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SFWA Blunder Round-UP
By Dave Klecha | August 31, 2007
I got a surge in search engine hits this morning. Andrew Burt, “Shades of Grey,” and SFWA were all mentioned prominently. It might only last the weekend, but apparently this thing is burning up the net, just a bit.
Nick Mamatas points out that Burt may not have conformed to actual DMCA takedown letter verbiage in communicating with Scribd, making his efforts not actually correct under the law, though that may end up saving him from charges of perjury. However, he did claim that it was official notice, so who knows how that shakes out. I’m guessing he didn’t consult any lawyers here. In that link, Nick provides some documentation links.
One of those is this bit of idiocy which Burt supplied as a list of infringing works. Aside from the aforementioned Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom, and issues of Ray Gun Revival, Burt also includes these: Learning XML, several instances of “Gay Erotica” (okay, so some of them seem to feature an Asimov character, but still..), The Best Advice I Ever Got (apparently by Warren Buffet and others), “Quotable Quotes,” “Hooked on Useless Fact,” and “Are We Living In End Times?” Okay, so maybe that last one is fantasy (ha!), but … not only does Burt not represent the copyright holders in these instances, they’re not even SFWA members.
According to a subsequent communication, Burt used a search method that focused on idiosyncratic phrases… which is sliiiightly more sophisticated than I thought at first, but not by much, and really just as useless when not coupled with a rigorous read-through of the results. Hell, I know in the past the Lois Bujold mailing list has conducted discussions on favorite idiosyncratic phrases, so any such broad, public search would hit that mailing list archive. The rest of that letter is alternately mystifying and enraging. Burt only points to a handful of authors who are mad (and, in the case of Asimov and Heinlein, presumably their estates), then speaks expansively about Scribd’s worth to SFWA members.
Again, that kind of thing is what Burt claimed he wasn’t all about during the election cycle, but it seems he is. He has come down, hard, and squarely on the side of those opposed to modern electronic distribution–he’s propagating the views of his much-maligned predecessor, Howard Hendrix, and presenting them as the views of SFWA as a whole.
Amazingly enough, it seems that Jeremy Tolbert and I agree again.
Also, here’s a nice bit of discussion in the SFWA LJ community. As a special note, it seems Will Shetterly has let his membership lapse, in spite of the touching story he often tells about SFWA’s Emergency Medical fund being there for he and his wife in time of need.
Topics: internets, science fiction | 1 Comment »
August 31st, 2007 at 4:54 pm
Caught this ego-scanning. I’ll keep contributing to the EMF; as I just noted at the SFWA LJ, you don’t have to be a member to do that.