Techdirt Reading List: Free Books From Verso (Mostly)

from the and-some-good-ones dept

Most Thursday's, we post book recommendations with links to purchase the books through Amazon (where a little cut of the purchase price goes to us). We've received a ton of feedback that people like those recommendations (and seeing how many books you guys have bought via that, suggests it's true!). We had another such book lined up for today, but we're going to put that aside as we saw the news this morning that publisher Verso Books, which has published a number of excellent books (including ones we've recommended in the past), is doing a special one day (today!) offer for a bunch of free ebooks, many of which may interest folks here -- though there are a few caveats which we'll get to.

The books include two that we've recommended before: Gabriella Coleman's excellent book about Anonymous, Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy and the collected writings of Aaron Swartz entitled The Boy Who Could Change The World. Now there's a big caveat on the Swartz book: as Verso notes, it does not hold the rights to that book in North America, so it's only available to those outside of the US (or someone using a geographically promiscuous VPN, I imagine). Now, quite obviously, Aaron Swartz would probably be first in line to argue that this kind of geoblocking is ridiculous and worthy of scorn. In fact, from its tweets, it appears that Verso also recognizes this. But, it's not exactly in Verso's control. Though perhaps the company could have reached out to The New Press, who published the book in the US to work out some sort of co-promotion.

The second caveat is that... Verso appears to be overwhelmed. There have been lots of complaints that after "purchasing" the ebooks people are not receiving their download links -- and I can confirm that. I tried direct download links and the "email me a link" option, and neither seemed to work. However, the company says it's working on it, and as long as the books are listed in your "library" in their system, then you'll be able to access them in the future.

And, of course, even if you're in North America, all of the other books are available for free, including Coleman's. The other books look pretty good as well. There's The Wikileaks Files with an intro by Julian Assange, Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, Revolution in the Age of Social Media: The Egyptian Popular Insurrection and the Internet by Linda Herrera and In The Flow by Boris Groys.

The one other issue that some people may take at least some offense to is Verso's decision to entitle the blog post about this whole thing Psst! Downloading Isn't Stealing [for today], with at least one person on Twitter pointing out that this title at least suggests that Verso hasn't read (or hasn't understood) Swartz's writings. Verso responded noting that it had, and given my own dealings with Verso, I believe that's the case. Though, it does seem a little wrong no matter what that the collection of Swartz's writings doesn't appear to be available anywhere as a Creative Commons download -- given that Swartz himself was instrumental in the founding of Creative Commons and many of the writings in the book were things that Swartz himself posted for free online on his blog.

As for the title, which perhaps a little annoying, it's Verso doing a play on words of an Aaron Swartz blog post entitled "Counterpoint: Downloading Isn't Stealing," which Verso also reprinted on their page. For folks who are extra sensitive to the claims some make that "copying is stealing," you can see why Verso's title may rub some the wrong way, but it does appear to be them just having some fun with the phrase. And, either way, go check out these books for free today...

Filed Under: aaron swartz, books, free, gabriella coleman, reading list, techdirt reading list
Companies: verso

Techdirt Reading List: Make It So: Interaction Design Lessons From Science Fiction

from the design-and-star-trek dept

We're back again with another in our weekly reading list posts of books we think our community will find interesting and thought provoking. Once again, buying the book via the Amazon links in this story also helps support Techdirt.

As I was debating what book to showcase this week, I saw that Open Technology Institute Director Kevin Bankston had apparently just recommended a book that sounded so good that I couldn't resist picking up a copy and making it this week's choice: Make It So: Interaction Design Lessons from Science Fiction. I haven't even read it yet, but the idea, and the recommendation from Kevin (along with the Amazon reviews) definitely make it sound worthwhile:

Mr. @KevinBankston recommends the book Make It So, about cross-pollination of UI between sci-fi and the tech industry. Any of y'all read it?

— Rob Pegoraro (@robpegoraro) March 9, 2016

For years, people have talked about how early Motorola flip phone designs were inspired by the Tricorder device in Star Trek, but the book appears to go much further in detailing lots of other examples. Hell, just take a look at one page from the index at the end: Looks like a fun read all around, and as I start to dig into it, I figured many of you might appreciate it as well.

Filed Under: books, design, reading, science fiction, techdirt reading list, ui

The Stagnation Of eBooks Due To Closed Platforms And DRM

from the open-it-all-up dept

Craig Mod has a fascinating article for Aeon, talking about the unfortunate stagnation in digital books. He spent years reading books almost exclusively in ebook form, but has gradually moved back to physical books, and the article is a long and detailed exploration into the limits of ebooks today -- nearly all of which are not due to actual limitations of the medium, but deliberate choices by the platform providers (mainly Amazon, obviously) to create closed, limited, DRM-laden platforms for ebooks.

When new platform innovations come along, the standard progression is that they take the old thing -- whatever it is they're "replacing" -- and create a new version of it in the new media. Early TV was just radio plays where you could see the people, for example. The true innovation starts to show up when people realize that you can do something new with the new media that simply wasn't possible before. But, with ebooks, it seems like we've never really reached that stage. It's just replicated books... and that's it. The innovations on top of that are fairly small. Yes, you can suddenly get any book you want, from just about anywhere and start reading it almost immediately. And, yes, you can take notes that are backed up. Those are nice. But it still just feels like a book moved from paper to digital. It takes almost no advantage of both the ability to expand and change the canvas, or the fact that you're now a part of a world-connected network where information can be shared.

While I don't think (as some have argued) that Amazon has some sort of dangerous "monopoly" on ebooks, Mod is correct that there's been very little pressure on Amazon to continue to innovate and improve the platform. And, he argues (quite reasonably), if Amazon were to open up its platform and let others innovate on top of it, the whole thing could become much more valuable:

It seems as though Amazon has been disincentivised to stake out bold explorations by effectively winning a monopoly (deservedly, in many ways) on the market. And worse still, the digital book ‘stack’ – the collection of technology upon which our digital book ecosystems are built – is mostly closed, keeping external innovators away.

To understand how the closed nature of digital book ecosystems hurts designers and readers, it’s useful to look at how the open nature of print ecosystems stimulates us. ‘Open’ means that publishers and designers are bound to no single option at most steps of the production process. Nobody owns any single piece of a ‘book’. For example, a basic physical book stack might include TextEdit for writing; InDesign for layout; OpenType for fonts; the printers; the paper‑makers; the distribution centres; and, finally, the bookstores that stock and sell the hardcopy books.

And, on top of this, people creating "ebooks" are limited to the options given to them by Amazon and Apple and Google. And then it all gets locked down:

Designers working within this closed ecosystem are, most critically, limited in typographic and layout options. Amazon and Apple are the paper‑makers, the typographers, the printers, the binders and the distributors: if they don’t make a style of paper you like, too bad. The boundaries of digital book design are beholden to their whim.

The fact that all of these platforms rely on DRM -- often at the demands of short-sighted publishers -- only makes the problem worse:

The potential power of digital is that it can take the ponderous and isolated nature of physical things and make them light and movable. Physical things are difficult to copy at scale, while digital things in open environments can replicate effortlessly. Physical is largely immutable, digital can be malleable. Physical is isolated, digital is networked. This is where digital rights management (DRM) – a closed, proprietary layer of many digital reading stacks – hurts books most and undermines almost all that latent value proposition in digital. It artificially imposes the heaviness and isolation of physical books on their digital counterparts, which should be loose, networked objects. DRM constraints over our rights as readers make it feel like we’re renting our digital books, not owning them.

If ebook platforms and technology were more open, it's quite conceivable that we'd be experiencing a different kind of ebook revolution right now. People could be much more creative in taking the best of what books provide and leveraging the best of what a giant, connected digital network provides -- creating wonderful new works of powerful art that go beyond the standard paper book. But we don't have that. We have a few different walled gardens, locked tight, and a weak recreation of the paper book in digital form.

It's difficult to mourn for lost culture that we never actually had, but it's not difficult to recognize that we've probably lost a tremendous amount of culture and creativity by not allowing such things to thrive.

Filed Under: books, closed, drm, ebooks, innovation, open, platforms
Companies: amazon, apple

Authors Guilded, United, And Representing... Not Authors

from the what's-their-real-agenda dept

One of the more Orwellian aspects of the book world is the number of publisher advocate groups calling themselves Author This and Author That. The Authors Guild, Authors United, the Association of Authors' Representatives... their devotion to protecting the interests of authors is right there in the names, right? No further inquiry necessary.

That's the idea behind the misleading nomenclature, anyway. But even a cursory glance at the behavior of all these "author" organizations reveals their true priorities and actual allegiances.

Let's start with the Authors Guild, which claims to "have served as the collective voice of American authors," and which describes its mission as "to support working writers. We advocate for the rights of writers by supporting free speech, fair contracts, and copyright. We create community and we fight for a living wage." The Authors Guild even proudly notes that it "has initiated lawsuits in defense of authors' rights, where necessary."

Leave aside the wooly talk about creating community. How does the collective voice of American authors, the supporter of working writers, the advocate for the rights of writers, go about fighting for that living wage? Especially given that publishers are making more money from digital books than ever, and sharing less of that money with authors than ever.

Well, the organization has periodically mentioned in passing that the shockingly low lockstep 17.5% legacy publisher digital royalty rate "needs to change," so there's that. Sometimes a spokesperson expresses his or her "hopes" for a little more fairness. And recently they did manage a whole blog post on the topic. But that's all. Occasional words; zero deeds. And likewise regarding a host of other obvious, longstanding, outrageous legacy publisher abuses such as life-of-copyright (forever) terms, twice-yearly payment provisions, draconian non-compete clauses, and impossible out-of-print clauses. Pro forma words and practiced complicity.

But does all this mean the Authors Guild is lying when it says it sometimes initiates lawsuits?

Not at all. The organization did sue Google and Hathitrust over digitization (the first suit was settled; in the second, the Authors Guild lost). Leave aside the merits of those suits; I think they were wrongheaded, but that's not the point. The point is that when the Authors Guild really wants to throw down, it throws down — just never against legacy publishers and the Rich Relationships™ by which they systematically screw authors (in fact, in the Google suit, the Authors Guild fought alongside the Association of American Publishers).

Indeed, at the moment when the Authors Guild had maximum leverage over legacy publishers to extract some actual digital royalty and contract provision concessions — during Hachette's contract standoff with Amazon — the organization surrendered that leverage and threw all its Collective Voice of American Authors weight behind Hachette. Even though Hachette's position was costing authors money; even though Amazon had repeatedly offered to compensate any authors who were being harmed by the standoff.

What's doubly bizarre about the Authors Guild's reflexive anti-Amazon animus is that Amazon stands for so much of what the Authors Guild claims to want. A pristine example: as I write this, the organization bleats on its home page that "Half of Net Proceeds is the Fair Royalty Rate for E-Books," while two lines down it calls on the government to investigate Amazon…for paying exactly that fair royalty!

Not only does the Authors Guild refuse to stand up to publishers; it actively supports them (while censoring the authors it claims to represent). I challenge you to review the organization's public positions and find a way to distinguish them from what you would expect in a legacy publisher press release. I'm being literal here — legacy publishers and the Authors Guild actually do cite and cross-post each other's press releases. Here's an example — the Authors Guild, approvingly posting on its own site a press release from John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan, who in the release approvingly quotes Scott Turow, then president of the Authors Guild. It's really that incestuous between the New York Big Five and the Collective Voice of American Authors.

If the Authors Guild really wanted to "advocate for fair contracts," it would support self-publishing, which even more than Amazon publishing is empowering authors with the first real competition the industry has ever seen — a 70% digital royalty rate (four times the lockstep legacy standard); control over packaging and other business decisions; faster time to market. Yet there's nothing on the Authors Guild website about how to use KDP, Kobo, NookPress, Smashwords, or any other self-publishing resource. Nothing about AuthorEarnings.com, the most comprehensive breakdown available about where authors are making money in Amazon-, legacy- and self-publishing. The only "self-publishing" resource available through the Collective Voice of American Authors has been a notorious scam outfit called (naturally) Author Solutions (a relationship the Authors Guild finally terminated in May).

(Novelist David Gaughran has been tireless in exposing Author Solutions' shady practices — see the preceding links — and the refusal of establishment publishing media to follow up on his work is at least as revealing as anything else in this article about where true power lies in the industry. Within that refusal there's a great story for an intrepid journalist about concentrated media ownership, how advertising dollars buy silence, and why establishments are so reluctant to examine their own shadiest practices.)

Authors United is no different. Against abysmally low digital royalties, Authors United might offer up a bit of pro forma tut-tutting. But the organization's only real action — in the form of petitions, monster ads in the New York Times, media blitzes assisted by pet stenographers, letters to boards of directors, and letters to the Department of Justice pleading for protection for publishers — is against the company that has sold more books than any other, that has opened up publishing to more authors than ever before, that pays higher royalties than any legacy publisher, that is making more money for more authors than ever before, that pays authors once a month instead of twice a year, that gives authors unprecedented access to sales data, that almost single-handedly ushered in the digital book revolution — Amazon.

All of which is more than a little weird just on the face of it. But it gets even weirder — and more telling — when you consider the animating principles Authors United claims in the anti-Amazon screed it recently sent to the Justice Department:

[We can't have a company using] its technologically supercharged monopoly powers to manipulate and supervise the sale of books and therefore affect the exchange of ideas in America…

The government has the responsibility to maintain an open, competitive, free, unsupervised, and undistorted market for books…

Our larger point is that we believe the Antitrust Division needs to reassess…overwhelming market power [regarding] any business that has established effective control of a medium of communication…

We believe these steps would restore freedom of choice, competition, vitality, diversity, and free expression in the American book market, while ensuring that the American people—as individual free citizens and as a democratic community—determine for themselves how to take advantage of the new technologies of the 21st Century…

Lofty principles! But given that Amazon's self-publishing platform enables all authors to publish whatever they like and leaves it to readers to decide what books they themselves find beneficial, while the New York Big Five (no concentrated market power in a group with a name like that!) has historically rejected probably 999 books for every one they deem worthy of reaching the public, a few questions present themselves. Such as:

• Who has really been manipulating and supervising the sale of books and therefore affecting the exchange of ideas in America, and who has really established effective control of a medium of communication — an entity that screens out 99.9% of books, or one that has enabled the publication of any book?
• Who has really been running an uncompetitive, controlled, supervised, distorted market for books — a company dedicated to lower prices, or a group calling itself the Big Five that has been found guilty of conspiracy and price fixing
• Who is really restoring freedom of choice, competition, vitality, diversity, and free expression in the American book market — an entity that consigns to oblivion 999 books out of a thousand, or one that enables the publication of all of them?
• And who is really ensuring that the American people determine for themselves how to take advantage of the new technologies of the 21st Century — an entity responsible for zero innovation and dedicated to preserving the position of paper, or one that has popularized a new publishing and reading platform that for the first time offers readers an actual choice of formats?

Measured against every one of the lofty principles Authors United claims to champion, the Big Five is a historical disaster; Amazon, a reformist boon. The organization decries Amazon's alleged abuse of its publisher suppliers (monopsony!), yet offers not even a word about how legacy publishers consistently abuse their own suppliers — the group commonly known as authors. Against legacy publisher abuses, silence; against the company that offers an alternative to those abuses, coordinated, well-funded attacks by a stable of celebrity authors (accompanied by admittedly hilarious claims to be "not taking sides").

Follow any of the links above to the various positions Authors United has taken, and repeat that handy "how do these positions differ from those of any legacy publisher?" exercise. You'll see almost complete redundancy between the positions of Authors United and those of, say, the Association of American Publishers. They might as well be the same organization. The only real difference is that one honestly declares that it represents the interests of publishers, while the other dishonestly pretends to represent the interests of authors.

Now let's look at the Association of Authors' Representatives, which, judging from what it has named itself, one might reasonably imagine is in the business of representing the interests of…authors.

So: when the Justice Department and 16 States Attorneys General charged the New York Big Five with colluding to fix prices, did the AAR cheer? No. Instead, they lobbied the Justice Department on behalf of the publishers. And when three of the Big Five settled with the Department of Justice, did the AAR, say, offer a public statement on behalf of the authors whose interests price-fixing had damaged? No. Instead, it protested the settlement “in the strongest possible terms” in a letter to the DOJ…on behalf of the publishers.

But when Penguin and Random House merged — inarguably increasing the already Olympian clout of the Big Five relative to authors, narrowing author alternatives, concentrating market power, diminishing choice, empowering a company notorious for scamming authors, etc., did the AAR write to the Justice Department to oppose the merger? Did the organization take any meaningful action at all?

Crickets.

And has this organization that purports to represent authors ever protested “in the strongest possible terms” any of the longstanding, widespread, abusive publisher practices noted above?

Against actual legacy publisher abuses, tepid words at best. In support of legacy publisher collusion, The Strongest Possible Terms.

All of which gives the lie to the oft-repeated Authors United claim that Amazon “retaliates” against authors. There’s no evidence at all for this charge; in fact, were it true, it’s hard to imagine how the books of every Authors United member, even those of floridly outspoken Authors United pitchman Doug Preston, would be available on Amazon, despite all the crazy accusations and anti-Amazon advocacy. These “author” organizations demonstrably have no fear at all of crossing Amazon. But the one group they never cross is the New York Big Five. Which is about all you need to know about where real retaliation, and real power, lies in the book industry.

Sometimes making a name misleadingly vague can serve an organization’s tactical interests — think the National Security Agency (it wouldn't do to call it the National Surveillance Agency) or the Chamber of Commerce (can't very well call itself the Big Business Lobbyist). Other times, organizations deliberately choose names that are the opposite of reality — calling a surveillance law the Freedom Act, for example, or a group dedicated to preventing gay marriage calling itself the National Organization for Marriage. It's the latter tradition in which all these allegedly author-centric groups belong. To call out their real priorities, their primary affiliations, in their names would be to reduce their effectiveness.

Now look, there’s nothing wrong with lobbying the government on behalf of big publishers. The First Amendment guarantees the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances, after all, and it doesn’t say those grievances can’t be self-serving or even that they have to be sane. I just wish all these organizations pretending to advocate for authors would call themselves something a little more honest. Power in publishing is already horrendously lopsided. Publisher lobbyists masquerading as author champions only makes things worse.

Filed Under: authors, books, groups, publishing, representatives, self-publishing
Companies: amazon, association of authors representatives, authors guild, authors united

Australian Police Raid Bookseller Over Copies Of A Book First Published 24 Years Ago

from the thus-transferring-legitimacy-to-a-single-citizen's-complaint dept

Considering the sort of potentially-offensive content the average Internet holds, it's almost charmingly quaint when this sort of thing happens.

Mr Lake said the police were very gentle when they arrived and asked that the book be removed from the shelf.

Mr. Lake runs Imprints Booksellers in Adelaide, Australia. The book at the center of the "gentle" raid was originally published 24 years ago.

[American Psycho], by American author Bret Easton Ellis, has been classified R18 under national censorship legislation since its release in 1991, requiring it to be sold in plastic and only to those aged over 18.

So, what happened? Two things. First, a new edition was published featuring a foreword by Irvine Welsh -- someone who's no stranger to plumbing the depths of humanity. This edition -- which arrived roughly 24 years after the original classification and sans the sealed plastic covering -- was noticed by a local citizen, who then got her third-party outrage on.

He said the raid occurred because somebody complained to police after reading in a weekend newspaper column that the book was being sold by bookshops without plastic wrapping.

"I had a phone call from a lady on Tuesday who was quite aggressive and questioned why we were selling this classified product out of its wrapper," he said.

As per usual, it's the squeaky busybody that gets the grease, despite the book being a good couple of decades past the point of its original outrage and being surpassed in terms of graphic violence several times over, including in plenty of unwrapped books sold by the same booksellers.

Music (mostly) blog The Quietus has probably the best description of what likely went down in the this "gentle raid" over the most shocking novel of the early '90s.

Imprint Books in Adelaide (AUS) was ‘gently raided’ by – some apparently very polite, possibly even contrite, hopefully totally fucking embarrassed – police officers for displaying unsealed copies of Bret Easton Ellis’ 1991 satirical (adjective: sarcastic, critical, and mocking another's weaknesses) novel American Psycho.

Now, while Australia -- a nation of adults constantly being treated like children (and paying far too much for the "privilege"…) by their government -- has earned a reputation as a busybody in its own right, it's highly doubtful these police officers were very thrilled with this assignment. But ignoring the complaint was likely out of the question. Anyone sufficiently motivated to ring up both the bookshop and the cops because of something they read in the newspaper is the sort of person who won't let the issue go until it's been resolved to their satisfaction. So, rather than just blow off the misplaced concern, they apologetically and gently "raided" the bookseller. No doubt this was followed by a surreptitious reconnaissance mission by the complainer to verify that the complainee had been sufficiently cowed.

As for the bookseller, he made the sort of assumption anyone would make when the latest edition of a 24-year-old novel arrived without the protective R18 shrinkwrap.

"We just assumed the classification has been lifted," he said.

Because that would make sense. But no, the R18 is still in place and people with nothing better to do but read newspapers and make angry phone calls will continue to put local law enforcers in an unenviable position: Do you raid the bookshop and look foolish? Or do you answer call after call from aggrieved locals until you finally decide to raid the bookshop and look foolish? When your choices are this awful, the best course of action is to just get it over with.

Filed Under: american psycho, australia, books, bret easton ellis, free speech, offensive content, raids

Authors Guild Cements Reputation As Luddites: Hates The Internet And Especially Amazon

from the fighting-against-the-future dept

The Authors Guild has something of a reputation for being anti-innovation, anti-technology, anti-future and anti-consumer. It's also anti-small author. And it appears to be flexing its lobbying muscle this week to make all of this clear. It starts off with a move to ask for a dangerous idea in copyright reform, asking the House Judiciary Committee to implement a "notice and staydown" provision in any revamped copyright law. Just last year we warned people that "notice and staydown" was the way in which the legacy copyright industry extremists were looking to rebrand SOPA, and it has quickly become the preferred language of those looking to expand copyright and to attack innovation online.

The Authors Guild letter is ridiculous beyond belief. It starts off with the usual whining about poor, poor authors unable to make a living any more.

We are writing to ask you to make certain much-needed changes to the Copyright Act to help curtail Internet book piracy. Writers' income is in steep decline. There are many reasons for this, but a decrease in copyright protection and the aggregate effect of Internet piracy play an important role: the entire publishing industry loses $80 to $100 million to piracy annually, according to a 2012 estimate by the Association of American Publishers. Meanwhile, a recent Authors Guild survey shows that approximately 67% of our authors earn less than the poverty level from their writing, with median writing-related income at $8,000, down 24% since 2009, when e-book sales started to take off.

Books provide an essential contribution to our society. Most authors don't expect to get rich from what they do: they write to inform, educate, and entertain, and in doing so add to our common store of knowledge and culture. But to keep writing, they must be able to support themselves and their families. This has become increasingly difficult in the digital age.

Notice how, like the music and movie industry's before them, the Authors Guild immediately attacks online file sharing as if it must be the cause, ignoring all possible alternatives. In the book space this is particularly ridiculous, because the lowered barriers to entry from the internet means that many authors can now be published when that wasn't a possibility before. The number of ebook authors has exploded. Perhaps -- just perhaps -- rather than blaming "piracy" for the difficulty the elite club of the Authors Guild has, they might recognize the law of supply and demand, and recognize that the greater competition means that the monetary spend on the written word has been spread more widely. That's allowed lots of brand new authors to make a living from their writing, despite being passed over by the traditional publishers.

And, yes, many do not make a living, but that has always been the case. I know many people who have written books, and even those who have tried to "make a career" of it. And most don't. It's just not that easy to make a living as a book writer, and it's not because of piracy. As authors like Paulo Coehlo have found, file sharing can help authors build a larger audience and to make more money in the long run, if they learn how to embrace their fans, rather than actively push them away, like the Authors Guild often does.

Online book piracy, once the province of shady offshore websites, has migrated to mainstream American distribution platforms. Our "Notice and Takedown" system is completely inadequate to combat this problem. What we need instead is a "Notice and Stay-Down" regime: once a webhost knows a work is being infringed, it should not receive continued "safe harbor" immunity from claims of infringement unless it takes reasonable measures to remove all copies of the same work.

As we explained last year, this is one of those ideas that copyright holders love, because they don't understand copyright law in the slightest, or how any such system would inevitably work. The main problem is that copyright is context specific. Identical copies could be infringing or not infringing, depending on context. For example, remember when Viacom sued YouTube over video clips that Viacom itself had uploaded? A "notice-and-staydown" provision takes away the context and with it plenty of non-infringing works as well.

The Authors Guild also argues that it's somehow easy for companies to automate all this:

ISPs, on the other hand, do have the ability to monitor piracy. Technology that can identify and filter pirated material is now commonplace. It only makes sense, then, that ISPs should bear the burden of limiting piracy on their sites, especially when they are profiting from the piracy and have the technology to conduct automated searches and takedowns. Placing the burden of identifying pirated content on the individual author, who has no ability to have any real impact on piracy, as the current regime does, makes no sense at all. It is technology that has enabled the pirate marketplace to flourish, and it is technology alone that has the capacity to keep it in check.

This is just wrong on so many levels. First, if the Authors Guild is so worried about big companies, a policy like this makes them more entrenched. Even if we were to accept the Authors' Guild's faulty claim that these tools actually work (they don't), the argument that tech companies now have easy access to these tools is also not true. Big companies have access to these tools. But the next generation of startups do not. Thus, this policy would leave Amazon and Google in charge and block out any new company. Is that really what the Authors Guild wants?

Second, these systems don't work. We point out false takedowns on YouTube via ContentID all the time (and frankly we don't write about most of the ones that we see). Advocating a filter that will inevitably lead to greater censorship is a ridiculous position for the Authors Guild to be taking. And, by then putting legal liability on tech companies if they don't do this makes even worse, as it will only create more incentives for the tech companies to over censor to avoid any possible liability.

There's a reason why the burden does not belong on the intermediaries and it's pretty straightforward: the intermediaries don't know if it's infringing. That's something that only the copyright holders can legitimately determine. That's why the system requires notice from the copyright holders.

The purpose of copyright is to encourage the creation of new works--including and especially literary works, which contribute so greatly to our nation's store of knowledge and culture. To continue to work effectively, US copyright law must provide meaningful protection against the widespread online piracy of books and journals, so that authors can afford to write them.

Actually, the purpose of copyright is to "promote the progress" of learning and education, and it's supposed to do that in two parts: one by creating incentives for new works, but also to then benefit the public by increasing distribution of those works. And, we're already living in a golden age with more books being written and published today than ever before. To argue that ebook piracy has somehow taken away the incentive to write... well, the evidence just suggests that's wrong. And, again, most authors never make much money at all. To complain that authors don't make enough is a different issue altogether and has little to do with copyright.

Of course, the Authors Guild didn't stop there. Also this week it went on the offense against Amazon, asking the Justice Department to investigate Amazon for antitrust violations -- even though the DOJ already looked into Amazon's practices and found them to be fine (instead finding Apple had violated antitrust law in colluding with publishers to raise ebook prices). But, don't mind the details, the Authors Guild is sure Amazon is to blame. According to the Authors Guild, the fact that consumers benefit from lower book prices shouldn't let Amazon off the hook.

Without commenting on the outcome of the Apple case, or the facts that led the majority to its conclusion, we'd like to point out the long-term dangers of interpreting antitrust law solely to favor low book prices over a thriving competitive and robust literary marketplace.

Yes, how dare you focus on the actual benefits to consumers, DOJ!

A related letter from "Authors United," again seems to attack Amazon for daring to offer good prices to consumers, as if that's some sort of horrible antitrust violation.

Personally, I think it would be great if there were more competition in the ebook space, though we have seen it start to expand, with Apple, Google and others entering the market. But, the reason those companies (despite their own market power) have had trouble making a real dent in the market is because people really like Amazon. Amazon does a pretty good job making it easy and convenient to buy ebooks, to read reviews, to find similar works, and -- of course -- to read the ebooks as well. It would be great if there was more competition -- and that it would lead to lower prices, better features and less DRM. I'd be all for it. But that's not what the Authors Guild is arguing for. They don't want an open marketplace. They don't want competition. They want higher prices and less competition from the riff raff authors who aren't signed to big publishers and aren't members of the Authors Guild.

It's not hard to see the consistent logic behind all of this. The Authors Guild doesn't like the internet at all. It used to have a good thing in the old days, pre-internet. It could keep out the riff raff, anoint authors as the chosen ones, and make money off of those few giant authors. These days it's much harder and there is a real marketplace. The Authors Guild can't compete, so it runs to the government to "fix" things. It attacks internet companies like Google and Amazon not because they're doing anything unfair, but because they're actually bringing real market economics to the market for books. And the Authors Guild can't allow that to to continue.

Filed Under: antitrust, authors, books, copyright, dmca, intermediary liability, notice and staydown, notice and takedown, writing
Companies: amazon, authors guild, google

Facebook Going After Designbook Because All The Books Are Belong To Them

from the book-it dept

Facebook has long made the silly argument that it has some kind of untoward iron-clad trademark on all things "book." Hell, even the site's user agreement contains a provision that by signing it, you agree that Facebook has a trademark on "book", as though such agreements actually meant anything. And, throughout time immemorial (or at least as long as the site has been popular), Facebook has aggressively pursued trademark claims on anyone who dares to use "book" within their sites' names or company names.

Just in case anyone was wondering, this hasn't stopped. Most recently, Facebook has informed a startup called Designbook of its intention to oppose the startup's trademark application.

"We don’t believe that any of our branding is related to theirs," [co-creator] Pollak said, in an article published yesterday by Boston magazine. "Our logo is completely different, different colors, different fonts."

Pollak and Clark say their name was inspired by the design books they used in school. It's a "really specific thing when you're an engineer... It's your prototype book, where you keep track of your projects, your ideas, and your inventions." Facebook hasn't commented on the situation, but Pollak describes it as a case of "trademark extortion and corporate bullying."

Yes, much like many of the other examples that people tend to cite whenever Facebook decides it's trademark-asshat time, such as phonebooks and scrapbooks, Designbook got its name from a source that has nothing to do with Facebook and isn't going to be confused for Facebook. And, while Lamebook appears to have survived Facebook's bullying, Designbook doesn't have anything like humor and parody to rest on as a defense.

And it shouldn't have to. Facebook has no registered trademark for "book" in the social media space. It tries to rely on its claim of an unregistered trademark, but they're full of shit. If such a trademark could get approved, it would have been by now, rather than the claim's most solid standing existing in a EULA. Here's hoping Designbook can fight this once the opposition is filed.

Filed Under: books, trademark
Companies: designbook, facebook

Latest Pointless Moral Panic: Minecraft Is Ruining Our Children

from the lessons-in-burgeoning-nerd-dom dept

Like many people, video games have been an integral part of my life for about as long as I can remember. From my days visiting Wildcat! BBS systems where I'd play Trade Wars 2000 -- to obsessing over the Apple IIe, IIc and IIgs -- video games were not only an integral part of my childhood, they actually helped forge an adult career path. Swapping out graphics cards and building new PCs to play Quake 2 led to a job in Manhattan legal IT, which in turn resulted in a life focused on writing about technology. Aside from a few tics, I like to believe I wound up relatively normal, and video games have made my life immeasurably more rewarding.

That background usually forces me into the role of video game evangelist when surrounded by folks that, all too frequently, are engaged in hand wringing over the diabolical moral dangers games purportedly present. At a party recently, some friends expressed muted shock because a colleague's kid was, instead of being social, playing a game in which he was "herding human beings and keeping them in a barn to eat." I had to explain (skipping the part about how you'd need a mod to actually eat them) how this behavior wasn't indicative of a Jeffrey Dahmer in training, he was simply engaged in normal problem solving behavior on the new frontier:
Despite the fact that Minecraft is simply an amazing evolution of the Lego concept for the modern age, the moral panic surrounding the game never quite seems to abate. The latest case in point is over at the BBC, where the outlet implies it has heard all of the pro-Minecraft arguments before, it's just choosing to ignore them in order to portray the game as an unpoliced virtual-reality hellscape that's rotting the brains of children everywhere. While there are some good points embedded within, there are notably more bad ones, like the argument that kids should instead be reading, because reading engages imagination and builds character:

"I concede the point but say that it's two-dimensional, and that children should be exercising more than their mouse fingers. The other side asks why it's any worse than reading for hours at a time. Because, I say, reading allows you to imaginatively inhabit other minds. The opposition implies that this is just the latest moral panic, and that Stone Age elders probably thought the world was going to the dogs when people stopped just staring at the fire and started telling each other stories."

The author pretty clearly sees the lips of "the opposition" moving, he just can't apparently be bothered to actually hear what they're saying. Of course it makes sense to encourage kids to read as well as play games but to dismiss Minecraft as unimaginative shows a total misunderstanding of the massive, cooperative world-building that occurs in the game. Instead of actually playing the game and trying to understand it, the entire article is doused in fear over whether Minecraft is negatively influencing kids. The only concessions toward admitting the game's benefits come via gems like this:

"For some autistic children who have trouble with complex social interactions, Minecraft is clearly a good fit with its lack of intricate social cues and simple environment. But for many parents, the absence of that complexity, in a world where their children spend so much time, might be a reason to be wary."

Whether it's Minecraft, apps or the internet at large, there is such a thing as parenting -- or paying attention to and understanding what your children are up to. Even then, in 1987 my parents certainly had absolutely no understanding of the world I was experiencing via the local Wildcat! BBS, yet those experiences opened an entire world of social interaction with like-minded individuals I never would have experienced otherwise as an awkward, socially anxious tot with painful new braces. That world taught me many things my parents never could have, but parenting in the brick and mortar world still helped me understand where social lines in this new frontier were drawn (with the exception of that time a 35-year-old BBS member called my folks to complain about their son's occasionally-barbed tongue).

In stark contrast, The Guardian makes the counter-argument that maybe it makes more sense to try and understand Minecraft instead of fearing it, allowing this informed education to fuel intelligent parenting choices:

"...here’s a simpler way for parents who don’t feel they understand Minecraft to build their knowledge: sit down next to your child and watch them. Ask questions. See if they’ll teach you how to play it with them. This doesn’t mean you’ll avoid having to make decisions about the amount of time your child spends in Minecraft’s beguiling “hyper-reality” rather than the unblocky real world, but it does mean you’ll have a better idea – with less worries – about what they’re up to, and how it can fit into their life.

Like so many things, actually bothering to understand something before you waste energy fearing it makes all the difference in the world. There are millions of kids for whom Minecraft is opening an entire world of enjoyable problem solving and social interaction, the benefits of which may extend into and across their entire lives. Stagnating this potential with fear because you couldn't be bothered to try and understand what your children are experiencing wastes more than just your time.

Filed Under: books, children, interaction, learning, minecraft, moral panic, reading, video games

Amazon And Hachette Bury The Hatchet -- It's Just Not Clear In Whom

from the moving-on dept

For the past few months, we've been following the whole Amazon / Hachette contract dispute that was full of ridiculous misinformation and economic ignorance. It was interesting to see such a fight play out in public, though it was also a reminder that oftentimes, such public fights become public due to misinformation campaigns.

Either way, the two companies have, well, buried the hatchet, though, as Nate Hoffelder points out, it's not clear in whose back it got buried. Hoffelder does note that from what's being said about the deal, it doesn't appear to be all that different from the one that Amazon recently signed with Simon & Schuster -- without such public anguish -- leading him to wonder what Hachette could have possibly gotten out of going toe-to-toe with Amazon in this battle in such a public manner.

In the end, it seemed like another fight about control and the future -- and, generally speaking, Hachette's desire to stave off where things are heading in the future for as long as possible. But, and this is the important bit, the future has a way of always winning out in the end, no matter how hard you negotiate against it.

Filed Under: books, contract, ebooks
Companies: amazon, hachette

Once Again: The Sky Is Rising When It Comes To Creative Output

from the why-so-much-doom-and-gloom? dept

A few years ago, we released our Sky is Rising report, looking at the state of the global entertainment industry, in which we found that, contrary to the story of gloom and doom that was being spread by some special interests, the real story was quite exciting. What we found when we looked at the actual numbers was that we are in a true renaissance of creativity, with massively more content -- video, movies, books, music and video games -- being produced these days than ever before. Perhaps more importantly, we saw that the amount of money being spent on these things also continued to increase -- though it didn't always flow through the same channels as in the past. This combination of factors -- more content producers, many new channels -- often led some people to insist that the industry was collapsing, rather than the truth, that it was growing rapidly, just in more distributed ways. That represented certain challenges for many people in the creative industries -- but from a public policy standpoint, it certainly suggested that things were pretty good -- not deathly bad, as was often implied. Last year, we came out with a follow up report that focused on Europe -- noting a similar pattern in various European countries, though with some countries facing unique and interesting challenges. However, one interesting aspect of that report was that we saw a stronger pattern of success in those areas where innovation was allowed to thrive and flourish, rather than be held back.

Today we're launching the third report in this series, The Sky is Rising, 2014 Edition, focused on the United States in particular. And, once again, we see the same basic story. Lots of growth. Tons more content being produced. Lots of stories of new business models and artists connecting with their fans in new and unique ways. We're seeing new markets develop, along with new tools to help those markets. But the key story is the same as always: there is more content being produced today than ever before, and it's helped along by innovative technology, as the two often go hand in hand. More content than ever before is being produced, and content creators have more new and powerful ways to create, to distribute, to build a fan base, to connect and to build a business model -- and that's quite exciting.

At the same time, there's a push underway to reform our copyright laws -- something that we agree needs reform. And, yet, strangely, much of the rhetoric around reform has been based on the idea that the content world is suffering, or that there's some sort of "Hollywood vs. Silicon Valley" battle going on. The actual evidence suggests no such thing at all. Rather, it suggests that when innovation is allowed to flourish nearly everyone benefits. More content creators are able to do much more and create much more content. More fans are able to experience and consume much more content while supporting content creators in new and unique ways. From a public policy standpoint, it seems like things have been trending in the right way for a long time. If there's to be any sort of public policy change it should be to try to speed up that process, rather than to slow it down.

You can read the full report below. Once again, as with the previous editions of this report, we'd like to thank CCIA for sponsoring and publishing the paper.

Filed Under: books, copyright, copyright reform, culture, film, innovation, movies, music, sky is rising, tv, video, video games