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Domain: fictioncircus.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to fictioncircus.com.
Stories · 14
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Apple Censors Ulysses App In Time For Bloomsday
Miracle Jones writes "Apple has censored a 'Ulysses' comic book app — just in time for 'Bloomsday' — because of a picture of Buck Mulligan's stately, plump cartoon penis. Not since Amazon removed digital copies of '1984' from people's Kindles while they slept has there been such a hilarious episode in the ongoing slapstick farce 'Let's See What Happens When Corporations Become Publishers.'" -
Judge Chin Says He Will Cut the Google Book Settlement
Miracle Jones writes "In a move that has shocked the publishing world, Judge Denny Chin has filed a brief saying that he has decided to cut the Google Book Settlement in half, letting Google host the first half of every book the company has scanned, and letting other interested stakeholders fight for the rights to the rest. 'We think this is a hard decision, but a fair one,' said John Peter Franks for Google. 'We would like to be able to host and control whole books, but at least we get the front half.'" -
Ursula Le Guin's Petition Against Google Books
Miracle Jones blogs about the petition against the Google Book Settlement created by science fiction writer Ursula Le Guin, winner of five Hugo awards and six Nebulas. Le Guin is urging professional writers who are opposed to the terms of the settlement to sign her online petition before the January 28th deadline. From the petition: "The free and open dissemination of information and of literature, as it exists in our Public Libraries, can and should exist in the electronic media. All authors hope for that. But we cannot have free and open dissemination of information and literature unless the use of written material continues to be controlled by those who write it or own legitimate right in it. We urge our government and our courts to allow no corporation to circumvent copyright law or dictate the terms of that control." -
Delay, Renegotiation Sought For Google Books Settlement
Miracle Jones writes "The Google Books settlement has been removed from consideration by Google and the Authors Guild after the DoJ made it crystal clear that the settlement would not be ratified 'as is' due to foreign rights, privacy, and antitrust reasons. The October 7th 'fairness hearing' has been canceled, and the next step is a November 6th 'status hearing' where the plaintiffs will reveal changes to the new settlement, such as how they plan to make it more fair, legal, and inclusive, and whether or not they will need to notify all the members of the class action lawsuit (7 million writers or so) yet again as a result of the changes. Some people are very happy about this." -
Opting Out of the Google Books Settlement, Pro & Con
Here are diametrically opposing view on what authors should do about the upcoming deadline to opt out of the Google Books settlement. Miracle Jones writes "The William Morris Agency has come out strongly against the Google Books settlement for its clients, citing the fact that the settlement creates a non-competitive marketplace for a whole new product (orphan books), in addition to containing provisions that will make it impossible for writers to remove books from the database after 27 months have passed: 'We believe that the license being given to Google to publish and display with impunity out-of-print "orphan" works (where the rights owner is unknown and estimated by the Financial Times to be between 2.8 and 5 million books out of 32 million books protected by copyright in the United States) will open the door to establishing Google as the most comprehensive database, potentially a monopoly, with unfair bargaining power.'" On the other side of the debate, James Gleick writes "With the deadline approaching for 'opting out' of the Google Books settlement, the Authors Guild has posted an aggressive explanation of who it thinks should do that: no one. Not a single author in the world, it argues, stands to benefit from removing himself or herself from the class. This comes as part of a new set of 'Answers' meant to push back against what the authors group thinks is widespread confusion about the settlement; they also address questions about just what kind of money we might be talking about, and what kind of control authors will have over Google's use of their work." -
Scribd Becomes a DRM-Optional E-Bookstore
Miracle Jones writes "In an effort to compete with Amazon and Google, the document-hosting website Scribd will now be letting writers and publishers sell documents that they upload. They will be offering an 80/20 profit-sharing deal in favor of writers. Writers will be able to charge whatever they want. In addition, Scribd will not force any content control (although they will have a piracy database and bounce copyrighted scans) and will let writers choose to encrypt their books with DRM or not. This is big news for people in publishing, who have been seeking an alternative to Amazon for fear that Amazon is amassing too much power too quickly in this brand-new marketplace, especially after Amazon's announcement last week that they will now be publishing books as well as selling them." -
Scribd Becomes a DRM-Optional E-Bookstore
Miracle Jones writes "In an effort to compete with Amazon and Google, the document-hosting website Scribd will now be letting writers and publishers sell documents that they upload. They will be offering an 80/20 profit-sharing deal in favor of writers. Writers will be able to charge whatever they want. In addition, Scribd will not force any content control (although they will have a piracy database and bounce copyrighted scans) and will let writers choose to encrypt their books with DRM or not. This is big news for people in publishing, who have been seeking an alternative to Amazon for fear that Amazon is amassing too much power too quickly in this brand-new marketplace, especially after Amazon's announcement last week that they will now be publishing books as well as selling them." -
Google To Remove "Inappropriate" Books From Digital Library
Miracle Jones writes "In an interview with Professor (and former Microsoft employee) James Grimmelmann at the New York Law School, who is both setting up an online clearinghouse to discuss the Google book settlement and drafting an amicus brief to inform the court about the antitrust factors surrounding "orphan books," he revealed that Google will be able to moderate the content of its book scans in the same way that they moderate their YouTube videos, leaving out works that Google deems "inappropriate" from the 7 million library books it has scanned. The Fiction Circus has called for a two-year long rights auction that will ensure that these "inappropriate" titles do not get left behind in the digital era, and that other people who are willing to host and display these books will be able to do so. There is only one week left for authors and publishers to "opt out" of the settlement class and retain their rights or raise objections, and Brewster Kahle's Internet Archive has been stopped from jumping on board Google's settlement as a party defendant and receiving the same legal protections that Google will get. A group of authors, including Philip K. Dick's estate, has tried to delay the settlement for four more months until they get their minds around the issue." In related news, Google is seeking a 60-day extension to the period in which it's attempting to contact authors to inform them of their right to opt-out of the terms of the settlement. -
Google To Remove "Inappropriate" Books From Digital Library
Miracle Jones writes "In an interview with Professor (and former Microsoft employee) James Grimmelmann at the New York Law School, who is both setting up an online clearinghouse to discuss the Google book settlement and drafting an amicus brief to inform the court about the antitrust factors surrounding "orphan books," he revealed that Google will be able to moderate the content of its book scans in the same way that they moderate their YouTube videos, leaving out works that Google deems "inappropriate" from the 7 million library books it has scanned. The Fiction Circus has called for a two-year long rights auction that will ensure that these "inappropriate" titles do not get left behind in the digital era, and that other people who are willing to host and display these books will be able to do so. There is only one week left for authors and publishers to "opt out" of the settlement class and retain their rights or raise objections, and Brewster Kahle's Internet Archive has been stopped from jumping on board Google's settlement as a party defendant and receiving the same legal protections that Google will get. A group of authors, including Philip K. Dick's estate, has tried to delay the settlement for four more months until they get their minds around the issue." In related news, Google is seeking a 60-day extension to the period in which it's attempting to contact authors to inform them of their right to opt-out of the terms of the settlement. -
Internet Archive Seeks Same Online Book Rights As Google
Miracle Jones writes "Brewster Kahle's Internet Archive has jumped on Google's 'Authors Guild' settlement and asked to be included as a party defendant, claiming that they ought to get the same rights and protections from liability that Google will receive when the settlement is approved by federal court. From the Internet Archive's letter to Judge Denny Chin: 'The Archive's text archive would greatly benefit from the same limitation of potential copyright liability that the proposed settlement provides Google. Without such a limitation, the Archive would be unable to provide some of these same services due to the uncertain legal issues surrounding orphan books.'" -
Was the Amazon De-Listing Situation a Glitch Or a Hack?
Miracle Jones writes "As Amazon struggles to re-list and re-rank gay, lesbian, and adult books on their website after massive public outcry against the secretive partitioning process, they are claiming that the entire situation was not the result of an intentional policy at all, are not apologizing, and are instead insisting that the situation was the result of 'a glitch' that they are now trying to fix. While some hackers are claiming credit for 'amazonfail,' and it is indeed possible that an outside party is responsible, most claims have already been debunked. How likely is it that Amazon was hacked versus the likelihood of an internal Easter weekend glitch? Or is the most obvious and likely scenario true, and Amazon simply got caught implementing a wildly-unpopular new policy without telling anyone?" -
Amazon Culls "Offensive" Books From Search System
Miracle Jones writes "Amazon has instituted an overnight policy that removes books that may be deemed offensive from their search system, despite the sales rank of the book and also irrespective of any complaints. Bloggers such as Ed Champion are calling for a 'link and book boycott,' asking people to remove links to Amazon from their web pages and stop buying books from them until the policy is reversed. Will this be bad business for Amazon, or will their new policies keep them out of trouble as they continue to grow and replace bookstores?" -
Harlan Ellison Sues For "Star Trek" Episode
Miracle Jones writes "The ever-quotable speculative fiction writer Harlan Ellison has launched a lawsuit against Paramount and the Writer's Guild West for rights to residuals surrounding his famous and award winning 'City on the Edge of Forever' episode for the original Star Trek series. Ellison, recently featured in the documentary 'Dreams with Sharp Teeth,' said that 'The Trek fans who know my City screenplay understand just exactly why I'm bare-fangs-of-Adamantium about this.' Regarding his lawsuit, he had this to say: 'The arrogance, the pompous dismissive imperial manner of those who "have more important things to worry about," who'll have their assistant get back to you, who don't actually read or create, who merely "take" meetings, and shuffle papers — much of which is paper money denied to those who actually did the manual labor of creating those dreams — they refuse even to notice... until you jam a Federal lawsuit in their eye. To hell with all that obfuscation and phony flag-waving: they got my money. Pay me and pay off all the other writers from whom you've made hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars... from OUR labors... just so you can float your fat asses in warm Bahamian waters.'" -
"Authors Guild" Skims Half of Google Book-Rights Settlement
Miracle Jones writes "A recent memo from the 'Author's Guild' to the writers and publishers that it supposedly represents shows that only $45 million of the $125 million dollar settlement with Google will be paid to writers, and that the most a writer can receive for a book is $300. Many people speculate that Google's monopoly over all of out-of-copyright works will result in a brutal monopoly that will hurt both writers and readers, and that the 'Author's Guild' had no right to make the deal in the first place. How will it all shake down? Should writers be paid at all for their work? Will Google be any good at the publishing racket?"