copyrights and wrongs

Some years ago in Spain there was a clamp down on illegal photocopying.

At the copy shop at the end of our road, they had always been amenable to making multiple copies of whole books – very useful for penniless English teachers who had managed to filch a single text book from their last employer and were now using this to go it alone with private classes. But suddenly the shop changed hands and it was rumoured that the owner, un viejo cascarrabias, had transferred the business to his son-in-law to get out of having to pay huge fines.

Certainly el nuevo dueño and the mates he employed as staff were más católicos que el Papa in their attitude to copying from books.

So when I went in and asked for a copy of a single page from a poetry anthology, they refused.

I thought about explaining some of the finer points of the law; after all, it doesn’t say all photocopying is illegal: there’s the concept of “fair use”, copies can be taken for review purposes, etc., etc. But it was clear they were not likely to listen.

So I fell back on the fact that I was the author of the poem in question and my name appeared clearly on the page I wanted copied.

At that point they agreed to make the photocopy.

I’ve been thinking about this recently, as the whole debate over la propiedad intelectual is very active in the press in Spain and all over the internet headlines pages. I’ll probably talk more about el S.G.A.E. and some of the Spanish rules and regulations in coming posts, but I thought I’d start here.

Incidentally, I’ve never decided whether I really had any more right to that copy than anyone else?