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Science Fiction Writers Write DMCA Takedowns

Posted by Zonk on from the quit-using-our-free-stuff-for-free dept.

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."

5 of 197 comments (clear)

  1. They will hear from me by N7DR · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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).

    1. Re:They will hear from me by N7DR · · Score: 5, Interesting
      I'm sure they will take you very seriously and alter their current policies lest you write another angry email.

      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.

  2. Irony by Robotech_Master · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
  3. Re:Scribd is at fault here by whoever57 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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).
    If you are in the business of running a website whose mission is to collect documents from users (as Scribd is), then failing to invest in some legal advice on how to handle real and supposed DMCA notices and/or the pitfalls of hosting user-uploaded content is simply irresponsible.
    --
    The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
  4. Some clarification ... by charlie · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.)