war more quickly than ever before. so again, i will use the osama bin laden operation as an example. that was a brilliant military operation in which i think all americans were proud to let what people don't realize i believe is the military now carries that operations like that everyday. .. >> the new berry has been

offering educational programs to the public since the early 1890s, so we think of this new series as an integral part of a long and important tradition in chicago. tonight's program is being audio recorded by chicago amplified which is an initiative of chicago public radio. chicago amplified is a web-based, audio library of educational events, and you can listen to a podcast of this event at the chicago amplified web site, wbez.org/amplified. booktv is also recording the program, and we will post on our web site the broadcast time when it is known. toward the end of the program this evening there will be an opportunity for audience involvement. in order to make sure that everybody can hear audience comments or questions and to include what you have to say in the recording, we will bring a

microphone to audience members who want to speak. with other forms of technology in mind, then let me ask you now to be sure that your cell phones and other devices are turned off or silenced. i want to thank our sponsors, newberry trustee sue gray and her husband, mel, for generously support oring these events. as the longtime co-chair of one of our book groups, sue appreciates fully the importance of the conversation about ideas, and she's played an important part in creating this seers and in -- series and in thinking about the types of conversations and conversationalists that we should host here. so, sue, thanks very much. our conversationalists tonight are extremely well known members of the chicago and, indeed, the national belek chul, cultural --

national cultural, intellectual worlds. all of you know something of them and their work, so my introductions will be brief. scott tour row has had a fascinating career mixing work as a prominent lawyer at the firm snr denton as it is known today with writing and especially the writing of fiction. his novels have won much acclaim from reviewers and from his peers, symbolized by their receipt of prestigious honors including a british silver dagger award. moreover, they have reached an enormous audience, millions of copies of them have sold. mr. turow's pro bono contributions to the legal environment of the state of illinois, among other places, are notable including his involvement with the hernandez case and with the re-examination of the death penalty here. he is currently serving his

second term as president of the authors guild. most of you probably know about it, but in case you don't, it's an american organization that supports and provides a range of pro bono advice to authors and has taken strong stands on such matters as the google books project. i have to say that one of the things i like most about scott is that he is an ardent and knowledgeable baseball fan. another is that he's a longtime friend of the newberry, and i want to add that if you haven't yet read his 977 book -- 1977 book "one l," i urge you to do so. as chicago magazine has recently reminded us, fred shapiro of the yale law school believes that richard posner is the most cited jurist of the 20th century, and i presume now 21st century. there's good reason to come to this conclusion. first, he's been a member of the

seventh circuit of the united states court of appeals since 1981 and has written a vast body of legal opinion. second, during that time he's published many, many books and articles, and in recent years he's become a much-discussed blogger. third, taken as a group his publications explore what i think is a remarkable range of intellectual interests. doing so with great subtlety. and, fourth, he's helped to educate and train a large number of students at the university of chicago law school where he's remained on the faculty since becoming a judge. among what i think are his most interesting books is his study of the decline of public intellectuals, and, i might add, the absorbing introduction he wrote for a new edition of a largely-forgotten classic, "james fitsjames stephens'

liberty, equality and fraternity." it is a good enter duction, i believe, to judge posner's views on big decisions that are legal but more than legal. this evening they're going to talk about books, authors, libraries and their fates in the digital age. obviously, the issues involved are important to us here at the newberry, and we think they could be important to everyone. let me provide a little context for the discussion that is going to ensue by quoting two recent seemingly contrasting comments by people who have connections with the newberry. one comes from robert h. jackson, a trustee of ours and a noted cleveland collector. who introduced with these words an important conference on books in hard times at this country's most important bibliophilic society, the goldier club of new

york. today books face the four horsemen of the print media apocalypse; computer, video, the internet and the iphone. history is changing books, and it's something for us to worry about, unquote. then there is what princeton's anthony graphton, recipient of the newberry award wrote in his wonderful little book, "kodak's in crisis." sit in your local coffee shop, and your laptop can tell you a lot. but if you want deeper, more local knowledge, you will still have to take the narrower path through the library doors and into the land of physical reading material. gentlemen, we are grateful to both of you for being here this evening, ask we look forward to your conversation. [applause]

>> well, i promised david that i would start, and this'll be basically sort of a few minutes of wool gathering on my part. as david mentioned, i am the president of the authors guild, and be i did it the first time in the early 1990s, and the difference now is remarkable. i spent yesterday afternoon and this morning in washington making stops as president of the authors guild in various senate and house chambers talking with intellectual property staff and finally this morning a large meeting at the justice

department talking about antitrust issues affecting the book industry. all of them relating to the digital revolution. and just to throw out some of the many problems, the electronic book, um, which probably does not encounter universal favor in this audience, but the e-book, i think, is unquestionably here to stay. and it's here to stay for a couple of reasons. one is portability. those of us who spend a lot of time on airplanes know that it's a lot easier to have the ipad that i use to write on now than

to be carrying, you know, three bulkier books with me it's also here to say because publishers have begun to realize that it dramatically reduces their cost structure. they don't -- if publishing is often the first to say 19th century business dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th century 100 years too late. and they initially were indesupposed to the book, and now they realize they don't have printing costs, they don't have warehousing costs, they don't have shipping costs, and most gloriously the book, the book business has always operated on a model that the publisher bears the risk of sale meaning that you ship books to a store. if they don't sell, the bookseller ships them back to the publisher.

so the e-book is seemingly here to stay. with it, it has brought many perils and opportunities. of course, our first book piracy is becoming rampant. this is, you know, the congress tried to deal with this recently in the piece of ill-fated legislation that was known as, you know, sopa, stop online piracy act, or pipa, that was the senate version. but piracy is a growing problem. it concerns me as president of the authors guild because everything's being pirated. it's not a special curse for best-selling authors. but at the bottom of the food

chain are authors whose if their margins are nibbled into any further, their books just won't be published. so that is one problem. the e-book, obviously, has created risk of enormous concentration in the book business. the e-book was not really invented by amazon, but they pioneered its sale. at one point a couple of years ago they had 90% of the e-book market. they still have 60% of the e-book market. and one worries about what would happen in a market that's that concentrated. so that is another concern. the mere survival of publishers is another question today. the book business has not been

terribly profitable for quite some time, certainly since 9/11. and whether the so-called brick and mortar publishers will survive with amazon has now gone into the publishing business too, you know, that is, that's a separate issue. from my own perspective, my publishers have always added value both in terms of the marketing of books and the editing of books. but perhaps another model is going to emerge. i'm not particularly eager to be an entrepreneur in the book business. in hiring my own editors and marketing people. not because i haven't been blessed to be in a position where i suppose that's feasible, but simply because i don't really know how to do those things, and i would rather spend my time writing than worrying

about the marketing of my books. and then, of course, there is the question of special pertinence here which is whether libraries are going to survive. let me ten back and say that -- let me step back and say that the combination of book discounting and now the e-book have made the survival of bookstores very much in doubt. and especially if amazon occupies that space in the way that they have, it's going to be very hard for any book retailers to survive. and i can explain in more detail why the world developed that way. but that has to do with the fact that amazon was, when the kindle came into being, was willing to sell e-books losing $5 every

time they sold an e-book. and that, among other things, prevented bookstores from trying to get into the same business. but, so bookstores we know are hard pressed. borders closed stores last year, independent stores have closed all over the country. and to whatever extent bookstores are intellectual centers in our community, their existence is threatened. from the perspective of authors, bookstores, generally speaking, are the site from which new authors have emerged. the online sales of books has been great for me personally as it is for any best-selling author. but like a are the of our -- but like a lot of our popular media, the internet tends, i think, to narrow rather than broaden

interest. then if bookstores are disappearing, will the libraries not be far behind? here the issues are different, and that is because of the prospect of near universal access through the computer terminal in your home. and will libraries still exist in that environment? google a few years ago scanned the collection of seven major university libraries and wanted to make the contents available for sampling by potential readers. the authors guild sued them because, in our view -- although google was only displaying snippets from, to even

individual user, they were using the whole book and selling advertising in doing so. and so google claims it's a fair use, we think it isn't. the case was settled on what i thought were generally reasonable terms. but the justice department objected because so-called orphan works, which are books whose copyright ownership can no longer be determined, were covered by the settlement necessarily, and google would have ended up with a de facto monopoly over true orphan works, and judge chen in new york thought that was reason to disapprove the settlement just like the justice department did. so that is being litigated. but in a world where, um, it's clearly a good thing for a 10-year-old who can speak english in china to be able to

have access to the full contents of the university of michigan library. but what happens to an institution like this one in that world? so with just having fired a few missiles, i will turn this over to judge posner. when david and i first talked about this program, he said, well, who would be an interesting companion in conversation? and i immediately thought of judge posner. he is one of the most far-thinking public intellectuals that we have, and i knew as somebody who's published as many books as he has that he undoubtedly had contemplated our digital future. >> well, my perspective is quite different. i'm not a best-selling author. [laughter] my books are, i guess, they all

really have been academic, and they don't sell many copies, and they don't generate much income. so whenever you're dealing with issues of art or literature or any kind of writing, there are two, there are two basic interests you have to consider. one is, um, the incentives of people to create the art, the literature and so on. and that, of course, is what scott stresses, what the authors guild, obviously, is interested in. but the other is the distribution of these works and the access of people to these works. and it's distribution and access that has been revolutionized by computers. and, um, and in that revolution which i think is a tremendously

good thing, but it does have a negative implication for some. create it. creativity. i think it's scandal myself that google has been frustrated in its efforts to digitize all works ever published. they ought to be all digitized, and they ought to be accessible to everybody in the world. um, otherwise you're just withholding from people their access to the great body of human thought. and, um, digital distribution is simply immensely more efficient than libraries or bookstores. i'm not talking about research libraries like the newberry library because, of course,

they've diversified into all sorts of activities that are not simply storage and lending or providing access to books. so they have a future. diminished future because to the extent that they are providing a storage and access service, when all works of art and literature are digitized -- and they will be eventually -- fewer scholars will come to research libraries to do research. they'll research it on their, on their laptop. that's, it's just such an immensely efficient mode of distribution that it really should be universalized. it's costless, right? it's instantaneous. i happen to be a tremendous admirer, also, not only of google, but of amazon which is

an unbelievable resource. it is just so immensely easy to obtain books through amazon. now, where the bookstores have one -- well, actually, you know, some bookstores have actually benefited from amazon because amazon has provided a market to small bookstores that specialize in, you know, out-of-print work. so i get a lot of out-of-print books from these small booksellers through amazon. and amazon not only provides access to these people, but they also, you know, i don't know what your experience -- my experience with amazon is terrific. you get books sent to you by some absolutely unknown, tiny bookseller who knows where, and

yet, um, you know, it's prompt, and whatever they represent the condition of the book, that's how it comes. so some booksellers actually are benefiting from amazon. but the only real advantage that a conventional bookstore has over amazon is browsing. um, and that -- but that's going to change because amazon already, you know, provides recommendations because they're looking at what you're ordering, and then they're using that to make recommendations. that's a, that's a artificial intelligence service that is not highly developed. it's unsophisticated, and it doesn't work well. but that's just a matter of time before advances in computer science will provide much more

intelligent advice from amazon on what you should be considering, and that becomes a substitute for browsing. so i don't think the bookstores, apart from these, you know, real specialists and out-of-print e esoteric stuff, i don't think they have a future. and as for libraries, standard libraries, well, they're just dying, right? because of all the ways to get access to a book, going into a library and looking in a card catalog and going to the shelving and, i mean, that's hopeless really. [laughter] you know, if you want to do research, um, you do it digitally. you get access to every, i mean, you should be able to get access to every book in the world. and so i just don't see, i don't

see that as, you know, the students, the college/university students, they don't go to the university library anymore. you go to reagan stein library at the university of chicago, a beautiful library, walk into it, you know? you don't see any people there. [laughter] if you walk into the stacks, you'll see some kids, you know, drinking coffee or what have you. socializing. it's just not efficient research. and as i say, you know, as far as storage is concerned, um, you could, you know, you can put every book that's ever been published, the full text, you can add in all the works of art and all the music, and you could probably put it on a chip this large, and then the whole world would have access to it. and i don't think these

libraries can compete. and there has been a significant reduction in the, in the use of university libraries in particular. now, um, book sales, putting aside the e-book -- i actually don't like them either, e-books -- but the sale of hard books, although it hasn't increasedded, but it's sort of held its own. so that's not the problem. i much prefer reading books that are in the old-fashioned, printed book. if i'm doing research, working on a judicial opinion or something, it's much easier to go looking -- but if i want to read an entire book, i'd rather have the book. but if you want the hard books, it's very hard to beat amazon as a mode of distribution of those books compared to bookstores.

so what are the effects on the authors, on the creators? well, it's probably negative because as scott says, there's a lot of tires. once all this stuff is floating around in digital form, it's very easy to appropriate. there's no real protection against it. i mean, people like me don't care because it's not, it's not a significant part of my income. so if -- and, of course, authors also want a lot of people to read their books. so piracy is actually a two-edged sword because, you know, if there's piracy, more people read your books. maybe some of the pirates, they'll become interested, maybe they'll buy your books. [laughter] you know, microsoft, for example, complains bitterly about piracy in the third world, people stealing their operating

system, windows. i think they're, i think they're killing because what happens with microsoft is these people, yeah, maybe they stole the operating system, hacked the operating system, but now when they're microsoft users, there are all sorts of other microsoft products that they decide they want, so they become microsoft and not apple people which helps microsoft. so, so then the question is, now, there are other ways, you know, which historically and no reason why it can't be true, too, in which authors are compensated. it's not true that royalties are -- you know, it used to be patronage, not royalties. royalties are a relatively recent development. as long as there's a demand, you know, for new works, works of literature and art and so on, there are lots of different ways of compensation and offsetting

the effects of piracy. but i think it is, i think scott is right, it is, there is an impact. it hits the least established authors the most. it's a trade-off between the great access that computerization gives to the consumer of intellectual products and the disincentives for the creators of intellectual products. if they, if they can't, if they're not fully compensated. >> well, um, first, i have to defend the authors guild for suing google. [laughter] and this is just, um, google digitized the contents of these libraries not as an act of altruism. they did it as a commercial venture. and they are selling advertising every time you go and look, um, at a page. and, frankly, google and the

authors can and the publishers had all agreed on a way to divide that income in the settlement. and, you know, unfortunately the court for its own reasons, you know, didn't, didn't approve along with the justice department. so the settlement perished. but it's just, it's a fight over who's going to make the money. and a lot of this revolves around, a lot of all of these issues revolve around, you know, the concept of copyright which, you know, has always existed as long as the republic, the constitution provides for protection for inventers and creators. and copyright is a limited monopoly that's just granted to the author or in the case of patents, the inventer.

and it's supposed to be the incentive that the creator has that they can exclude people from using their intellectual property, their work for a period of time. then eventually thing pass into public domain. a lot of this has become the creature of large corporations. the period of copyright has been extended most recently due to the activism of the walt disney company which didn't want mickey mouse passing into public domain. and there is no doubt that copyright and the need to enhance the public body of knowledge are to some extent in conflict. and the way that conflict has been resolved under our existing

model is through the existence of libraries where you have free access to the intellectual property created by authors. software manufacturers, by the way, many of them don't like this, the so-called first sale doctrine, or the, you know, library lending right that exists in the copyright laws. they don't want any exceptions. but one of the significant, i think, the significance of libraries and its importance is the fact that access to books is free. you walk into a library, and this world of knowledge is available to you for nothing. and so one of the, one of the parts of the google settlement provideed that there would be access to the google collection, call it what you will, in every public library.

there would be a terminal providing for free access to the contents of these seven libraries. and so when we exalt amazon, we also have to ask the question about, you know, what happens to the young, the poor and the elderly who have been traditional users of our public libraries and probably even to some extent this, this institution. and, um, it would be unfortunate if the net effect of this attempt to broaden access to the world of knowledge in point ends up excluding certain people. now, this has been a threat in the digital world from the beginning. and, you know, and it's still with us, and the problem is just transferred to world of books.

but it is, it is a significant concern. the libraries are trying to headache arrangements with -- to make arrangements with publishers now for, to download, to make the libraries sites where e-books can be downloaded. many public libraries around the country are doing that. some of them, of course, want to do it without limitation. and literally supplant amazon by becoming, using the library lending right to, um, to make e-books available for free through their portal. in which case, of course, one copy of every book will be sold because the library will make it available to everybody in the world. authors and publishers, of course, are up in arms about that idea.

but, um, i don't know if judge wants to respond to any of that or just answer the broader question which is what do you think the future of copyright is? >> well, i'm not a fan of copyright, actually. [laughter] >> can you explain that? >> i do certainly agree with you that google is not motivated bilal truism. [laughter] -- byial truism. >> this is a jungle, right? whether it's authors or booksellers, you know, everyone is struggling for financial sang sang -- financial advantage. so i think the first copyright law, certainly in the english-speaking worlds, the english-speaking world, i think it's about 1710, 1709, isn't that the first english copyright law? so the world's greatest literature was all written before 1709, right in. [laughter] you have hoeler, you have the

greek -- you have homer, you have the greeks, you have can today, shakespeare and so on. because as they say, there are a lot of, there are a lot of other incentives for writing besides royalties based on your ability to forbid other people to copy your stuff. there are people out of compulsion, they're not trying to make money. they have to eat, they'd love to get rich, but they write because they have a great drive to do it. or they have patrons, or they have nowadays -- we actually have a patronage system was a lot of writers are employed by universities, right? so their employment, they're actually compensated for writing, right? they have a salary, and it

covers both their teaching and their, and their writing. so patronage remains an important mode of compensating authors that isn't, you know, part of copyright. um, also and especially now there are all sorts of ways in which successful writers make money other than from the sale of their books. they're invited to give lectures. they, um, they exploit other media, you know, movies, tv series, so on. so, um, the problem, the problem with copyright is, um, it's a tremendous, it's a -- patents are the same thing -- they're tremendous blockages of access.

the fair use doctrine that, um, scott mentioned, this has been scandalously contracted by publishers. you know, so you take -- you get a book, and on the copyright page it will say no part of this book can be, you know, reproduced without permission of the publisher. that happens to be legally false, and i've actually wrote a paper in which i said that publishers and authors and so on who misrepresent copyright rights, the rights they have, by in effect denying fair use option, they ought to lose their copyright. so the fair use doctrine says

that you're permitted without getting the permission of the -- without compensating the author, you're permitted to quote parts of the work or use it in other ways, you know, provided that there's a justification for this appropriation without seeking permission. and, of course, anytime someone quotes in a book or a newspaper article, what have you from a copyrighted work, he is using a copyrighted work. reproducing a copyrighted work without authorization, without seeking permission and yet it's, it's lawful. and i think, i think free use should -- i think people should be free to, um, republish an

academic work maybe with the exception of textbook, but an act dem cantic article, for example, without -- an academic article without getting the permission of the author. i mean, what's the point? i get all these e-mails, a pathetic e-mail. someone says, you know, i want the make ten copies of your article for my seminar. my permission, is there a fee? i say, of course, you have my permission. there's no fee, do what you want with the article. [laughter] so, and, you know, the all sorts of, you know, when you make a movie, um, you run into a, um, a fair use minefield because, you know, you might accidentally photograph in your movie some

painting on a wall. there's been a case like that. exterior wall, there was a painting. that happened to be captured in the frame of a picture, and then they're sued for copyright infringement for copying. so copyright is just a terrible briar patch for authors. so on the one hand, the original author wants to, um, wants protection against appropriation of his work. on the other hand, he also would like to be able to use a lot of published stuff. i mean, where would shakespeare be in a copyright era? [laughter] he was a shameless play -- plagiarist. not only of the plots, the story, the story details, but he'd take language, you know? if you read a play, i mean, a great example i particularly

like, um, in marc anthony or julius caesar, there's a great description of cleopatra on the nile. shakespeare took the english translation of plutar and rewrote it in blank verse and put it -- and it's one of the great scenes in anthony and cleopatra. now, if he did that today, you know, modern author, you know, we have this endless copyright rules getting stretched out, 75 years now. say, no, you have to get plutar's permission because, you know, it's true you improved it, you put in a blank verse, you changed some things, but, you know, basically there's so much overlap that, i'm sorry, you've got to get his permission.

so then plutar says, well, you know, you're a very successful playright, i'm just a historian, an obscure greek historian, so i'm going to have to charge you for this. [laughter] so it's, it's a tremendous bonanza for lawyerses and so on. so i'm skeptical. and i particularly emphasize the fact that all, all creative writing, all academic writing, all builds on prior stuff. the more you know about literature, the more you know about an academic field the more you realize the famous people, the successful people, they've borrowed tremendously from their predecessors. and the more difficult you make it to copy, to appropriate, to build on, um, the more you actually retard creativity at

the same time that you are increasing the financial rewards to the new, the new creator. >> so let's move the conversation about there's a lot in there that i'd love to quarrel with, of course. [laughter] and be -- whatever the virtue of judge posner's observations about copyright, i think the reality is that there are now massive industries erected on its existence, and the chances of congress throwing away copyright to the detriment of, um, of all of these industries that are dependent on intellectual property is, i think, not realistic. so i think copyright, patent are here certainly for the foreseeable future. but you told, when we were talking a little bit about what

we might discuss, you were talking to david and me about, um, the way your books are edited now which -- >> oh, yes. >> which i felt was really interested. >> yes. >> and another sort of side of the digital world. >> well, it's interesting, you know, every -- all companies now, and, you know, this is efficient, engage in extensive outsourcing. and now the harvard university press does not edit the books that it publishes. it outsources them -- not all of them, but it's done a couple of mine, several of mine, and i requested it with my latest book. so they outsource to this company called tnt. i don't know why it's called that. [laughter] it's not explosive. and they do cloud editing which means that, um, the manuscript,

of course, electronic, is in a, it's in a server somewhere, and you have access to it, they have access to it. and what that means is that when you make your changes, they make their editorial changes, that is immediately visible to the, to both the editor and the author. so that increases the rapidity of the editing. and, um, because, you know, there's a company that's entire business is editorial work, they, they're really good at it, and they're very fast. and, um, you know, it is much, much, much easier to do rewriting and editing digitally than by hand. i mean, it's extraordinarily --

i do a lot of writing, and a lot of rewriting of my tough. of my stuff. and it's just so much easier, so effortless to rewrite on a excuse whereas by hand, you know -- on a computer whereas by hand, you know, you have to have it typed. so it's done a lot not just for access, but also for you authors, and it's greatly simplified research. it's an extraordinary boon for judges, right? they throw at us cases that we don't know anything about at all, and they're lawyers or so they're very cagey. they tell us just what they think we need to know to vote for them. [laughter] and it's off very little. [laughter] ask so i, i -- and so i, i go online, you know? i look up the product, i look up

the companies. and i find a lot of stuff, find a lot of things out that i could never find out in the conventional way. so there's tremendous advantages which i've been stressing, and i know there is a downside that scott is very concerned with and, you know, i have nothing against the authors guild fighting for the interests of the authors, although i do emphasize the fact that too much copyright protection hurts the authors. you know, you think of all the derivative works, so if you've seen the movie "careless," i think it's called "careless." no, maybe it's the wrong word. it's the movie that's a takeoff on "emma."

>> clueless. >> "clueless," i'm sorry. so that's a very good movie. so if, um, if emma were still in copyright, then "clueless" would be a derivative work, and the copyright holder, jane austen's heirs, would be able to block the production of "clueless." and so, you know, someone wanted to do "clueless," would have to go and deal with jane austen's descendants, it would be difficult because the person who has the idea for "clueless" doesn't, can't tell, can't tell too much of that to jane austen's descendants unless they decide -- lest they decide to go make their own "clueless." so it's very, very awkward to have derivative works controlled by the original, by the author

of the work from which it's derivative. and as an example of the kind of blockage that copyright law creates in, for new creative work. >> well, my only response to that point is that -- and, again, i'm not in favor of unlimited extension of copyright s, but i kind of instinctively think that there is, um, having a limited period which both incentivizes people who want to write outside a university setting and, frankly, if everybody's writing inside a university setting, it's not unusual to be able, for example, to tell a short story that came out of the university of iowa writers' workshop. because there's certain hallmarks of it. and, you know, there's great

value in having creative work come from all segments of the society. so, but that -- and i do think that copyright right now does provide the incentive that it's supposed to. i think if there were no copyright, there would be a whole lot of people who would write anyway. but they would not as eagerly write the second and the third and the fourth book when they discovered that there was to reward in it. no reward in it. i mean, this is an argument back and forth on where you, and be where you should strike the balance. but i have to say that, um, you know, if "clueless" were to be written during jane austen's lifetime, i think that's, that's much different than, you know, i saw a production of "invisible

man." a performance of "invisible man" down at the court theater in hyde park. and i can criticize the production, but it had been many years that the ellison estate resisted having "invisible man "dramatized. and i kind of feel like within a limited period of time that ought to be ralph ellison's right to say that i only want people to encounter my characters, my story in the way i originally envisioned. and, certainly, judge posner is right that, you know, most authors are very happy to have their works dramatized and filmed and, you know, it broadens the audience, it's a good payday, although i would point out to him that if copyright didn't exist, there would not be any reward for

authors in that, in that system. but i do think there's, you know, the french concept, the continental concept that an author has a certain interest in the integrity of his or her own work. it has a kind of intuitive appeal to me, and it's embraced in the concept of copyright. but, um, the bottom line, though, is we are entering a much, much different world, and, you know, we sit in a physical edifice that existed to create access to books. i don't think we've thought of yet a good answer for certain segments of the society. who cannot go on amazon.

but, and i'm not certain yet that there's an incentive anywhere to create an answer. >> but, scott, you said "limited term." >> yes. >> and you talked about the lifetime, jane austen and her lifetime. look, the copyright term is now 75 years from the author's death. so the author might have died at the age of 75, and, um, might have written his best work when he was 20, 55 years earlier. 55 plus 35 --55 plus 75 is 130, is that a limited term? >> it wasn't the authors guild that was asking for it to be extended. >> are you asking for it to be compressed? >> because of mickey mouse. >> no. partly mickey mouse. mickey mouse.

[laughter] partly it's sonny bono because sonny bono skied into a tree and killed himself whereupon he became a national hero. [laughter] and he had famously said, and he had famously said that copyright should be forever. and so his widow went to congress -- >> mary bono. >> -- and said copyright should be forever, but if you don't want forever, you know, how about 75 years? so between the martyred sonny bono and mickey mouse -- [laughter] we have this ridiculous term. i mean, it's ridiculous, also, because very often -- suppose you wanted to reproduce, republish something that had been written a century ago but was still copyrighted because

the author had died recently? if it's an obscure work, you might find it impossible to find out who owns the copyright. then what do you do? there's an orphan copy. so when i started off as a judge and someone asked me to perform a marriage ceremony, i went to one of the older judges and said, you know, where do you get marriage ceremonies? he had a sheaf of marriage ceremonies that he gave me. this was 30 years ago. and over the years, you know, whenever i perform a marriage ceremony, i give these to the couple and say, you know, rewrite it, do whatever you want with it. and they do, and i keep copies. so i have a tremendous collection of marriage ceremonies which i have no real

interest in publishing, but i could how it'd be a service to publish them so people can have ideas for what to put in their marriage ceremony. but, of course, i couldn't do that because i don't know where this old guy who died many years ago, where he got these marriage ceremonies. for all i know, they're copyrighted. [laughter] and if anyone tried to publish them, some descendant would pop up and say, no, you infringed my copyright. so i think copyright causes a lot of trouble. [laughter] and i don't think it really pays. but -- [laughter] >> i think we'll now turn to the phase of this program where the audience has a chance to ask questions of our conversationalists or make comments, and there are going to be people with microphones, so they'll bring you a microphone, and then you can say what you

want to say. >> well, we've been sort of u.s.-oriented here. back in the 1980s i worked for a chicago-based multi-national that did a lot of business early on with china. so being nice people they volunteered to have a chinese woman come to chicago to learn how to set up an intellectual property department in china. and northwestern participated, oh, it's good. she went home, told them all about it, and the chinese officials said why would anyone want to do that? and i think that's the way a lot of non-u.s. countries that are emerging feel about this.

so let's take it out of the realm of just u.s., western europe and talk about intellectual property worldwide. >> well, it's certainly the case that there are many in the developing world who regard patent and copyright law as a western conspiracy to, um, hold down the developing nations. and there are certainly, um, you know, the chinese are famous copyright and patent pirates. and the number of american business people who can tell you stories about going over to china and take advantage of the low labor costs and, you know, with their tool and dye, with their patented tool and dyes and

find somehow there's a state-owned factory that opens two or three years later right down the road using miraculously the same tool and dyes, um, you know, that this is, this is part of our landscape. and, you know, as i said, the chinese are not, not regarded as unduly deferential. to intellectual property. i suppose when they start creating a lot of it, then their feelings will change. ..

these life saving drugs. we're not talking simply about expanding a world of knowledge, but preserving lives. so yeah, there is significant disregard for the american intellectual property system in the developing world you. >> if they country is a consumer rather than a producer, it has no real incentive to enforce intellectual property because the only beneficiaries would be the foreigners. i think it works out fine in the long run though because they need access to our intellectual

property to become productive. as they become productive, scott mentioned their load wage rates, of course as they become productive, as they become wealthier countries, there wage rates rise and we benefit from trade with these countries. we are actually financed by china, right? china owns a great deal of the american public debt, along with japan and other countries. so we benefit a lot from that. we have, you know, potential antagonisms with china over taiwan and islands in the south sea and so. so we don't have a fully comfortable relationship with china, but it's certainly understandable why these countries initially are, as

consumers of intellect property, do not support intellectual property rights. this is true with patents, even more so with copyright. my age brings with china intellectual property, i've been told, my books have been translated into chinese, a really big market, and once the dean of beijing law school came to chicago and we at lunch and he had no satchel full of translations of my books into chinese. they look like really nice books. i was too polite to say, i've never gotten a penalty in royalties from china, these translations. but i haven't. [laughter] it is, of course we want american ideas to penetrate into china, right? so the fact that they're

translating our books without paying royalties made in the national interest of america. >> questions? >> in a recent issue of "the new yorker" magazine there was an article about a gentleman who wrote a fiction, a novel, and got a book contract for it and it was discovered fairly quickly that he plagiarized almost the entire book. but interestingly, from many, many sources, not just from one place. and in this article the author stated that plagiarism is not against the law. so is there a difference between plagiarism and copyright violation? >> oh, yeah. plagiarism is copying, whether or not it is copyrighted material. it's still a plagiarist.

if you don't disclose. i make him if he said, you know, i copied, i mean, famous essay about don quixote. yeah, if you say that you are -- suppose i said, you know, i want to be a success like scott turow, so i'm just going to copy his novel and sell it under my name. but i acknowledge, it's all copy from him except the title page which has my name on it. so i've be a copyright infringer but i wouldn't be a plagiarist because i wasn't concealing anything. on the other hand, if i copy a work that is out of copyright but i don't acknowledge the copy, then i'm a plagiarist. you're quite right, it's not illegal to be a plagiarist.

it's strongly disapproved in our culture. now, it didn't used to be. now, it used to be the concept of creativity in the renaissance, in shakespeare's england, was that you are free to copy anything without acknowledgment, but you have to add something. you have to improved. and if you did that then that was fine, and you wouldn't be accused. because it wasn't a secret that shakespeare was taking his plots and plot details and so on from previous authors. but now we have this notion, sort of a romantic notion, 19th century notion, that the only creativity is originality. and taking an existing work and improving it, even if you improve it decisively, that's not creative. and so if you don't acknowledge

come if you don't acknowledge it, you're guilty of the sin which gets you fired and so on. i wrote a little book about plagiarism, and there was a harvard student, i've forgotten the name now, an indian name, who had written a chick lit novel. and it was discovered, and she had a 500,000-dollar movie deal thing. unit, it was looking like tremendous success. then it turned out that she had plagiarized part of her novel from another better known, well known author. so she was disgraced and she lost her 500,000-dollar contracts and so on. well, i read her book and

particular attention to plagiarism. now, it turned out hadn't taken over briefing like a picture taken a number of passages. but what's interesting about it, every passage that she took, she had revised and they were better. so she had improved the original. now, maybe because she had taken stuff from the predecessor, she should, you know, he forced to pay a fee or something. if she had gone to this person and said, you know, i like your book, i'd like to take some stuff out of it, i don't think your book is really well written, however -- [laughter] so when i take your stuff i'm going to revise it, is this okay? if you don't allow this on offer is copying with improvement, you lose some genuine creative work but not the sort that we regard

as proper in our culture. >> commented more than question. i'd like to sort of circle back around to something you're talking about very early which is about access. i'm a librarian and a work in a law firm, so i have access as do most of the people who are here. but i'm in intentional luddite on the weekend i didn't have a computer at home. and i choose not to. i have that option to choose not to, but there are any number of people in this culture, and increasingly more of them, who do not have that option. so when i go to the library on the weekend, i get to see what it's like for people who don't have access. e-books are not an option for them. how do you bond two people who don't have access to share how

do you respond to people who don't have access to? >> people who don't have access to the internet, you mean? [inaudible] >> well, you don't need money -- i don't know why, why there should be a price to accessing a book on the internet. i think all books -- [inaudible] >> how much a month? [laughter] [inaudible] >> how much a month to access? >> it varies. >> i mean, computers now are very inexpensive, and i don't think internet access, so we're talking about a few hundred

dollars. obviously, there are people who don't have that money. if you want to have come if you want to subsidize internet access for poor people, fine with me. access are very low. if you want to lower more with a subsidy for people who can't afford it, fine with me. >> isolated to this before, but i mean, this really is the function that the library has always played in our society. and i do believe in free access to knowledge, and i think it's important that there be a portal. again, society for those who

either can't afford it or have some scruples against it. and that place has been the library. and while i agree with judge posner that libraries are being rendered and anachronistic but a lot of technological developments, i worry very much about the problem that you were talking about. which is, you know, it shouldn't be the case that the world of knowledge is close to those without resources. >> i think we're going to leave it there. i would like to express only have of the newberry, my thanks to our conversationalists this evening. scott turow and judge posner and i want to thank all of you for being part of this conversation

today. i will just end by saying that i wish we had some walt disney manuscripts at the newberry library, and i'm going to check into that tomorrow. thank you all. we will see you back your the next time. [applause] >> we would like to hear from you. tweet us your feedback, twitter.com/booktv. >> here's a look at a number of books that are being released this week.

>> up next on booktv, joanne griffith examines the first time of the obama administration and questioned whether the president has sufficiently answered many of the issues facing the african-american community. this is about an hour 45