Rule 34/slashfiction/etc is legally protected assuming it's licensed correctly.
I want to be very clear about that point. I don't necessary have to agree with, or like, whatever someone writes using that document. That's the whole point.
Anyone who uses it does *not* need my approval and even my explicit disapproval will not remove their protection, again, assuming they're following the licence correctly.
On the subject of fanfiction, I saw a post in another thread (ages ago) that had a really good way of fixing this problem. As the author, release a CC-BY-NC-SA licenced "universe bible" that is specifically built to allow fanfiction. As long as your fans publish whatever they write as a derivative of that document and license it under the CC-BY-NC-SA licence, then they're legally protected. Even if the author goes all Lucas on them.
I'm drafting something like that for my own novels, but I've been snowed under with other writing commitments and my day job that I haven't finished it. A draft is here though:
As an Australian and as a rights holder (who supports CC, fair use, fanfiction, parody/satire, etc) who sees the constant encroachment of the MPAA/RIAA/etc into our legal system, this is only going one way.
Funny, a quick browse of the threads shows a broad spectrum of opinion, civil discussion for the large part (minus one +5 about the US sticking its dick in the asses of every country in the world then invading when they retaliate), and a lot of facts and citations and interesting discussion.
Perhaps what you're trying to say is, "Not everyone agrees with me and this is horrible! Groupthink! Censorship!".
Bonus points: You called Iran a "3rd world theocracy". Do you know who made them into a theocracy by actively overthrowing the democratically elected, reasonably secular leader and installing hardline fundamentalists? I'll give you one guess.
Also, don't fucking go on a massive rant about Subject X. If she asks, "What is Warp?" Just say, "It lets the ship go faster than light." Don't regurgitate the entire Memory Alpha article that you've memorized or possibly helped write.
As someone who introduced my ex to Trek a few years back, and who's still in largely into it despite not being together anymore, I took the simple approach of "show the good, skip the crap".
More specifically, this is what I did:
- Saw Star Trek 2009. Explained beforehand, very briefly, that it was a "darker and edgier reboot" of the original series that for canon purposes took place in an alternate universe. Answer any questions she has ("Why is Spock bleeding green? What is a Romulan? What is Warp?") - Showed her DS9 and TNG, especially First Contact, since that's one of my favourites, along with Generations. - Watched some Voyager, some Enterprise, etc. A bit of everything.
And that was it. Again... show the good stuff, skip the crap stuff ("Threshold"? What is that? I am not aware of any episode with that title). It's a show with a huge body of content; there are some gems in there, but there are some poo nuggets too.
So if the United States sabotages Iranian efforts to develop nuclear power, and they have an energy shortfall which results in 100 preventable deaths of Iranian civilians who were on life support, this is just as bad as if the Iranian cyber-warfare division deliberately cut the power to a US hospital and 100 American civilians on life support died?
Yes, I'm sure they would be seen in exactly the same light by the U.S. administration and public.
Yes, if you jailbreak you can do anything, obviously. Removing WebKit would be a *bit* harder, since I assume it's basically built into the OS in a very deep level, but hey. You start the kickstarter to fund having a team look at ways of replacing it with a suitable alternative, I'll throw in some cash.;)
This is extremely unlikely. I very much doubt that, ever, Apple will ever allow a non-native toolkit to be installed on the iPhone. Their philosophy is "We own and control everything down to the sandboxed app level and manually approve every app", and the official reason why they do this is because it allows for a uniform user experience without weird bugs caused by strange combinations ("When I use Chrome with Gecko some pages render funny!"). The fact that doing so allows them to make dump trucks full of money out of the defacto walled garden is incidental.
More browser competition on the iPhone is fantastic, but it'd be even better if iOS allowed you to change the default browser so that when you tapped a link in an email it would open in that browser. Currently this is not possible; no matter how many browsers you have installed, you tap a link in an app (such as Mail) it opens in Safari. You can't change that, and you can't uninstall Safari, although you can remove it from your quicklaunch tray if you want and put something else there. Doesn't fix the problem though.
I don't really care much for being able to remove Safari -- it's probably arc-welded to the OS anyway, and if you take it off your quicklaunch and change the default browser you'll never see it -- but without the ability to make Junior/Opera/Long Awaited Chrome For iOS/etc your default browser, choice is a bit of an illusion.
They may very well be right! And if you have a [i]scientific[/i] hypothesis about the formation of the world that involves intervention by deities or supernatural forces or even [i]casts serious doubt on the validity of evolution without offering an alternative...[/i] please, step this way and collect your Nobel Prize.
I'm serious. If you could provide a peer reviewed, falsifiable, scientifically valid explaination for the formation of sentient life that relies on a deity you would win every Nobel Prize in the universe. Your name would be remembered alongside Einstein, Darwin, Oppenheimer... you would be hailed as a genius.
The problem is, creationism may be right. It may be 100% true and correct. Every word, every letter of the Bible could be correct. The problem is [i]proving it[/i].
I posit that the universe was created by Twilight Sparkle from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. You always assume the Twilightests are wrong, but what if they aren't? And why is it OK to have multiple points of view in the scientific community, unless you think that the world was created (by a unicorn or other means)*.
*Teaching of this philosophy is now illegal in all states of Australia after the Pinkie Pie/Twilight Sparkle Pony Cult Suicide of 2011.
... but it could be worse. At least it didn't "teach the controversy" by adding in Intelligent Design [s]lies[/s]alternatives, and just removed a few examples. It doesn't seem more than this.
It's interesting, but that's what Amazon has. It actually really relies on what I wrote about purchasing being easy and cheap; to buy is easy, just a 1-click process, but to return you have to go to "My account" / "Manage my Kindle" / "Books" / Scroll down to the book in question / Click / Apply for refund / Enter refund reason / Click go.
For 99c, or $5, or whatever, it's just not worth it for some people. That said, there are a number of people on readers forums who boast that they've never paid for a book because they always just return it when they're done reading it, or return it then buy it again if they want to "keep" it for another 7 days.
I get probably 3-5 returns per 100 sales so I just don't really worry about them and I'm guessing Amazon isn't either, or they'd start tightening the return policy. The only main issue with a lot of returns is if you get a flood of returns all with the same reason ("copyright issues", "poor quality", "typos/editing issues", etc) you can get your book pulled for review.
Look at it this way. If you were at a cinema watching a movie and, at any point for 7 days after watching a film you could stand in line and fill in a short form to get an immediate refund... would you? And we're not talking about $13 or $14 here, it's $5. Or $0.99. Most people can't be bothered.
Some people will, some people will even if they make you fill in a mountain of paperwork, but they'd probably just pirate it anyway. I don't think the 7 day returns policy affects sales much and it's a definite selling point. "Try my book!" I say, "If you don't like it, 7 days, no questions asked return policy, even if you read the whole thing."
I'm an Australian author with two novels, seven short stories and a couple of other things under my belt (sequel's out, woot woot http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0080XLF2Q/). As a natural born citizen and rights holder, I'm sure that the people at this conference would love to hear my voice as a representative of local grown IP, especially one distributed digitally and therefore quite prone to copyright infringement. I look forward to being able to give my piece -- that, in summary, the best way to combat copyright infringement is to:
- Produce a better product than pirated copies (so DRM/FBI warning/copyright warning free) - Which is easy to obtain (Amazon's 1-click buy process) - With sufficient safety nets (7 day no questions asked return policy) - Cheaply (my novels are $5, shorts $0.99) - In a timely fashion all over the world (Australians are used to waiting 3-6 months for TV shows they can bittorrent the day they're broadcasted in the US) - And with sufficient protection for derivatives and fan-works (a Creative Commons, CC-BY-SA-NC licenced universe bible is due out as soon as I apply the last of the polish and hit submit). - Without alienating people who do pirate it anyway (some people, even if it's cheap, readily available, DRM free, timely, safe and reasonably free-as-in-freedom, will not pay and attempting to coerce those people into being customers is not only pointless but detrimental since it makes you look like an arse and writers trade based on their reputation)
I eagerly await my invitation to this discussion which I'm confident will not be dominated by direct representatives of Hollywood insisting we DRM the universe and filter all aspects of the Internet, all in the name of protecting foreign interests to the detriment of domestically produced IP.
OP here. Although the scoop goes to Deadline, Hugh himself made the formal announcement on the Kindleboards (in this thread http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php/topic,113999.0.html ). Note that Hugh is a really awesome guy and was taking the time to respond to each and every comment, but the forums have a "no bumping" rule which meant he's now only posting occasionally to avoid keeping the thread at the top of the Writer's Cafe section which it's dominated since the announcement.
Ahh, Conservapedia. The only way to vandalise CP is to post facts.
It really makes me sad, sometimes, that these people exist -- but I'm glad they're allowed to express their retarded, deranged opinions freely and without fear of retribution... because it allows everyone to see what twats they really are.
There was ONE Indian guy in an early episode of TNG -- I remember because it stood out for me as, wow, there's a non-white, non-black guy! But no Chinese at all. Sulu, Japanese. Hoshi, Japanese. Kim, Korean.
If a Trek ship was truly representative of their ideals, then 1/4 of the ship's population would be Chinese.
A sci-fi with almost all Chinese nationals, with some EU and Iranians thrown in (and a single Australian). The original draft of the story had the Indian Space Agency taking a much bigger role but it got cut for length and story flow reasons.
I'm an Australian author (plug: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006RZNR3Y/ ) who relies exclusively on digital sales and I strongly oppose any such fucking with our legal system.
Go away, AFACT. Nobody wants you to exist. Not the politicians. Not the voters. Not the readers (listeners/viewers/etc). Not the content creators.
Nobody.
AFACT serve only the Hollywood industry who is so inept and out of touch with what's going on around them that they senselessly blunder into things like this. They are dicks and their defeat in court -- an utterly humiliating and complete defeat where they had to pay all of iiNet's costs -- makes me cackle with glee.
Anyone who's read Lacuna knows that I'm a big fan of War of the Worlds. It's public domain now so there are DRM free copies around for nothing.
I mean... It has the heat ray, an invisible beam of heat that was point-and-click death. A laser. But every Hollywood movie ever has lasers being bright beams of light...
War of the Worlds wrote a much more realistic depiction of lasers than almost all movies and did it all [i]before lasers were even invented[/i].
It is a bit depressing, though. Welles wrote the Martian tripods as the most invincible, powerful weapon of war ever conceived. Only we have gotten so good at killing that these days, the version described in the original novel would be defeated laughably easily.
Sometimes things get an extra, unintended, meaning much later...
... go-forward time machine. That way, when Sally McKnight in high school told me, "No way, not if you were literally the last man alive", I can finally test this theory!
I'm not getting absolutely no sex because I'm a hideous subhuman monster, physically and emotionally... no. I'm doing it for SCIENCE.
... Can get you put in prison. And imagine the spin put on this: Technical Slashdot User Enables Child Pedophiles To Avoid Prosecution!
It's like saying driving lessons cause vehicular manslaughter. Or Viagra causes rape.
My question to the people who allow this kind of searching, without warrants or oversight, is... if it's so easy and cheap to bypass and avoid, and even modestly technical people can google for "How Do I Shot Anonymous Internet?", then whyare you really doing it?
Slashdot Mirror
Rule 34/slashfiction/etc is legally protected assuming it's licensed correctly.
I want to be very clear about that point. I don't necessary have to agree with, or like, whatever someone writes using that document. That's the whole point.
Anyone who uses it does *not* need my approval and even my explicit disapproval will not remove their protection, again, assuming they're following the licence correctly.
On the subject of fanfiction, I saw a post in another thread (ages ago) that had a really good way of fixing this problem. As the author, release a CC-BY-NC-SA licenced "universe bible" that is specifically built to allow fanfiction. As long as your fans publish whatever they write as a derivative of that document and license it under the CC-BY-NC-SA licence, then they're legally protected. Even if the author goes all Lucas on them.
I'm drafting something like that for my own novels, but I've been snowed under with other writing commitments and my day job that I haven't finished it. A draft is here though:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hIZbgp1qdfXiML-MkQl-pxvCIjSdDqaXiQTIQIYK6tk/edit?pli=1#
As an Australian and as a rights holder (who supports CC, fair use, fanfiction, parody/satire, etc) who sees the constant encroachment of the MPAA/RIAA/etc into our legal system, this is only going one way.
Away from expanding Fair Use. Which is a shame.
All I can say is,
"It's opt-in. For now."
Funny, a quick browse of the threads shows a broad spectrum of opinion, civil discussion for the large part (minus one +5 about the US sticking its dick in the asses of every country in the world then invading when they retaliate), and a lot of facts and citations and interesting discussion.
Perhaps what you're trying to say is, "Not everyone agrees with me and this is horrible! Groupthink! Censorship!".
Bonus points: You called Iran a "3rd world theocracy". Do you know who made them into a theocracy by actively overthrowing the democratically elected, reasonably secular leader and installing hardline fundamentalists? I'll give you one guess.
Also, don't fucking go on a massive rant about Subject X. If she asks, "What is Warp?" Just say, "It lets the ship go faster than light." Don't regurgitate the entire Memory Alpha article that you've memorized or possibly helped write.
As someone who introduced my ex to Trek a few years back, and who's still in largely into it despite not being together anymore, I took the simple approach of "show the good, skip the crap".
More specifically, this is what I did:
- Saw Star Trek 2009. Explained beforehand, very briefly, that it was a "darker and edgier reboot" of the original series that for canon purposes took place in an alternate universe. Answer any questions she has ("Why is Spock bleeding green? What is a Romulan? What is Warp?")
- Showed her DS9 and TNG, especially First Contact, since that's one of my favourites, along with Generations.
- Watched some Voyager, some Enterprise, etc. A bit of everything.
And that was it. Again... show the good stuff, skip the crap stuff ("Threshold"? What is that? I am not aware of any episode with that title). It's a show with a huge body of content; there are some gems in there, but there are some poo nuggets too.
That was my thought exactly.
So if the United States sabotages Iranian efforts to develop nuclear power, and they have an energy shortfall which results in 100 preventable deaths of Iranian civilians who were on life support, this is just as bad as if the Iranian cyber-warfare division deliberately cut the power to a US hospital and 100 American civilians on life support died?
Yes, I'm sure they would be seen in exactly the same light by the U.S. administration and public.
Yes, if you jailbreak you can do anything, obviously. Removing WebKit would be a *bit* harder, since I assume it's basically built into the OS in a very deep level, but hey. You start the kickstarter to fund having a team look at ways of replacing it with a suitable alternative, I'll throw in some cash. ;)
This is extremely unlikely. I very much doubt that, ever, Apple will ever allow a non-native toolkit to be installed on the iPhone. Their philosophy is "We own and control everything down to the sandboxed app level and manually approve every app", and the official reason why they do this is because it allows for a uniform user experience without weird bugs caused by strange combinations ("When I use Chrome with Gecko some pages render funny!"). The fact that doing so allows them to make dump trucks full of money out of the defacto walled garden is incidental.
More browser competition on the iPhone is fantastic, but it'd be even better if iOS allowed you to change the default browser so that when you tapped a link in an email it would open in that browser. Currently this is not possible; no matter how many browsers you have installed, you tap a link in an app (such as Mail) it opens in Safari. You can't change that, and you can't uninstall Safari, although you can remove it from your quicklaunch tray if you want and put something else there. Doesn't fix the problem though.
I don't really care much for being able to remove Safari -- it's probably arc-welded to the OS anyway, and if you take it off your quicklaunch and change the default browser you'll never see it -- but without the ability to make Junior/Opera/Long Awaited Chrome For iOS/etc your default browser, choice is a bit of an illusion.
They may very well be right! And if you have a [i]scientific[/i] hypothesis about the formation of the world that involves intervention by deities or supernatural forces or even [i]casts serious doubt on the validity of evolution without offering an alternative...[/i] please, step this way and collect your Nobel Prize.
I'm serious. If you could provide a peer reviewed, falsifiable, scientifically valid explaination for the formation of sentient life that relies on a deity you would win every Nobel Prize in the universe. Your name would be remembered alongside Einstein, Darwin, Oppenheimer... you would be hailed as a genius.
The problem is, creationism may be right. It may be 100% true and correct. Every word, every letter of the Bible could be correct. The problem is [i]proving it[/i].
I posit that the universe was created by Twilight Sparkle from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. You always assume the Twilightests are wrong, but what if they aren't? And why is it OK to have multiple points of view in the scientific community, unless you think that the world was created (by a unicorn or other means)*.
*Teaching of this philosophy is now illegal in all states of Australia after the Pinkie Pie/Twilight Sparkle Pony Cult Suicide of 2011.
... but it could be worse. At least it didn't "teach the controversy" by adding in Intelligent Design [s]lies[/s]alternatives, and just removed a few examples. It doesn't seem more than this.
For now.
My face: :(
I'm guessing they mean the ACCC. Can't think of who else they might mean.
It's interesting, but that's what Amazon has. It actually really relies on what I wrote about purchasing being easy and cheap; to buy is easy, just a 1-click process, but to return you have to go to "My account" / "Manage my Kindle" / "Books" / Scroll down to the book in question / Click / Apply for refund / Enter refund reason / Click go.
For 99c, or $5, or whatever, it's just not worth it for some people. That said, there are a number of people on readers forums who boast that they've never paid for a book because they always just return it when they're done reading it, or return it then buy it again if they want to "keep" it for another 7 days.
I get probably 3-5 returns per 100 sales so I just don't really worry about them and I'm guessing Amazon isn't either, or they'd start tightening the return policy. The only main issue with a lot of returns is if you get a flood of returns all with the same reason ("copyright issues", "poor quality", "typos/editing issues", etc) you can get your book pulled for review.
Look at it this way. If you were at a cinema watching a movie and, at any point for 7 days after watching a film you could stand in line and fill in a short form to get an immediate refund... would you? And we're not talking about $13 or $14 here, it's $5. Or $0.99. Most people can't be bothered.
Some people will, some people will even if they make you fill in a mountain of paperwork, but they'd probably just pirate it anyway. I don't think the 7 day returns policy affects sales much and it's a definite selling point. "Try my book!" I say, "If you don't like it, 7 days, no questions asked return policy, even if you read the whole thing."
I'm an Australian author with two novels, seven short stories and a couple of other things under my belt (sequel's out, woot woot http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0080XLF2Q/). As a natural born citizen and rights holder, I'm sure that the people at this conference would love to hear my voice as a representative of local grown IP, especially one distributed digitally and therefore quite prone to copyright infringement. I look forward to being able to give my piece -- that, in summary, the best way to combat copyright infringement is to:
- Produce a better product than pirated copies (so DRM/FBI warning/copyright warning free)
- Which is easy to obtain (Amazon's 1-click buy process)
- With sufficient safety nets (7 day no questions asked return policy)
- Cheaply (my novels are $5, shorts $0.99)
- In a timely fashion all over the world (Australians are used to waiting 3-6 months for TV shows they can bittorrent the day they're broadcasted in the US)
- And with sufficient protection for derivatives and fan-works (a Creative Commons, CC-BY-SA-NC licenced universe bible is due out as soon as I apply the last of the polish and hit submit).
- Without alienating people who do pirate it anyway (some people, even if it's cheap, readily available, DRM free, timely, safe and reasonably free-as-in-freedom, will not pay and attempting to coerce those people into being customers is not only pointless but detrimental since it makes you look like an arse and writers trade based on their reputation)
I eagerly await my invitation to this discussion which I'm confident will not be dominated by direct representatives of Hollywood insisting we DRM the universe and filter all aspects of the Internet, all in the name of protecting foreign interests to the detriment of domestically produced IP.
OP here. Although the scoop goes to Deadline, Hugh himself made the formal announcement on the Kindleboards (in this thread http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php/topic,113999.0.html ). Note that Hugh is a really awesome guy and was taking the time to respond to each and every comment, but the forums have a "no bumping" rule which meant he's now only posting occasionally to avoid keeping the thread at the top of the Writer's Cafe section which it's dominated since the announcement.
Ahh, Conservapedia. The only way to vandalise CP is to post facts.
It really makes me sad, sometimes, that these people exist -- but I'm glad they're allowed to express their retarded, deranged opinions freely and without fear of retribution... because it allows everyone to see what twats they really are.
Fundamentalism is not sexually transmitted, it's generally passed from parent to child.
I have always thought exactly the same thing.
There was ONE Indian guy in an early episode of TNG -- I remember because it stood out for me as, wow, there's a non-white, non-black guy! But no Chinese at all. Sulu, Japanese. Hoshi, Japanese. Kim, Korean.
If a Trek ship was truly representative of their ideals, then 1/4 of the ship's population would be Chinese.
Which is why I wrote this: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006RZNR3Y/
A sci-fi with almost all Chinese nationals, with some EU and Iranians thrown in (and a single Australian). The original draft of the story had the Indian Space Agency taking a much bigger role but it got cut for length and story flow reasons.
I'm an Australian author (plug: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006RZNR3Y/ ) who relies exclusively on digital sales and I strongly oppose any such fucking with our legal system.
Go away, AFACT. Nobody wants you to exist. Not the politicians. Not the voters. Not the readers (listeners/viewers/etc). Not the content creators.
Nobody.
AFACT serve only the Hollywood industry who is so inept and out of touch with what's going on around them that they senselessly blunder into things like this. They are dicks and their defeat in court -- an utterly humiliating and complete defeat where they had to pay all of iiNet's costs -- makes me cackle with glee.
Not dismissing what's obviously a pretty daunting technical challenge, but still. The problem is...
Why would you buy a $250 3D Nvidia card if you didn't care about performance?
Anyone who's read Lacuna knows that I'm a big fan of War of the Worlds. It's public domain now so there are DRM free copies around for nothing.
I mean... It has the heat ray, an invisible beam of heat that was point-and-click death. A laser. But every Hollywood movie ever has lasers being bright beams of light...
War of the Worlds wrote a much more realistic depiction of lasers than almost all movies and did it all [i]before lasers were even invented[/i].
It is a bit depressing, though. Welles wrote the Martian tripods as the most invincible, powerful weapon of war ever conceived. Only we have gotten so good at killing that these days, the version described in the original novel would be defeated laughably easily.
Sometimes things get an extra, unintended, meaning much later...
... go-forward time machine. That way, when Sally McKnight in high school told me, "No way, not if you were literally the last man alive", I can finally test this theory!
I'm not getting absolutely no sex because I'm a hideous subhuman monster, physically and emotionally... no. I'm doing it for SCIENCE.
... Can get you put in prison. And imagine the spin put on this: Technical Slashdot User Enables Child Pedophiles To Avoid Prosecution!
It's like saying driving lessons cause vehicular manslaughter. Or Viagra causes rape.
My question to the people who allow this kind of searching, without warrants or oversight, is... if it's so easy and cheap to bypass and avoid, and even modestly technical people can google for "How Do I Shot Anonymous Internet?", then whyare you really doing it?