2006 June Archive at Deadpoet’s Cave

The first piece is a reader’s letter to TODAY. Surekha A Yadav describes how a foreign worker was assaulted in a bus, and how no one bat an eyelid, including the bus driver. Among the possible conclusions she reached about the incident:

So, I am left with some ugly theories about my countrymen.

Did the others in the bus dismiss his plight because he wasn’t our equal? A foreign worker gets himself in trouble. He probably had it coming.

Or was it due to the colour of his skin? And that brings me to my response. Did I rush to the worker’s aid only because of the appearance of similarities in racial origins? I would like to think not.

The second piece is ThugChic’s blog entry about a racist term (via tomorrow.sg) which many do not realise is a racist term: ahpunehneh.

I have reproduced her post in full below, as she has exhorted. It is hard-hitting and incisive, dealing with behaviour which has been trivialized to the point of being acceptable. I believe this is partly because we are constantly reminded about the fragility of our multi-ethnic society and how it will fall apart if we talk about it in depth.

But talk about it, we must, in order to gain a deeper understanding of each other. Also, I have to say that while I agree with a lot of ThugChic’s points, I don’t condone her threatening violence on others.

You might also want to check out the comments (blogger)(haloscan) on ThugChic’s blog as well as the comments on tomorrow.sg.

Continue reading ‘The silence is broken’

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Copyright Copywrong

Published

acroamatic

on Friday, 2 June 2006

in Musings

. 0 Comments

There’s been a post about intellectual property - specifically copyright - issues laying dormant in my draft box. That will have to wait for another day. This entry, also about IP, is in response to a post on youth.sg about volunteering to proofread Project Gutenberg texts.

I left a pretty long comment, ~~which is under moderation. Just in case it disappears into the ether, I am reproducing it here~~. (It’s been approved.) You might want to read the youth.sg post for context first.

The quote you have chosen about checking the copyright laws in your country before downloading is a bit vague. You can read any PG book online regardless of copyright laws anywhere in the world.

Reading/viewing a work has never been an exclusive right of the author. For example, when you purchase a book, you are not paying for the right to read it. You are actually paying for the right to own a physical copy. The right to create this copy and to profit from it is (part of) what the copyright holder owns.

Another example: I can read this website even though it’s copyrighted. Why? Reading is not the exclusive right of the author. The difference, in this case, is that youth.sg makes the works available for free (in terms of cost). But, as a reader I still can’t “reproduce the work; publish the work; perform the work in public; communicate the work to the public; and make an adaptation of the work” (from IPOS’s website).

For clarification of what you can and cannot do with Project Gutenberg texts, please read http://www.gutenberg.org/freedom:

“Free of charge means that you don’t have to pay for the book you received. Freedom denotes that you may do as you like with the book you received.

This distinction is immaterial if you just want to read a book privately, but it becomes of utmost importance if you want to work with the book.”

In any case, the copyright term in the US is longer than in Singapore (life + 95 for literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works). That being so, if a book has gone into public domain in the US, it’s most probably gone into the public domain in Singapore. Meaning that you are free to do what you want with it.

But as I always say, I’m not a lawyer. So go easy on me if I’ve misinterpreted the law.