Scrivener's Error

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Scrivener's Error	Law and reality in publishing (seldom the same thing) from the author's side of the slush pile, with occasional forays into military affairs, censorship and the First Amendment, legal theory, and anything else that strikes me as interesting.

24 March 2008

10:59 [GMT-6]

The Madness of March

It's a grumpy Monday here in Sharkville. Four thousand (directly attributable) deaths in Iraq and no exit strategy in sight. Politicians continue to prove that they are the perpetual "Me Generation;" no matter their age(s), they and their handlers make kindergarten recess look sedate, well-behaved, and mature. My alma mater wins yet another basketball national championship and gets fifteen seconds on a halftime report... because my alma mater continues to act like a university that happens to have an athletic program instead of a minor-league feeder system that sends its kids off to class during the time that coaches are lining up recruits.

Over at GalleyCat, Ron Hogan rightly wonders why US book covers seem less imaginative than UK book covers for several current "multigenre" novels. He says:

Put it another way: For those of you reading this who aren't science fiction fans, which of the two book covers above would more effectively motivate you to at least check out the flap copy, maybe even the first couple pages, if you saw it face-out at a bookstore?

Oh, dear. Ron, I thought you knew better. In the US market, the cover isn't for the potential reader, or at least not primarily for the potential reader; it's for the chain and distributor buyers. And since chain and distributor buyers are completely uninterested in shelving books in more than one part of the store, they won't care, and in fact will be less impressed by a cover that accurately represents the book's content than by a cover that accurately represents the part of the store in which their own prejudices — since, as a group, they're not themselves readers — will place the particular widget.

I'm not bitter about this. Just pissed off, because it results in some truly awful cover art over which the authors have no control, and the editors only very little more (such as this book, which is entirely about strategy and in which none of the main characters ever approach a personal weapon... which is a shame, because the art director and cover artist should have been shot). Here's a hint: Sales material needs to be pointed at people who will actually buy the damned thing, not at consignees between the publisher and the buyer. Unless, of course, you're actually interested only in the numbers shipped to consignees, as PW's current entry in the cover-design column implies.
On Friday, Professor Patry noted that sometimes Israel stands up to US pressure — this time in an IP context. What I find more interesting in this context is that it's not the creators of IP who are pushing for the more-restrictive measures, but their patrons (linking in to my ongoing attempt to demystify the definition of WFH). This has interesting economic, theoretical, and artistic implications going far beyond the "information wants to be free" meme... which, like most memes, misstates what is at issue and then overstates itself.
Also last week, but this time at Madisonian, Professor Yen notes a tying proposal for unlimited downloads with the purchase of an iPod. This, again, implicates the patron/creator divide... and an area of antitrust law that is getting increasingly complicated. The story at Ars Technica and the various reactions have touched on the Micro$oft/Internet Exploder litigation as the paradigm, but that's really quite inapposite; instead, the paradigm remains International Salt and the various photocopier disputes. Nonetheless, it points out that there is much more than mere copyright at issue.
It's "dangerous to use common sense" to try to resolve a patent issue at a preliminary stage, even under common law (or, at least, in a common-law jurisdiction). This is the same reason that one should not proclaim that "fair use says I'm immune" in a copyright dispute: it depends on the facts, not just proclamations of abstract values.
Another item from somewhere else to which the publishing industry needs to pay more attention: It's the buzz, stupid, not the immediately extractable licensing fees (or contractual concessions). And yes, I'm talking to you, Bertelsmann and Hachette and Pearson.

Labels: arts, copyright, culture, intellectual property, jurisprudence, life, miscellany, politics, publishing

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Warped Weft

Now live at the new site. I have arranged some of the more infamous threads that have appeared here by unravelling them from the blawg tapestry (and hopefully eliminating some of the sillier typos). Sometimes, the threads have been slightly reordered for clarity.

Links of Interest

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Writer Beware and the Writer Beware Blog provide essential knowledge for writers who don't want to be ripped off
Writing-World.com published by the former managing editor of the now-defunct Inklings
Agent Research & Evaluation provides both free and paid analyses of literary agents
US Copyright Office, including both registration forms and records and quite a bit of other helpful information
Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) allows searches of granted, pending, and some rejected trademark registrations
US Supreme Court Opinions from the current and past couple of terms
Law Library of Congress includes statutes for free
The Public Library of Law can help you find the law... but not use it in court, as many of its resources are not in proper form and do not provide all of the citation information needed in court papers
Legal, free e-books are available through Online Books (University of Pennsylvania) and Shakespeare (MIT)
Legal, free music is available through
- ClassicCat.net (what kind of music do you think you'll find here?)
- Music.Download.com (long-awaited successor to MP3.com)
- Janis Ian (artist)
- John McCutcheon (artist)

Other Blawgs, Blogs, and Journals

These may be of interest; I do not necessarily agree with opinions expressed in them, although the reasoning and writing are almost always first-rate (and represent a standard seldom, if ever, achieved in "mainstream" journalism). I'm picky, and have eclectic tastes, so don't expect a comprehensive listing.

A blawg is sort of like a blog on legal issues, but usually has a lot more links to outside resources (other than other blogs) than does a typical blog. Scrivener's Error is a blawg, not just a blog. You can find other blawgs at < ? law blogs # >.

How Appealing is aimed at appellate lawyers and legal news in general. If you care about the state of the law, start here — Howard's commentary is far better balanced, better informed, and better considered than any of the media outlets. To concentrate on the Supreme Court, don't forget SCOTUSBlog.
Some academics' blawgs with a variety of political (and doctrinal) viewpoints:
- Professor Anthony Arend (Georgetown Law)
- Professor Stephen Bainbridge (UCLA Law) (aka "The Perfesser")
- Professor Jack Balkin (Yale Law)
- Professor Dennis Crouch (Missouri Law) (better known as Patently-O)
- Professor Michael Froomkin (University of Miami Law)
- Professor Eric Goldman (Santa Clara University Law)
- Professor Rick Hasen (Loyola-LA Law)
- Professor Brian Leiter (U of Chicago Law/Philosophy)
- Professor Lawrence Lessig (Stanford Law)
- Professor Michael Madison (Pitt Law)
- Professor Larry Ribstein (University of Illinois Law)
- Professor Lawrence Solum (University of Illinois Law)
- Professor Rebecca Tushnet (Georgetown Law)
- Professor Tom Ulen (University of Illinois Law)
BoingBoing, by speculative fiction writer (and 'net activist) Cory Doctorow, is quite hostile to copyright enforcement efforts, particularly regarding file-sharing
The main European IP blawg of interest remains the UK-based IPKat, on a variety of intellectual property issues, with some overlap (with a less Eurocentric view) at IPFinance
Cyberlaw (Stanford) has its agenda grounded firmly in the so-called "digital commons," which might make a bit more sense if any of the advocates of that viewpoint understood diddly-squat about population ecology
The American Constitution Society blawg is a purportedly "liberal" counterweight to the so-called "Federalist Society" (which, despite its claims, should be called "Tory Society") that has yet to establish much coherence... but maybe that's all to the good.

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