Sunday, January 21, 2024

Untrained Melody

I was planning to regurgitate some of the current discussions about AI, particularly with respect to copyright (this is, after all, a blog by and for authors), but I have just changed my title to Untrained Melody because of something I noticed this morning on Amazon.

One of the most important factors in buying something on Amazon is how many stars a book or other product has, and how many five-star reviews there are. Well, now that Amazon is using AI to sort reviews, one maybe cannot trust Amazon star ratings and reviews.

I am looking for a magic mat that will gently shock my feet and make foot and leg pain vanish temporarily. Walmart has something of the sort on clearance for less than $10, and it appears to have very poor reviews. So, of course I visited Amazon, willing to pay four or five times the Walmart price for a foot-shocker for authors and other sedentary people, providing that the Amazon product has good reviews.
 
Check this out, not literally, of course. 
"Customers like the quality and sturdiness of the health personal care product. They mention that it is beautiful and well made.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews"

The sentence about AI is in very fine print. (I put up a screen shot, but that was not permitted).

Intrigued for many reasons, I scrolled until I found the reviews. Here is the reviews link:


What should tires and a low-slung skirt, or a necklace, or a router table, or a sandbag have to do with a stimulating bit of electrified leather or plastic?

Maybe, authors, you should investigate what Amazon AI may have done to your reviews. Maybe, would-be-buyers, you should check if you are looking at a product where the reviews have been AI generated from the text of customer reviews.

I might have happened upon an isolated SNAFU.
 
Even so, the AI does not appear to have perfected the spelling, punctuation, grammar of the reviews, so what use is it?

The Mintz law firm's Insights Center has an excellent (if possibly over-punctuated) examination of the (Un)fair Use? Copyrighted Works as AI Training Data.

Authors Bruce D. Sokler, Alexander Hecht, Christian Tamotsu-fjeld, and Raj Gambhir discuss the dilemmas that have arisen around the world from the methods used by developers to train their tools and models.

As they write:

"Many have been amazed by the capacity of generative AI tools to answer questions, crack jokes, and compose poetry."

 And:

".. for training AI models, researchers have “scraped” various data sources including internet forums, book corpuses, and online code repositories."

Allegedly, it wasn't a contentious issue until AI became commericalized. Perhaps a use can be fair as long as it is for the benefit of all mankind, and is not exploited for the financial gain of a few.

Apparently, in Europe, there is a right for copyright holders to opt-out of having their work data mined, and if they do so, the AI trainers must seek permission. It would have been simpler if the AI trainers had stuck to works that are unquestionably in the public domain, but would they find Chaucer, Aphra Behn, Shakespeare, The Castle of Otranto, and the Bible a tad inconvenient for training purposes?

The Mintz authors supply links to efforts in the USA, including President Biden’s “Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence” and a couple of partisan lawmakers' AI Foundation Model Transparency Act.
 
Meanwhile, there are lawsuits. Last month, the New York Times sued leading generative AI companies for “unlawful use of The Times’s .... content without permission to develop their models and tools.” 
 
The Authors Guild has organized a class-action lawsuit against OpenAI. There is an article about it on the Times site, here:
https://authorsguild.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=727ad03949c981c140a2bf125&id=240dd73de4&e=4daaa77539
 
The purpose of the law suite is to take a stand against wholesale theft of the work of all authors, no matter the genre in which they write. The Authors Guild penned an open letter, which thousands of authors supported. You can use the search function to check whether or not you signed. 
 
My name is on page 22 of 200 pages of supporters' names,
https://authorsguild.org/app/uploads/2023/10/Authors-Guild-Open-Letter-to-Generative-AI-Leaders.pdf

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ 



Friday, January 19, 2024

Karen S Wiesner: The Conundrum of Spoilers or {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Last to Leave the Room by Caitlin Starling


The Conundrum of Spoilers

or {Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Last to Leave the Room by Caitlin Starling

by Karen S. Wiesner

Several criteria guide book-buying strategies, which is something I've spoken of at length in articles as well as in my book Writing Blurbs That Sizzle--And Sell! (Fiction Fundamentals, Book 7). Personalizing those standards, here's what guides my decisions on whether or not to commit to purchasing a book to read:

First and foremost, for me, is the author. If it's one I've loved his or her past offerings, that may be all that's necessary for me to sweep up every new release and get to the checkout ASAP. If it's an author who I inconsistently enjoy their work or a brand-new writer for me, I may waffle about buying. The format, price, genre, and subject matter would all have to come into play for me to cross the threshold of firm decision in whether to buy something from them.

Second, whether the book is available as a paperback almost always plays a significant role in my choice. There are almost no authors I would automatically buy a hardcover book for. In my opinion, hardcovers are too expensive, unless you can get them on sale. I only buy ebooks if there are no other formats available--because I spend far too many hours every single day looking at screens, it's hard for me to choose electronic reading material for pleasure, given the strain on my eyes and brain. Inevitably, I wait until the paperback edition is available before buying, period, even for my most favorite authors. However, I do occasionally make exceptions.

The third factor for me is the genre. If I'm sold on the previous two criteria and it's a horror story, it's a done deal--as in, I can't get to the cash register fast enough. My second favorite genre is (sigh!) all other genres. Science fiction, fantasy, mystery, Regency romance, thriller…you name it. I wish I could choose between them, but they're all in constant competition with each other and my interest at a particular moment.

Back cover blurbs tend to be the tie-breaker for all the previous directives, and it's the make-it-or-break-it point of whatever came before. If the back cover blurb doesn't sell me, that's it. It's either hello, or sorry thanks for coming goodbye. Most importantly, a blurb can't be too short. I need to know who the characters are, what they're facing, and what the stakes are. I want details up until the point of spoilers but never beyond. If I don't get the information I need in a blurb, little can convince me to move forward since the risk of buying something that doesn't have enough persuasive evidence to warrant spending money and time on is too great for me. Though back cover blurbs are the fourth and last factor in whether or not I may a book purchase, it's the one that plays the most significant role in my decision.

Note: Cover art and reviews--bad or good--aren't considerations in my book-buying choices even one iota. I would buy a book with a cover that doesn't appeal to me if it meets my four crucial requirements. As for reviews, I don't read them at all until the book has been purchased and I'm just about to start reading it. I absolutely hate it when a back cover blurb is little more than a publisher thrusting a fistful of reviews or accolades at me in place of the blurb, like most book distributors (Amazon!!!) do these days, as if any of that matters to me in the least.

Last to Leave the Room by Caitlin Starling has had many genres attached to it. I think psychological horror sums it up best. Some reviews mentioned science fiction as a potential genre, but I don't really see how that fits after having read it. (Too much of a stretch in my mind to classify this title that way.) Techno-thriller could also fit because there is a lot of technical information given about physics, technology, computers, engineering, etc. In any case, the horror aspects were what appealed most to me for this story.

I was eagerly awaiting Starling's next release, given how much I enjoyed two of her previous books. See my reviews for them here:

The Luminous Dead: https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2023/06/karen-wiesner-book-review-luminous-dead.html

and

The Death of Jane Lawrence: https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2023/07/book-review-death-of-jane-lawrence-by.html

The basic idea of this story is that a brilliant scientist with almost no moral boundaries embarks on ground-breaking research that leads to the city she's living in sinking. She's funded by an equally immoral corporation--though it's respectable on the surface--that retains a "bully" who makes sure none of the prone-to-lunacy scientists goes too far off the edge of the world. The scientist's own private research is actually the cause of what's happening to the city and that makes the consequences not only diabolically personal but universally dangerous.

The hardcover and ebook editions came out October 10, 2023. I held out until November 11, 2023, hoping to see the paperback release become imminent in that time. For reasons involving reaching a low point in my TBR pile and the additional motivation of Christmas only a month away, but mainly because I was very eager to read this author's next book (the genre and blurb utterly sold me), I decided to splurge and get the hardcover.

After I held the hardback with the wraparound paper cover art in my hands, I studied the cover for a long time. It was an interesting design, showing eight women who all looked identical. One of the women, the one in the spotlight, sat at the bottom of a staircase and was the central focus of the design. The others were obviously listening to her and giving her their attention. The fact that they so closely resembled each other intrigued me. Having read the back cover blurb earlier, before my purchase of the book, I started to form clear ideas about what the book's central themes were.

Next, I re-read the back cover blurb that was printed on the inner leaf of the slipcover. From there, I had a very strong concept of the plot. This was followed by reading the back cover of the book, which had no fewer than nine reviews put forth from other authors of the genre, I assume (I'd never heard of any of them, though some accolades were included for most of them). The reviews stunned me a little bit because they gave away what felt like crucial elements of the story conflict that I wasn't sure should have been leaked prematurely.

Let me inject here that I've never understood what people consider spoilers. An article on Wikipedia states that, "A spoiler is an element of a disseminated summary or description of a media narrative that reveals significant plot elements, with the implication that the experience of discovering the plot naturally, as the creator intended it, has been robbed of its full effect." On the sitcom Big Bang Theory, Sheldon calls a spoiler anything revealed that "pre-blows" the mind; as in, the only place the mind can and should be blown is where the writer intended shock and awe to dazzle like fireworks within the viewer's individual brain.

The only part I've ever been sure of when it comes to spoilers is that I'm apparently guilty of giving crucial information away too often. I've lost count of how many people have screamed out in the middle of an active discussion "Spoiler!", as if I committed a murder or worse. I know people who won't read a synopsis of a book, movie, or videogame in advance because those handful of words might wreck something for them. How do they know if it's something they'll like without reading even that much? I don't get it. Even after being called on it, I can't fathom why the perfectly innocuous thing I'd said is being viewed as an illegal revelation of vital plot elements that would have otherwise been an awestruck surprise to the one who hadn't yet read the story, seen the film, or played the videogame.

To so many people, spoilers are a serious miscarriage of justice. In the past, for me, I've actually enjoyed spoilers. I'm the type of person who reads as much as possible about a story (whether it's a book, a movie, or a videogame) in advance of submerging in it. For videogames in particular, I prefer not to have big surprises hit me while I'm immersed. I always read in-depth walkthroughs in their entirety before undertaking any game I'm interested in. I don't want to miss anything vital to gaining the best possible ending just because I didn't realize I had to say something specific that isn't obvious to anyone but the game developers. It's possible to miss or lose so much in videogames if you're not aware in advance of the event that causes potentially disastrous consequences. I once played a game that took about 25 minutes from start to finish. I solved all the extremely challenging puzzles, made the correct choices, and did literally everything right. I had a single misstep. I said something I didn't realize was even a bad thing to say; at the time, it seemed like the best choice of the few options I was given. The ramifications of that decision led to an ending that didn't seem fair. Though it was a short game, it was an exhausting one that I didn't want to ever repeat. I rue now that I didn't read a walkthrough first so I could avoid the seemingly fatal mistake of not reading the developer's minds. I haven't made that mistake since.

In any case, for books and movies, I need to read the back cover blurbs, any reviews I come across, and if I happen to hear too much detail in advance on social media or elsewhere, I don't mind. For mysteries or psychological thrillers, I generally guess the finer details almost immediately after starting the story. As a writer, I love the reverse engineer process of that. It doesn't ruin anything for me. If anything, it makes it more exciting for me as a writer. Yes, a twist is always welcome in any type of story, but, up until Last to Leave the Room, I'd have to say I've never minded spoilers at all, no matter how explicit and thorough. Ultimately, I'd say I've had a major blind spot where spoilers are concerned.

With Last to Leave the Room, something happened to me that I'm not sure has ever occurred before except in the case of most of M. Night Shyamalan's films, where the big reveal will forever change the story for me as I initially knew it. While most of Shyamalan's movies are still really good once I know the core element, that big twist in the story is the point of it for me. I don't want that ruined in advance. His promoters are good at telling the fringe edges of the story in the blurb and previews so nothing crucial is ever given away thereby wrecking the shocking twist to come.

After viewing the cover for this particular Starling tale, followed by reading the blurb and reviews slipcover, I felt like I went into starting the story with far too much information--revealed with too on-point cover art and reviews that sabotaged the jolt I'd been looking forward to getting while reading the story. I guess without really realizing it, I'd allowed this author to be the one I wanted to give me a horrifying shock or several in the course of reading her books, the same way I feel about Shyamalan movies. For the first time, I really understood why people got mad at me for, in essence, telling the punch line of a joke before giving the lead-up.

For those who don't mind spoilers, I'll include details below in very small writing about what it was that was "spoiled" or given away before I started reading Last to Leave the Room. If you don't want spoilers, don't read it and don't look at the book cover or reviews too closely.


The cover of the book shows nine identical women, eight of whom are circled around the central figure in the light, who's obviously the leader, almost looking like she's teaching them. Given that the back cover blurb speaks of the main character Tamsin finding a door in her basement that wasn't there before the distorting dimensions leading to accelerated subsidence affecting the entire city of San Siroco, and that an exact physical copy of Tamsin emerges from that door, it was easy to deduce that whatever this phenomenon destroying the city is, it creates doppelgängers--possibly many of them. In fact, Tamsin's cat also gains its own doppelgänger early in the story, after Tamsin's copy emerges. So I went into the story aware this would be the focus of the story. Reviews on the back cover talk about other focuses and conflicts, like gender, identity, and memory being central in the story premise. All of the things in this paragraph led to further deductions on my part, which were borne out almost exactly how I imagined they would be in reading the actual story.


I read through the first part of the book (titled "The City", comprising the first 28 pages), the second "The Door" (40 pages), and the third "The Double" (136 pages) with almost no surprises revealed that I hadn't already figured out before I ever started reading the book. I'll also add that on page 96, I felt compelled to re-read the back cover blurb and realized that the blurb contained information that was either highly inaccurate or wildly misleading. Again, so I can't be criticized for spoilers, here's what that is below, in tiny print that you'll really have to strain to read if you want to know:


The back cover blurb states emphatically that, at the bottom of the stairs, Tamsin "finds a door that didn't exist before--and one night, it opens to reveal an exact physical copy of her." Point of fact, the door never actually opened in the story at the point before the doppelgänger appeared. If it did, it happened off-screen. Which is to say, it didn't happen at all, or the author was trying to trick the reader--blatant cheating when it comes to giving readers foundational facts. The opening of that door is a pivotal conflict in the story! In fact, the opening of the door is almost shown to be impossible throughout the story until the end. So telling the reader in so blasé a fashion in the blurb that the door opened (when it won't and can't and seems unlikely to within the story) and Tamsin's copy came out of it when the reader would find out soon enough that that event happened off-screen was beyond toleration for me. As a reader, I was denied seeing that take place within the story. I see this as a gross error on the part of the author or the publisher, or blatant cheating. Either that part of the blurb was accidentally or deliberately wrong, or it's wildly misleading, and, as such, in my opinion, is completely unfair.


Readers have to be given certain, foundational facts in the setup of a story. On the face of it, those foundations have to be valid from start to finish, or there have to be at least two very different perspectives that are equally true in order to justify the setup. Any alteration has to feel natural and be properly built-in from the beginning. In this case, I don't believe it was. I feel this inaccuracy unfairly altered and colored my perceptions pre-read. At the very least, I believe the word "presumably" should have been added to the blurb (in the area I spoke of in my last spoiler paragraph) in order to allow it to stand where it does as a foundational fact. Providing that one little word would have allowed me to feel satisfied on this point. I would have accepted everything as is with its inclusion. Without it, I couldn't help feeling that I'd been unreasonably deceived from the off by the author. This eroded some of my trust in the author-reader contract. I believe I will be wary about the next book she offers and worried she won't play fair again.

By way of review, Last to Leave the Room is certainly one of the slowest moving stories I've ever read. That's not a criticism per se because I genuinely enjoyed the story, but, given that I basically knew everything foundational about the story before I started reading it, 205 pages of developing the characters, themes, and conflicts did seem a little excessive in the process of reading them--despite how well-written and compelling those pages were.

Additionally, I was put off by the present tense perspective the story was told in. On her website, the author said the reason she wrote the book this way was "in an attempt to capture that transitory feeling, of existing only in that moment in the narrative with no promise of a future, and an at times fast-receding glimpse of the past." Regardless, I lost track of how many times I had to read and re-read sentences because the present tense didn't sound quite right and I had to figure out where I was getting confused before continuing. In all cases, the present tense was the reason for why I became tripped up.

My final bit of criticism before I get into the good stuff is that Starling almost seems incapable of writing a protagonist that I as a reader can feel the slightest bit of sympathy for. She sets up a thoroughly unlikeable cast that, instead of growing, and maturing, and learning from mistakes, disintegrates page by page and frequently becomes an outright villain by the end. [It's this very reason I didn't enjoy Starling's novella "Yellow Jessamine". Absolutely nothing was redeemable by the end of that twisted little tale.] These are the kinds of characters you come to hate and secretly wish for the worst to happen to them instead of the best. As a writer myself, I don't understand that mentality in developing characters. I want readers to come to love, empathize with, and root for my characters. Could authors who create utterly despicable main characters actually want readers to root for their character's demise, pumping their fists in victory when the consequences of bad behavior inevitably come a-knockin'? I can't begin to fathom this. Regardless, I still find this author's stories utterly compelling, if for no other reason than that you simply can't walk away from these train wrecks without seeing how they resolve, satisfactorily if not happily.

On the plus side, the fourth and last section of the book gave me everything I was looking for in a Caitlin Starling novel. There was shock, disgust, horror, awe, unexpected developments, validation of several theories I'd been playing with throughout, and the answer that was pretty close to what I'd predicted before actually starting the book felt justified and captivating. I especially loved the explanation of the title. In fact, it may be what I loved most about the book. I apologize to those of you who don't care about spoilers having to read the next tiny paragraph, but in an effort not to be shouted at for revealing a spoiler, though I can't see how, here's how the title fits in with the story (and matches the cover art):


Tamsin reads endless theories, arguments, psychoanalytic reviews, and stories about doubles. In most of them, the doppelgänger causes destruction. The original usually tries to kill the double and is harmed in the process. Sometimes it disappears, other times it's the last one standing. Ultimately, the original always loses. In one particular yarn, the devil teaches black magic to seven students. The last one to leave each night forfeits his or her soul. In the case of a doppelgänger, that "shadow" is always the last to leave the room, so that's what the devil takes as payment.


While it took me two weeks to read Parts 1-3 of Last to Leave the Room, I read Part 4 in about two days, actually getting up at one a.m. one night to read more as the noose tightened. Ultimately, I found this story worth the price I paid for the hardcover. Starling never fails to deliver an impactful story with an explosive ending.

That said, I'm left with conundrums I've rarely had before about whether front-loading a story with what could easily be considered spoilers (even with my previous, blasé tolerance of them) can or will adversely influence the reading experience. About the closest I can come to an accurate response is that any spoilers, some spoilers, a lot of spoilers--it's all subjective. In the case of this novel, I was put off by what I felt was too much pivotal information being given in advance of reading a single word of it--almost to the point of fury. To add to my confusion, after finishing the book and just before writing this review, I went to the author's website. I found two essay/articles there concerning this particular story, and both gave away so much information about the plot that I was certain had I read either of them in advance, I wouldn't have enjoyed the book at all. They left little or nothing for me to discover on my own in the process of reading.

This experience leaves me with uncertainty about something that, in the past, before reading this particular title, I would have responded to very differently: At what point is a surfeit of information given in advance about the plot of a story overkill or buzz-kill, so that there's almost no point to reading the book since you can already guess the core elements? I simply don't know. Anyone else want to give it a try?

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/


Thursday, January 18, 2024

WEIRD TALES Centenary Tribute

I've recently finished reading an anthology called WEIRD TALES: 100 YEARS OF WEIRD, edited by Jonathan Maberry, current editor of "The Unique Magazine." As the subtitle implies, this book was published in honor of the magazine's 2023 centennial. It hasn't operated continuously all those years, having lapsed and been revived several times, but its present incarnation claims continuity with the venerable pulp zine famed for showcasing the early works of H. P. Lovecraft and many other classic twentieth-century horror and fantasy authors. The contents of the anthology consist mainly of fiction (plus a few poems) but also several essays. One of the latter, "Swords and Sorcery: WEIRD TALES and Beyond," by Charles R. Rutledge, is a reprint from the November 2022 issue of the periodical. The others, original to this volume, explore topics such as the history of the magazine, the evolution of occult detectives, cosmic terror, shared world authorship, and some sources of Lovecraft's visionary horror.

As for the fiction, I was mildly disappointed to discover that this isn't exclusively a reprint anthology. Stories from the actual magazine are outnumbered by new ones. In addition to two pieces from twenty-first-century issues, "Up from Slavery" (2021) by Victor LaValle and "Jagannath" (2011) by Karen Tidbeck, we get eight "classic reprints." The vintage authors comprise H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, C. L. Moore, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Tennessee Williams (under a pen name), Richard Matheson, and Allison V. Harding. While I thought it was a bit of a cop-out to choose what's probably Lovecraft's best-known and most often reprinted tale, "The Call of Cthulhu," to represent him, several other "classic" entries may be new to many readers, as some were to me. And one can hardly complain about the original stories, given their uniformly high quality. This compilation offers abundant thrills for lovers of weird fiction, however we define the term.

Horror fans in general would enjoy the anthology, and for devotees of WEIRD TALES, it's a must-read book. The numerous illustrations and ads reprinted from the magazine practically justify the purchase price in themselves.

I count as one of my most treasured writing milestones a story published in WEIRD TALES (September-October 2003): "Manila Peril," featuring Filipino vampires in southern California.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Sunday, January 14, 2024

Once A Pirate...

"Once..." is an odd and exciting word. It sets up expectations for what is to come next. Three possibilities come to mind.

Once... Twice, as in "Once bitten, twice shy," the proverb, and the Great White hit.

Once... upon a time.

Once... Always... in the sense of irredeemability of a thief, a scoundrel, a kleptomaniac, a cheat, or the ingrained and noble nature of a king or queen, a marine, a warrior.

Once is an adverb, a conjunction, and very rarely and idiosyncratically, a noun (just the once). 

"Once a pirate" sounds like the title to a fantastic novel, and indeed, it is.

Not all pirates are equal. Business writer and regular Forbes contributor Tendayi Viki explains the difference between rogue pirates and government-licensed pirates (privateers) in an article on innovation and the advantages of not following the rules.

His most interesting point, IMHO, is about the piratical nature of Start-ups.

"Unlike startups, large companies have to follow the rules. As Steve Blank notes:

Startups can do anything. Companies can only do what’s legal.

Having no business model and no market reputation to defend makes startups quite dangerous as competitors."

Corsairs could be pirates or privateers. Buccaneers were the original pirates of the Caribbean, but many were under license to attack Spanish shipping. Paying taxes does not mean that one has Letters of Marque. What are we to call Big Tech?

Business writer Sara Todd makes some interesting points about piracy and the start up days of Apple Computers.

"[Steve Jobs] offered a maxim meant to motivate the developers: “It’s better to be a pirate than join the navy.”

and

"The pirate metaphor also involved a certain willingness to plunder. “Steve also never minded occasionally stealing good ideas from others, like the Picasso quote—’good artists copy, great artists steal,’” Hertzfeld adds."

Picasso's might be a philosophy not only shared by tech geniuses, but also by great musicians, as Paul Resnikoff discusses for digital music news.

https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/04/19/robert-plant-and-jimmy-page-blatantly-admit-to-stealing-their-music-led-zeppelin/

Despite admissions, if one is good enough, one gets away with whatever alleged copyright infringement one might be accused of, presumably because the "borrowing" is transformative or otherwise is de minimus. 

The same may not apply to distributors of other people's whole work. Paul Resnikoff writes about the problems for musicians that streaming music has created.
 

Long time legal blogger about the music industry,  Chris Castle of Music Tech Policy speaks to the emerging moral hazard when a service provider unilaterally decides whom to pay and whom not to pay for essentially the same product.

What if Amazon were to decide not to pay self-published authors? Not that they don't. Oh, wait...

The authors who were allegedly punished, were the innocent victims of e-book piracy. The musicians who are being stiffed are the innocent victims of streaming fraud.

As Chris writes: "it’s good to remember that this whole episode is somehow excused by overcoming streaming fraud. I think there are a lot more direct ways to stop fraud than stiffing an entire category of artists."

Please follow the Music Tech Policy link for potential solutions.

Book piracy has many tentacles. Next time, I may look at the unfair use of copyrighted written works as AI training materials.
All the best,


 


Friday, January 12, 2024

Karen S Wiesner: {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Heart's Blood by Juliet Marillier


{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Heart's Blood by Juliet Marillier

by Karen S. Wiesner


A rare single title novel by New Zealand author Juliet Marillier, Heart's Blood was published in 2009. This historical fantasy is loosely based on Beauty and the Beast but it's a richer, more complex tale with a heroine, Caitrin, who flees a home life much more terrifying than anything she might encounter in her search for a safe haven. Her chief ability and means of employment is as a scribe, not a skill most young women in the time period possess. Her father taught his daughter his craft before his death.

Caitrin flees to Whistling Tor and its crumbling hilltop fortress. The chieftain, Anluan, is feared and repulsed by the townsfolk because of the dark curse over the ghost-filled woods that enthralls him. Not surprisingly, Caitrin causes a stir in the shroud that hovers like a dense mist over the household, bringing unexpected light and promise to most of the staff--and the reclusive master of the house caught in the web of sorcery that destroyed his ancestors and will soon claim his life as well. To free Anluan will also release Whistling Tor from the evil surrounding it, but to do so will require sacrifices and something perhaps more terrifying than misfortune: Hope.

This was a beautifully written tale, despite how slow moving (to the point of, at times, plodding). Complete with complicated, fully fleshed out characters and a rich, wonderfully elaborate setting, the Gothic atmosphere of creepiness in a dark castle surrounded by a forest haunted by spirits that may or may not be malevolent kept me guessing about who was actually trustworthy. I was interested, as well, in the plant in Anluan's garden called "Heart's Blood". I found out after reading this book that there's a flower commonly called bleeding heart, Lamprocapnos spectabilis, that's supposed to signify rejected or unrequited love. Too bad the beautiful woodland plant didn't make it to the cover of the book. It's really quite striking! 

Incidentally, while Heart's Blood is sometimes referred to as part of the "Whistling Tor series", the author's website states emphatically that it was intended as a standalone and no follow-up is planned. Bit of a letdown there, as this is an amazing world I would have liked to enter again. But the author does have six other series to immerse her readership in, and I highly recommend giving them a try.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/


Thursday, January 11, 2024

Robotic Companions

A robotic device called ElliQ, which functions as an AI "companion" for older people, is now available for purchase by the general public at a price of only $249.99 (plus a monthly subscription fee):

Companion Robot

As shown in the brief video on this page, "she" has a light-up bobble-head but no face. Her head turns and its light flickers in rhythm with her voice, which in my opinion is pleasant and soothing. The video describes her as "empathetic." From the description of the machine, it sounds to me like a more advanced incarnation of inanimate personal assistants similar to Alexa (although I can't say for sure because I've never used one). The bot can generate displays on what looks like the screen of a cell phone. ElliQ's makers claim she "can act as a proactive tool to combat loneliness, interacting with users in a variety of ways." She can remind people about health-related activities such as exercising and taking medicine, place video calls, order groceries, engage in games, tell jokes, play music or audiobooks, and take her owner on virtual "road trips," among other services. She can even initiate conversations by asking general questions.

Here's the manufacturer's site extolling the wonders of ElliQ:

ElliQ Product Page

They call her "the sidekick for healthier, happier aging" that "offers positive small talk and daily conversation with a unique, compassionate personality." One has to doubt the "unique" label for a mass-produced, pre-programmed companion, but she does look like fun to interact with. I can't help laughing, however, at the photo of ElliQ's screen greeting her owner with "Good morning, Dave." Haven't the creators of this ad seen 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY? Or maybe they inserted the allusion deliberately? I visualize ElliQ locking the client in the house and stripping the premises of all potentially dangerous features.

Some people have reservations about devices of this kind, naturally. Critics express concerns that dependence on bots for elder care may be "alienating" and actually increase the negative effects of isolation and loneliness. On the other hand, in my opinion, if someone has to choose between an AI companion or nothing, wouldn't an AI be better?

I wonder why ElliQ doesn't have a face. Worries about the uncanny valley effect, maybe? I'd think she could be given animated eyes and mouth without getting close enough to a human appearance to become creepy.

If this AI were combined with existing machines that can move around and fetch objects autonomously, we'd have an appliance approaching the household servant robots of Heinlein's novel THE DOOR INTO SUMMER. That book envisioned such marvels existing in 1970, a wildly optimistic notion, alas. While I treasure my basic Roomba, it does nothing but clean carpets and isn't really autonomous. I'm not at all interested in flying cars, except in SF fiction or films. Can you imagine the two-dimensional, ground-based traffic problems we already live with expanded into three dimensions? Could the average driver be trusted with what amounts to a personal aircraft in a crowded urban environment? No flying car for me, thanks -- where's my cleaning robot?

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Sunday, January 07, 2024

Scammer Time

Just what we need for an AI-enhanced Happy New Year: AI-enhanced scams, data breaches involving everything a "population health technology company" has on millions of patients, trademark scams from scammers pretending to be lawyers, untouchable data brokers...

So, my earworm for today is "Can't Touch This" in all its jolly, ironic glory.

For writers, blogsite owners, and website owners, it's that time (which comes around every two or three months) to update your passwords on the U.S. Copyright Office DMCA Designated copyright agent directory.

More annoying and depressing, if you write under the protection of an LLC, you should know that the laws are changing, and LLC owners' social security numbers and drivers license numbers are going to be a matter of public record.

Wealth Lawyer and Coach Mat Sorensen explains what a pain all this is:
 
For those of us who prefer advice in writing, lawyer Eli N. Krafte-Jacobs with the Finney Law firmhas an explanation.

One of many bottom lines is that, if you have an active LLC or Corporation and do not file a BOI (Beneficial Ownership Information) report, you could be fined, imprisoned, and your bank may refuse to do business with your business.

It's not a scam. My Norton 360 seems to think that a link on the topic with reference to Homeowners Associations and Condominium Owners Associations is a harmful link, and I surmise that Norton's AI systems detected an offensive word for a male member or a male barnyard fowl within the name of the respectable Massachusetts law firm and flagged it.

I think that is hilarious.

Now I will turn to scams.

Legal blogger and associate lawyer Lisa Bollinger Gehman for the intellectual property law firm Baker Hostetler reports on the increasingly sophisticated trademark email scams.

https://www.ipintelligencereport.com/blogs/be-aware-as-trademark-email-scams-get-more-sophisticated/#page=1

Some writers own trademarks, so this might be of interest. As you may know, trademarks have to be renewed with the USPTO something like every five years. Also, like copyright agent registrations, or website ownership information, anyone can search the database and send official-looking letters and emails aimed at tricking the trademark owner into sending them a huge fee. Usually, in my experience, if you read the fine print with a magnifying glass, they are selling SEO registration, or spurious trademark registration in a foreign country.

Lisa says:

"Trademark owners should be wary of official-looking email solicitations from attorneys or law firms that claim to specialize in trademarks and are masquerading as Good Samaritans who wish to aid in protecting the company’s brand against another company that has contracted that firm to register the same mark."

Among other valuable advice and insights, Lisa points out that email scammers may forget to spoof the official .gov domain extension. Maybe one cannot spoof dot gov.

Now, the scammers claim to be specialist trademark lawyers, and their pitch may attempt to outrage and panic their target by saying that someone else is trying to register the same trademark or business name.

More information about trademark scams can be found on the USPTO’s website:

Trademark scams: How to avoid them and what to do if you get fooled: 
 
Caution: Scam alert: 

 

Also of interest, a large group of bloggers for the law offices of Troutman Pepper including Molly S. DiRago, Robyn Lin, Natasha E, Halloran, Ronald I Raether Jr, James Koenig, and Kim Phan compiled a very comprehensive round up of privacy laws, breaches, and violations.

Their article More Privacy Please is compelling reading, discussing topical issues with a health care company that filed to adequately protect DNA data, and made misleading promises to potential clients about how their privacy and data would be respected and securely stored; also discussing tax preparation companies that share clients' information without permission; also revealing issues with generative artificial intelligence (GenAI).

In California, there is a Delete Act to rein in data brokers, but it does not appear that this Law will have any teeth for several years (until 2026). They also discuss investigations of alleged data leaks from 23andMe and from Twitter, and much, much more.

More detailed information on the ground-breaking, Californian "Delete Act" (to whom it applies, how it should work, why is it superior to existing law etc) is provided by Amy de La Lama, Christian M. Auty, Goli Mahdavi, and Gabrielle A. Harwell of the law firm BryanCave Leighton Paisner LLP.

Read more: https://www.bclplaw.com/en-US/events-insights-news/the-delete-act-a-first-of-its-kind-data-broker-law.html  

"Data brokers are entities that knowingly collect and sell to “third parties the personal information of a consumer with whom the business does not have a direct relationship.” Cal. Civ. Code §1798.99.80(c). This likely includes entities that receive personal information received from third parties and compile that data into a form that can be used to enrich data sets of third parties, such as by adding data appends to a third party’s data set for marketing purposes."

Shocking to this writer is the implication that some of these data brokers collect, store, and sell information about ordinary persons' reproductive healthcare. Another revelation seems to be that one has to resubmit requests to delete information every 45 days. In other words, it looks like its whack-a-mole with these privacy invaders. (My words!).

Finally, after all this talk of data leaks, breaches, and legal selling of personal information, class action law firm Shamis Gentile has a fascinating breakdown of what your data is worth to the first seller: https://shamisgentile.com/class-actions/data-breach-lawsuit/

While your social security number might sell for as little as $1, your medical records could be worth $1,000. Scroll down the page to see what everything else about you might cost a crook.

All the best,


Rowena Cherry 
SPACE SNARK™  

Friday, January 05, 2024

Karen S Wiesner: {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova


{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

by Karen S. Wiesner

A novel that took 10 years to write, completed in January 2004, sent to a literary agent in March of that year; two months later (and two days after sending the manuscript to publishers), the first-time author is offered a deal…that she refuses! The rights are auctioned off and finally bought for $2 million. That alone sounds like something made up. Add to the unrealistic quality of such a testament: Elizabeth Kostova's debut novel The Historian was published in June 2005, landed at #1 on The New York Times bestseller list in its first week, and by August of that same year, it'd sold in excess of 900,000 copies and gone through six printings.

I love vampires, Dracula (historical and fictional), and literary novels about people who love books--a particular theme in this book, as described by the main character Paul: "It is a fact that we historians are interested in what is partly a reflection of ourselves we would rather not examine except through the medium of scholarship; it is also true that as we steep ourselves in our interests, they become more and more a part of us." The history and folklore of Vlad Tepes and his fictional equivalent Count Dracula are explored in narratives told by Paul, a professor; his mentor Rossi; and Paul's daughter (who's never named), while utilizing letters and oral accounts, and covering 1930s, 1950s, and 1970s timelines. The goal is to find Vlad's tomb.

Described as a mash of genres including Gothic, adventure, detective, travelogue, postmodern historical, thriller, and epistolary, The Historian's origin centered on the author's father (a professor) telling her "real history" vampire tales when she was a child. Her librarian mother's love of books also had a profound effect on Kostova. Later, the author had a notion to write about a father spinning tales about Dracula tales to an entranced daughter with Dracula listening in--because Dracula's still alive. Two days later, Kostova started writing.

Interestingly, Kostova never wanted her novel to be classified as a horror, nor was she pleased with the comparisons it got with Dan Brown's Robert Langdon series. [Ironically, the reason for the bidding war for the rights to publish The Historian stemmed from the houses believing "they might have the next Da Vinci Code within their grasp" (according to Publishers Weekly).] While I can understand the connection to comparing The Historian to Brown's historical thrillers, better comparisons, I think, would be to Charlie Lovett's The Bookman's Tale or Arturo Perez-Reverte's The Club Dumas, both fantastic novels that won't disappoint readers.

The author intended to write a chilling Victorian ghost story. She chose the figure of a vampire for many reasons, not the least of which was because "our fear of Dracula lies in the fear of losing ourselves, of relinquishing our very identities as human beings." Not surprisingly, the main characters in The Historian become obsessed, all but losing their individual identities in their quest to discover the dark side of human nature in the complex figure of Dracula.

While this novel is large enough to be overwhelming to some readers (nearly 700 pages in the trade paperback), I found myself so riveted by the adventures these learned bibliophiles undertake that span the globe, I barely noticed the pages flying by. It's very hard to imagine that this was the author's very first book, considering how masterfully it's constructed and written. If you haven't already, I highly recommend reading The Historian. If you've already enjoyed it once, maybe it's time to re-read this timeless novel? I've already put it back on my TBR pile.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Thursday, January 04, 2024

AI as a Bubble

Cory Doctorow's latest LOCUS column analyzes AI as a "tech bubble." What Kind of Bubble Is AI?

Although I had a vague idea of what economists mean by "bubble," I looked it up to make sure. I thought of the phenomenon as something that expands quickly and looks pretty but will burst sooner or later. The Wikipedia definition comes fairly close to that concept: "An economic bubble (also called a speculative bubble or a financial bubble) is a period when current asset prices greatly exceed their intrinsic valuation, being the valuation that the underlying long-term fundamentals justify." The term originated with the South Seas Bubble of the early eighteenth century, involving vastly inflated stocks. The Dutch "tulip mania" of the seventeenth century offers another prominent example.

Doctorow takes it for granted that AI fits into this category. He begins his essay with, "Of course AI is a bubble. It has all the hallmarks of a classic tech bubble." He focuses on the question of what KIND of bubble it is. He identifies two types, "The ones that leave something behind, and the ones that leave nothing behind." Naturally, the first type is desirable, the second bad. He analyzes the current state of the field with numerous examples, yet always with the apparent underlying assumption that the "bubble" will eventually "pop." Conclusion: "Our policymakers are putting a lot of energy into thinking about what they’ll do if the AI bubble doesn’t pop – wrangling about 'AI ethics' and 'AI safety.' But – as with all the previous tech bubbles – very few people are talking about what we’ll be able to salvage when the bubble is over."

This article delves into lots of material new to me, since I confess I don't know enough about the field to have given it much in-depth thought. I have one reservation about Doctorow's position, however -- he discusses "AI" as if it were a single monolithic entity, despite the variety of examples he refers to. Can all possible levels and applications of artificial intelligence be lumped together as components of one giant bubble, to endure or "pop" together? Maybe those multitudes of different applications are what he's getting at when he contemplates "what we'll be able to salvage"?

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Saturday, December 30, 2023

ANATOMY OF A SCAM

 

My topic for the day is "Pig Butchering", which is a brutal name for a type of scam. For my title (not to borrow someone else's title), I took Anatomy, with reference to meaning #6, Examination in detail.

Since the Welltock leak of more than the average amount of personal information, seniors (especially) have been receiving scam phonecalls from foreign-sounding persons who want to confirm that the person holding the handset has diabetes. Apparently, 11% of the American population is afflicted with that malady. One might be surprised. The way some politicians metaphorically beat their chests about the cost of insulin, one might have thought that the percentage would be at least double 11%. 

Or the affliction could be back pain (so much that one might jump at the chance of a free brace). Mixed metaphor deliberate.

That is probably closer to spear-phishing, if the calls are based on garbled information on the dark web. Pig butchery is a more lengthy process to cultivate misplaced trust, as Ian Debbage, legal blogger for the global law firm Squire Patton Boggs explains.

Lexology link:
 
Squire Patton Boggs link to the Pig Butchering scam story:

Ian Debbage concludes thus:

"Of course, the only sure-fire way to avoid losing money to the pig butcher is to avoid becoming the pig. This means being cautious of contacts that you do not properly know introducing investment opportunities and get-rich-quick scenarios that seem too good to be true."

The scams are not just shady investments. Some are much, much worse, especially with the rise in AI which facilitates deep-fakery, not to mention (which of course I am) the plethora of unreliably sourced information sold by dastardly "data-brokers".

"Granny, I've been arrested!" "You have a computer virus." "Your Everything-Store account has been hacked and you need to follow this link to reset your password..."

Katie Spence writes about what one might call apochryphal telephone scams that could cost the unwary recipient of a phone call or text message up to tens of thousands of dollars, and maybe a broken heart in the case of romance fraud. Click the apochryphal-word link to read dozens of stories of unfortunate, vulnerable people who got smished.

To add insult to injury, some cyber-criminals apparently keep a cruelly-named "suckers list".

Happy New Year!!

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 
SPACE SNARK™