| Wednesday, December
5, 2007 With luck I will do a chapter of Mamelukes
today. We're also overdue to get the first installment of the December
column done, and I've neglected the essays here. Mea culpa. I hope the
subscribers think they get their money's worth even so.
I have got the contributors of the two War World novels,
Blood Feuds and Blood Vengeance, to send me authorizations for getting them
back into print, and I'll now start negotiations for that. Certainly we can
get them into electronic copies. The question will be whether if you accept
Amazon Kindle publication, which is non-exclusive, other publishers will
still be interested in ebook copies. We'll see.
Two of the authors, Harry Turtledove and Steve Stirling,
are far better known now than they were when those books came out, so this
shouldn't be difficult. Anyway we'll see what happens here.
=========
I am informed by my agent that Inferno I and Inferno II
are now in the production process at Tor, so we are officially DONE with
those books. Hurrah. Niven will be over tomorrow and we'll take a hike,
working on the plot of our next Big Book. Hitting the earth with something
big has been very lucrative in the past...
=========
And I have to get myself in gear and do some creative
work, having spent my morning on administrative stuff.
Only Firefox is driving me nuts. I can't open new links
until it will open and it won't open without updating since I closed it
without restarting last time. Eventually I'll be able to process the mail.
==============
This is very relevant to the ebook situation:
Powell's turns the page
The cash register at Powell's City of Books, the
nation's preeminent independent bookstore, rings thousands of times a day as
customers pick up new and used books, funky British editions, local literary
journals and obscure zines.
http://www.calendarlive.com/books/
la-et-powell3dec03,0,7765211.story?coll=cl-books-features
Bill Shields
==============
The SFWA Anti-Piracy
matter
This is going to be long, and for some it will not be
interesting. To skip it click here.
I recently received this letter purporting to summarize
what happened. It is a good illustration of what you can prove if you make
up your data.
Subject: e-Books, Piracy, Doctorow and Burt
Jerry, I think the issue here is muddled.
Doctorow's chief objection is not that the SFWA
tried to pull down copyrighted works from ScribD. Doctorow's chief
objection is not that he was unconvenienced by his book being pulled
down from ScribD. Doctorow's chief objection is that Dr. Burt's takedown
list (available online in several places) was done so appallingly
incompetently that it sends the wrong message. From digging a bit
further back, it appears that Burt and Doctorow have butted heads to the
point where Doctorow's (and other's) position is that anything Dr. Burt
does is going to do more harm than good. This isn't a campaign against
the SFWA per se trying to defend copyright. This is entirely a campaign
against Dr. Burt having anything to do with the way the SFWA tries to
protect author's rights.
Without Doctorow's over the top invective, here's
the reason why:
Dr. Burt's list was apparently compiled by doing a
ScribD seach for "Asimov". It pulled every book that had the term
"Asimov" in it. (while ScribD has a search tool for author searches,
this was apparently not used...) The entire list had over 1,000 works on
it. Of which fewer than 100 were books by Dr. Asimov.
Any book that had a "jacket blurb" on it that was
an endorsement from Gardner Dozois, onetime editor of Asimov's Science
Fiction, got pulled into the list (this is what got Down and Out in the
Magic Kingdom). Any book that had a character or place named Asimov in
it got pulled into the list. Any book that had a blurb by Asimov got hit
by it. Any book that simply had the *term* Asimov in it.
Anyone who's used a search engine more than twice
would have looked at that list, and said "Wait, that's too many hits"
and cross checked it. Anyone who wasn't terminally lazy would've done a
search for titles, and would have done a search for individual sentences
from, say, the second chapter of a book. The Asimov estate, by all
accounts, gave Dr. Burt the entire list of infringing titles to work
from. It wasn't used.
Finally, Dr. Burt sent a take down letter. Take
down letters are legal documents, though they do not have to be prepared
by an attorney and notarized (thank God). However, if the take down
letter isn't done correctly, it opens the person demanding the take down
letter to great legal harm. Dr. Burt's take down letter that was sent
was clearly cut and pasted from a form, and opened the SFWA to great
harm.
Let us hypothetically say that the value of the
materials listed illegally on ScribD is worth $10M.
If you were prosecuting a damages case for $10M,
would you be anything less than frothingly libid if your agent, Vince,
were this incompetent?
The reason both Stross and Scalzi wanted Burt off
of the committee list is because they felt
he was incompetent, lazy, and
would be nothing but a polarizing influence at best. I suspect there is
a long and ongoing dispute here that's getting tangled in the leads with
the copyright discussion.
I have brooded over this for some time. You can prove
anything if you make up your data.
Here in fact is what actually happened:
First, background: scribd is a for profit corporation with
millions of dollars in VC capital. Its web site consisted of documents
posted by anyone who cared to. There was no attempt to check whether the
poster had any right to put up those documents. Documents available for
downloading included: I Have No Mouth but I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison;
everything ever written by the late Jack Chalker; every book and story
written by the late A. Bertram Chandler; works by Poul Anderson; works by
the late Roger Zelazny; and everything ever written by Larry Niven and Jerry
Pournelle both as individuals and in collaboration. These I know about and
they are representative of thousands more.
When one attempted to call attention to this scribd either
ignored the communications, or sent the legal requirements for a DMCA
takedown notice. Those requirements include a statement under penalty of
perjury that the complainant either owns the copyright or is an authorized
representative of the copyright owner. While some authors and estates have
asked SFWA to act for them, many have not, and scribd claimed the right to
ignore complaints from anyone other than the copyright owner. In other
words, they can take the property and do with it as they will, and it's up
to the owner to find out they are doing it and complain.
Several attempts were made to get scribd to be reasonable.
They weren't. Then the following events happened.
1. A list was compiled as a talking point. We had
told them there were thousands of documents. Scribd said "Naw, which ones?
Be specific!" Mostly, in fact, they ignored all attempts to get them to pay
any attention to the tens of thousands of pirated works on their site.
2 The list compiled used the names Heinlein Silverberg and Asimov because
they had authorized SFWA to act for them. Over six hundred documents
came up. Over a hundred were eliminated from material in their header and
title. Those included 9 Doctorow items. All items whose headers made it
clear they didn't belong were eliminated.
3. Any further examination would have required that each document be
downloaded and opened. That takes time. There were still hundreds on this
list alone.
4. scribd was asked to examine the documents as examples of possibly in
violation postings. They told us to pound sand. Suggestion was made that
scribd ask those posting items to certify that they had the right to post
them (citing creative commons would be one valid reason). They told us to
pound sand. They declined to work with anything other than takedown orders.
(A scribd official has told me they defy me to show they told us to pound
sand. Of course they did not use that language. Mostly they were simply
unresponsive. They certainly refused to take any initiative, and kept
repeating that they would respond to takedown orders.)
5. In exasperation Committee Chairman Burt said "Ok this is a takedown
order". Of course it was not. It wasn't a legal order at all. It wasn't in
any legal format and scribd had no more obligation to pay attention to that
than they had to all previous requests to be reasonable. If I send you a
list and say take these down, you have no obligation to do it. I have to
send them in proper format, and certify that I am either the copyright owner
or have authorization to act for the copyright owner before you have to pay
attention to me. This wasn't in that form, and could have been ignored. They
knew that. They had been telling us that in the past. There were no legal
ramifications. You may think of Burt's exclamation as an aggressive
bargaining statement if you like. Ignoring it would have had no legal
consequences, and scribd knew that.
(The official response of scribd to Burt's letter was from their lawyers
who made it very clear that this did not meet the requirements of a DMCA
takedown order, and put them under no obligations.)
6 Nevertheless they did pull them and notified Doctorow and others they
had done so, expecting I suspect that there would be a storm. About 90% of
the documents on the list were blatant cases of piracy. Some were trivial.
Some number, from a dozen to about fifty, were legitimately posted, some
under the Creative Commons license, and should not have been removed. The
removals were done by scribd. When complaints came to SFWA both the
Committee Chairman and the President sent notices to both scribd and the
document authors removing those from the list and apologizing to the
authors.
7. scribd had EFF send a bullying letter to SFWA (A scribd official says
defensively that letter was generated at the request of Cory Doctorow. I
have no reason to doubt this, but the letter to the SFWA President says that
it is on behalf of EFF's client, scribd.com.)
8. The resulting storm wasn't to scribd liking. Several VC's decided not
to talk to them. (A scribd official says these persons are mythical. I can
only say that I may have sources scribd does not have.) EFF got more hostile mail than it had expected. While
there was a lot of obloquy poured onto SFWA, scribd came in for their share
-- after all, they did have about 10,000 pirated documents up on their site,
and anyone could go see that. Many people did, and were appalled.
9 For whatever reason, scribd got nervous and pulled thousands of documents including hundreds
by Doctorow and others posted under Creative Commons, this time purely on
their own initiative. They discovered that sorting the illegal from the
legal documents took time and resources they did not have (and they have far
more resources than SFWA or any individual author) so they went to mass
action by pulling all the documents put up by particular individuals,
whether legally there or not.
(A scribd official has sent me mail saying that my account is bs, and
complaining that they never told SFWA to pound sand. I agree. They never
used that language. They also insist that the letter to the SFWA President
was sent on the instigation of Mr. Doctorow, not scribd. I can only say that
the letter says it is on behalf of their client, scribd.com. The relations
among Doctorow, EFF, and scribd are not within my kenning.)
Now: Please tell me how, short of opening each of tens of thousands of
documents and generating a legal DMCA order for each of those found to be in
violation of copyright and by an author who had authorized SFWA to act for
him/her, anything might have been done? Scribd relied on the sheer amount of
work required. They counted on our inability to do all that.
The result, in my judgment, was a Good Thing.
For those who think this all trivial, I invite you to
Google the following line
zelazny Lord of Light ebook
You will get the following return as the first item:
lokapalas lord of light,
Google, Page 1. roger zelazny lord of light ebook download,
Google, Page 1. isle of the death by roger zelazny, Google,
Page 5 ...
www.scribd.com/doc/185539/Lord-of-Light-Roger-Zelazny
- 632k -
Cached -
Similar pages |
This after scribd removed thousands of items. We are
trying to reach Judy Zelazny to tell her about this. (As of December 7 that
document has been removed by scribd, so at the moment it is no longer
available.)
I note that my correspondent accuses Dr. Burt and SFWA of
incompetence and laziness, and accepts that as fact. I would not myself call
it laziness to decline to spend 400 hours compiling a properly vetted list
of pirated documents. If anyone is lazy it is scribd.
The assumption here appears to be that the obligations
fall exclusively on the victims, who must find the cases of theft, identify
them properly, and send in legal notices demanding that scribd stop stealing
their property. I would have thought the burden ought to fall on this
well-financed for profit commercial corporation, not on the individual
authors and copyright owners; but apparently my correspondent and those
whose accounts he draws on think otherwise.
I also ask just who was harmed here? Apparently the
harm was to Doctorow and Stross who, for two days, did not have their free
documents displayed for downloading on a web site that used pirated works as
one principle attraction to get readers. Me, I would be ashamed to sell to
that market, but leave that. There is no evidence that at any time during the
couple of days that their documents were no longer available on scribd
anyone tried to download them. Of course the documents in question were
available on other web sites including Doctorow's craphound web site, so
even if someone wanted a copy and looked in vain for it on scribd, it could have
been found elsewhere.
If anyone else was harmed I have not heard of it. So for a
couple of days some free documents were not available on a single web site;
meanwhile, hundreds of pirated documents by Asimov, Heinlein, and Silverberg
were taken down and no longer available for theft.
Perhaps it is evil of me to do so, but I say Hurrah! I say
it was a good result. I say that this action blasted scribd loose from their
stance of stonewalling and doing nothing, and that is all to the good.
As to:
Finally, Dr. Burt sent a take down letter. Take
down letters are legal documents, though they do not have to be prepared
by an attorney and notarized (thank God). However, if the take down
letter isn't done correctly, it opens the person demanding the take down
letter to great legal harm. Dr. Burt's take down letter that was sent
was clearly cut and pasted from a form, and opened the SFWA to great
harm.
this is factually incorrect, egregiously so. First, the
letter sent was not a takedown notice. It said "Yes, this is a takedown
notice" but it was not in DMCA format, and did not contain any statement
under penalty of perjury. It had no more effect than any other bargaining
demand in a bargaining situation, and scribd knew that.
Second, the effect of improperly drawn takedown notices is
not what is stated there. There was no great harm -- other than
denunciations of SFWA. The consequence of claiming under penalty of perjury
that you own the copyright or represent the person who does could indeed be
severe, but that didn't happen.
As I said, you can prove anything if you make up your
data.
The bottom line here is that there appear to be those who
are far more concerned about having their works available for download by a
readership largely drawn from people looking for pirated works, than for the
owners of the pirated works. I find that interesting.
End
There is an interesting story from Japan about ebooks on
cell phones over in mail.
==========
There is a discussion of
Barnett and his views in Mail
============
To learn how SFWA is stealing money from Cory Doctorow,
see
http://www.scribd.com/doc/266943/SFWA
-Blames-Scribd-Incendiary-Comments-in-Boing-Boing-Article
It is probably worth noting just where Electronic Frontier Foundation,
which says it protects individual rights, stands on this:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/268111/Scribds
-Official-Response-to-the-Science-Fiction-and-Fantasy-Writers-Association-SFWA
===
And a reader says:
It took about 10 minutes, randomly plugging
names into the scribd search box, to assemble this list:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/361495/Card
-Orson-Scott-Enders-Saga-1-Enders-Game
http://www.scribd.com/doc/236269/
-Zen-in-the-Art-of-WritingRay-Bradbury-
http://www.scribd.com/doc/102558/Stephen-King-The-Shining-
http://www.scribd.com/doc/36810/Michael-Crichton-Next
http://www.scribd.com/doc/200587/Crichton-Michael-Disclosure
http://www.scribd.com/doc/348135/Angels-and-Demons-Dan-Brown
http://www.scribd.com/doc/66310/EBook-John-Grisham-The-Summons
These examples are so obvious that I have
to assume they don't check the copyright status of uploaded
materials...maybe they assume that the fine print at the bottom of this
page covers them as far as legal liability?
http://www.scribd.com/upload
"WARNING: Do not upload copyrighted
material for which you don't own the rights or have permission from the
owner."
Enough. I have work to do, and I have become pretty discouraged by all
this. Apparently there is a large faction that is more concerned that their
works be exposed for free download on a site that largely draws its viewers
from those seeking pirated copies of copyrighted works, than with protecting
author rights; and which is willing to spend as much time as needed to hound
anyone who does not agree.
I have had a pretty good life as a writer. I feel sorry for those who
want to follow in my footsteps, since it's pretty clear that the enemies of
copyright will probably win this battle. There are many of them, and they
wear us down.
Wednesday TOP
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