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Cultural Identity Politics <strong>in</strong> the (Post-)Transitional Societies<br />
make a photocopy of the book for a friend who is also <strong>in</strong>terested <strong>in</strong> the topic. Th e clerk<br />
at the photocopy<strong>in</strong>g centre will tell him that, although he is allowed to make a copy<br />
of a small part of the book, mak<strong>in</strong>g a copy of the whole book is prohibited. He might<br />
even show him the article <strong>in</strong> the copyright law about reproduction for private purposes<br />
or the copyright notice on the back cover of the book, which sometimes <strong>in</strong>cludes the<br />
statement: “Th e photocopy kills the book.” Th e buyer then might come up with the idea<br />
of establish<strong>in</strong>g a public or private lend<strong>in</strong>g library, where all the books he has bought will<br />
be available to everybody for borrow<strong>in</strong>g. He will soon fi nd out, however, that <strong>in</strong> Europe<br />
remunerations have to be paid to the authorized organization for the public lend<strong>in</strong>g of<br />
books. He might then get angry and decide to hold a public read<strong>in</strong>g from his copy of the<br />
book, whose owner he defi nitely is, because <strong>in</strong> this way at least he will <strong>in</strong>form people about<br />
its content. But <strong>in</strong> this case, too, he will be approached by the collective organization of<br />
authors, which will ask him for another k<strong>in</strong>d of remuneration that allows him to read<br />
from the book <strong>in</strong> public. Th e buyer fi nally realizes that, accord<strong>in</strong>g to copyright law, he is<br />
excluded from a whole series of uses of the book – a book he has already paid for – and if<br />
he wants to ga<strong>in</strong> access to them, he must pay additional remunerations to the author or<br />
rights holder. Given the prohibitions stated <strong>in</strong> copyright law, he must pay remuneration<br />
each time for each of these uses of a book he has already paid for once.<br />
Accord<strong>in</strong>g to copyright law, only the author, not the other possible rights holders, is<br />
usually appo<strong>in</strong>ted to receive many of these k<strong>in</strong>ds of remuneration. Th e author may pass<br />
rights on to the publisher, but <strong>in</strong> some cases some rights are not transferable. Legal<br />
regulation therefore gives the author rights to “secondary revenues” (like remunerations<br />
for copy<strong>in</strong>g, lend<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong> public libraries, adaptation <strong>in</strong>to fi lm or theatre performance and<br />
so on). Th e author’s revenues are composed, as we can conclude, of two k<strong>in</strong>ds of revenue:<br />
(1) a direct payment for a work which we have already described as a “wage” aft er the<br />
submission of a manuscript to the publisher; (2) secondary revenues which are a k<strong>in</strong>d of<br />
rent follow<strong>in</strong>g publication of the book on the basis of already accomplished and paid work<br />
and already sold commodities (see Table 2).<br />
Table 2: Author’s revenues<br />
134<br />
1. Direct payment for a work “wage”<br />
2. Secondary revenues “rent”<br />
Bus<strong>in</strong>ess partnership between the author and the publisher<br />
Th e publisher of course knows about both types of revenue and he th<strong>in</strong>ks: if the author<br />
is justifi ed to receive, besides a wage, also rent revenues, then the relation between the<br />
publisher and the author is no longer a contract between the author as a seller of labour or<br />
his/her ability to write a manuscript and the publisher as a buyer of labour. Th e publisher,<br />
accord<strong>in</strong>gly, no longer feels obliged to provide, <strong>in</strong> the form of a wage or direct payment