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linking to the Speculations blog anyways. I mean it's not like it isn't the very top story on there or anything . . .

But he writes good sci fi. =)

As long as it's not in ALL CAPS...

Well, you can read up pretty easily by just googling on "Harlan Ellison copyright binaries". The short form is that Ellison discovered some of his works were being posted to an alt.binaries group and got ticked off in his own uniquely Ellisonian ranting, raving, frothing-at-the-mouth way. AOL requested and received a summary judgment because, "Hey, we're complying with the DMCA, therefore we're not liable."

This appeal decision is basically a higher court saying, "Oh, no you're not in full compliance...not only did you change the email address without telling anyone, someone had already told you about it when your email address worked. Let's send this through that lower court one more time."

IANAL and all that, of course.

Harlan Ellison's webpage:

From his NEWS page he's been on a campaign to Kick Internet Piracy.

According to this site, he's been fighting to prevent unauthorized posting of books/creating work on the intarweb without the authors consent...he believes AOL was partly responsible for his works being posted.

TO PROTECT WRITERS' CREATIVE PROPERTIES.

WE FILED A LAWSUIT AGAINST THE ABOVE PARTIES TO STOP THEM FROM POSTING MY WORKS ON THE INTERNET WITHOUT PERMISSION. THIS IS COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT. RAMPANT. OUT OF CONTROL. PANDEMIC.

What I find surprising is that the lower court sided WITH AOL in what looks to be a one sided case in favor of Ellison. How can the lower court support the DMCA and still side with an evil corporation...are they that corrupt now? Do we need federal courts to provide simple justice to the common man now?

I've been fielding communications from people like you for almost nine years now over at Speculations, and I keep saying the same thing to everyone: please don't self-publish your work.

With very few exceptions it ends badly for the author, with a garage full of books, an empty bank account, and no chance of a career as a professional author. Pointers upstream to SFWA and Writer Beware are excellent places to start; I would also recommend looking around the Speculations site, paying particular attention to the Caveat Scrivener section of The Rumor Mill.

Above all things, remember Yog's Law: money flows towards the artist. Never pay anyone to read, edit, represent, review, or publish your work; if you do, you're a sucker, not a professional.

I've been fielding communications from people like you for almost nine years now over at Speculations, and I keep saying the same thing to everyone: please don't self-publish your work.

With very few exceptions it ends badly for the author, with a garage full of books, an empty bank account, and no chance of a career as a professional author. Pointers upstream to SFWA and Writer Beware are excellent places to start; I would also recommend looking around the Speculations site, paying particular attention to the Caveat Scrivener section of The Rumor Mill.

Above all things, remember Yog's Law: money flows towards the artist. Never pay anyone to read, edit, represent, review, or publish your work; if you do, you're a sucker, not a professional.

I've been fielding communications from people like you for almost nine years now over at Speculations, and I keep saying the same thing to everyone: please don't self-publish your work.

With very few exceptions it ends badly for the author, with a garage full of books, an empty bank account, and no chance of a career as a professional author. Pointers upstream to SFWA and Writer Beware are excellent places to start; I would also recommend looking around the Speculations site, paying particular attention to the Caveat Scrivener section of The Rumor Mill.

Above all things, remember Yog's Law: money flows towards the artist. Never pay anyone to read, edit, represent, review, or publish your work; if you do, you're a sucker, not a professional.

Oh, and yes, we've been Slashdotted once ... gosh, that was fun. :)

As for Point Two ... unless 1) somebody posts detailed plot, story, or character information here, 2) you are dumb enough to include it in your book, and 3) your book is lucky enough to make it into print after you include unsolicited fan fiction in it, you should be fine. The SF writing community trades research all the time; you can see it in action over on the SFF.net or Speculations research topics.

Speculations has a ton of good advice, and don't miss The Rumor Mill, especially the Caveat Scrivener sections.

SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. If you know anybody in SFWA, ask to look in the back of the directory at the list of agents representing members.

SFF.net, which hosts most of SFWA's online conversation in newsgroups.

Preditors & Editors is another outstanding resource; if you have any doubts about whether your agent, editor, or publisher is on the level or not, go poke around there.

Speculations has a ton of good advice, and don't miss The Rumor Mill, especially the Caveat Scrivener sections.

SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. If you know anybody in SFWA, ask to look in the back of the directory at the list of agents representing members.

SFF.net, which hosts most of SFWA's online conversation in newsgroups.

Preditors & Editors is another outstanding resource; if you have any doubts about whether your agent, editor, or publisher is on the level or not, go poke around there.

Right. Libraries. The publishing industry doesn't make much of a public fuss of it, but one of the goals that they are starting to consider reachable is using the growing copyright restrictions to shut down public libraries. In the eyes of publishers, libraries are nothing but open copyright violations. All the arguments being made about "piracy" apply directly to libraries.

In some quarters, yes, the above is true. (Harlan Ellison, ^h^h^h.) However, the publishing industry is much more divided on the question of "piracy." The audio industry (the corporations, that is) all agree that song swapping is inherently bad for their business. But in the publishing industry you find people who actually encourage book swapping -- and not just some authors. Check out the Baen Free Library, an archive of freely available books. There are some non-trivial names on the author list there (Jerry Pournelle, Lois McMaster Bujold, Mercedes Lackey) and it has official sponsorship from Baen Books, which is one of the largest publishers of science fiction and fantasy.

The introductory page by Eric Flint, "Introducing the Baen Free Library" is an eloquent argument for the share-and-share-alike crowd. Anyone who is interested in this debate, regardless of which camp you prefer, would be well advised to read that essay. (It's fairly lengthy, but worth the effort.)

This was, by the way, discussed multiple times on Slashdot.

With the second amended complaint, we were able to add a complaint for vicarious infringement against AOL for the development of the Gnutella file transfer protocol by its Nullsoft division. Gnutella is Napster without a central processing hub. By setting up a "sting" operation, one of our investigators was able to track the infringement of several works by Harlan and Isaac Asimov using Gnutella. This presents interesting issues regarding the responsibility for the release of software which effectively pollutes the intellectual property environment.

Note that Harlan didn't type it in, it appears Kent Brewster, the site's editor did. Although the caps do make it seem even more venom-filled!