So many people keep asking me about trying to get their hands on the third book of the Centauri Trilogy, “Out of the Darkness,” I just thought I’d mention someone has one up for auction on ebay.
It’s a fascinating study in how NOT to list something, because the words “Babylon 5” and “Centauri” appear nowhere in the header. So anyone looking under those would miss it entirely. I’ve seen used book dealers asking sixty bucks for this, but in this instance–with one day and five hours to go–it’s only up to $7.19.
Understand, I don’t get anything out of this, nor do I know the seller. But in the past couple months I must have had close to thirty inquiries about the book, so I just figured I’d put out a broad alert.
This should be interesting.
• 
Just goes to show that patience is a virtue. A few months back, at the Amazon.com used book marketplace, this was going for, and I kid you not, **$76**!
Before going to E-Bay, I checked the Amazon Marketplace again, and got it for $6.31, $9.80 after shipping.
The Hardcover which reprints all three is going for $79.95.
Another great place to look is in Barnes & Noble’s used book department on their website. I’ve found astonishingly great bargains for all sorts of books there, and it takes a lot less time to comb through than E-bay.
“But in the past couple months I must have had close to thirty inquiries about the book, so I just figured I’d put out a broad alert.”
So? Has it occured to the big brains at the publishers to consider a reprint of there’s that much demand for it?
Yes. Has it occurred to the big brains in fandom that the rights may have lapsed and they’re not legally able to do it?
PAD
Boy, am I glad I have the SFBC hardcover. And I ain’t sellin’ it, not even for $75! 😉
I looked all over for a copy and could not find one, till I took a trip to Houston and found a brand new copy at a Barnes and Nobles for cover price.
You mean my book is actually worth more than I paid for it? Unfortunately, I love Bab 5 too much to part with it. Yes, I like PAD too, but there is a lot of PAD out there, but very little Bab 5. Thus, supply and demand and a book worth ??? dollars. I did like the story and how it answered some plot points from the series. Of course, if it goes high enough ($6000 maybe?), I might be tempted. 🙂
Guess if I ever do let it go I will check online before getting money from Half Price Books.
Iowa Jim
( The Hardcover which reprints all three is going for $79.95. )
Wow.
I had no idea the HC was going for this much.
I picked up the original paperbacks as soon as they were released. I also temporarily joined the SFBC and they sent me the Centauri Trilogy omnibus as a free gift. So I have both.
I don’t really know the proper venues, but I’m willing to part with the HC if anyone here happens to know anybody who would be interested. Just feel free to pass along my email address connected with this post.
This is the second time in two weeks that I’ve found out that something I owned is worth quite a bit more than I paid for it. Apparently, the CD version of the soundtrack to 2010 is worth quite a bit as well since it was one of the first CD/LP simultaneous release. The movie was 1984 I think, so that would be about right for it. 20 years later, the CD sells used for $75.
Since I have it on my iPod, I’m almost tempted to sell it… almost.
“Since I have it on my iPod, I’m almost tempted to sell it… almost.”
I wouldn’t if I were you. Take it from someone who had his cell phone dropped into a large glass of water by his two year old…you NEVER know what’s going to happen to your electronic stuff. Better to keep your options open.
PAD
Hmm…someone swiped/never returned my copy of the trilogy..and I was able to replace it at Half Price Books in Houston and Book Worm in Boulder with each costing half cover in the past year….go figure.
Oh, and a PAD interview is up at Newsarama.
“Has it occurred to the big brains in fandom that the rights may have lapsed and they’re not legally able to do it?”
Nope. Because it seems everytime we turn around it appears publishers/authors have the rights to such things for decades, and that the government is eager to extend it even farther. Under such a climate, the idea that the rights could have lapsed just didn’t occur. I guess this is something different altogether? Silly me, not having studied law …
Star Wolfe…
Different rights…
WB’s ownership of copyrights of B5…their ownership of the “idea” is what the government is eager to extend.
Del Rey’s (I think) right to publish B5 books, however is just a contract they signed with WB that expires.
Basicly, it’s a driver’s license, vs WB’s ownership of the car.
I know EXACTLY what you’re talking about. My 5-year old PowerBook went belly up a month ago. Looks like something on the motherboard. I had to get the hard drive in an external mount to get the data off. The hard drive was acting flaky as well, but I was fortunate to retrieve my data. I wasn’t too sure there for a while, though. I hadn’t done a full backup in 8 months, so I was sweating.
Use those CD burners, folks!
“WB’s ownership of copyrights of B5…their ownership of the “idea” is what the government is eager to extend.”
To the extent that, if I recall correctly, many people are worried that nothing will ever again fall into public domain in a person’s lifetime.
I suppose it probably wouldn’t be workable, but I’d find far more reasonable the idea that the characters in a specific book/movie are copyright for a fairly long time and if the author/publisher/studio wants to do something else with them, they’re free to do so, or sell the rights (temporarily) to another. But the actual book or movie has a reasonable shelf-life (say in the ten-twenty years range from first publication) such that, at some point, it does become available to all, but after the creator has had a reasonable chance to recoup his investment. This 20-50 years after the death of … is strikes me as lunatic overkill.
But then, I’m not an author and I shouldn’t be surprised if they had a rather different point of view on the matter. I’m open to rebuttals.
Well, PAD’s blog isn’t the best place to discuss limitation of copyrights, as in many cases they’re waht pays the bills and he has a number of daughters hitting college years, or teen years, or barbie years….
But I’m unsure of what you mean by the stories should go out of copyright protection, but the character’s stay in…to what benefit would that be to the public?
An example against your 10-20 year limit, using PAD as an example..it’s been what? near 20 years since the first Arthur book came out? And he has a new one coming in the near future..Possibly part of the publishing deal for that involves reprinting the earlier volumes, and if the copyright on that had evaporated, then that’s money (and potentialy even a whole publishing deal) not avaialable to him.
(I’m not sure character’s can actually be copyright–ed? It’s usuasly trademark protection they have).
At Amazon Marketplace a seller from Georgia is asking $96.76 for this book!
Scavenger – That’s what I mean. PAD would have legal protection to use the character, as he envisaged it, as he sees fit. He’d have the sole rights to create new stories and novels – unless he farmed it out on contract. But, unless it was reprinted or rewritten (as KNIGHT LIFE so expertly was) the story/novel itself would eventually fall into the public domain. And, no, ten years would be a little short. Twenty years would seem more reasonable. According to a patent site, standard patent protection is 20 years. Inventions are generally the fruit of intellectual exercise, after all. Why should ‘intellectual property’ be any different?
I’m not trying to be mean-spirited here, I’m just trying to understand as i honestly don’t see a difference. Of course, as I wrote above, I’m not a professional writer, so my point of view is biased.
Hmmm…
The unavailability of this title must mean only one thing- The publishers, much like Londo Mollari, are being controlled by the Drakh. After all, “We all have our Keepers”.
I think it was that charming Mr. Morden who bought up all the remaining copies.
On a more positive point …
PAD doing Red Soph… er, Sonja? Neat! I may have blinked and missed it, but I don’t recall your mentioning it. Any news as to when the first full issue will be out – as opposed to the preview, I mean?
The final sale price was $20.79.
Final price $20.79… But the Seller made out even better on 9/1 by selling a copy for $35.00. Good stuff. But I gotta tell ya, many of the eBay sellers make your average comic store owner stereotypes look like CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. I’ve been nicely emailing this one woodworker on eBay to see if he could stain one of his standard pieces a different color for me (even offered to buy the stain and pay extra, etc.) and the guy will NEVER write me back. I have emailed this guy twice in the last (3) weeks and NOTHING… I know he’s not dead (because he keeps putting up new auctions) so I suspect he’s getting the emails too… So I’ve decided to keep sending the same email once every week until I get a response or get tired of it. Chances are, he’ll break before I do. That’s right, you can’t out “2-year-old” me!
speaking of stuff that was cheap, and is now worth a buttload. MST3K the movie on DVD, 1999, 10 bucks, 2 currently available on ebay that i saw, 70.00, and 190.00. Amazon used starting at 94.98 up to 185.00.
Being an mst3k fiend, If I didn’t already own it, I’d be pìššëd.
JAC
That novel had one of my all-time favorite PAD punchlines (from Garabaldi, near the end — if you read the book, you know what I’m talking about). Unfortunately, since my wife has never read the trilogy, I couldn’t share it with her.
According to a patent site, standard patent protection is 20 years. Inventions are generally the fruit of intellectual exercise, after all. Why should ‘intellectual property’ be any different?
Well, first, a nitpick: a patent is an intellectual property. It’s an intellectual property associated with inventions rather than literary/artistic works, but it’s an intellectual property nonetheless.
But getting to your main point, you’ll certainly find lots of people who agree wit you that the the disparity between copyright duration and patent duration is troublesome.
But if you’re looking for a rationale for the discrepancy, one often postulated goes something like this:
Establishing durations for the grant of rights that are copyright and patents involve balancing two interests: (1) the interest of the creator who, it is recognized, should be given some amount of exclusive control over his/her/its creation; and (2) the interest of society who will eventually benefit from that creation being able to be used, freely and unencumbered, by any or all of its members. If (1) is deemed more convincing, you’ll tend to allow long-lasting grants. If you’re more convinced by (2), you’ll be inclined to keep those grants comparatively short-lived.
Patents generally deal with scientific, technological, and technical material. Copyrights generally deal with artistic and creative material. In general, it seems that (2)–the needs of society at large–is valued more highly with scientific, technological, and technical material than with artistic/creative ones. Therefore, in the constant balance between (1) and (2), there’s a more convincing incentive to keep patent durations short than there is with copyright.
You may not agree–plenty don’t. But when you look at some hypoteticals it’s easy to see how this line of thinking comes around. If an inventor creates a more efficient engine or a more effective drug, it’s easy to argue that those inventions would benefit society in important ways when their patents expire, and that therefore their patents should expire comparatively soon. But the benefits to society when a copyright expires are less clear, so there seems to be a less convincing argument for swiftly expiring copyrights are the way it “should” be. You may not agree–as I said, many don’t–but…I dunno…as chargined as I am that so little material passes into the public domain nowadays, I still don’t quite seem to have it in me to argue that, say, old Disney cartoons’ failure to enter the public domain bears quite the same societal weight.
But, as they say, I digress. You wondered why patents and copyrights have such different durations–that’s part of it. But reform is always churning, so who knows how the world’s lawmakers will come to define copyrights and trademarks and patents in the future.
“balancing two interests: (1) the interest of the creator who, it is recognized, should be given some amount of exclusive control over his/her/its creation; and (2) the interest of society who will eventually benefit from that creation being able to be used, freely and unencumbered, by any or all of its members.”
A delicate balance it is indeed. Unfortunately, as we have seen with the trouble concerning AIDS medication/generics needed in third world countries, we’re sometimes a little too slow at acknowledging real-world needs and correcting the ‘balance’ in the right direction. I admit, it is a rather harder to quantify the cultural equivalent.
I was thinking on this last night, and I realized, I can’t really think of a true benefit of things entering into the Public Domain. (I mean more current things, like Mikey Mouse or Superman). I mean, yeah I get that when that happens, then anyone can put out early Mickey Mouse cartoons are so forth, but…what’s the actual benefit of that?
Read Spider Robinson’s story, “Melancholy Elephants”. The basic point of the story was that in musical composition, there are only so many arrangements of notes that make any sense to the human ear. The problem with continuing copyright in perpetuity, as laid forth in the story, is that eventually, it will become impossible to create a piece of music that doesn’t accidentally infringe on someone’s existing copyright. The protagonist of the story was the widow of a famous composer, who’d killed himself after his third piece in a row (one he’d written for his wife on their anniversary) was found to have several passages in common with another work that no one had ever heard of.
A similar point can be made with regard to written works. For instance, if Disney’s copyrights extended into perpetuity, no one would ever again dare to make a cartoon in which the comic foil is the first mate on a small boat, for fear of running afoul of the copyright on “Steamboat Willie”. Yes, Disney does defend their copyrights fiercely, and for good reason.
That Spider Jerusalem story sounds like an interesting cautionary tale. I’ll have to keep an eye out for it.
But if you can forgive me for playing humorless devil’s advocate for a moment, I can still see why the scenario in that story might not make for a compelling call for copyright law reform.
For one thing, copyright does not extend in perpituity; its protections remain finite. Sure, it’s long-lived. Sure it’s been extended repeatedly. Sure many believe that repeated copyright extensions are tantamount to perpetal copyright. But it seems one of the reasons copyright extentions have been able to continue is that they’re always careful to present themselves as finite, as eventually expiring.
For another thing, in reality, I think it’d be difficult to show that long-lived coprights actively discourage the creation of new works. (They certainly disincent the creation of derivative works, but new works? I don’t think that’s quite as dramatic yet.) Mind you, if it could be convincingly demonstrated that long-lived copyrights actively disincentivize the creation of new works, I’d think copyright duration reformers would have a lot easier time of things. But I don’t think the real-world influence of long-lived copyrights is anywhere near a disincentivizing force as it seems to be in that story.
Just devil’s advocating here, understand…
“A similar point can be made with regard to written works. For instance, if Disney’s copyrights extended into perpetuity, no one would ever again dare to make a cartoon in which the comic foil is the first mate on a small boat, for fear of running afoul of the copyright on “Steamboat Willie”. Yes, Disney does defend their copyrights fiercely, and for good reason.”
Nah, you’re mixing settings with charecters. That’s like saying that you can never write an adventure TV show with a starship captain without getting it in the neck from Paramount.
The thing about copyrights extended into perpetuity is that it both preserves the integrity of something (to a degree)and sees to it that the rewards of that creation go to the right places.
Do you really want to see the market flooded with Mickey Mouse cartoons, books and other items that are all produced by cheap John, fly by night companies? And what about the types of films that would be able to be made once there is no way to enforce or protect a copyright? You know all those guys, just to go straight to the extreme example, that have tried making pørņ spoofs of famous charecters but got shut down because they were too close to the real charecters in design and got hit with the copyright? You think that they won’t rush to put something out with the real Mickey or Bugs?
And look at the profits. Disney made Mickey. Warner Brothers made Bugs. And I don’t mean that they created them here. I mean that they MADE them. When they looked like they were charecters that would be hits they went into full bore PR mode over them. It took years of good work, protecting the charecter’s integrity AND carefull promotion work to make those money making charecters in mega-money makers. How is it fair for some one to be able to come along, slap Mickey, Bugs or some other charecter on an el-cheapo product and clean up on it when they never did squat to earn it?
I’ve got no problem with charecters staying under copyright at all. Some one wants to make a paycheck then they can do it with their own work.
“The protagonist of the story was the widow of a famous composer, who’d killed himself after his third piece in a row (one he’d written for his wife on their anniversary) was found to have several passages in common with another work that no one had ever heard of.”
He shoulda just said that he was “sampling” and gotten his grammy nomination. Works for most the Hip Hop and Rap “artists”.
He shoulda just said that he was “sampling” and gotten his grammy nomination. Works for most the Hip Hop and Rap “artists”.
Not anymore, Jerry. Copyright is strictly enforced on samples now. Beck’s most recent album was held up for months due to the ridiculous amount of samples he used and the time needed to pursue the rights. I work for a business that has gotten heavily involved in rights management as a side business.
I don’t know that I would go so far as to say that copyrights should never expire. But I do agree that many arguments for the swifter expiration of copyrights boil down to “I wish that guy no longer controlled his stuff so that I can do whatever I want with his stuff without paying, crediting, or acknowledging him in any way.”
And I don’t find that line of argument particularly complelling at all.
Still shows up way too much for “artists” who are being praised for their genius and originality for my tatses.
Everything else aside, I do think this shows that
there are some folks out the who’d read more B5 stuff. Quite arguably, It’s the best written sci-fi series ever produced with simply terrific characters and dialogue. Lots of stories that need to be explored. How about it, guys? Can someone put some new B5 stuff? JMS? PAD?
I do think this shows that there are some folks out the who’d read more B5 stuff. Quite arguably, It’s the best written sci-fi series ever produced with simply terrific characters and dialogue. Lots of stories that need to be explored. How about it, guys? Can someone put some new B5 stuff? JMS? PAD?
Unless I’m mistaken, Warner Brothers controls Babylon 5, handling licensing of this stuff through their Consumer Products division. (Neither JMS, PAD, nor anyone other than Warner Brothers can authorize licensed publishing, though one hopes that anyone who would acquire the license would employ creators at least as talented.)
Since there’s no B5 publishing program now (new stuff or reprints of previously published stuff,) one concludes that either no publisher has made a proposal to Warner for such rights or that Warner has not deemed any received proposals acceptable (for whatever reason.)
One hopes that these high secondary market prices and other indications of a hungry market would incent folks to pursue and grant licensed publishing rights, but it’s probably best to direct such hopes at prospective publishers (as was done to Del Rey to convince them to pursue the license after the previous novel licensee’s arrangement lapsed) rather than individuals.
But for B5 fans itching for something to get excited over, I understand JMS has announced plans to publish his own B5 scripts in book form–at least 14 volumes–including material like original drafts and other fun stuff for fans. You can apparently sign up at the website http://www.babylon5scripts.com/ to be alerted when there’s news on that project.