't keep putting money back into the printing press, then, no more dharma books.

I totally understand what you are saying, and the little anarchist inside of me agrees with you 100%. But I also produce a lot of work, graphic work, that I sell to earn my right livelihood. I must copyright it, because if someone else uses it to make money and i don't receive any of that money, then not only is there no livelihood, but how can I give money I don't have to dharma projects that benefit others? What is fair is if somebody wants to use my work, and we work out a deal and they benefit from it and so do I.

An interesting sideline to this is that a big corporation's lawyers recently emailed me telling me that a design I had put on a tee shirt violated their trademark. Well, I know trademark/copyright law pretty well, and it doesn't. But I also understand their concern, and if they'd like to purchase the rights to the image they are objecting to, I'll cut them a fair deal!
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Last edited by PadmaVonSamba on Fri Mar 29, 2013 6:16 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Copyrighted Dharma books

Post by PadmaVonSamba »

Sara H wrote:So I guess you could say the new model is: Copyrighted, but free to distribute.
Donations gratefully accepted. And ethically encouraged.
More or less.
A lot of people do that, and a lot of Buddhist publishers who are funded by contributors
print in large type on the back cover:
"FREE DISTRIBUTION ONLY. NOT FOR SALE".

Very often, the royalty payments that famous monks and lamas get from their books are used to fund hospitals and schools and other projects that the teacher is connected with. So, the copyright also helps the Dharma.
Last edited by PadmaVonSamba on Fri Mar 29, 2013 6:18 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Copyrighted Dharma books

Post by Yudron »

I recently met the owner of Minds.com, a huge sit for open source everything. You can post anything, and you specify how you want it used.

It's all interesting from the POV of someone who is writing a book right now. What to do when I'm done?
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Re: Copyrighted Dharma books

Post by PadmaVonSamba »

Sara H wrote: as a tool to ensure economic compensation for the author or publisher, the tool is broken, and no longer works. Or rather, the tool didn't break, but technology made it obsolete.
Yes, this is true. For the person who wants the stuff, it's a dream come true.
For the person creating what the other one wants, it's a nightmare.

This reminds me of a story, I think it's a zen tale, about a burglar who breaks into the home of a zen master and starts to steal things and the zen master tells him, "don't steal it, let me give it to you". later, the police catch the burglar and bring him to trial. The zen teacher tells the judge, "that stuff was a gift. he didn't steal it". And the burglar quit burglaring and became the teacher's pupil.

Some artwork I once produced, that was on my own website at the time, appeared as a graphic in a Huffington Post article. A friend of mine saw it and alerted me to that. I contacted the author of the article. he said he's pulled it off some other website that had a "Creative Commons" logo on it saying that anything on that website was free to use.
I'd been Robin-Hooded! Everything worked out to everyone's satisfaction, but I never did find out who grabbed the graphics off my page and gave them away.

many years ago, I operated a little bookstore in a room at a Buddhist center, where books, incense, and little things were sold to raise money for the center, to keep it open. A friend said to me, 'why don't you sell the books for whatever they cost, so that people can get these Dharma teachings cheaper?" And i told her, "that would only help the person buying the book. But if we raise money for the center, it will help a lot more people". Just another example.

It may be that in the end, as you say, a whole new way of doing things will emerge. But I think the journey there will have a lot of holes in it that just swallow people.
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Re: Copyrighted Dharma books

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Yudron wrote:I recently met the owner of Minds.com, a huge sit for open source everything. You can post anything, and you specify how you want it used. It's all interesting from the POV of someone who is writing a book right now. What to do when I'm done?
If Minds.com is like Creative Commons, just be aware that it isn't a real license contract, and that once you set a precedence that anybody can just come in and have whatever you do for free or under some non-specific agreement, if you are known as Santa Claus, the guy who just gives everything away, it's going to be hard to claim any ownership to that...or to anything else you produce, later, if you ever want to. But, let' s keep this in the context of Dharma. How does all of this affect right liveihood?

Really...I wish I lived in a world where I could just create whatever I wanted and just give it all away to whoever would be happy to have it, and not worry about it selling or not, and still be able to pay my dog's vet bills and put food in the fridge. If anybody knows where this planet is, let me know, and I'll start packing!
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Re: Copyrighted Dharma books

Post by Sara H »

PadmaVonSamba wrote: If the popular trend were to walk into a grocery store and just take stuff, because it would cost less that way, soon there would be no more grocery stores!
This is a poor example.

A more accurate example would be walking into a grocery store with no employees, no cash register, no doors, no locks, that was always open, and was filled with every kind of food you can imagine.

Then, when you walk up to a shelf, and take a can of soup off of it, another identical one instantly appears to take it's place, no matter how many times you take one, or how many you take.

That's a more accurate example.

The cost of reproduction is basically zero, for infinite amounts.

It's only the initial publishing cost, and "man hours" to do it, and that is recouped very quickly, using the donation model.

Non-profits use this method all the time.

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Re: Copyrighted Dharma books

Post by Sara H »

PadmaVonSamba wrote:
many years ago, I operated a little bookstore in a room at a Buddhist center, where books, incense, and little things were sold to raise money for the center, to keep it open. A friend said to me, 'why don't you sell the books for whatever they cost, so that people can get these Dharma teachings cheaper?" And i told her, "that would only help the person buying the book. But if we raise money for the center, it will help a lot more people". Just another example.

It may be that in the end, as you say, a whole new way of doing things will emerge. But I think the journey there will have a lot of holes in it that just swallow people.
There are other ways to make money for Dharma centers.

The OBC which I'm affiliated with gives all their books away for free.

They live literally, on Dana, the donations of the laity.

Frugal living, and good training, makes quality teachers that people are happy to support financially.

They even give their retreats for free.

It doesn't all have to be a for-profit model.

They have a gift shop too, and they used to have a small business selling Buddhist supplies like meditation cushions, and statuary, before they stopped doing it, so they had a small bit of sales money from that at one point.

But the point is, there's more than one way to do things, and being able to offer the Dharma for free, is an achievable goal.

It can take time to build up and be able to work to that, but it can be done, successfully.

I think it works a lot better that way actually.

Likewise, there are ways to support artists and content creators. The donation model, a decide-your-ammount-to-pay model, crowdsourcing efforts like Kickstarter...
The subscription model, ticket sales for live performances, being sponsored by organizations or patrons...
Commissioned works... a lot of the great classics of art were commissioned by organizations or wealthy patrons..

These all work marvelously well, and are generally variations of the theme of Dana, the Buddhist concept of selfless giving.

Dana really does work. And is a much more Buddhist way of doing things than charging money for it. If you give the Dharma away for free, you'd be surprised how that comes back to you.

Sara
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