A Human Right Sighting

[themic]

ok another version cropped to show just the offending portion of the page - only 32 kB or so, again only in B&W

 

[papercut]

And I see themic has managed to get the page scanned. Yay!

 

[laynlow]

Tagged for updates and outcome.

 

[Zak Smith]

There's no need to "tag" threads.

Just use the "Subscribe" button at the bottom of the page.

-z

 

[Oleg Volk]

Found the editor email/phone, will send them a message.

 

[themic]

remembering that print subscribers have free online access to all articles, i went and just got the color version from the website. picture only.

 

[themic]

oleg -

from the magazine print version:

principal commercial offices:

25 st james street, london sw1a 1hg
tel 020 7830 7000
fax 020 7839 2968/9

111 west 57th street, new york ny 10019
tel 1 212 541 0500
fax 1 212 541 9378

and a hong kong address too

 

[countertop]

Oleg,
Since you seem unfamiliar with the magazine, perhaps we should point out to you that the Economist is one of the foremost news magazines in the world. Certainly, amongst professionals (and upper crust Europeans), it has a far higher rpofile than almost any other publication. . . .Consider it as a Time for the intellectual set . . . .

Of course, along with the UN groveling perspective, they also have a reputation as particularly opposed to firearms ownership.

I wouldn't settle cheap.

 

[countertop]

Here is some more info on it - direct from their web page. I've highlighted important info.

About The Economist

• About our History

It is not only The Economist's name that people find baffling. Here are some other common questions.

First, why does it call itself a newspaper? Even when The Economist incorporated the Bankers' Gazette and Railway Monitor from 1845 to 1932, it also described itself as "a political, literary and general newspaper".

It still does so because, in addition to offering analysis and opinion, it tries in each issue to cover the main events—business and political—of the week. It goes to press on Thursdays and, printed simultaneously in six countries, is available in most of the world's main cities the following day or soon after.

Readers everywhere get the same editorial matter. The advertisements differ. The running order of the sections, and sometimes the cover, also differ. But the words are the same, except that each week readers in Britain get a few extra pages devoted to British news.

Why is it anonymous? Many hands write The Economist, but it speaks with a collective voice. Leaders are discussed, often disputed, each week in meetings that are open to all members of the editorial staff. Journalists often co-operate on articles. And some articles are heavily edited. The main reason for anonymity, however, is a belief that what is written is more important than who writes it. As Geoffrey Crowther, editor from 1938 to 1956, put it, anonymity keeps the editor "not the master but the servant of something far greater than himself. You can call that ancestor-worship if you wish, but it gives to the paper an astonishing momentum of thought and principle."

Who owns The Economist? Since 1928, half the shares have been owned by the Financial Times, a subsidiary of Pearson, the other half by a group of independent shareholders, including many members of the staff. The editor's independence is guaranteed by the existence of a board of trustees, which formally appoints him and without whose permission he cannot be removed.

What, besides free trade and free markets, does The Economist believe in? "It is to the Radicals that The Economist still likes to think of itself as belonging. The extreme centre is the paper's historical position." That is as true today as when Crowther said it in 1955. The Economist considers itself the enemy of privilege, pomposity and predictability. It has backed conservatives such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. It has supported the Americans in Vietnam. But it has also endorsed Harold Wilson and Bill Clinton, and espoused a variety of liberal causes: opposing capital punishment from its earliest days, while favouring penal reform and decolonisation, as well as—more recently—gun control and gay marriage.

Lastly, The Economist believes in plain language. Walter Bagehot, our most famous 19th-century editor, tried "to be conversational, to put things in the most direct and picturesque manner, as people would talk to each other in common speech, to remember and use expressive colloquialisms". That remains the style of the paper today.

Established in 1843 to campaign on one of the great political issues of the day, The Economist remains, in the second half of its second century, true to the principles of its founder. James Wilson, a hat maker from the small Scottish town of Hawick, believed in free trade, internationalism and minimum interference by government, especially in the affairs of the market. Though the protectionist Corn Laws which inspired Wilson to start The Economist were repealed in 1846, the newspaper has lived on, never abandoning its commitment to the classical 19th-century Liberal ideas of its founder.

The Corn Laws, which by taxing and restricting imports of corn made bread expensive and starvation common, were bad for Britain. Free trade, in Wilson's view, was good for everyone. In his prospectus for The Economist, he wrote: "If we look abroad, we see within the range of our commercial intercourse whole islands and continents, on which the light of civilisation has scarce yet dawned; and we seriously believe that free trade, free intercourse, will do more than any other visible agent to extend civilisation and morality throughout the world - yes, to extinguish slavery itself."

Wilson's outlook was, therefore, moral, even civilising, but not moralistic. He believed "that reason is given to us to sit in judgment over the dictates of our feelings." Reason convinced him in particular that Adam Smith was right, that through its invisible hand the market benefited profit-seeking individuals (of whom he was one) and society alike. He was himself a manufacturer and wanted especially to influence "men of business". Accordingly, he insisted that all the arguments and propositions put forward in his paper should be subjected to the test of facts. That was why it was called The Economist.

Wilson was not The Economist's greatest editor in terms of intellect. That title probably goes to his son-in-law, Walter Bagehot (pronounced Bajut), who was the paper's third editor, from 1861 to 1877. Bagehot was a banker, but he is best remembered for his political writing and notably for his articles on the British constitution. The monarch, he argued, was head of the "dignified" parts of the constitution, those that "excite and preserve the reverence of the population"; the prime minister was head of the "efficient" parts, "those by which it, in fact, works and rules." The distinction is often drawn, even today.

It was Bagehot who broadened the range of the paper into politics. He was also responsible for greatly strengthening the interest in America that The Economist has always shown. Under the editorship of Bagehot, who argued that "The object of The Economist is to throw white light on the subjects within its range", the paper's influence grew. One British foreign secretary, Lord Granville, said that whenever he felt uncertain, he liked to wait to see what the next issue of The Economist had to say. A later admirer of Bagehot's was Woodrow Wilson, president of the United States from 1913 to 1921.

The paper, however, had to wait nearly half a century before getting another remarkable editor. He came in 1922, in the shape of Walter Layton, whose achievement, in the words of The Economist's historian, Ruth Dudley Edwards*, was to have the paper "read widely in the corridors of power abroad as well as at home", even if critics said it was "slightly on the dull side of solid". That was certainly not a criticism that could be levelled at his successor, Geoffrey Crowther, who was probably The Economist's greatest editor since Bagehot. His contribution was to develop and improve the coverage of foreign affairs, especially American ones, and of business. Its authoritativeness had never been higher.

From the earliest days, The Economist had looked abroad, both for subjects to write about and for circulation. Even in the 1840s, it had readers in Europe and the United States. By 1938, half its sales were abroad although, thanks to world war, not for long. Crowther's great innovation was to start a section devoted to American affairs, which he did just after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941. "American Survey" (renamed "United States" in 1997) was aimed not at Americans but at British readers who, Crowther believed, needed to know more about their new allies. In time, however, it earned a following in the United States that became the base for the great rise in American circulation that began in the 1970s.

For most of its existence The Economist has been content with a small circulation. When Bagehot gave up as editor, it stood at 3,700, and by 1920 had climbed to only 6,000. After the second world war, it rose rapidly, but from a base of barely 18,000, and when Crowther left it stood at only 55,000, not reaching 100,000 until 1970. Today circulation is over 830,000, more than four-fifths of it outside Britain. The American circulation accounts for a third of the total.

A recent editor, Rupert Pennant-Rea, once described The Economist as "a Friday viewspaper, where the readers, with higher than average incomes, better than average minds but with less than average time, can test their opinions against ours. We try to tell the world about the world, to persuade the expert and reach the amateur, with an injection of opinion and argument." With readers such as these, and aims such as these, The Economist was bound to find it progressively harder to increase its circulation in Britain. That became especially true in the 1960s and 1970s, when British daily papers started to carry more of the interpretive, argumentative and analytical articles that had traditionally been the preserve of the weeklies. The Economist has survived, and indeed prospered, by building on the internationalism of its outlook and by selling abroad.

In this it has been helped enormously by its coverage of business and economic affairs. Wilson believed that even statistics, so far from being dull, could "afford the deepest and often the most exciting interest." To this day, readers such as Helmut Schmidt, chancellor of West Germany from 1974 to 1982, agree. But few readers buy The Economist for one thing alone, and in recent years the paper has added sections devoted to Europe, Asia and science and technology. The current editor, Bill Emmott, has introduced an expanded coverage of books and arts, a new section devoted to Latin America and Canada and our web edition, Economist.com.

Articles in The Economist are not signed, but they are not all the work of the editor alone. Initially, the paper was written largely in London, with reports from merchants abroad. Over the years, these gave way to stringers who sent their stories by sea or air mail, and then by telex and cable. Nowadays, in addition to a worldwide network of stringers, the paper has about 20 staff correspondents abroad. Contributors have ranged from Kim Philby, who spied for the Soviet Union, to H.H. Asquith, the paper's chief leader writer before he became Britain's prime minister, Garret FitzGerald, who became Ireland's, and Luigi Einaudi, president of Italy from 1948 to 1955. Even the most illustrious of its staff, however, write anonymously: only surveys, the longish supplements published about 20 times a year on various issues or countries, are signed. In May 2001, a redesign introduced more navigational information for readers and full colour on all editorial pages.

 

[Oleg Volk]

I am well familiar with them from their glory days ten or more years ago. I sent an email to the editor and pointed him to this thread as well as indicated what kinds of problems they would run with me and the subjects of the poster (who are as opposite of the conservative Republicans as can be, and likely to take action on that account). We'll see what comes out of this story. And to think they could have just asked...

PS: Thanks to all who helped with the research!

 

[Standing Wolf]

An to think they could have just asked...

Life includes occasional ironies. I'm glad you're standing up for your copyright. I've had to do it myself a time or two, and it's invariably a hassle.

 

[Andrew Rothman]

Wow.

People here move fast -- a tribute to the high regard in which we all hold Oleg.

I have color photos of the pages in question and the cover, which I'll upload in an hour or so when I get home.

 

[Oleg Volk]

The right to use of of my photos for a year cost $750 last time I made a sale. Magazine illustrations run less (one-time rights) but that depends on the circulation. Unauthorized use should be more expensive. We'll see what the response would be in the morning. We've gone over the legal options last time someone infringed.

 

[CGofMP]

Speaking of which....

Oleg, what happened to that anti gun group that used your image in their message? Did you recover anythign from them?

(Brady campaign? I do not remember.. it was like a year ago)

 

[QuarterBoreGunner]

I have nothing to add, but to say that this episode simply illustrates why I love the internet. God/Yahwe/Jehova/The Goddess/Cuthulu/bless the free exchange of information.

/Sven! Where are you!

 

[Oleg Volk]

I have yet to hear back from them. Will have to give them a call tonight in case their emails don't get delivered properly.

 

[Trebor]

A certified letter with the details of the infringment and your expected compensation might be better then a phone call. Even better if it's from your attorney. Just my opinion.

 

[another48hrs]

I wonder if the Economist is running on the "if I change x%" myth. They actually taught us that it was all right in Highschool, but the truth is if you put the image next to the original and you can tell it was taken from it you're screwed. Ask permission first!

 

[357to44]

In my opinion, The Economist should be given an option of either (1) re-publishing the poster ASAP unaltered (at least at the same scale -- will take more space), plus attributing it to the author and paying him a regular price or (2) paying 2.5 to 3 times higher premium for what they published.

Also, it would help to have this thread discoverable via Google Usenet search.

An interesting piece attributed to The Economist is at http://www.enotes.com/future-internet/871

 

[countertop]

just wondering if there is anything new to report on this thread?

 

[Oleg Volk]

They replied with a request for more info, nothing since.

 

[Harry Tuttle]

I would bet the editor, the art director, the layout department and the illustrator are now emailing each other about intelectual property rights and "finding things" on the internet.

i would send them a bill.

Whats the price of a G4, 17 inch laptop with a gig of ram?

 

[Mr Jody Hudson]

Interesting that the Economist is known for copyright infringement - and has thus prooved it here.

 

[Mulliga]

Nail 'em to the wall, Oleg.

 

[Highland Ranger]

Longer they take, more it costs, I say . . . .