Ripped

This week's theme is either "ripped off" or "ripped from..."

The copyrightalliance.org has a ripped-from-the-headlines (in other words "topical") question and answer page that currently discusses copyright related to tattoos, fair use by political campaigns or music, copyright protection for tweets, emojis, and much more.

https://copyrightalliance.org/education/qa-headlines/

The Electronic Freedom Foundation has an interesting article by Cooper Quintin and Beryl Lipton about a very frightening patent designed to rip off anyone with whom an incarcerated person communicates.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/09/prison-surveillance-catalog-monitoring-online-purchases-inmates-family-and-friends

Is it right that the government could trick a person who might be related to an inmate into revealing their own Amazon purchasing habits and history? 

EFF's Chao Liu writes about a company called Clearview that wants to rip off your face, not literally.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/09/federal-government-just-cant-get-enough-your-face

The greatest concern, perhaps, is that bad Artificial Intelligence can increase the likelihood of false arrest and mistaken identity (not necessarily in that order).  

 

Matthew Guariglia of EFF discusses the "afterlife" problem with biometric surveillance, collection, and data retention, especially by the military.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/09/lessons-history-afghanistan-and-dangerous-afterlives-identifying-data

 

 

Over-reach in data gathering is everywhere. The law firm Hunton Andrews Kurth discusses how New York City wants food delivery services to share their customer data with restaurants.

https://www.huntonprivacyblog.com/2021/09/17/new-york-city-to-require-food-delivery-services-to-share-customer-data-with-restaurants/#page=1

Customers do have the right to deny food delivery services and restaurants this information, but customers must affirmatively opt out.

 

The law firm of Squire Patton Boggs has a Consumer Privacy World blog, which is well worth following. This last week, their legal bloggers Kristin Bryan and Alexis Chandler  gave an update on the massive T-Mobile data breach and resulting litigation.

https://www.consumerprivacyworld.com/2021/09/t-mobile-named-as-a-defendant-in-nearly-30-data-privacy-litigations-in-wake-of-massive-cyberattack-where-are-we-now-a-month-in/#page=1

 

 

For Brodies LLP, Niall McLean has cautionary advice for writers about recycling old news. It is important to know that distressing information that might once have been newsworthy and in the public domain may, after the passage of time, be private and not in the public interest any more. The case is in the UK, but it's good to know.

https://brodies.com/insights/reputation-management/historically-public-presently-private/

 

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ 

http://www.spacesnark.com/  http://www.rowenacherry.com

EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday

Karen Wiesner: The Stories Behind Classic Fairy Tales (Woodcutter's Grim Series), Part 5

WOODCUTTER’S GRIM SERIES—

Classic Tales of Horror Retold

 This is the fifth of eight posts focusing on my Woodcutter's Grim Series and the stories behind classic fairy tales.

For the ten generations since the evil first came to Woodcutter's Grim, the Guardians have sworn an oath to protect the town from the childhood horrors that lurk in the black woods. Without them, the town would be defenseless…and the terrors would escape to the world at large. 

HUNTER'S BLUES, Book 9 (A Mirror Darkly World Novel)

 by Karen Wiesner

Supernatural Fantasy Romance/Mild Horror Novel

** Loosely based on “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”. When the evil in Woodcutter’s Grim unleashed, humans turned into ghouls with the instinct to contaminate others. The Protectorate—the guardians sworn to protect the town—are all that hold the threat at bay. Guardian hunter Reece Pallaton discovers the source of the evil, the mirror that’s only the opposite half of the “glass darkly” world he lives in, and his own terrifying connection to both. **

I started outlining this book while I was writing my second Writer’s Digest Books craft reference, FROM FIRST DRAFT TO FINISHED NOVEL (which was changed back to its original title COHESIVE STORY BUILDING after I got the rights back to the book and had it reissued). I was planning to use HUNTER'S BLUES as an example for that writing reference, but never did. Basically, I got a lot of the outline written during that time, but it kind of fell into the background because I was working on the new craft book. Much later, I started thinking that maybe there was a way I could turn this into a Woodcutter’s Grim Series novel. In this "mirror darkly world"* of Woodcutter’s Grim, the Protectorate has become hunters, keeping the zombies (they call them "ghouls") that have proliferated on the Earth at bay, and it’s not a fun job even as it is a never-ending one.

*Star Trek has this whole "mirror universe" plotline that most of their series have versions of, in which the normal characters in the show have evil counterparts in a mirror universe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_Universe That's kind of what my Mirror Darkly World is grounded in. It's like a very dark version of the real world that all the previous books in the series were set in.

When I first decided to make HUNTER'S BLUES part of the Woodcutter's Grim Series, I choose a deeply disturbed obscure fairy tale about a woman who tricks her husband into eating his own son for the fairy tale my story would parallel, however loosely. Talk about dark! I couldn't come with any ideas in that vein though. "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" made so much sense, especially in light of who (and what) Tess (from "Beauty is the Beast" , Book 7, WOODCUTTER'S GRIM SERIES, Volume II).

The graphic on the cover of HUNTER'S BLUES really caught my eye when I stumbled upon it. Within the story notes I’d come up with, I had ideas about Reece disappearing for stretches of times, waking up and wondering where he is. This graphic gave me the concept of where he was when he disappeared and how seeing Shell “through a glass darkly” brought him back each time. While that's not the way the story ultimately worked out (it was his father who was trapped in an in-between world, mainly, and who used the mirror to look back on Woodcutter's Grim), I think the cover nevertheless works.

The development of this book was so strange. It never actually fit into Woodcutter's Grim per se, even after I finished writing it and it was published. In ways, the town of Woodcutter's Grim was like a futuristic version of the town in all previous stories in the series, so that's why, for first couple years after it was published, it had the subtitle of being a "futuristic" novel in the series. That was my attempt to make sense of how it fit into the series. But it didn't quite work. I didn't become aware until much later, when I began work on BRIDGE OF FIRE, Book 10 that it was wholly inaccurate. I realized then that the complication in describing the timeline is that HUNTER'S BLUES is set in a mirror world of Woodcutter's Grim.

When I was first outlining HUNTER'S BLUES, trying to figure out how all this was supposed to work, gave me endless headaches. More than once, I thought about giving up because I felt like there was no way to sort it all out. But I did eventually, and the explanation is in this graphic I created to make sense of it all:

HUNTER'S BLUES is set in the Mirror Darkly World of Woodcutter's Grim (while the rest of the previous books were set in the Real World of Woodcutter's Grim). In the Mirror Darkly World, the Protectorate's unofficial guardian is Reece Pallaton (Gabe Reece is guardian in the Real World). Until I wrote BRIDGE OF FIRE, I didn't realize just how important the Pallatons would end up in the entire series.

An obscure and impossible-to-confirm origin story of Snow White says that the classic fairy tale was based on the life of a German countess. At the age of 16, she was forced out of her home by her stepmother. She ended up falling for a prince and, given the politically inconvenient nature of the relationship, the girl's disappearance was more than a little mysterious. Was she poisoned? The girl's father also reputedly owned a few copper mines that employed slave children who, through maltreatment, were severely stunted and deformed. https://random-times.com/2020/02/08/the-dark-origins-of-the-fairy-tale-snow-white-and-the-seven-dwarfs/

Reviews and Honors for HUNTER'S BLUES:

5 star review from Linda's Reviews

4 star review from Huntress Reviews

HUNTER'S BLUES is a dark tale and it even has zombies (or ghouls), which is very "un-fairy tale-like"! Do you like stories with zombies? Leave a comment to tell me about it!

Happy reading!

Find out more about this book and Woodcutter's Grim Series here:

http://www.writers-exchange.com/woodcutters-grim-series/

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08MLBYBH1

Karen is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 140 titles and 16 series. Visit her here:

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

https://www.goodreads.com/karenwiesner

http://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/ 

http://www.writers-exchange.com/blog/ 

https://www.amazon.com/author/karenwiesner 

Writers' Rituals

Here's an article by Stephen Graham Jones that cautions writers against falling into the habit of depending on "rituals" to start a writing session:

The Case Against Writing Rituals

By "rituals," he refers to elements along the lines of a favorite mug, a particular type of pen, or, as he admits having succumbed to at one point, a "lucky" hat. He also includes in that category needing a quiet environment or a certain block of time to generate wordage, things that I wouldn't have thought of as rituals. He has trained himself to write anywhere, for as long a time as the situation allows, with whatever tools may be at hand. He also discusses a more insidious habit, a routine of reading e-mail and checking social media pages before easing into a creative session. I wouldn't have called that behavior a "ritual," either, but on reflection it does qualify for the label. I admit to a similar tendency to feel I must clear away the daily computer chores that don't require much thought before diving into the work of writing. Too often, getting through the minutiae leaves less time for actual work than I'd expected.

Somewhere Isaac Asimov recounts an interview when he was asked whether he performed any pre-writing rituals. After a puzzled inquiry about what the interviewer meant by "ritual," he answered something like, "I put paper in the typewriter" (or, later, turn on the word processor). As anyone who's read his memoirs or autobiographical essays will recall, Asimov really could write anywhere. When forced to travel, even for nominal vacations, he took his "work" with him. That's one factor he credited for his prolific output.

Maybe Stephen Jones's disapproval of rituals isn't completely justified, though. Can't they have a sort of placebo effect? Mightn't it be helpful to have an established process that primes the creative part of the brain to get into gear?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

No Trivial Matter

"No Trivial Matter" might be an example of litotes. When one aggrieved party takes the time, trouble, and expense to go before a judge, it cannot be trivial to them, can it?

A slur could be Tweet-length, and yet be profound in its impact. A photographer's copyright could be infringed unseen, and not be legally "De Minimus".

We'll start with the short form slurs (my own characterization, chosen for the sibilance... and to digress, one online dictionary defines "sibilance" as "having a sibilant quality" !) 

 

From an influencer with a self-alleged botched bottom, to a rural parking dispute (and much more) legal bloggers Emily Cox and Paloma Kotecha  representing the UK law firm of Stewarts LLP tell a series of defamation-related stories:

The Rise And Rise Of Defamation On Social Media.

Lexology Link

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=e41bf662-4eda-4fe9-b5a1-7418b2c0d9d8

 

Original Link

https://www.stewartslaw.com/news/the-rise-and-rise-of-defamation-on-social-media/

 

Defamation on Facebook seems to be a hot topic Down Under, with indications that media companies with pages on Facebook might be held as liable as any publisher, as far as Australian law goes, for defamatory content posted by Facebook users on the media's pages.

Christine Wong and Greta Ulbrick of Herbert Smith Freehills LLP explain the latest thinking on defamation law for the digital age:

Lexology Link:

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=39e86874-023d-4b3b-9409-15503466b489

 

Original Link:

https://www.herbertsmithfreehills.com/latest-thinking/defamation-law-for-the-digital-age-the-high-court-decides-media-companies-are-

The media allegedly tried to claim a defense of innocent dissemination.

All bloggers and writers and publishers should take note and beware of "innocent dissemination". Moderating comments would be a good start.

Apropos of nothing...except perhaps running your own small business website, possibly as an author, the Eastern District of New York has recently held that stand-alone websites (not linked to your own bricks-and-mortar bookshop, for instance) are not subject to the Americans With Disabilities Act.

If that was a concern for any of our dear readers, find out more from an Advertising Law blog article by Caren Decter for Frankfurt Kurnit Klein and Selz PC.

Original Link:

https://advertisinglaw.fkks.com/post/102h6jd/edny-holds-that-stand-alone-websites-are-not-subject-to-the-ada

 

Finally. for the law firm Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP (which I am delighted to get my tongue around), legal bloggers Benjamin E. Marks and Michael Goodyear ask "Is There a De Minimus Defense For Trivial Use of Concededly Infringing Material...?"

Can't you just picture Dirty Harry asking that question?  Seriously, the well reasoned answer might surprise at first reading.

Lexology link:

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=f3b1f4f3-5d49-417d-8cae-3d39861b7174

 

Original link:

https://www.weil.com/-/media/mailings/2021/q2/ipmediaalert202109.pdf

There's a lot to unpack in the case (pardon the pun), but when it comes to copyright, if you copy the entire work, you cannot claim a De Minimus defense. The.pdf version is especially well done and easy reading.  And, if you happen to have lost track of the photos on your long-abandoned Facebook pages, you might not be in the clear if any belong to another copyright holder.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ 

http://www.spacesnark.com/  http://www.rowenacherry.com

EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday   

Karen Wiesner: The Stories Behind Classic Fairy Tales (Woodcutter's Grim Series), Part 4

 

WOODCUTTER’S GRIM SERIES—

Classic Tales of Horror Retold

This is the fourth of eight posts focusing on my Woodcutter's Grim Series and the stories behind classic fairy tales.

For the ten generations since the evil first came to Woodcutter's Grim, the Guardians have sworn an oath to protect the town from the childhood horrors that lurk in the black woods. Without them, the town would be defenseless…and the terrors would escape to the world at large. 

THE DEEP, Book 8

 by Karen Wiesner

Supernatural Fantasy Romance/Mild Horror Novel

 ** Very loosely based on “Metamorphoses: The Story of Pygmalion and the Statue” by Ovid. Cheyenne Welsh can't forget her past and the disappearance of her younger sister. When she returns to Woodcutter's Grim to sell the family property she grew up on, she's confronted with all the nightmare-realities of her childhood, still alive and well, still right where she left them--down in the darkness the Deep dwells inside. Her home... **

All of the novellas in the Woodcutter’s Grim Series thus far had been loosely based on popular, traditional fairy or folk tales, myths, fables, parables, nursery rhymes, poems, or some other literature. When I told my son I wouldn’t be following that theme for THE DEEP or any other Woodcutter’s Grim Series novels, he promptly insisted I was cheating and changing the rules midgame. I thought long and hard about that and ultimately worked like mad, pouring over all of the above to find something appropriate. I finally chose a loose interpretation of Metamorphoses: The Story of Pygmalion and the Statue by Ovid. Now I can’t imagine the story would have worked—or at least wouldn’t have been as effective—if I hadn’t followed my son’s advice.

The heroine’s father in THE DEEP had been introduced at the beginning of the Shaussegeny miniseries (WOODCUTTER'S GRIM SERIES, Volume II), so I was able to expand on his character as a professor of demon lore and introduce his penchant for fetish statues. If you’ve ever seen one and you know its purpose, you realize this is creepy stuff.

The title came about for the fetish statue that I created in the story, which has a name, Die diep (African for "The Deep"), and that statue has had a long, bloody, chilling history.

Writing this story gave me no end of trouble, requiring multiple revisions and overhauls, setting the book aside to brainstorm on ways to fix it, getting a critique partner involved so I could see what I was doing wrong… Well, eventually I did get the story to work.

The story behind Ovid's "Pygmalion and the Statue" was apparently inspired by the famous sculptor Praxiteles who created a statue modeled after his lover, a famous courtesan he'd seen rising naked from the sea like the goddess. He duly fell in love…or lust…or worship or whatever, lol. https://marcbarham.medium.com/pygmalion-and-galatea-the-metamorphosis-of-a-metamorphosis-myth-c8b93958f8e0

 Reviews and Honors for THE DEEP:

Editor's Top Pick from BellaOnline

5 star review from Huntress Reviews

5 star review from BTSemag

5 star review and Reviewer's Top Pick from Readers' Favorite

5 star review from MBR Bookwatch

5 star review from Linda's Reviews

I've always found African death masks and some of other tribal pieces, like fetishes statues, frightening. How about you? Leave a comment to tell me about it!

Happy reading!

Find out more about this book and Woodcutter's Grim Series here:

http://www.writers-exchange.com/woodcutters-grim-series/

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08MLBYBH1

Karen is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 140 titles and 16 series. Visit her here:

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

https://www.goodreads.com/karenwiesner

http://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/ 

http://www.writers-exchange.com/blog/ 

https://www.amazon.com/author/karenwiesner 

Advice on "Breaking In" to Publishing

Cory Doctorow's newest LOCUS column discusses the beginning writer's obsessive quest for tips from pros on how to get started in publishing. In particular, we love to read about how successful authors landed their first sales:

Breaking In

The major premise of this article: The publishing field changes so fast that a veteran author's story of how he or she first got accepted for professional publication isn't likely to be of any practical help today. As Doctorow puts it with reference to his own early experiences, "While I still have an encylopedic knowledge of the editorial peccadilloes of dozens of publications, most of them no longer exist, and the ones that do have been radically transformed in the intervening decades." What Doctorow supplies instead is "meta-advice," advice on where to find the best advice. According to him, novice writers can get optimal assistance by pooling their knowledge of current publishing practices and trends with other novice writers, sharing what they've discovered through researching markets and submitting to editors. "Just as a writers’ critiquing circle should consist of writers of similar ability, so too should a writers’ professional support circle consist of writers at similar places in their careers."

He does offer some general guidelines applicable to everyone, a more specific, pragmatic version of Heinlein's well-known "rules." Doctorow also narrates his own "breaking in" story with mention of several publishing veterans who assisted him, including Judith Merril. He declares that an established author's most "powerful tool for helping out new writers" is encouragement.

My first adventure in professional publication (my only previous published work being limited to short pieces in our high-school newspaper), in the late 1960s when I was just over twenty years old, certainly has little if any practical application for writers today. I didn't have the benefit of mentors or networking of any kind. I knew nothing about submitting manuscripts except that they had to be double-spaced on only one side of the paper and had to include a SASE (self-addressed, stamped envelope, for those who've never submitted a paper manuscript). My sole source of information about the industry came from the annual WRITERS' MARKET reference volume in the public library. Today's novice writers are so fortunate to have the resources of the internet. I assembled a collection of stories for a vampire anthology, wrote an introduction, and sent the package to Fawcett in New York. After a year of silence, I mailed them a humorous "haven't heard from you" greeting card. Now that I know better, I'd never think of doing such a thing. Yet they responded promptly, apologized for the long wait, and offered me a contract. In view of my total ignorance, the editor had to explain to me how anthology payments worked and how to arrange for reprint permissions. That proposal became my first book, CURSE OF THE UNDEAD, a mass market paperback.

My first professional fiction sale came about in a more conventional manner that still applies to today's markets, other than the shift from snail mail to e-mail submissions and communications. I received a call for submissions to Marion Zimmer Bradley's second Darkover anthology, FREE AMAZONS OF DARKOVER, probably because the rudimentary fan activities I'd started doing had somehow gotten me on Bradley's mailing list. The zip code on the envelope, however, was wrong, and the letter had reached me barely in time to meet the deadline, if I worked very quickly (for me—I wasn't quite as slow then as now, but I haven't been a truly fast writer since my teens). So this sale had an element of luck, too; the submission invitation could have been lost completely. Without much hope of success, I wrote a story and mailed it just in time. To my surprise, it was accepted. After that, I had stories included in numerous later Darkover anthologies. They stayed in print for many years and, for a long time, supplied my most reliable (although modest in amount) source of royalty income.

Doctorow's "advice" for beginners may be broadly summarized in the eloquent statement, "Writers blaze their own trails, finding mentors or not, getting lucky or not, agonizing and working and reworking, finding peers and lifting each other up."

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Bad Calls

Today's topic is "Bad Calls" around the World: by an Australian Troll, by Apple in going after an allegedly notorious international trademark troll, by a Tobagoan mimic in the early morning hours, a breathtakingly daft reTweet, and more.

"Hello?" I said at 6:00 am when a call interrupted my early morning quiet writing time.

"Hello?" my almost inimitable voice replied.

I would have been creeped out, but my daughter has Mynah bird mimicry skills and it amuses her to take the mickey over the phone, although, not usually before noon.

"Deborah?" I did not say, because that is not my daughter's name.

"Deborah?" My exact intonation echoed the name I actually used.

I fell silent. If my Mynah-like daughter had been messing with me, she would have said something original in exasperation that I had stopped playing. The caller from Trinidad and Tobago waited for several minutes to see (I assume) whether I would say something a sight more useful to an identity thief, but I did not and the caller eventually gave up.

At that point, I looked at Caller ID, which showed "PORT SPAIN TR", and I did some research.

Area Codes you never want to call back, if you receive a curiosity-arousing call:

https://www.thepolicecu.org/blog/blog-detail/the-police-credit-union-blog/2021/05/14/area-codes-you-never-want-to-call-back-and-why

A lot of banks and brokerage houses are pushing clients to agree to use Voice Recognition to validate telephone access to account information. Don't do it. 

Legal bloggers too numerous to link to (but whose names should show up) for Troutman Pepper have published a very thorough and extensive article --"More Privacy Please"-- on what the USA is doing about Robocallers, hackers, ransomeware, Zoombombing, the Solar Winds hack, for profit dossiers on private citizens,  Macy allegedly scraping faces, Ancestry's use of yearbook photos, and other outrages, scams and  scammers.

https://www.troutman.com/insights/more-privacy-please-september-2021.html

Kim Kommando blogs about privacy hacks (in the tip sense of the word) to do with irrevocable bad calls in chosing your free and convenient email provider.

Link

Cari Sheehan, of counsel at Barnes and Thornton is holding a webinar (one has to register to attend, but anyone can read the blurb) about the special need for lawyers to refrain from wildly liking comments or pages on social media.

When a lawyer likes something, the legal ramifications can be damaging.

https://www.lexology.com/Events/Details/10245?utm_source=Lexology%2bDaily%2bNewsfeed&utm_medium=HTML%2bemail&utm_campaign=Lexology%2bsubscriber%2bdaily%2bfeed&utm_content=Lexology%2bDaily%2bNewsfeed%2b2021-09-10

The same, apparently, might apply to politicians and their staffers. Liberal law professor Turley recently described a retweet as "breathtakingly daft".  One could probably search for the phrase.

Representing the law firm of Walder Wyss Ltd., Markus Frick and Manuel Bigler discuss  Swiss law and the case of the Patent troll

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=fb2194a3-b9cc-4139-b093-633caf9fcf63

With trademarks, one has to use the mark or risk losing it. In Switzerland, anyone can apply to the authorities to cancel someone else's trademark if the trademark owner does not actively use their TM.

That's why I always put my TM below my name when blogging, and dear reader, if you have a TM, you should do so, too.

Trying to cancel someone else's trademark can be considered abusive. Do it often, and one may be called a troll, or even a notorious troll as is reported in this case, which Apple appears to have lost.  The Walder Wyss commentary is very interesting.

Meanwhile, down in Australia, Mhairi Stewart and Nikki Randall report with great nasal-mutilaton-wit for Bennet + Co on the case of an apparently scorned, would-be plastic surgery recipient who was not very good at concealing her identity, and her bad call in trolling the reputation of the unwilling surgeon cost her a very large judgement and her anonymity (not necessarily in that order).

https://bennettandco.com.au/areas/defamation/surgeon-wins-450000-for-defamation-after-identifying-an-anonymous-troll/

It is a very good story. It's also quite teachable. One is never as anonymous as one supposes one is, especially give the points that Kim Kommando and others make about privacy.  Better not to hide behind an illusion, perhaps.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

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

http://www.rowenacherry.com

EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday