Comments on: Science Fiction writers take on Internet pirates

Glaskowsky analyzes a sudden flareup in the fight to protect intellectual-property rights.

[mhenriday]

«[A] more rational attitude»

would be to recognise that in this particular dispute, Cory Doctorow's position that caution and circumspection are required of those who would enforce copyright, so that this right, important as it may be, not be allowed to over-trump one vastly more important, that of freedom of speech and of the press. In this instance, the SWFA had not, as Mr Glaskowsky recognises, done its homework, and richly deserves Mr Doctorow's rebuke. As to Mr Glaskowsky's remark that «the operators apparently don't much care» (that the Scribd site contains copyrighted material), which would seem to indicate that he has privileged access to their innermost motivations, I can only hope that the science fiction from which he presumably derived these god-like powers has been perused with scrupulous respect for all applicable copyright laws....

Henri

[Peter N. Glaskowsky]

Doctorow is no friend of copyright

A respectful, wary neighbor, perhaps, but no friend.

Considering that you can go to that site today and download pretty much anything Robert Heinlein wrote...

and considering that the operators of the site have been informed of this grossly illegal situation...

and considering that they haven't done anything about it...

I don't think I have to be psychic to say they don't much care about other people's intellectual-property rights.

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[jasonbentley]

Corporate Love

It is egregiously disingenuous to name Flickr and then refuse to name Scribd, which you've annointed a "pirate site," completely missing the fact that Flickr is *full* of copyrighted content (and a lot of content that's not).

Granted, Scribd isn't (yet) owned by another corporate behemoth like your buddies at the house of Fake, but to slander a disruptive technology as piracy is short-sighted and just flat-out lame. You're clearly playing favorites.

Scribd is a boon to independent writers. Scribd is also 100% DMCA compliant, an opinion that the EFF concurs with.

[Peter N. Glaskowsky]

I'll cover this in my post tomorrow.

Thanks for the feedback, though, I appreciate it.

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[lodurr]

Careless and erroneous assertions

You make an interesting assertion, which I've seen made elsewhere about Cory Doctorow's original rant on Boing-Boing:

"In his post, Doctorow focused exclusively on the legally published documents, ignoring the fact that the vast majority of documents listed by Burt really were copyright violations."

I found that curious. I have been reading Doctorow's writing on technology and copyright for several years (his SF for only a year or so), and it didn't really sound like him. As a bona fide expert in electronic publishing and online copyright issues, he's usually more careful about that kind of thing.

So I read through the missive again, and I realized that what you're saying is... well, it's false. Plainly false. He clearly states that the document listed copyrighted works by Asimov and Silverberg. He didn't list the total number of entries on the list (no one has, that I've seen, beyond saying "hundreds"), but to read this column one suspects the total number of false-positives to be maybe ten or twenty. (In fact it was at least 80, according to the conservative estimate of one SFWA member.)

In any case, the clear English prose of Doctorow's posting is quite explicit in stating that the list was intended to be a list of copyrighted works of those two authors, and it implies that most of the matter on the list was indeed copyrighted works of those two authors.

What it seems to come down to, then, is that you're requiring a more explicit and precise -- dare I say, _legalistic_ -- statement that yes, indeed, Andrew Burt got most of the list right. Given what's now becoming clear about the sloppiness with which he did his work (e.g., he could not possibly have looked even at every _title_ on the list, or he'd have known just from that he was requesting takedown on stuff he shouldn't be), I find that an odd requirement to place upon an aggrieved party. After all, we're not requiring Jerry Pournelle to even recount the facts of the case accurately (for example, he states as fact that Burt examined each entry, which he clearly did not).

[Aside: why is everyone calling him "Dr. Burt"? He's a professor of computer science. When we're not trying to emphasize their specialness, most speakers of English would not refer to or address computer science professors as "Dr.", but rather as "Professor." For that matter, most of the many PhDs in SFWA (like David Brin, Stanley Schmidt and Gregory Benford) are most often addressed and referenced by their first, last, or full names. For example, nobody's saying "Dr. Pournelle" -- which would be perfectly appropriate, since Jerry Pournelle holds at least one doctorate. The "Dr. Burt" references positively beg to be called out as an oblique appeal to authority.]