This 'n That (And On Your Face... Or Not)

A laconic young male of my acquaintance, when asked by his father where he had been and what he had been doing, would reply evasively, "This 'n That."

This is not about him.

It's a heads up about author-related items of interest to writers, but there is no uniting theme.

A few years ago, as an indirect result of affordable medical care legislation, TEIGIT (an entertainment industry collective) found it unaffordable to offer group dental insurance to entertainment industry professionals.

Now, Authors Guild members are able to join the Book Industry Health Insurance Program (BIHIP) to buy health insurance with the Lighthouse Insurance Group (LIG).

https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/authors-guild-partners-with-lig-solutions-to-provide-members-health-insurance-options/

Authors Guild dues are on a sliding scale according to the writing income of the member, but most members pay the minimum annual dues of  around $150 per annum.

Refer a friend link. (I have no idea whether or not this benefits this author. I doubt it, but disclose it.)
https://go.authorsguild.org/join?rc=57e0498b09194644

Additional disclaimer: Authors Guild is borderline political, but so far, not so much that dues are not tax deductible.

Authors and other creators who feel like they are being mugged every day by pirates might enjoy the Authors Guild ongoing advocacy against the allegedly lawless Internet Archive.
https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/ia-national-emergency-library-update/

The law office of Littler Mendelson PC has a rather useful, State by State chart of where face mask wearing is recommended or required... or not at all.  You don't have to have anything sitting on your face in Oklahoma, Iowa, or Montana. Which is good to know.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/documents.lexology.com/57310a69-1d92-460f-a21f-72a9929052c7.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAVYILUYJ754JTDY6T&Expires=1592693204&Signature=JJNC%2FUj6pwS0%2BSne2uCIKWZp9J4%3D

Talking of good-to-know stuff, the law office of Frankfurt Kurnit Klein and Selz PC, has a need-to-know breakdown of the recent DMCA report.
https://ipandmedialaw.fkks.com/post/102g8rz/copyright-office-dmca-report-what-you-need-to-know

Kudos to Craig Whitney, Caren Decter, and Christina Campbell. It's actually a very comprehensive article, with hot topics such as the meaning of red flag knowledge, repeat offenders, safe harbors, and an OSP or ISP's ability to control.

For our United Kingdom readers comes a really great analysis of WIPO and poor man's copyright from Dr. Catherine Cotter of Slaughter and May, with kudos to the researcher Emily Costello (no link to Emily available at this time.) Any English-writing writer might like this. (Not "like" in the Facebook sense.) If you are beyond wanting to snail mail a sealed envelope to yourself and preserve it in its intact state, check this out... (and forgive my grammar.)

https://thelens.slaughterandmay.com/post/102g9cb/wipo-brings-poor-mans-copyright-into-digital-age

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

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

EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday   

Congress, Close Those Pirate-Friendly Loopholes, Please!

For the benefit of authors and interested readers of this blog who are not members of Authors' Guild, I am sharing recent news from the Guild.

Dear Member, 

This week, we sent a letter to Congress asking for help in fighting piracy, which affects us all. Authors care about e-book piracy. We hear this increasingly from our members. From 2009 to 2013, the number of Internet piracy alerts we received increased over 300%. In the next year alone, from 2013 to 2014, it doubled. 

There is a direct connection between e-book piracy and authors’ pocketbooks. The publishing industry as a whole loses $80 to $100 million to piracy annually, according to the Association of American Publishers. Many publishers have the resources to adjust their business models to absorb piracy-related losses, but individual authors don’t. Each time a standard frontlist e-book is pirated rather than purchased through a normal retail channel, its author forgoes what would have been nearly $2 in royalties. This adds up and make a real dent in the typical author’s earnings. (According to our recent survey, median writing-related income for full-time authors in 2014 was only $17,500.) 

Despite many publishers’ implementation of anti-piracy software and technological protection measures, the problem continues to grow. According to the International Intellectual Property Alliance, the effectiveness of protection measures is limited by “business models built entirely around manufacturing and distributing technologies, software, devices, components, or tools, or around providing services, to gain unlawful access to the content or to copy it without authorization.” 

So we’re asking Congress to do something about it. This letter, addressed to the House Judiciary Committee (which is spearheading a review of U.S. copyright law), reminds members of Congress that Internet piracy directly harms authors’ ability to make a living. It asks them to consider key changes to the U.S. Copyright Act to give authors a productive remedy for online infringement—not the ineffective, Sisyphean system currently in place, known as “Notice and Takedown.” 

Court decisions have construed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s Notice and Takedown provisions to mean that a copyright owner is required to send a notice for each separate instance (i.e., copy) of infringement, specifying the URL. But as soon as a pirated copy is taken down, it is usually put right back up. Needless to say, copyright owners cannot keep up with this senseless game, and individual authors do not begin to have the resources to send a new notice every time a pirated copy is posted or reposted. 

We are asking for a “Notice and Stay-Down” regime: once a webhost knows a work is being infringed, it should not continue to receive “safe harbor” immunity from claims of infringement unless it takes reasonable measures to remove all infringing copies of the same work. 

You can help supplement our efforts to create more awareness among members of Congress by contacting your Representative to express your support for this change. Feel free to pass along our letter or write your own. And, as always, if you’ve been a victim of Internet piracy, let us know at staff@authorsguild.org.

Full link to the letter: 

http://hosting-source.bm23.com/896/public/Letter_to_Judiciary_Comm._7.9.15.pdf

Do read the letter. It calls out Google Play and the pirated works posted there. I've seen illegal ebook versions of my works posted on other sites with false release dates and false publisher information. 

Like this: (But, I wouldn't visit lacumbre if I were you!)

http://www.lacumbre.com/review-714-498-forced_mate_god_princes_of_tigron_1_/

Publisher

Transworld

Publication date

28th August 2014

ISBN

0505526018

Length

326 pages

Categories

Thrillers

I've never had a contract with Transworld and the book is not a "Thriller". It was released as a paperback, and only as a paperback by Dorchester Publishing's "LoveSpell" imprint.

More anon.

Rowena Cherry

Should First Sale Doctrine Apply To Intellectual Property?

Marilynn Byerly has graciously consented to allow me to repost an article she posted on her own "Adventures In Writing" blog in November 2013.

Marilynn's comments are important as the USPTO is about to host a Roundtable on the topic of copyright reform with regard to whether First Sale Doctrine should apply to digital works, and as a group of Berkeley lawyers attempts to start a "grassroots" movement to change (weaken) copyright protections under the law--which I infer is for the benefit of Amazon, Google, libraries, and freetards-- but not for professional authors.

Should eBooks Be Resold Like Used Paper Books?

The Department of Commerce is asking for comments about 
Digital First Sale and the possible changes to copyright law
 that would allow an ebook to be resold.  

Here’s my letter.

The biggest problem with the resale of “used” e-books 
is e-book piracy.  Some think that cheaper books mean less reason to 
pirate books and that’s true to a certain extent, but used e-books also
mean that authors and publishers will no longer be able to prove 
that an online copy has been stolen.

Right now, publishers and authors license their books to specific 
resellers/distributors like Amazon Kindle, BN’s Nook, and Smashwords. 
If a book is available at any other site, the publisher and author know 
instantly that that book is pirated, and they help the authorities take 
these sites down.  

These sites are fairly common, and some look like legitimate 
book-selling sites so the consumer is no wiser that they are buying
 stolen books.  Some of these sites actually sell the books, others 
are scams which steal credit card information and install viruses 
on the victim’s computer.  

If e-books are sold used, the scam sites will be able to fly under 
the legal radar.

Pirate sites will claim that their books are being given away for free 
by legal owners so they can continue their dispersal of illegal copies.  

If e-books are sold used and a site or individual can sell thousands 
of copies  of the same ebook by saying that they are selling one used,
there will be no way  for the author/publisher to prove this.  
This will essentially make book theft a crime that can’t be punished.

Even readers who want to do the right things by buying legally won’t 
be able to tell who is a legitimate reseller and who isn’t.  

Readers looking for bargains will buy illegal books instead of legal 
ones, the profit margin for authors and publishers which is small now 
will plummet to the point that publishing will no longer be profitable
for anyone, and those who make the money will have done nothing
to create books.  

Allowing the sale of used e-books will destroy all value to copyright.

Marilynn Byerly, Author

Thank you, Marilynn Byerly.

My best wishes,

Rowena Cherry

Open Letter From Authors' Guild (Richard Russo)

Authors are joining The Authors' Guild in record numbers. Here's why:

An Open Letter to My Fellow Authors

It’s all changing, right before our eyes. Not just publishing, but the writing life itself, our ability to make a living from authorship. Even in the best of times, which these are not, most writers have to supplement their writing incomes by teaching, or throwing up sheet-rock, or cage fighting. It wasn’t always so, but for the last two decades I’ve lived the life most writers dream of: I write novels and stories, as well as the occasional screenplay, and every now and then I hit the road for a week or two and give talks. In short, I’m one of the blessed, and not just in terms of my occupation. My health is good, my children grown, their educations paid for. I’m sixty-four, which sucks, but it also means that nothing that happens in publishing—for good or ill—is going to affect me nearly as much as it affects younger writers, especially those who haven’t made their names yet. Even if the e-price of my next novel is $1.99, I won’t have to go back to cage fighting.

 

Still, if it turns out that I’ve enjoyed the best the writing life has to offer, that those who follow, even the most brilliant, will have to settle for less, that won’t make me happy and I suspect it won’t cheer other writers who’ve been as fortunate as I. It’s these writers, in particular, that I’m addressing here. Not everyone believes, as I do, that the writing life is endangered by the downward pressure of e-book pricing, by the relentless, ongoing erosion of copyright protection, by the scorched-earth capitalism of companies like Google and Amazon, by spineless publishers who won’t stand up to them, by the “information wants to be free” crowd who believe that art should be cheap or free and treated as a commodity, by internet search engines who are all too happy to direct people to on-line sites that sell pirated (read “stolen”) books, and even by militant librarians who see no reason why they shouldn’t be able to “lend” our e-books without restriction. But those of us who are alarmed by these trends have a duty, I think, to defend and protect the writing life that’s been good to us, not just on behalf of younger writers who will not have our advantages if we don’t, but also on behalf of readers, whose imaginative lives will be diminished if authorship becomes untenable as a profession.

I know, I know. Some insist that there’s never been a better time to be an author. Self-publishing has democratized the process, they argue, and authors can now earn royalties of up to seventy percent, where once we had to settle for what traditional publishers told us was our share. Anecdotal evidence is marshaled in support of this view (statistical evidence to follow). Those of us who are alarmed, we’re told, are, well, alarmists. Time will tell who’s right, but surely it can’t be a good idea for writers to stand on the sidelines while our collective fate is decided by others. Especially when we consider who those others are. Entities like Google and Apple and Amazon are rich and powerful enough to influence governments, and every day they demonstrate their willingness to wield that enormous power. Books and authors are a tiny but not insignificant part of the larger battle being waged between these companies, a battleground that includes the movie, music, and newspaper industries. I think it’s fair to say that to a greater or lesser degree, those other industries have all gotten their asses kicked, just as we’re getting ours kicked now. And not just in the courts. Somehow, we’re even losing the war for hearts and minds. When we defend copyright, we’re seen as greedy. When we justly sue, we’re seen as litigious. When we attempt to defend the physical book and stores that sell them, we’re seen as Luddites. Our altruism, when we’re able to summon it, is too often seen as self-serving.

But here’s the thing. What the Apples and Googles and Amazons and Netflixes of the world all have in common (in addition to their quest for world domination), is that they’re all starved for content, and for that they need us. Which means we have a say in all this. Everything in the digital age may feel new and may seem to operate under new rules, but the conversation about the relationship between art and commerce is age-old, and artists must be part of it. To that end we’d do well to speak with one voice, though it’s here we demonstrate our greatest weakness. Writers are notoriously independent cusses, hard to wrangle. We spend our mostly solitary days filling up blank pieces of paper with words. We must like it that way, or we wouldn’t do it. But while it’s pretty to think that our odd way of life will endure, there’s no guarantee. The writing life is ours to defend. Protecting it also happens to be the mission of the Authors Guild, which I myself did not join until last year, when the light switch in my cave finally got tripped. Are you a member? If not, please consider becoming one. We’re badly outgunned and in need of reinforcements. If the writing life has done well by you, as it has by me, here’s your chance to return the favor. Do it now, because there’s such a thing as being too late.

Richard Russo
December 2013

 

Click for the Guild application form.

 

Click for the PDF version of this letter.

If you are eligible to join, and decide to do so, you can--if you wish-- give credit on your application form to the author who convinced you to join. 

As an Authors' Guild member, you can buy health coverage. I have their dental coverage through TEIGIT (The Entertainment Industry Group Insurance Trust) which is a Cigna policy. It's great. It even offers orthodontistry coverage.

Best wishes,

Rowena Cherry

Copyright: Those who speak to Congress, speak for themselves.

This week, I respectfully present a round-up of a few discussions of copyright issues around the internet that interest this author.

Most Upsetting (to me)
" .... speakers emphasized education and voluntary cooperation over legislation, even as they acknowledged that voluntary efforts by search engines–a chief gateway to pirated works–had not been effective."

http://www.authorsguild.org/general/no-sopa-speakers-downplay-legislation-at-house-online-piracy-hearing/

Who were the "speakers"? One was John McCoskey, executive VP and CTO of the Motion Picture Association of America.

Allegedly, he said that  "the bad actors were not the search engines but the pirate sites."
That may be the view of the MPAA, but it does not represent the views or experience of many musicians and authors whom I follow.

On the internet, the key to piracy is to follow the money, in this author's opinion. The search engines encourage the creation of pirate sites by making pirate sites profitable. If the search engines were barred by law from also placing paid advertisements on pirate sites and thereby profiting from piracy and making piracy profitable, the search engines might escape blame.

The High Cost of Free (Music)
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/the-high-cost-of-free/Content?oid=3762154
In this article, journalist Kathleen Richards discusses a documentary "Unsound" about how piracy has affected a sampling of musicians.

When she writes, "It's a topic that threatens their livelihoods, yet few have talked about it publicly, because those who have have been criticized and ostracized by the fans they rely on to make a living...." she could equally well be writing about authors.

Cyber-bullying and intimidation are rife when people who don't mind paying for expensive equipment, and for softward to protect "their freedom", become abusive when anyone dares to suggest that the creator of the entertaining content ought to be paid.

However, the comments on this article are mostly by musicians, for musicians, and well worth reading. The coarse and abusive remarks by the pirates and bullies have been removed.

Not so, with the next interesting article on piracy!

Too Many Americans Think Piracy Is Okay.
http://www.thewrap.com/congresswoman-judy-chu-many-americans-think-piracy-okay/
Kudos to Congresswoman Judy Chu for speaking out. Brickbats to the lowlifes who make racist comments about Congresswoman Chu, and vulgar comments about the unfortunate perspective taken by the photographer.

An absolutely typical piratical argument follows these lines quoted in part from one commenter:
"consider the fact that most of us won't have a shred of pity for these billionaire corporations whose members have private islands for themselves while we have to struggle to pay rent. Everyone else in the industry will be completely fine despite piracy. Movies are making more money than ever right now so none of these set-technicians or caterers or whatever will be negatively effected.(sic) Ms. Chu can **** right off."
 
Note the assumptions:
1) All copyright owners are billionaire corporations.
2) Copyright owners own private islands.
3) Income inequality is not fair/People who are not billionaires are justified in pirating.
4) Piracy doesn't hurt anyone at all who works in the entertainment industry.
5) Caterers and set-technicians will not be hurt by piracy.

Finally, whoever JemJem is, one has to admire the succinctness and wit of his/her comment on a hostile Authors' Guild discussion about Judge Denny Chin's volte face on the Google Book Scanning saga.

" Our rights to what's yours supersedes your rights to what's yours."

Apparently, the end justifies the means in Denny Chin's courtroom, and it is not copyright infringement if one scans an entire copyrighted work without permission or compensation as long as one only displays (and makes money from) the parts of the work that people want to read.

Does this open the door to an unauthorized anthology of the world's greatest sex scenes? Would that be transformative?

Opting-in would have made so much more sense, and been so much fairer.

All the best,
Rowena Cherry
SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/