Chapter 4 - Ethical Dilemma

An Ethical Dilemma

As we have discussed, the law relating to copyright provides- at least in principle- a way in which a creative person can gain recompense for their original work, Let us now take a simple example of how this can operate in practice.

Consider the case of Alice who was writing a textbook. She wishes to include in her book material from various sources- particularly a few key diagrams that have previously been published in other books. Some of these are quite old, dating back to the 1930s and 1940s.

In the intervening years, the original publishers of these books have been taken over several times but, following some fairly extensive research, she is finally able to track down the names of companies who currently own the rights of the books from which she wishes to reproduce diagrams. Following this exercises, she contacts these companies, and asks for permission to reproduce diagrams for these works.

The majorities of companies respond and indicate that she can reproduce the diagrams- providing that she pays fee (ranging from £40 through to £2,000 per diagram reproduced). Payment is deemed necessary because, although the diagrams are quite old, the copyright has not expired (typically, copyright for material that is published in a book continues to 70 years after the death of the book’s author). Alice decides that she cannot afford the permissions costs (these total an amount which is fair in excess of the revenue that she will get from her book once it published).

Although copyright serves to reward people for their creative work, in practice this does not always happen. For example, only relatively recently have author’s contracts with publishers contained clauses to the effect that they will receive royalty payments for materials reproduced from their work. Consequently, in the case of old books, there is little, if any, chance that an author (or their estate) will receive any remuneration when original material from their book is reproduced.

With this is mind, Alice decides to scan the relevant diagrams, make a few alterations to them- so they looked a little different- and then use them in her book without having obtained any permissions to reproduce them.

This raises a number of ethical issues. In the case of older books, should publishers require significant fees to be paid to them if material from one of their books is reproduced elsewhere? To what extent should this be underpinned by consideration of fair use? It is reasonable for publishers to require significant amounts of money to be paid in relation to the reproduction of material from an old book- particularly when they know that this will not be passed on the author, or their estate? To what extent is it appropriate to simply make modifications of diagrams, and therefore avoid the payment of permission fees? By the way of a simple example, consider figure 4.3. Let us suppose that this is edited by Alice and reproduced in her book in the form illustrated in Figure 4.4. To what extent (if any) is Alice guilty of plagiarism? One point to note: by not paying permissions fees, it follows that the author will not acknowledge the original source of the diagram- thus, the original creative person does not receive any credit.

To what extent do such consideration apply to software? For example, is it permissible to take another person’s code, make limited modifications to it, and represent it as one’s own work? 

Response

            The act of getting someone else work and modify it without the owner’s permission is already considered as plagiarism. The golden rule can be applied in this situation, which says “Don’t do unto others the things you don’t want others will do unto you.” Even it would cost a lot on Alice’s part to pay for each diagram that she will use, still she should respect the rights of the owner or the publisher who holds the copyright of the book. If Alice can’t afford to pay she need not to modify the diagrams, the best solution to her problem is to study it and make her own diagrams. If she would be able to publish the book, someday another author might want to make her book as a reference and if she did the right thing she would realize the essence of respecting someone’s effort. In software development aspect, it would be very unethical to copy one’s code and modify it. There are nth ways of making your own code and if you just need a reference code you can always study the pattern but don’t copy/modify it unless you have the permission of the owner,