What is Digg?58 Comments
- mattmccon1, on 10/10/2007, -3/+64First music, then video, now text? Why don't we just eliminate electricity, move into caves and become hunter-gatherers and get it over with. These copyright gestapo types need to get a grip.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -2/+48Dugg for the amazing headline alone.
- UncleHenry, on 10/10/2007, -1/+34Oh freddled gruntbuggly,
Thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits
On a lurgid bee.
Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes
And hooptiously drangle me
With crinkly bindlewurdles,
Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon,
See if I don't! - txcine, on 10/10/2007, -4/+34Bogus DMCA claims cause legitimate copyright holders' work to be taken down. Also see http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/30/science-fiction-writ-1.html
- JeremyTolbert, on 10/10/2007, -1/+30I am a science fiction writer, but I am not in SFWA, and nor will I ever join so long as the likes of the current administration are running things. Their policies regarding ePiracy are hamfisted at best, and at worst, earn the organization ridiculous amounts of bad publicity, which is the last thing prose science fiction and fantasy needs right now.
- GnuTzu, on 10/10/2007, -2/+29Well, next is speech itself. The new DRM chip will be installed in the nerve fibers between your brain and your vocal cords, limiting what you can an can not say.
From there, the DRM chip will be implanted directly into the speech center of the brain, where you your capacity to think certain phrases will be restricted.
But, if they really get their way, fees will be collected automatically for every non-original thought--with no opportunity to opt out of a thought should you feel that a fee is overpriced. And, that's because ideas that something was overpriced would also be a non-original thought, and that would incur a fee as well. - Nekronaut, on 10/10/2007, -1/+27Dugg for Hitchhikers ref.
- skeeve, on 10/10/2007, -0/+25COPYRIGHT VIOLATION!!!!!
I am officially serving you with a DMCA take down notice. The number 42(T) is an official trade-mark and copyright of the SFWA. Please remove your comment and sew your lips shut with this SFWA approved thread. - HunterTV, on 10/10/2007, -0/+23[BREAKING] SFWA issues DMCA against the SFWA and Causes Micro Black Hole, Tourist Attraction to "Open Soon," Relatively Speaking
- hierophantus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+16Someone at the RIAA just read that and creamed his jeans.
- zaren, on 10/10/2007, -1/+16I was reading about this on BoingBoing this morning. Our cape wearing, dirigible flying hero Cory Doctorow is hopping mad about it.
As he should be.
Issuing takedowns on bibliographies? Reading lists?!? This is about as well thought out and effective as the RIAA and MPAA shotgun tactics, and surely doomed to the same negative press and backlash. - jbmercha, on 10/10/2007, -6/+2042
- EntropyMan, on 10/10/2007, -1/+14Answer: because it is trivial to issue proper DMCA notices for the actual infringements and it is criminal to issue false ones. The thing Cory is arguing for is that such notices should come from the copyright holder or their agent, not an industry group increasingly acting like the RIAA and MPAA. SFWA can make it easier for members to issue such notices when they're warranted, but should not make easily avoidable (and potentially costly) mistakes on their behalf.
- digghasnoethics, on 10/10/2007, -1/+12At a bare minimum, the individual responsible should be sacked, the SFWA formally apologise and swear never to do such again, and they should make restitution in significant monetary terms.
Oh, and the individual who claims to be in charge of the SFWA needs to fall on their sword.
Unless such criminal actions hurt the organisation concerned, they will continue to bear false witness in the belief they can get away with it. They need to learn. - averyhoopyfrood, on 10/10/2007, -0/+10Wrong, there are two types of poetry worse than Vogon poetry. The second worst being that of Azgoths of Kria and the very worst being that of Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England but her and her poetry were destroyed along with Earth.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -2/+11http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/vogonpoetry/lettergen.shtml vogon poetry generator
- theinept, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8What purpose does the SFWA serve other than determining what sources of publication are legitimate for entry to the SFWA and perpetuating the easily bought member-voting process for its own Nebula awards? Seems like a self-sustaining organization that isn't really relevant anymore trying to shield itself behind copyright law that even it doesn't understand. Aside from the Writer Beware information, which is freely available to anyone, I don't understand what the organization claims to offer as a service and I don't understand why membership is beneficial to the author. Could you our preferably any member authors clarify? You get free novels sent to you by publishers fishing for Nebulas?
And since when did everything become all rights reserved? Nebula(R), SFWA(R). It's behavior that I would suggest is simply not very Science Fiction. - NSMike, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6Comment Hijack:
aburt@tech-soft.com
That's the e-mail address of the chair of the Copyright Issues committee, Andrew Burt. E-mail him and let him know how you feel.
I plan on asking for a list of all SFWA members so I can promptly stop purchasing their works.
http://www.sfwa.org/org/contacts.htm - Numbers_of_pi, on 10/10/2007, -2/+6Buried as inaccurate, NOTHING is worse than Vogon poetry. :P
just kidding, dugg - bherring, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3I emailed this article to the the SFWA Executive Director and Vice President email accounts. There are more addresses and contact info on their website.
- ihate2reg4u, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4Dugg for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America bringing scribd.com my attention. Thanks! I'm downloading as in speak.
- endlessoul, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4My brain bleeds.
Bleeeeeeeds! - JeremyTolbert, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Originally, SFWA was created to offer services to members, and it still does. It has a disputes group that helps settle contract issues and helps members get paid. And they have an emergency medical fund for members as well. It has a couple of good things going for it, but mostly I agree with you. It's very irrelevant and a bit of an old boy's club to boot.
- Phydeaux, on 10/10/2007, -3/+5Also check out the growing list of places posting variations of this story here:
http://raygunrevival.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?p=6558#6558 - GaiaAP, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3chrissandvick: If true, then that obviously needs to be taken into account, but this IP mania is rapidly beginning to borderline on the outright absurd. These people could learn an important lesson or two from Game Theory; Most notably that the people who become too greedy often gets punished by the collective and end up with nothing at all. Happily, they don't have to recognize that fact voluntarily for the lesson to be imbued eventually by an outraged public. Sounds like somebody needs to read Robert Axelrod's 'The Evolution of Cooperation' - post haste.
- Klarth, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3Actually, there are at least two poets worse than any Vogon's efforts. The poems of the Azagoths of Kria come to mind, along with Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex.
http://www.pictographics.com/poetry.html - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2 Every debate I've ever read on his site he gave the other side all the time and space they wanted to air thier views. Very few people ever change anyones opinion in anything.
Do you have a specific criticism of what he said about the case in question? - sezzme, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3A great quote from singer/songwriter Janis Ian, in an article she wrote here: http://www.janisian.com/article-internet_debacle.html
..."take author Mercedes Lackey, who occupies entire shelves in stores and libraries. As she said herself: "For the past ten years, my three "Arrows" books, which were published by DAW about 15 years ago, have been generating a nice, steady royalty check per pay-period each. A reasonable amount, for fifteen-year-old books. However... I just got the first half of my DAW royalties...And suddenly, out of nowhere, each Arrows book has paid me three times the normal amount!...And because those books have never been out of print, and have always been promoted along with the rest of the backlist, the only significant change during that pay-period was something that happened over at Baen, one of my other publishers. That was when I had my co-author Eric Flint put the first of my Baen books on the Baen Free Library site. Because I have significantly more books with DAW than with Baen, the increases showed up at DAW first.There's an increase in all of the books on that statement, actually, and what it looks like is what I'd expect to happen if a steady line of people who'd never read my stuff encountered it on the Free Library - a certain percentage of them liked it, and started to work through my backlist, beginning with the earliest books published.
"The really interesting thing is, of course, that these aren't Baen books, they're DAW---another publisher---so it's 'name loyalty' rather than 'brand loyalty.' I'll tell you what, I'm sold. Free works."
In other words, the SFWA are being idiots and helping to kill book sales of SF writers with their stupid actions. - Phydo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2To be clear, Scribd doesn't pirate anything, Users upload documents, Scribd hosts documents. Setting aside the question of whether 'pirated' documents actually costs anybody any real money (see John Scalzi's argument of a couple of years ago, here: http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/003538), I think a common sense middle ground here is to make it as easy for an author to take down pirated versions of their works as it is for users to upload them. And authors should be able to easily register their wishes with Scribd whether entire works of theirs should be allowed to be uploaded at all.
Scribd is still a young service, and all this is still shaking out, however Jerry Pournelle's vitriol against Scribd and Cory Doctorow is just sad. You'd think that a forward-thinking SF author of his stature would be able to see that the future is already here, and is different than what he is used to. Some people find it profit to give their works away, and Scribd is great for that. As a small press operator caught up in all this, we are more concerned with obscurity than with 'piracy', so we give our product away. We want people to find our publication, and we want to garner as many eyeballs as we can for our artists and authors. Times change, and we need to change with it.
Johne Cook
Overlord, Ray Gun Revival magazine
http://raygunrevival.com - SPThom, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Dugg for the article being drenched in geeky sci-fi references.
- monkeyboy7706, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Seeing as how the organisation/person that issues the takedown has to swear legally that they are entitled to do this doesn't that make a bogus takedown just as illegal (or even more so) than the supposed copyright infringement?
Maybe RIAA/MPAA/SFWA will be forced to take more people to court in order to pay the expenses of false DMCA notices. This would probably lead to more DMCA notices resulting in the need for more income from taking people to court in order to pay for the new false notices. In other words a vicious circle in which they end up eating themselves up with legal expenses, not knowing who is suing who and end up suing themselves in to bankruptcy. - insomniac8400, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Sounds like tony snow under bush's control.
- hierophantus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Thanks for the cite; I'm going to check that out.
- EntropyMan, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2I'd look at the people wielding those taketown notices for an answer to that question. In this case, I'd bet that Andrew Burt relied a bit too much on his "clever detection algorithm" and didn't even read the full list of works he claimed were infringing.
- deinspanjer, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2If they are going to act alike, they could at least have the decency to change their acronym by switching the W to an A. Then we can continue to use our "Down with the *AA" slogans.
- dlowder, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2GaiaAP: OK, so those who are "too greedy" get punished by the collective. How? If by this, you mean that we should not buy or use the works that they have created, that's fine. That's the free market at work. If you mean that it's OK to steal their work, that's a very dangerous "slippery slope" that we probably don't want to go down as a society. It's a very short distance from there to the point where the "collective" takes your lands and your money if they feel you have too much of either.....
- docwho76, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2If takedown notices are so easy to make then how come all we ever see stories about is how DMCA takedown notices were bungled?
- dromo, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1ironic for a genre that has dealt extensively with patriarchy, control and also knowing the rumour network effects that this is going to create. When will people learn to communicate with their stakeholders transparently?
- in2deep, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2Crazzzzyyy!
- nateslost, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Agreed
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2Those authors should counter sue for defamation of character. Fire Class Action Lawsuit Right back them. Especially the Cory Doctorow who seems to take allot of bad rep because of this.
- EntropyMan, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Good idea. Maybe we'll call them the SFWAA.
- Skooma714, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1ITT post copyrighted material.
It was a bright cold day in April and the clock were str - mariadonovan12, on 12/01/2008, -0/+0To achieve your goals and acquire excellent scores in rica test get logged into the most valid educational testing.
http://test-help.org/rica.htm - Majorkerina, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1I want to have Cory Doctorow's children
- farrellj, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Ya, but the most anyone in Fandom can say about Jerry in a "debate" is that he is mostly deaf...
- farrellj, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1SFWA must have Alzheimer's...They are like the CRIA (Canada's equivalent of the US's RIAA), many of it's members have left, and the younger, more in touch with the technology people are making money, while those who relied on the old business models are slowly but steadily loosing money. If free electronic books are truly taking money away from traditional publishers, that means that there is a demand for for them that is not being met by the traditional publishers. So the traditional publishers should get their head out of the sand and start publishing ebooks that are easy to use, without stupid DRM. As the proud owner of thousands of books, I would gladly have electronic versions, especially since the dead tree Canadian editions are about 20+% more than American editions...and I can do what I currently do with the Baen free download books..store them on my palm pilot, and always have a half dozen books to read with me at all times.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -3/+2 This whole thing is being distorted. I think people need to read what Sci Fi author Jerry Pournelle has to say on the subject.
"The site in question uses other people's works to draw a crowd and thus fulfill their business model. I first learned of them when I found that just about everything I have ever written, alone or with others, was posted in full text. MOTE IN GOD'S EYE. HIGHER EDUCATION (which is STILL there). Many other works by me, Niven, Sheffield, Heinlein, and others. Their response was a demand that I prove ownership of everything they had stolen; they insolently set up a set of hurdles for authors to get their works removed from this den of thieves.
SFWA acted on behalf of a number of actual writers. It was impossible to list each of the thousands of stolen items, so Dr. Burt used a computer generated list. That list may well have included some items to which the thieves had some rights of publication...... "
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/mail481.html - jacquesm, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0jerry pournelle a forward thinking sf author ? he was not cool in the eighties, and not very forward thinking then, now he's just old school trying to hang on to the gravy train.
just another mote in gods eye :) - hierophantus, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1This is even more bogus than the one from yesterday (the Viacom one). At least in the Viacom debacle, you could see why someone dying to believe their copyright was infringed could attest to the infringement for a takedown (even if they were wrong). This here, on the other hand, is just blatantly obvious stupidity. The best example I've seen yet for punishing a bogus takedown attempt.
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