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Science Fiction Writers Write DMCA Takedowns
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."
I read Cory Doctorow's response. It was very insightful, intelligent and on point. There was a slight caustic edge to it but I think that's understandable in this case...
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.
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
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).
Reading the emails, there is no way that they consitute a valid DMCA takedown notice. Thus, Scribd had no obligation to take anything down. Scribd should have demanded a proper notice or ignored the emails.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I thought this was going to be an article about what DMCA takedown notices would look like 50 or 100 years from now.
I hope the DMCA isn't still around in 50 or 100 years, but alas.
How ironic that Andrew Burt should do this.
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 (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, 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.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
I note that Cory's Down and Out... has since been replaced on scribd.com. I wonder if they replaced all of the erroneously (I mean illegally) removed works.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
So what's the secret to reading scribd's material without flash. I refuse to install flash on my Linux systems after previous experiences with flash's binary pukefests.
"many of which were not infringing on SFWA copyrights in any way.
So what you're saying is that yes the site does contain copyrighted materials for which no permission been obtained, and hence it does infringe on the works of some authors?
Sorry chief, but ya do the crime, ya do the time. Be more careful in the future.
Three Squirrels
Does anyone have a list of members of SFWA? I'd like to update my "do not buy from" list.
> prominent science fiction names (like 'Asimov' and 'Silverburg')
Silverburg? Really? Last I checked, The Book of Skulls was written by Robert Silverberg (as well as a host of other great books).
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
They're science fiction writers! Surely they understand that in the new age of freedom that writing a book and giving it away is the way to be now! Making money is for old-fashioned troglodytes who like eating and having a place to live.
And it will only get worse. It was clearly foolish for the organization to send out notices about content it doesn't own. But it's actually a bit counterproductive to make a big deal about this. Written between the lines seems to be the claim, "The SFWA is a bunch of jerks. Whoo hoo. Now I can feel good about myself for pirating, er, sharing so much without paying." Not every writer can get cash from the EFF to support a writing habit. Not every writer can get USC's bursars office to do the rights management. I wish Cory would cut the writers some slack and admit that the copyright system, however flawed, is really pretty fair. If there are n readers who pay for n copies, then everyone pays an equal amount. But if n people buy legit copies and m pirate the work, then it's not fair to the n folks.
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.
Whether or not any of the alleged incidents of infringement was accurate, all of the false accusations were material misrepresentations that are actionable under 17 U.S.C. 512(f). So, clearly, your statement here must be an endorsement of, rather than a challenge to, the criticism leveled by GP.
I can understand why DMCA takedown notices qualify as fiction, but what makes them SCIENCE fiction?
Dr. Jerry Pournelle notes in his daybook (blog... whatever) that scribd has at least one of his works on the site, entirely without permission (and therefore illegally). The process to remove a work is lengthy and emails were apparently not returned. When this sort of abuse of copyright occurs, why is anyone suprised when people who rely on income from their efforts band together to attempt to halt the infringment?
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?
Doctorow's complaint is centered over a take down notice that includes one of his works released under "Creative Commons." For that he is entitled to relief and should have public access to such work restored. In this he has a valid point.
Where Doctorow's thinking goes astray is over matters of Scribd hosting copyrighted works without permission thus denying the copyright holders/authors the income due from their works. This is theft.
As Doctorow points out, the SFWA take down notice appears over broad on the face of it. That is correctable as is copyrighted works being illegally hosted by Scribd.
What also remains is determination over amounts of lost revenue due copy right holders over Scribd's illegal distribution of those works and to what degree Scribd has financially benefited from the theft.
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.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
Thicker Than Blood
Come give me a takedown notice for my own book. I'll sue the crap out of you.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
It's like some bad science fiction story set in the near-future, where automatons are used to enforce the will of idea-owning cartels, empowered by a government that passes laws with unintended though predictable consequences!
Thank god we have science fiction stories to warn us away from such dystopias.
Here you go, scroll down a little bit to see it (Corey Doctorow):
r iday
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/view481.html#F
Read the whole thing
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 have never authorized SFWA to act on their behalf, such as Bruce Sterling, and my [Cory's] own Creative Commons-licensed novel, "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom."
RTFA before saying the summary got the story wrong.
You can't take the sky from me...
Isaac Asimov - Robert Silverberg - David Eddings - Neal Stephenson - William Gibson - SFWA Vice President Andrew Burt
Isaac Asimov - Robert Silverberg - David Eddings - Neal Stephenson - William Gibson - SFWA Vice President Andrew Burt
Isaac Asimov - Robert Silverberg - David Eddings - Neal Stephenson - William Gibson - SFWA Vice President Andrew Burt
Isaac Asimov - Robert Silverberg - David Eddings - Neal Stephenson - William Gibson - SFWA Vice President Andrew Burt
Wonder if I should report to the local federal building or wait for the G-Men to come pick me up now?
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 take a chance that the contract I sign will enable my publisher to attack my fans in my name. Everything that I read indicates that new authors will likely only get one legitimate chance at a real printing with real promotion.
So here I sit. Punished for trying to contribute to this culture, while not attacking it. I feel like a sailor dehydrating while at sea. Water everywhere but not a drop to drink. You seem like the kind of person who is willing to give me the tough criticism I need either in my business strategy or my writing skills. Could you read the book and tell me what you think? How would you proceed from here? Any feedback is welcome.
I am sorry.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
I'm sure he is.
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
I was involved in SFWA's early organizing of what eventually became the ePiracy Committee. They were a very forward thinking bunch and worked very hard to properly protect the works of their members. I did by hand (well, by Forte Agent and WinTrack FTP and web site mirroring) what Burt's program does. Out of 14,000+ hits I had no false positives. That was because I actually looked at what I was doing. It's pretty apparent Burt isn't.
I sincerely hope he is doing this on his own, otherwise the ePiracy Committee is in the process of sabotaging the second part of their stated purpose: "The purpose of SFWA's ePiracy Committee is to minimize the harms from piracy while maximizing respect for our customers." Acting like a street gang is not going to look like respect to any customers.
What makes this all the more mystifying is the fact that SFWA had some very good legal advisers. In fact, they wrote some fairly detailed copyright/anti-piracy/DMCA articles which are still on SFWA's web site. Burt isn't following his own organization's instructions. If he doesn't straighten out he's going to run into a hell of a liability problem, and it won't be just him that has to pay for it.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
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
John Scalzi, freelance troublemaker
If you find a bunch of them at a single site, you can list them all on a single complaint.
It's "copyright", not "copywrite". I'm consistently surprised that so many people get it wrong, but most particularly when an individual is making a generally cognizant argument on the subject.
The utter irony of this action by SFWA boggles my mind. I subscribe to the SFWA Bulletin, and read it quarterly. It is obvious from my reading, that they don't *get* electronic publication. Even though they publish articles in their bulletin basically *admitting* that paper SF magazines are dying a prolonged slow death, they refuse to recognize new models. Flip, paper SF *books* are dying out, their numbers dwindling on the shelves.
On the electronic publishing forefront, consider the case of Ray Gun Revival http://www.raygunrevival.com/. They are a great magazine publishing Space Opera (with fantastic cover art btw). They have peer magazines covering other genre (horror, fantasy, contemporary, etc.). These online magazines, and *many* more like them, represent a new model that can keep SF out there and in front of the upcoming generations that are reading *online* more and more. Hint, hint SFWA!
Yet, SFWA blunders along and creates this fiasco, actually striking a kind of blow against electronic publishers like Ray Gun Revival, and writers like Cory Doctorow who embrace these new models. Scribd is one of the ways that electronic publications, that are not run by the big publishing houses, and writers, make themselves *visible*.
I write SF and fantasy, and I *want* a healthy market for my work, so my hope is that SFWA, which has done a lot of good for writers will get their act together and fix what they have done.
I hadn't heard of Scribd before. Now I might use it.
I hope they appreciate the free advertisement.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
I am an SFWA member.
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.)
Disclaimer - I've lurked here during the many RIAA\MPAA discussions. I wasn't happy with their shotgun approach to legal action, but it wasn't my issue at the time. Now this has arisen, I'm pissed off. Using legal firms which base their entire search on 'keywords' including author's names is unforgivable. If you're going to mess someone's life up with a civil case, get your facts right. Don't just guess. The people who initiate these actions don't seem to understand the effect this has on innocent people lives. Do these people actually understand how much stress a false accusation causes? Do they really want to be as abhored within the geek community (which I imagine is a fairly big customer base for these guys) as the RIAA\MPAA? While I appreciate they feel they have legitimate concerns on some points, I suspect they've hired an 'ambulance chaser'. Wint.
We don't need to turn this into another SI vs. Imperial units argument again, do we?
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Even though we've all seen these kind of programs a few times, I think it is a disgrace that a computer scientist could do something as unprofessional as using a simple substring match against two names in order to determine if a text is under copyright. Not only Mr. Burt should have known better, but he is also sending the message that his education in CS must have been useless, since he chose to ignore it completely. It might have been understandable for someone not formally trained to develop and/or deploy such a poorly designed system, but it is something unacceptable coming from a computer scientist.
With stunts like this one, it is no wonder that disciplines like software engineering are in the sorry state they currently are, with no chance of becoming a real engineering in the near future.
This thing pisses me off, not only because it's an abuse of the law and an insult to authors like Cory Doctorow, but because it's an insult to people (like me) who make an effort to do a good job in a computer related career only to find ten persons doing crap like this for every decent one.
GPG 0x1B479C78
Lazarus would just say that we have too many rules in thus f###### place anyway and its time to get out of here. Anybody seen if there are tickets to Mars yet?
Actually, I thought the goatse reference might increase the number of people who clicked the link (seriously). But anyway, I've never been asked by an author to read his book, so I think I might print some pages and read them on my flight tomorrow. Couldn't you advertise your book using StumbleUpon, or something like it? I am considering doing the same for a technical book I'm planning to write with a friend. Also, some book publishers give away free chapters of novels on college campuses. In my experience the hardcore math/science nerds at Ivy League schools devour scifi books like pizza. Good luck!
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, or send a Skandar around to explain things, they should just treat these threats like a 4th Law of Robotics: ignore it.
--
make install -not war
By infringing on the intellectual property rights of Doctorow and others?
Sending DMCA takedown to Cory Doctorow is like hitting a stone with a knife. Let's watch the clash =) (well, they actually sent it to Scribd, but that doesn't change the point)
http://www.qwantz.com/archive/000469.html
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.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
but it looks like a nice website. They have malthus on the first page and some kind of nifty flash reader.
What other sites are there like scribd? I'd seen project guttenberg before, but their documents tend to be in raw text file format, have typos, etc.
Also, are there sites that have fiction released under creative commons, or some such? A lot of people write fiction they probably couldn't make much money off of (fan fiction and otherwise) and it would be cool to see some massive moderated document repository that I could filter through for good stories.
1. Make list.
2. Check list.
3. Check list.
4. Find out who is naughty or nice.
Ice Cream has no bones.
I don't think I'll be reading anything else by him, paper, legal download, or illegal download unless I get word that it's so outrageously stupid that I can't resist. But only if it's a posting on a publically available website.
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 finding an attorney capable of writing a legitimate DMCA takedown letter.
The Pournelle I grew up respecting would have found the information online himself and Scribd would have pulled his content offsite.
Too bad Pournelle lost sight of what science fiction is all about. I read it as a fun way to get insight into possible futures, some of which I'd like to live in, some I'd like to avoid. Pournelle, like Harlan Ellison has gone from cutting-edge to part of a dying past, and all the people who used to respect him can do for him now is stay out of their way as they lurche towards the tar pits and hope they don't manage to take the entire genre of science fiction along with them. If SF becomes fundamentally irrelevant to modern readers' experience, nobody's going to buy it no matter how much or how little DRM is attached to it and whether or not it's available on BitTorrent or not.
I write the kind of computer how-to articles Pournelle built a good part of his professional reputation on as I have for the last 20 years, I get paid by publishers in the usual way and not by the EFF, and I've got NO sympathy for his viewpoints.
Anyone doing DMCA takedown notices on my behalf for materials copyrighted in my name without my permission had better have a good lawyer. SFWA's assumption that all of their writers want rogue copyright agents using lawbots making bogus claims of representation is abysmally stupid, and all Pournelle's blathering in their defense can't make it otherwise. Not everyone uses the same business model for writing writers from the old days used to.
If Pournelle can't figure this out and responds to people trying to make new business models consistent with the digital age work, why the hell is he still writing SF? The answer, of course, is that a writer who's recycling the same old ideas from a generation ago and has built up an audience can keep on selling "product as usual" to the same bunch of readers. Well, I won't be reading any more of that, obsolescence can be catching and I don't want to pick up any of his. Hint: He's a Vista user. No, I am not kidding.
The stuff I write for money these days is how-tos on making Linux work, the areas I write about is where "point and click" and "plug and play" don't work yet. I write about that instead of about Windows because I think Open Source is where the future is, and I started the Linux learning curve 3 years ago back when it was a lot more painful than it is today because I saw where things were going.
I've done a lot of my SF reading from the Baen Free Library and as a result, Baen has gotten about $100 of my money. "The first taste is always free"... and if one has read 6 books in a series, it's worth buying the 7th book in order to find out NOW what happens in next. While Pournelle could try this himself and make his writing more profitable, if he has nothing left to say worth reading, he probably shouldn't bother.
The most interesting thing about the discussion on Boing-Boing is that the people who are writing cutting-edge SF are the people slamming the SFWA hardest. And it's clear from Pournelle's article that he doesn't even understand why.
The cruellest irony is that while Pournelle waxes hysterical about his work being 'stolen', he hasn't figured out that it isn't worth stealing for anyone who wants to read books that might provide insight into the future. That article of his tells me more than I wanted to know about what he has to say. And
Tech Public Policy stuff
I tire of the many self-righteous comments against the SFWA and Dr. Pournelle. "Oh, how DARE they...!
It's simple: Scribd appears to have been making money off the work of others. They didn't do the due diligence necessary to insure they product they offered didn't belong to others, then made it difficult for those who did the work to contact them and request they quit stealing (yes, stealing). One or more of those victims asked their association to help them, and the SFWA accidentally demanded they take down of more than just the protected works.
Real damage ($$) was done to the authors who's work was improperly taken, like Dr. Pournelle. No real damage ($$) was done to those who's free works were accidentally made unavailable for a short time.
The self righteous are now incensed at those who made an error while trying to stop the theft, call one of the victims names, scream that the SFWA didn't do proper due diligence, ignore that Scribd didn't do any due diligence, and defend those appear to make a living as thieves.
I am ashamed of you! Methinks you should rethink your notions of right and wrong.
READ the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the other amendments! http://lcweb2.loc.gov/const/const.html
Now it's time to use it in the SciFi stories.9 /the-weapons-of-.html
See my small cartoon:
http://geekandpoke.typepad.com/geekandpoke/2007/0
Bye,
Oliver