The Spider-Man of the sci-fi writing world

I was a big Spider-Man fan when I was a kid. I could never understand why poor Spidey was persecuted by J. Jonah Jameson, editor of the Daily Bugle. I was especially mystified by how easily Jameson could get the police to pursue Spider-Man despite all the obvious good he was doing.

I'd like to think that anyone familiar with the Spider-Man stories--and who isn't, considering that the three recent movies brought in $2.5 billion at the box office plus untold additional revenue from the DVD releases--would appreciate the irony of Peter Parker's position. He does so much good for the world, but he gets persecuted for it.

But obviously that lesson hasn't been learned by some writers and fans who really ought to know better.

Three months ago, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America dissolved a committee created to pursue copyright violations when the committee's chairman, Andrew Burt, made a fairly significant mistake in his dealings with a free text-sharing site called Scribd.

Scribd was hosting thousands of documents violating the copyrights of SFWA members, and declining to cooperate with SFWA's demand that Scribd remove them. Scribd said it was entitled to individual DMCA takedown notices for each one. In truth, however, the DMCA doesn't allow a Web site to hide behind the official takedown process this way. As I explained in my blog posts at the time (part one, part two, part three), the DMCA requires Internet service providers to remove pirated content no matter how they become aware of it.

But Scribd wasn't responding appropriately, telling SFWA to "pound sand" (as writer Jerry Pournelle described it on his blog earlier this week). Burt, perhaps out of frustration, told Scribd to treat a list of apparently infringing documents as if it was a DMCA takedown notice, which it wasn't--but Scribd removed the pirated documents as well as some incorrectly listed items, including a story from writer Cory Doctorow and posted to Scribd by one of his fans.

It's clear to me that in spite of Burt's mistake--he should have made his case on the language of the DMCA rather than incorrectly attempting to convert an informal list into a formal demand--this whole process was a big win for the good guys. A bunch of pirated content was removed, and the other material was restored within days.

But anticopyright activists, with Doctorow in the lead, raised a huge stink over the incident because they felt Burt was acting irresponsibly. They persuaded SFWA to shut down Burt's committee and establish an advisory committee to recommend ways to deal with the threat from book pirates while being more careful about the law.

The advisers released their recommendations on November 1, and about four weeks later, SFWA's board voted to follow almost all of them, creating a new Copyright Committee with a broader charter but closer oversight.

But because the board put Burt in charge of the new committee, all the people who were angry with SFWA over the Scribd affair became outraged all over again.

Andrew Burt

(Credit: Andrewburt.com)

So there we have it. Burt doesn't look anything like Spider-Man, but he's had about the same effect--the streets get cleaned up at the cost of a few sticky bits left hanging around. And what's his reward? A few loudmouths are demanding his arrest and summary execution.

If you aren't impressed by this analogy yet, you have to compare this drawing of J. Jonah Jameson with this photo of Cory Doctorow.

Buzz cut, skimpy facial hair, cancer stick--I rest my case.

Doctorow ought to know better. Even if he prefers to distribute his writings free of charge and make his living another way, he should show more respect for the right of other writers to sell their work. He should be supporting SFWA, not book pirates and those who protect them. And that goes for all the other SFWA members who've been giving SFWA grief over Burt's actions, too.

I just hope the SFWA board stands behind Burt until the current furor dies down and he can get back to work. Scribd still carries huge amounts of pirated content, and there are even worse sites out there that I won't mention. SFWA is in a good position to deal with these sites, and it would be a shame if these efforts were sidetracked by a vocal minority that doesn't particularly care if SFWA continues to exist at all.

[jasonbentleyscribd]

Mr. Pournelle's latest blog post is shot through with exaggerations and downright lies about the whole affair. At no time did anyone at Scribd tell Dr. Burt or anybody else to "pound sand," and I challenge Mr. Pournelle to produce any correspondence that shows we did. He also invents phantom venture capitalists that "stopped talking" to Scribd over the affair. Pournelle may have been a seer in 1979, but much of what has fallen out of his mouth during this affair has been unsubstantiated, exaggerated, distorted bulls***.

While you continue to pound the drums of piracy against Scribd, you might wish to mention our new copyright filtering system beta. It should get your spider senses tingling pretty hard.

More info at http://blog.scribd.com/2007/12/scribd-unveils-text-matching-system.html

[Peter N. Glaskowsky]

Thank you for making it clear that you work for Scribd.

Jerry didn't quote anyone as saying "pound sand". He used that in its traditional metaphorical sense, like "get lost". I put quotes around it here because I was quoting Jerry.

The correspondence I've seen does show that you were insisting on properly formatted DMCA takedown notices before you took any action. That insistence is contrary to your own terms of use as well as the DMCA itself, as I explained in part 2 of my earlier coverage.

You eventually agreed that takedown notices are not strictly required because you did, in fact, act against some of the users and many individual documents without receiving DMCA notices.

Why don't you tell us precisely what Jerry said that was exaggerated or untrue? That would be more useful than just making these vague accusations. You could write it here, or better, send an email to Jerry. I'm pretty sure he'll print anything you send him. Except he's likely to stop reading your email if he encounters the word "bulls***", so you probably shouldn't say that again.

If I said anything untrue here, of course, please tell me what it was, and I'll write a prompt retraction.

Your filtering system is interesting and certainly a step forward. I wonder if there's some way to make this system more generally useful, perhaps by allowing other websites to submit queries against it so that authors don't have to submit all of their work to every document-sharing site on the Internet.

I would also suggest that you update the terms of that service to specify that Scribd will make no other use of the uploaded text, including that it will not be made available to third parties under any circumstances or to Scribd personnel except as required to administer the service. You might someday have an unscrupulous employee who would treat the collection of documents as a personal library, and clear terms prohibiting that kind of activity would help protect your company.