ArcticLlama Freelancing Blog

As a professional writer, copyright law is of particular interest to me. Not because enforcing copyrights is a 24/7 job (actually it is), but rather because it is the concept of copyright, and its application to works of art, including writing, that make it illegal for anyone to rip off the things that writers write. If you want to write professionally, this is important, because otherwise anyone could take whatever you write for free, and free don’t pay the mortgage, as they say.

Not that that stops everyone. Especially when it comes to the online world, writers need to stop people from stealing their content.

Unfortunately, it seems that no area of the law attracts more armchair lawyers than copyright law. Check out any writing forum, writers group, or webpage about writing, and sooner or later, you’ll see Joe Writer turn into Joe Writer Expert in Copyright Law. Maybe he stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

Copyright law is actually very complex. It can also be very arcane. That is because copyright and other forms of intellectual property law were actually included from the very beginnings of the United States of America, which co-opted a great deal of English Common Law into its first legal codes. So, in some ways, copyright law is older than America itself. As you can imagine, that can make it tough to apply everything to modern times.

What makes it even more complicated is that while the actual copyright laws span volumes of books, the majority of how copyright law works is actually created and enforced via case law, which is the how the laws grow to be applied to a constantly evolving world via court rulings and subsequent reliance upon those earlier rulings (known as precedent) by courts in future copyright cases. In other words, even if you read and understood every word of copyright law as published, you STILL wouldn’t understand copyright law worth a darn.

Ironically, most people can’t even grasp the published law as demonstrated by a fun article on ARS Technica about how you can’t have a Superbowl party with a television bigger than 55 inches.

This article should be required reading for anyone looking to spout off about how copyright law works. In it, the author notes how a friend determined that using a TV bigger than 55″ to display the Superbowl or other programming violates copyright law, by saying, “It’s in there.”

Indeed.

Copyright Law Is Complicated

The law is all about context, pulling out a single sentence is bound to produce all manner of legalistic junk. In this case, while the sentence is indeed, “in there,” it also not applicable to private viewings because of other sections of the law.

A good way to understand it is to think of the law like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, those books where you read along and then either go to page 124 if you want to go left, or go to page 187 if you want to go right. By choosing to go right, you never read page 124; whatever is on that page never happens in your reading of the book. Similarly, as you go through the copyright laws, you come to a page that says if you are having a private showing in your own home go to page 22,820. If not, then go to page 13,283. The sentence that is “in there” is only there if you go to page 13,283. If you go to page 22,820 (private showing), that line never comes up.

Ah, nothing like a quick bit of pontification on a Monday morning. Cheers.

Somewhere along the line I started reading the website Coding Horror, which is kind of ironic considering that I am a basic level programmer at best.

Sure, I understand the structure of a For-Next Loop and I can work through an If-Then-Else statement, but I’m typically much better at sorting through someone else’s code than I am at writing my own programs. It is sort of the programming equivalent of being able to read a foreign language, but not speak it.

Recently, Coding Horror weighed in on the subject of what value netbooks have. Netbooks, in case you aren’t much of a techie, are small, lightweight laptops that are typically both low-end power and low-end pricing. In other words, you end up with a very portable computer that is not designed for power computing tasks, all for a very low price.

For example, I got my Acer Netbook for just over $200 including shipping and tax. It weighs close to 2 lbs and can fit inside of my 6 inch x 9 inch notebook that I use. (It’s a little thick though.) The trade-off is that it uses a slower than the typical desktop Intel processor called Atom, and it only has 1 GB of RAM. Incidentally, these lower level limits are the result of Microsoft’s tight fisted control of the Windows XP license that can actually run on a netbook versus the recently demised bloatware known as Windows Vista.

Why Netbooks Suck For Techie Blogger Types

The author of Coding Horror is a regular reader of another blog called Global Nerdy, where a recent article suggested that Netbooks occupy the arena between Smartphones and Laptops. While Coding Horror comes to the defense of netbooks, their reasons are different from my reasons.

The original article author apparently looked around at his needs and found no need for a netbook. His contention is that Netbooks are too big to fit into your pocket and thus inferior to Smartphones as a portable device, and less powerful than laptops, and thus inferior to laptops as a computing device. This is not untrue.

The mind boggling part of the recent backlash against netbooks is that the, overwhelmingly techie, authors of these articles assume that people purchasing a netbook are actually trying to replace either a Smartphone or a Laptop at all. If that were the case, then these writers would have a point. However, that is almost always NOT the case, and the myopic vision of those who are power computing users, are just missing the point.

Netbooks are NOT a replacement for laptops or smartphones. Indeed, they are something else entirely. I cannot speak for why other people purchase a Netbook, but one need look no further than the freelance writer to understand how great a Netbook can be for the right user.

Why SmartPhones and Laptops Suck

As a professional freelance writer, I have many needs. This is not unlike most other professions. A carpenter needs a hammer, or a nail gun. I do not. But, I don’t go around saying that nail guns are worthless and that no one ever would need anything other than a hammer.

For a freelance writing business, there is no tool more necessary than a Netbook. In fact, for most of my particular uses, it is the SmartPhones and Laptops that suck, not the netbook.

The best iPhone or top of the line Android SmartPhone, and every other phone out there from Blackberry, to Palm to Windows Mobile all suffer from one fatal flaw; they cannot be touch-typed on. I write 500 words in my sleep. I often write 2500 words, 5000 words, or even complete 300 page books or manuals. Not being able to touchtype is like cutting my salary by 75%. For typing on the go, a Smartphone is worthless, no matter what kind of keyboard it has.

Which brings us to laptops. While certain techie types might consider carrying around a five or six pound laptop with a 17″ widescreen to be perfectly acceptable, there are, I would wager, quite a few more of us who find the idea of carting around a laptop and accompanying laptop bag less than appealing.

Sure, if I’m headed to the local Starbucks for a little java and writing, then I wouldn’t mind at all. On the other hand, if I’m headed out to meet up with friends, or to drop my daughter off at dance class and I just need to have something along with me so I can use some of my down time to write, I really don’t want to be lugging around a big old laptop computer and then wondering when I’m done if it is O.K. to leave it in the trunk of my car. (Is it too cold? Too hot? Will it get stolen?)

A netbook on the other hand serves this function beautifully. It is small and very portable. Instead of being the dad with the huge shoulder bag, I’m the dad with a small backpack or even just a portfolio case. I can whip out the netbook virtually anywhere and write an article, jot out some notes, or do a little research on the Internet when I find a Wi-Fi hotspot. When I’m done, it really isn’t all that big, so I can pretty much take it with me anywhere. If not, it fits in the glove box, under the seat, in a locker. Heck, it even fits in a friend’s purse!

In the end, people who bag on netbooks are completely missing the point. Netbooks are not for replacing phones or for replacing laptops. Netbooks are made to replace and improve upon that centuries old tool, the notebook; not the computer kind, the paper kind. A netbook eliminates carrying around paper and pen along with a file folder with all of your reading or research printed off. Use a netbook for what it is made fore, and you will find that netbooks are not worthless, they are priceless.