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.
Mushy Links
Today, my brain is the sausage, after a migraine attack. There isn't a lot of variety in the links for today...
Tor Books, the leading publisher of speculative fiction in the US, now has a new, community-oriented website live. Hopefully, it will be kept better updated than the Tor Books "official" site. Special bonus: For the next week (until 26 July), all of the e-books and wallpapers that Tor has made available for "limited times" during the last few months are available. Free, and authorized by the copyright holders. And this includes some pretty good stuff, too.
Here's some shocking, late-breaking news: screenwriters believe that TV execs have too much control over shows. That's nearly as shocking as gambling in Rick's casino.
What this complaint really reflects, though, is the distinction between creation and exploitation... and, in particular, the flip side of the long-tail theory. Or maybe it is just a necessary consequence of TV executives being, at their core, beancounters with inadequate education in the creative process. Whatever; there are certainly enough horror stories the other direction, of screenwriters and directors going so far out in an effort to be "new" that they destroyed both their creation and its commercial viability.
Speaking of bad writing and the excessive influence of executives, a screenwriter's lawsuit against Mel Gibson over The Passion of the Christhas been sent back for another polish. This time, though, it's bad legal writing being polished. Of course, it isn't very hard to find bad legal writing — open any primary law source and you'll be immersed in bad writing.
Europe now has an opportunity to adopt the reasoning of Feist... but won't do so. A case now before it questions whether a table of contents is a database protected by the Database Directive, Directive 96/9/EC (11 Mar 1996). This ill-considered pile of bird droppings purported to give sui generis (that is, "unique unto itself") protection to the content of databases. The real problem here is that it represents a return to "sweat of the brow" reasoning that is inconsistent with the trend in all other intellectual property law since the initial adoption of the Berne Convention in the nineteenth century. It's also just plain a bad idea from a policy perspective, but that shouldn't surprise anyone who knows much about how EC Directives get adopted... which makes the US legislative process, with its nearly overt domination by industry lobbyists, look positively pristine.
In a lawsuit that sounds like a segment from Robot Chicken, Mattel won a jury verdict over copyright in the Bratz dolls. What I find disturbing is not a copyright question as such, but an employment law question. It is not entirely clear from the article what Carter Bryant, then an employee of Mattel, was doing when he conceptualized the Bratz dolls. It is not clear whether he did so on company time; it is not clear whether there was an appropriate, enforceable employment agreement that would have reached to arguably related thoughts not on company time; it is not even clear that Carter Bryant's job was such that coming up with the Bratz dolls fell within his scope of employment. Perhaps all of this is clearer in the pleadings and in the evidence presented to the jury, but the article is annoyingly obtuse on important details.
Last for today, and farthest from copyright — but still well inside intellectual property — is this securities class action resulting from patent misconduct. Although it sounds ridiculous, it does make a valid point that is too often ignored: Intellectual property forms the basis for a great many businesses, and misconduct concerning intellectual property can also occur in the course of creating it.
Ritual disclaimer: This blog contains legal commentary, but it is only general commentary. It does not
constitute legal advice for your situation. It does not create an attorney-client relationship or any other
expectation of confidentiality, nor is it an offer of representation.
I approve of no advertising appearing on or through
syndication for anything other than the syndication itself; any such advertising violates the limited
reuse license implied by voluntarily including syndication code on this blawg.
Current Poll
None at present.
Archives
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.
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?)
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:
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.
![[self-portrait]](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_aph-FWKPAtw/Sb7dbBwgg0I/AAAAAAAAAAU/xefH94KcXQA/S220/LawShark5204a.jpg)
Scrivener's Error
at 1024x768.