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| Jonathan Rosenbaum |
11/1/05
I have no objection to having my published/copyrighted works made available to the public via the Google Print Library Project.
Personally, I'm delighted that a pirated collection of my Chicago Reader film reviews was published in Persian in 2001. I'm told that the book, whose title translates as Jonathan Rosenbaum's Reviews, is sold in Tehran for roughly the equivalent of one U.S. dollar.
Admittedly, I receive no money from the sale of this volume, and in fact own a copy of it only because an Iranian friend sent me one. But I don't care; knowing that my work is valued and read in Iran is much more important to me than making money from this. On the other hand, I'm pissed off that I haven't managed to acquire a copy of a pirated edition of my monograph on “Greed,” translated into Portuguese that was published in Brazil a few years ago, though I'm still more pleased than annoyed about its existence. (All that annoys me, to be frank, is the publisher's refusal to honor my request and send me a copy.)
Having my work for the Chicago Review posted on the Internet for free—as it was for many years, until around 2001—helped my career incalculably. Thanks to this practice, I was invited by the film critics of Buenos Aires to give a series of lectures in their city (in what proved to be the first of five trips there to date), and I've received comparable invitations to visit many other countries around the world and/or write for various publications, some of which actually pay me for doing so. Consequentially, I feel that I've had some financial benefit in the long run because of my reviews having been so readily available.
Even after it was decided by an administrator at the Reader to charge people for accessing my older reviews, a move that I've regretted—and would regret even if I received any part of the relatively inconsequential amount of money involved—my work's international circulation has been predicated on its availability on the Internet, so I'm happy that it circulates in any form. I'm even happier that a German web site, on its own initiative, managed to post about five years' worth of my articles for the Reader that were cached and which Internet cruisers can now access for free. I just hope that the administrator at the Reader doesn't hear about it.
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