Scam And Comply.

Victoria Strauss's  "Writer Beware" blog has a comprehensive list of scammers preying on writers. One should bookmark it.

https://accrispin.blogspot.com/2019/08/from-philippines-not-with-love-plague.html?fbclid=IwAR32_XrsidyeVPfyMvrQwYzgfiXsjHzPYGIoQhXGURZHxchOSG6d8pT1Cws

That same part of the world has also taken no small part in ebook piracy.
https://entertainment.mb.com.ph/2018/04/23/fight-against-piracy-continues/

While membership of the Authors Guild may not help writers (much) against piracy, apart from advocacy in all the right and powerful places against all aspects of copyright infringement, Authors Guild can assist members to recognize and avoid bad publishing contracts and disputes with publishers.

https://www.authorsguild.org/member-services/legal-services/

When acting like a bed bug and biting your gigantic host, it's always good to anesthetize them first. Here's the compliance part, which is actually about non-compliance.

Legal blogger Craig L. Cupid, writing for Baker Hostetler has written a three-part blog series about the DMCA and the requirements with which companies must comply in order to merit Safe Harbor protections.

Original:
https://www.copyrightcontentplatforms.com/2019/08/part-1-companies-are-not-complying-with-the-safe-harbor-provision-of-the-dmca/#page=1

Also
https://www.copyrightcontentplatforms.com/

Craig L. Cupid makes the points:

"Three rules associated with these requirements are recurring issues not being addressed by OSPs:

1. OSPs must provide the Copyright Office with their full legal name, physical street address and any alternate names affiliated with the platform.
2. OSPs must register a designated agent to receive copyright infringement notices. The rules require that the agent’s full name, address, phone number and email be publicly accessible on the OSP’s website and that the identical information be provided to the Copyright Office for display in its DMCA directory.
3. OSPs must write, post and implement a repeat infringer policy to govern the takedown process for users who recurrently post copyrighted materials."

Does EBay do #2?  Does Amazon?  Does Facebook? How many times have the copyright owners amongst our readers gone to an OSP site and been given the run-around instead of finding a clear link to a fully named person who is copyright agent, with full contact info?

Another big host, Amazon, is in the news for acting like a flea market.

Bill Bostock, writing for Business Insider, reported this week on the bootleg copies of George Orwell's "1984" being sold by scammers who claim copyright over their versions, and include gibberish and horrible gaffes presumably from a much-relied upon internet translation app.  "Faces" into "Feces".

https://www.businessinsider.com/1984-sold-amazon-text-replaced-gibberish-2019-8

Bill's is a very interesting take on the topic. Highly recommended.

Another sizeable establishment is allegedly attempting to trademark the definite article. That would be the word "The".  (Application No. 88571984).

Alex Nealon, blogging for the law firm Banner Witcoff, reports on Lexology, and also on the Patent Arcade blog about The Ohio State University's quest to patent that word, presumably in the limited context of clothing.

http://patentarcade.com/2019/08/university-attempts-to-trademark-the-most-common-word.html#page=1

Wouldn't "The U", as the University of Miami is known, want to challenge that trademark grab?
Hopefully, someone will tell them.

All the best,
Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/  http://www.rowenacherry.com

EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday

Dystopias

There's a podcast series called Extra Sci-Fi, produced by people who also create podcasts on Extra History and Extra Mythology. All these short (usually around 10 minutes) presentations are entertaining as well as packed with information. Extra Sci-Fi, which has been exploring the history of science fiction, recently completed a sequence about dystopias and apocalypses. This is the first, from which you can follow the subsequent installments:

Extra Sci-Fi

It's interesting to view their survey of dystopian fiction over the decades and witness the changes in what kinds of dystopias and apocalypses resonate with readers as cultural conditions evolve. 1984 and BRAVE NEW WORLD are very different types of cautionary tales from A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, for instance. However, it's worth noting how different 1984 and BRAVE NEW WORLD are from each other, too. Orwell's novel portrays a society that's horribly oppressive for almost everyone, with the possible exception of Inner Party members (and they're constantly watched, too). The proles seem to lead their lives in an attitude of indifference to the all-pervasive surveillance, but still those lives can't be very satisfying in a society of perpetual economic shortages. In Aldous Huxley's world, on the other hand, life is comfortable and full of pleasure. Transient problems can be easily solved by another dose of soma (a happiness drug with no negative side effects) or a fresh love affair. Everybody enjoys his or her work because they're all conditioned from conception to fit into their destined social and economic slot. The only discontented people seem to be a few of the Alphas with enough intelligence and self-awareness to realize what they're missing in this shallow lifestyle. Since "even Alphas are conditioned," though, most of them accept that it's their duty to behave "childishly" for the greater good. Only from the external viewpoint of the reader, and John the Savage as the reader's representative, does the society of BRAVE NEW WORLD appear dystopian.

Ira Levin, author of ROSEMARY'S BABY, wrote a superficially utopian novel called THIS PERFECT DAY. While not very original, it does have some points of interest. For example, the F-word in its sexual sense is commonplace, but terms referring to violence (such as "kill") are taboo. All citizens enjoy security and happiness as long as they obey the rules. Under the surface, though, this conformist society turns out to be cruelly oppressive. In this kind of world, naturally the hero is the character discontented and curious enough to probe beneath the surface and rebel against the ruling authorities' violations of human rights and dignity.

TV Tropes labels a dystopian society that looks pleasant, cheerful, and generally attractive on the surface a Crapsaccharine World:

Crapsaccharine World

The page includes BRAVE NEW WORLD and THIS PERFECT DAY as examples.

This topic came to mind for me while watching the third season of THE HANDMAID'S TALE. Like Margaret Atwood's novel, the TV series portrays the Republic of Gilead as a society that's oppressive and unpleasant for almost everyone except those who manage to reach accommodations with the roles they're forced into. Perhaps the children growing up in Gilead, if its regime lasts that long, will simply accept those roles as "normal." In the series, as opposed to the book (except in the epilogue set long after the fall of Gilead), we at least get some relief from horrors by way of the scenes set in Canada. The only people likely to be content in Gilead, the Commanders with their privileges, power, and material luxuries, still have to face competition from their peers, so they may not enjoy complete happiness either. Junior Commanders and the Guardians, one assumes, have to watch their backs all the time. The Wives, although pampered, lead very circumscribed lives, endure the monthly humiliation of the Ceremony (embracing a Handmaid while the Wife's husband ritually rapes her), and have no real power aside from their potential influence over their husbands. Presumably a Wife who becomes a mother (through the surrogate maternity of a Handmaid) may find fulfillment in her child. As for the common people, married couples have to face the lurking danger that an econo-wife who proves fertile may be forced to become a Handmaid. Then there's the threat of execution or a slow death in the Colonies as punishment for transgressions. The only women with any actual power seem to be the Aunts, who exercise control over the Handmaids and perform the vital function of midwifery.

Pioneering behaviorist B. F. Skinner wrote a book provocatively titled BEYOND FREEDOM AND DIGNITY. A society such as Huxley's in BRAVE NEW WORLD offers and generally provides happiness for all, except for the very few who still care about freedom and dignity. The world of THIS PERFECT DAY and Crapsaccharine Worlds in general seem to offer that promise of happiness, which works as long as nobody probes too deeply. Then we have the downright horrible dystopias such as 1984, THE HUNGER GAMES, and THE HANDMAID'S TALE, dooming all but the privileged few to a miserable existence. Maybe the underlying theme of all types of dystopian SF is that warped societies, including those that look pleasant on the surface, aren't good for anyone, even the apparently privileged elites.

Of course, as Cory Doctorow says in his blog on "fake news" (which I linked to recently), that kind of fiction doesn't give us predictions, but rather warnings: "If this goes on. . . . "

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Common Assumptions

In his essay "On the Reading of Old Books" (written as the introduction to a 1943 translation of St. Athanasius's book on the Incarnation), C. S. Lewis explains why he thinks it vital for modern people to read old books:

"All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook—even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united—united with each other and against earlier and later ages—by a great mass of common assumptions. We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century—the blindness about which posterity will ask, 'But how could they have thought that?'—lies where we have never suspected it, and concerns something about which there is untroubled agreement between Hitler and President Roosevelt or between Mr. H. G. Wells and Karl Barth."

Therefore, says Lewis, we need the literature of past ages to awaken us to the truth that the "common assumptions" of one era aren't necessarily those of another, and ours might actually be wrong. Speaking of the "contemporary outlook" of Lewis's own period, through much of the twentieth century experts in psychology and sociology held the shared assumption that no inborn "human nature" existed, that the human mind and personality were almost infinitely malleable—the theory of the "blank slate." We meet versions of that belief in works as different as Lewis's THE ABOLITION OF MAN (where he views the prospect with alarm), Huxley's BRAVE NEW WORLD, Orwell's 1984, Skinner's WALDEN TWO, and Heinlein's first novel (published posthumously), FOR US, THE LIVING. Later research in psychology, neurology, etc. has decisively overturned that theoretical construct, as explored in great detail in Steven Pinker's THE BLANK SLATE.

Whatever our positions on the political spectrum, in the contemporary world we embrace certain common assumptions that may not have been shared by people of earlier periods. We now believe everybody should receive a free basic education, a fairly new concept even in our own country. In contrast to our culture's acceptance of casual racism a mere sixty years ago, now racial prejudice is unequivocally condemned. Whatever their exact views, all citizens except members of lunatic fringe groups deny being racists. Outward respect for individual rights has become practically worldwide. Dictatorships call themselves republics and claim to grant their citizens fundamental human rights. In our country, all sides claim they want to protect the environment and conserve energy; disputes revolve around exactly how to go about reaching those goals. Everybody in the civilized world supposedly respects and values human life, even if in some regions and subcultures there's little evidence of this value being practiced. One universally accepted principle in the modern, industrialized world is that children and especially babies are so precious that we should go to any lengths to protect them and extend their lives. For instance, expending huge amounts of energy and money to keep a premature baby alive is considered not only meritorious but often obligatory. The only differences on this topic among various factions of our society involve how much effort is reasonable and where the cutoff line should be drawn (e.g., how developed a preemie should be to receive this degree of medical attention, at what stage and for what reasons abortion should be allowed, etc.). Yet in many pre-industrial societies, it was obligatory to allow a very premature newborn or one with severe birth defects to die; expending resources on an infant who would almost certainly die anyway would be condemned as detrimental to the welfare of the family and tribe. The development of advanced medical technology has probably played a vital part in changing attitudes like this to the opposite belief we hold in contemporary society.

It's likely that alien cultures we encounter will have different universal assumptions from our own. In Heinlein's STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND, Mike (the human "Martian") reports that on Mars competition between individuals occurs in childhood instead of adulthood. Infants, rather than being cherished, are cast out to survive as best they can, then re-admitted to the community after they've proven their fitness. To creatures who've evolved as units in a hive mind, the value we place on individual rights would make no sense. A member of a solitary species wouldn't understand the concept of loyalty to a group. Where might the "characteristic blindness" of our time and place in history be lurking?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Round-Up Of Other People's Copyright-Related Opinions

This will be brief... but if you click the links, you will find plenty to read!

This links to The Atlantic and chronicles just how easy e-books have made life for plagiarists and copyright infringers. Really, IMHO, publishers and authors may have made a huge long term mistake in jumping aboard (before they were well and truly ready) when Amazon launched the Kindle.

To read:
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/06/plagiarism-in-the-age-of-self-publishing/485525/
 
Caveat, according to a conversation I had recently with a female millennial, only "strange"and "unpopular"  people like science fiction and science fact, and see the fascination in mixing Psychology with Politics and Power. Alas! To my way of thinking, this is all grist for SF plots, because few people would believe what could be going on, right at our fingertips... unless they grew up reading "1984", "Brave New World" and the like.

To read:
http://www.citizen.org/documents/Google-Political-Spending-Mission-Creepy.pdf

Or watch...   this one goes to a video.  The conclusions are very Big Brotherish, and alarmingly logical. Big Brother is not only watching you, he is telling you what to think.  And have you noticed? The government will prosecute you for real if they find out that you don't think the "settled" way about certain matters! How safe are you from detection if you "search" using politically incorrect search terms?

If a large population gets all their news from the internet, and they find most of their news by conducting a search, and the search engine "helpfully guesses" the rest of the sentence as they are typing, it should be possible to lead people to think the way one wants them to think.

To watch:
https://musictechpolicy.com/2016/06/10/google-has-been-actively-altering-search-results-to-favor-hillary-clinton/

I think I'll try to duplicate the experiment. But, here's a funny thing. I've provided three links. I cut and pasted all of them from my email "Draft" folder. (My habit is, when I find something interesting during the week, I start a brief email to myself and save it for you all.) For each link, I pasted it on the page, then I hit the "Link" function and made sure that the link work.  However, when I checked "preview" only one of the three showed up. Hmmm. So, I colored them yellow... and now they show up as pink. I've added second urls and all seems to be well, so I guess I made a mistake.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry