Science Fiction Writers Write DMCA Takedowns 197
TheGreatGraySkwid writes "With an ironic lack of forward thinking, the Science Fiction Writers of America (or, more specifically, their Vice President Andrew Burt) have issued scattershot DMCA takedown notices against numerous items on the document-sharing site Scribd, many of which were not infringing on SFWA copyrights in any way. It appears that a simple keyword search for prominent science fiction names (like 'Asimov' and 'Silverburg') was used to determine which documents were to be singled out. Included in the documents was Cory Doctorow's 'Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom,' which was released under the Creative Commons license and is freely available at any number of places. Doctorow is up in arms over at BoingBoing, with several other Science Fiction notables speaking up in the comments."
Cory (Score:5, Informative)
I would like to think that this little incident will be a wake up call to these consortium types who go so overboard in "protecting their consituents" but I'm going to take a I'll beleive it when I see it attitude for now.
I hope someone does go after them for this though, if nothing else to add one more precedent to the "frivolous use of DMCA notices" body of law.
Re:Cory (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah I had pretty much the same reaction. That caustic edge left me wondering if maybe he was a nut case. I decided to look up his credentials [wikipedia.org] on Wikipedia. Here is the last paragraph of the 'Fiction' section of the entry for him:
I even when through the last months worth of edits to make sure he had not doctored his biography recently to make himself seem more credible. Personally I think he has decent credentials.
Re:Cory (Score:5, Informative)
Frankly it amazes me that they were dumb enough to include his works, given how outspoken he is on such issues.
And yeah, he's a bit of a nutcase I suppose. ( http://xkcd.com/239/ [xkcd.com] )
Re:Cory (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that someone reading Slashdot doesn't know Cory Doctorow's credentials and wasn't sure whether to trust his Wikipedia entry, let alone know who he is in the first place, is actually a charming example of just how insanely fucking huge the Internet is.
Re:Cory (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm. Maybe it's too good to be true, and it's just cleverly-crafted sarcasm?
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While true, it does give a lot more credibility to its veracity than just looking at the article itself. There is a lot you can glean by browsing the history.
I know everyone likes to show how smart they are by saying "don't trust wikipedia", but for me, "trust" depends not only on the chance of it being false information, but how much damage bad information would give. If I see a mention of Mary Queen of Scots and want more in
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Nonono! That's not at all. It was an entirely sarcasm-free post.
I really am impressed that someone actually checked the history to determine the trustwortiness of the article. In my experience, most people just make a snap judgement one way or the other without checking up.
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Re:Cory (Score:4, Funny)
OMG!! OMG !!
This is the first sign of the apocalypse! It was foretold in chapter three of the holy testaments of the TCP/IP.
Chapter 15 verse 7 of the book of routing.
"and Yea, before the end of time when the routing tables become corrupt and the packets fragment, there shall be a sign. The well of bable, the fountian of inanity will have a single light grow from within. A young new user will go against the word and check the truthiness of the word. Upon this event, the fall of all that is will begin. This will be the warning of the arrival of the rouge router packet horsemen that will start the loss of data, reset TTL counters at random causing packet losses where there should not be any and the bandwidth will fall."
DOOMED! WEARE ALL DOOMED!
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Of course, I like it when skeptics look at and think about the facts - and then decide to join the crusade, anyway.
Re:Cory (Score:4, Funny)
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Ahh, Cory is the author of 0wnz0red. I remember reading that story and liking it a lot. I sent an email to him to thank him for releasing it for free, and he sent me back a really nice reply.
You can add my thumbs up to his credentials, whatever that may be worth.
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Re:Cory (Score:5, Funny)
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I had always been of the impression that irate is measured ellison.
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Not this again... (Score:5, Funny)
We don't need to turn this into another SI vs. Imperial units argument again, do we?
Re:Not this again... (Score:4, Funny)
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Don't get me wrong, I like some of the Lazarus Long stories, but the ending just got... umm... actually, kind of twisted up by it's own past, but that's another thread.
Re:Cory (Score:5, Insightful)
Slightly caustic isn't going to do much about this problem of DMCA notices put up by non-copyright holders, but wouldn't the act of insisting on a improper takedown legally infringe on Doctorow's property? As in he is entitled to damages. Umbrella groups that represent artists are businesses, and the only was to effect the way a business acts is by hitting it in the profit margin. I would love to see Doctorow go after severe punitive damages and then use the money to promote Creative Commons.
They will hear from me (Score:5, Interesting)
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As a paid-up lifetime member of SFWA, you can be sure that I will be asking for an explanation of this action (and clarification/confirmation as to whether this is being done in the name of the SFWA or whether Andrew Burt is simply acting as an individual).
How does your organization work? Does it do this for its members as a service, protecting your copyrights? Do members grant permission for this? If not, they don't have the right to issue DMCA takedowns for copyrights they don't own. Did you have to
Re:They will hear from me (Score:5, Informative)
Well, like many organizations, the word "work" doesn't necessarily describe things very well :-)
Andrew Burt is currently VP, and I have just looked at the current copy of our journal of record, and I can find no hint in the records of Board meetings or in the reports submitted by the individual officers, that this action has been sanctioned as an official act.
And to (finally) answer your question: to the best of my knowledge there is no simple place to sign up for anything like this kind of "service". I could imagine people contacting the SFWA to ask them to help with removal of copyrighted works that that particular individual has found (and for which he owns the copyright), and I would expect the SFWA to help in such an (isolated) instance. But as far as I know, the SFWA has no standing to conduct the kind of sweeping action suggested in TFA, because members do not automatically give it that authority; as far as I know, members would have to do so explicitly, via some kind of definite communication with the SFWA.
Re:They will hear from me (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, Mr AC: firstly it won't be angry; and secondly I have found the people at the helm of the SFWA to be very responsive to their electorate. So I believe that the tone and the content of your response are unnecessarily negative, at least until I receive evidence to the contrary from the SFWA. At this point I am quite prepared to believe that this is all just a misunderstanding or an error by one person.
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Scribd is at fault here (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Scribd is at fault here (Score:4, Informative)
I can understand why Scribd took them down, as lawyers don't come cheap.
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Yeah. Too bad India isn't outsourcing lawyers.
Re:Scribd is at fault here (Score:4, Insightful)
Ignoring a takedown notice that falls short of the technical requirements but that identifies the work infringed, the infringing content, and provides contact information has the legal result that the flawed takedown notice may be used to prove the service provider's knowledge of infringement, and thus have the same effect on liability, as if it were a flawless takedown notice (see 17 U.S.C. 512(c)(3)(B)(ii)). Scribd, therefore, was quite likely required, at a minimum, to contact the complaining party for a proper takedown notice, but just taking the material down avoids the mess of paying a lawyer to find out whether or not they actually have to comply and, if not, what they can get away with, contacting the complaining party, etc.
I don't think its fair to act as if Scribd's is morally obligated to know the precise legal boundaries of what they can get away with and push them (unless they have an explicit contractual obligation to their users to do so).
Re:Scribd is at fault here (Score:5, Interesting)
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However the penalty of perjury per 512(c)(3)(B)(vi) does not stand due to the lack of a statement o
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No, because with or without the penalty of perjury, a material misrepresentation is independently actionable under 17 USC 512(f).
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Well,
If Scribd have procedures other than those prescribed by the DMCA, then Scribd is once again in the wrong.
According to the SWFA Livejournal site [livejournal.com], no DMCA notice was issued to Scribd, so, in this case, I think Jerry
Re:Scribd is at fault here (Score:5, Insightful)
Ignoring the obvious ad hominem, let's look at Jerry's arguments:
"I can say this: Scribd.com which Doctorow defends has the complete text of a number of works. One of them is Sheffield and Pournelle, Higher Education. I guarantee you that neither I nor Charlie's widow has given this outfit any permission to do this. They used to have more of my books, and Niven's, and many others. They also had a series of hoops one had to jump through to get those taken down. The procedure was onerous, and they didn't answer my emails."
Doctorow doesn't defend scribd, and he also voice no objection to authors (or their agents) sending DMCA notices in order to remove truly infringing content. His problem is with SFWA sending fraudulent notices (which of all things wasn't even in a proper format) that resulted in non-infringing material being removed. And those 'series of hoops' [scribd.com] are what's required by the DMCA notice-and-takedown process. It is the law, not some arbitrary attempt on scribd's part in order to make the process more difficult than necessary. If he has a problem with the law he should take his complaints to Congress.
"SFWA will have an answer to Doctorow. Doctorow does not seem to have done his homework regarding DMCA, but that too is hardly astonishing. DMCA has a number of legal requirements for both those asserting their rights under it and those asserting a right to post copies of works without the permission of the copyright owners. I am no expert on those matters, but SFWA has such experts among its membership and supporters."
I find it incredibly hard to respond to that in a non-ridiculing manner. Cory has been working with the Internet and copyright for so long that he should be able to quote the entire DMCA by heart by now (well, maybe not the rider bill concerning the sui generis protection of boat hull designs). If there is someone that doesn't understand the DMCA it is Burt, he didn't even manage to send a proper DMCA notification to scribd. If that's the level of "experts" that SFWA has available, I'd strongly advise them to get outside counsel post haste. Especially now that Burt has exposed the SFWA to liability due to perjury under DMCA 512(f).
And let me repeat; noone has said that sending notices in order to get infringing material removed is wrong. The entire issue is with SFWA sending notices that resulted in non-infringing content, and content from authors that have explicitly allowed for distribution being taken down.
"They made it difficult for writers to ask that their works be taken off: we had to find them and request one at a time and provide them other materials."
That's the way the DMCA works. If he doesn't like, Congress is over there.
"[..] or that the right of Doctorow to have his work displayed on a site that uses piracy to get net traffic is far more important than mine to have a writers organization try to act in my behalf."
The real issue here is what requirements there should be on services that provide 3rd parties the ability to publish stuff. The notice-and-takedown provisions of the DMCA isn't without it's flaws but it is certainly better than nothing. Copyright holders might feel that the current law is too lax or onerous, so I'd be really interested in seeing what kind of system Pournelle would like to replace it with.
And it might also be educational for him to think through the consequences of his proposed system. For starters: What would be the impact on services ranging from MySpace and YouTube down to blogs which allows comments on posts? Could unscrupulous organizations like the Church of Scientology abuse his system to silence online criticism?
Smart people have thought about these questions, and notice-and-takedown and a similar procedure called notice-and-notice are at the top of the pile when it comes to striking a balance between protecting creators, not stifling the creation of new services and avoiding abuse of the system.
Re:Scribd is at fault here (Score:4, Insightful)
"Just to clarify. This letter, sent by Andrew Burt, seems not to be a DMCA notice as a DMCA notice requires some specific statements as to the agent's representation of a copyright holder, which this letter lacks. Indeed, this letter is obviously written as part of a longer back and forth correspondence between Burt and someone at Scribd.
However, in this subsequent letter, Burt falsely claims that the first letter linked was in fact not an "idle musing, but a DMCA notice."
Since the criticism of these letters emerged, we have been told that, in fact, SFWA never sent Scribd a DMCA takedown notice. This is correct.
In other news, I just got a tin deputy badge from a box of Crackerjacks and will be placing some parking tickets I just printed out on my home computer on the windshields of cars on my block. If anyone receiving the ticket asks, yes I am authorized to hand out these tickets and they are real tickets, the fines from which I will collect. If these real tickets get me into trouble, then they are not real tickets and anyone suckered by them is to blame for his own foolishness.
Is that all clear now?"
Irony (Score:5, Interesting)
Andrew Burt was responsible for the first real unfettered access I had to USENET, back in the days when my telnet access was through a CP/CMS machine, and so telnet into Nyx.net [nyx.net] (back when it was still known as nyx.cs.du.edu) was all cluttered with ANSI codes and improper scrolling yet still readable. aburt's Nyx site was where I went to read the anime newsgroup rec.arts.anime that a friend had told me about, and where I was inducted into online writing circles where we wrote our tales and shared our stories freely on the Internet. Though defunct now, alt.pub.dragons-inn and alt.pub.havens-rest were really jumping back in the day.
And Burt was also a more direct champion of writing circles [salon.com], in his work with Critters. According to the article, he believed that espousing some of the principles of the Open Source movement in writing would lead to more and better writers.
And now look what he's doing. What a shame that it should come to this.
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Yeah, I feel like a bit of a chump for donating a thousand bucks for Critters to upgrade their servers a couple years ago.
I'm all for authors having control over their works, but the DMCA is a POS and I'm surprised and disappointed Aburt is going this route. I always thought he had more sense than that. If I find that any computing resources for Critters got misappropriated for this little venture, I'll be a damn sight more than disappointed. I'll be hopping mad that money I give willingly to help suppor
Down and Out et. al. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Down and Out et. al. (Score:5, Informative)
Ray Gun Revival magazine has at least two works that have been removed by Scribd at SFWA's behest merely for mentioning the last names 'Asimov' and 'Heinlein'.
We filed our DMCA counter-notification and are awaiting the mandatory ten day time period.
The story, for me, is recounted here: http://raygunrevival.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?t=139 5&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0 [raygunrevival.com]
one of the tags should be (Score:4, Insightful)
RS
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RS
scribd with non-proprietary sw? (Score:2)
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Not using Linux.
(not really a secret)
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Prominent authors (Score:2)
Silverburg? Really? Last I checked, The Book of Skulls was written by Robert Silverberg (as well as a host of other great books).
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Perhaps the original poster was thinking of Stickwick Stapers by Farles Wickens with four M's and a silent Q.
What a cluster honk (Score:2)
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He should be pissed at them. I would, if this happened to me.
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The problem with being an ass on behalf of others is your clients will be the ones to end up with the worst of the ill will that you generate. It's real shame that Cory can't challenge the offending party to a duel.
Lightsabers?
Laser Guns?
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I don't know about Cory, but I think the system is far from fair. Very far from fair. In many, many ways.
all the best,
drew
http://openphoto.net/gallery/index.html?user_id=1
Some CC BY-SA photos for your enjoyment...
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Oh, you're right. But please supply a better system if you can. I'm all ears. I just don't think it's fair for a few suckers to pay for the content while everyone else tries to justify their sharing/theft by growsing about the current model. To me, copyright is like gravity. It's a weight on your shoulders, but it's better than floating off into the vaccuum of outer space.
I've poked around sites like YouTube, Revver, and Scribd and while they have many great, o
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Oh sure. Go ahead. Criticize. But please try to remember that many writers are doing the best that they can. Jerry Pournelle has been complaining to Scribd [jerrypournelle.com] for some time, but they just ignore his email messages. Not every writer has chosen Cory's path. There's a real danger, though, if Cory's love of anarchy kills the copyright system. I like paying for big Hollywood movies, the morning paper, and the latest song from iTunes. I want some of my money to go ba
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So, Jerry Pournelle can't use Google to find out how to file a proper DMCA takedown or, better yet, find a copyright attorney to do it for him and, if the material isn't taken down "expeditiously", proceed to legal action?
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Foolish, sure, but also illegal.
Huh? (Score:4, Funny)
Well, they ARE infringing in some cases (Score:5, Informative)
Theoretical blathering on copyright aside, unauthorized posting of complete copyrighted works that ought to be a source of income to the writers who write books for a living is not right. There are no MPAA or RIAA strongarm tactics at work here. Rather, there are actual writers attempting to defend their copyrights.
Everyone rightly complains when the RIAA sues a grandmother for $10,000, but if an individual musician requests that a site illegally hosting an entire album stop unauthorized distribution of their work, isn't that a lot different?
RTFA (Score:2)
There are no MPAA or RIAA strongarm tactics at work here. Rather, there are actual writers attempting to defend their copyrights.
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America has used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to fraudulently remove numerous non-infringing works from Scribd, a site that allows the general public to share text files with one another in much the same way that Flickr allows its users to share pictures.
Included in the takedown were: a junior high teacher's bibliography of works that will excite children about reading sf, the back-catalog of a magazine called Ray Gun Revival, books by other authors who h
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Its not being ignored, its irrelevant. The fraudulent ones are still a violation of the law, no matter how many non-fraudulent notices were included along with them.
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Somehow I would respect you more if you were equally angry about both types of violations. Why is it irrelevent if the authors rights are violated, but [cue Dragnet sound track] a violation of the law when your toes are stepped upon?
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How about because yet another "umbrella" organization is acting on the alleged behalf of its members, without checking if it actually represents them, and is using a badly-written law like a giant club in exactly the way tech-savvy people warned the badly-written law was going to be abused?
How about because the removal of illegitima
Re:Well, they ARE infringing in some cases (Score:4, Informative)
The process to remove a work is to provide a notice conforming to 17 USC 512(c)(3)(A), which should take about half an hour if you've actually located infringing content, and by sending that to the registered agent identified on the publicly accessible portion of the website (as required by 17 USC 512(c)(2)), and then check to see if the infringing work is expeditiously removed as required by 17 USC 512(c)(1)(C). If not, file a lawsuit, because the service provider is outside of the DMCA liability shield, and is subject to suit for damages and injunctive relief for the infringment.
If the service provider tries to put you through additional hoops and draw the process out, well, as long as you do what is required and document it, they're the one's left holding the bag.
Anyhow, no amount of actual infringement justifies the illegal (under 17 USC 512(f)) misrepresentation involved in the false claims of copyright ownership and infringement at issue here.
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The interesting thing is, once you take off the OMG DMCA blinders, that is all considerably more heavy-handed than what the SFWA did in this instance.
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Dr. Pournelle is absolutely correct, and he is correct that he hasn't had anything decent published recently. I am sure, as he notes, that he ekes out a meager living on residuals and reprints. The last Pournelle reprint I bought, a "The Mote In God's Eye" recent edition, fell apart before I was half way through the book. So, while I do not support downloading and reading his material for free when it is published on the net without his permission, I had zero qualms about buying a third printing edition
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That's not fair to him. The Burning Tower stuff he's done with Niven is decent, at least. Is it as good as the Mote trilogy? Well, no, but how does your work this week compare to your best output in the last fifty years?
I don't think I've ever seen him rail about people who bought used books. You want to buy books used? Go ahead. This discussion is about a company that's making other people's work available without compensation so they can drive traffic to a site and cash in on advertising.
The other
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It sounds like Dr. Pournelle is unhappy that Scribd is taking advantage of the DMCA's safe harbor provision to make money. While I understand wh
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Pournelle's pissed? So f*cking what? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's ironic that the author of books like "A Step Further Out" in a business which is about giving people a look into possible futures, he hysterically denounces someone who is actively trying to create a future worth living in, apparently, because he himself is incapable of findi
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"Apparently writers who want some control over who displays their works are despicable, but those who want their works displayed by pirate sites have a legitimate grievance."
Hello, dumbshit: it's not a "pirate site" to the extent that it's distributing works with permission. When you send takedown notices, you should be careful that the notices cover only properties to which you own the rights. Otherwise, guess what? You're the pirate.
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My understanding of the DMCA is that there is little accountability for such false accusations, and I see that as one of the big problems. There's no penalty for wrongly jerking someone around unless they choose to come after you in court.
Interesting approach (Score:2)
I have enjoyed reading work from both of these authors for several decades. It's too bad that their names are being besmirched like this.
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If the prominent website goes down, we can still read it here . . .
hawk
Not all SCI FI writers are jerks... (Score:4, Interesting)
Thicker Than Blood [scribd.com]
Come give me a takedown notice for my own book. I'll sue the crap out of you.
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I have received good to great reviews so far, but there are no avenues to promote an book that is strictly a creative commons download. I have submitted the book for more mainstream reviews but I always get the same answer back. Until you have a publisher, we consider you a vanity writer.
In fairness I am pretty sure I can get published but have not perused it yet in part because I do not want to ta
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Dystopias (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank god we have science fiction stories to warn us away from such dystopias.
"Doctorow is up in arms over at BoingBoing" (Score:2)
One Forward, Two Back (Score:2)
I sincerely hope he is doing this on his own, otherwise the ePiracy Committ
SFWA Statement regarding removal of works (Score:5, Informative)
I want to respond to the flurry of activity that has resulted from Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) mistakenly identifying several works as infringing copyright. First, some background. There have been discussions within SFWA for several months regarding websites that allow users to upload documents of all sorts for other users to download and share. Many hundreds of copyrighted texts have been put online at these sites, and the number is growing quickly. Some SFWA members complained about the pirating of their works to SFWA's e-Piracy Committee and authorized the committee to do something about it. SFWA contacted scribd.com, one of these sites, about removing these authors' works and generated a list of infringing works to be removed.
Unfortunately, this list was flawed and the results were not checked. At least three works tagged as copyright infringements were nothing of the sort. I have personally apologized to the writers and editors of those works. If you are a creator who has had material removed and has not yet been contacted, please email me at president@sfwa.org.
SFWA's intention was to remove from scribd.com only works copyrighted by SFWA members who had authorized SFWA to act on their behalf. This kind of error will not happen again.
Michael Capobianco
President, SFWA
DMCA time - 10 Minutes or less (Score:2)
If you find a bunch of them at a single site, you can list them all on a single complaint.
Some clarification ... (Score:5, Interesting)
SFWA is an organization of writers (as in, a herd of semi-feral cats). It's not a distribution cartel like the MPAA or RIAA, and it has not, in point of fact, got very much real-world clout at all.
SFWA is, however, a representative democracy. And the current elected executive officers appear to have decided to take this (in my opinion, bone-headed and incompetent) action on their own initiative.
There is currently a flame war raging inside SFWA over these DMCA takedown notices, with some authors supporting them and others calling for the resignation of the board. I'm not going to name names or tell tales out of school, but please don't assume that this is indicative of some borg-like organization of copyright totalitarians taking aim at your liberties: it's more a symptom of incompetence.
(Meanwhile, some of us are maintaining our SFWA membership specifically to fight this kind of stupidity from within.)
Andrew Burt should be publicly shamed (Score:2)
Even though we've all seen these kind of programs a few ti
The Plastic Age (Score:2)
Asimov has been dead for over a decade, while Silberberg hasn't written anything worth copying in about as long.
Unless they get a holographic C&D from Hari Seldon [wikipedia.org], or send a Skandar [wikipedia.org] around to explain things, they should just treat these threats like a 4th Law of Robotics: ignore it.
Re:Only a Little Bit Pregnant? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think so.
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There are legal ways to use copyrighted material without permission. Thus NOT infringing on the copyright.
Your conclusion is, at best, stupid.
Basic Logic (Score:2)
No, saying that many of the subjects of the supposed DMCA takedown notice were not infringing does not say that the others were infringing; its perfectly consistent with the infringing/non-infringing status of the rest not being readily determinable.
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The site in question is a hosting service for e-books. How would you feel if somebody pulled your website because somebody else using the same ISP happened to have hosted somebody else's copyright works there, and your site happened to mention one of the authors of those works? This is what has happened here.
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On the one hand, I am a tightwad that's willing to buy Eric Flint's book in hardbound because he's cool.
OTOH, I wouldn't waste the effort to cross the street to spit on Harlan Ellison.
Not inspiring hatred from the book buying public can be profitable.
Although it mostly just helps to not be lame and full of yourself (like Ellison).
Re:SFWA represents ... (Score:4, Insightful)
This suggests that every member of SFWA supports what's happened. Since I'm a member of SFWA (indeed, I ran for president of the organization earlier this year and lost), and have access to their private boards and have seen the carnage there, I can tell you authoritatively: It's not even remotely true.
Speaking for myself, I think every author has a right to say how their work should be used and displayed. I also think that this particular maneuver was pretty dumb.
Punishing every member of SFWA because of a jackassed maneuver by one of its officers is like punishing every American because Dick Cheney is busily taking a squat on the Constitution. In both cases, the executive in question does not represent the views of every member.
Re:SFWA represents ... (Score:4, Interesting)
As of today however I will not buy books from people who I know are SWFA members, until the idiots in charge are no longer in charge. Guilt by association I guess, which is bad, but... there ya go.
Either get rid of the nutter (and from what I have read you actually are the person who should be in charge), or leave, or I won't buy your books any more.
Change, change fast, or lose at least one paying customer.
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Suggestions like yours are flogging a horse that's already going as fast as it can; beware, lest you flog it to death.
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Then you'd better plan on not buying my books for several months. I paid my yearly dues today, and while I would be delighted to have the particular person who did this resign (and indeed many people have suggested this should be what happens), I don't see it happening any time soon, since he's not inclined to do so (it would help if he actually beli