link to: 09:51 [GMT-6]

The theme today appears to be overgeneralization...

• At GalleyCat, there's yet another whinge about problems with the short story market. The major difficulty with this particular whinge is that it has an exceedingly narrow view of what constitutes a "short story": If it's material that might conceivably have a dragon, or a spaceship, or a detective, on the cover, it doesn't count. It also focuses on periodicals as the "natural" form for distributing short fiction, while neglecting the economic and technological (not literary) origin of periodicals... that has, in the 170 years or so since they became viable at the mass level, changed so radically that it's no wonder that profitable periodicals are no longer an effective means of distributing individual pieces of short fiction to large audiences.
• Lee Goldberg also makes a similar error of omission in his discussion entitled "The Cons and Cons of Self-Publishing" — only in this case, the error is far less of a problem, and his analysis is far more on target. There are certain niche categories for which self-publishing is a viable option; implicitly (and correctly), Goldberg is asserting that fiction — at any length — is not included. Because Goldberg is primarily a fiction-writer (both for TV and for print), his article unfortunately assumes that his own experience extends across the entire field, to include other niches like technical and instructional manuals, poetry, and cookbooks.
• In the "coffee-snort overgeneralization" category, an editor asserts that "Kensington Publishing Corp. is the last remaining independent U.S. publisher of hardcover, trade and mass market paperback books." Again, this is an almost-understandable overgeneralization, as it appears on the Novelists, Inc. blog... the problem is that I can name at least fifteen independent US publishers of hardcover, trade and mass market paperback books outside of trade fiction, including a former employer of mine that isn't exactly struggling for revenue.

Labels: law practice, miscellany, publishing

link to: 12:24 [GMT-6]

• Orwell was right about pervasive surveillance on Airstrip One — just about fifteen years off in his estimate of when it would happen.
• Sometimes even the Daily Telegraph has something perceptive to say about publishing... or, at least, to report by drawing on a "news event" to unintentionally imply something more relevant. In this instance, it's an excuse for a beefcake/cheesecake photo to "illustrate" a story on "celebrity-written" novels. Of course, being the Telegraph, it utterly fails to go beneath the surface, remarking only that "publishers need to make a profit" and then expounding on how publishers are "highly educated with a passion for literature, and they became publishers in the hope of finding the next Vladimir Nabokov, not the next Martine McCutcheon." Leaving aside that the person with the title Publisher ordinarily does not make these decisions — instead, they are constrained from above by numeric measures of success, and from below by what their subordinates believe will meet those measures — most publishing executives these days (in both the US and the UK) are not "highly educated with a passion for literature."

  Those major objections aside, Mr Farndale's piece does implicate toward a critical issue in publishing and literature that is founded at least as much on the logical errors of the "great books/great art" movement as on anything else: What is the brand or mark that should be applied to a new work as an identifier? Example: Should it be Raymond Carver, Gordon Lish, Esquire, or McGraw-Hill? In turn, this has profoundly disturbing implications for preservation of cultural artifacts and permission to reproduce them — not just for the Google Book Search litigation (you knew I was going to work that in somehow, didn't you?), but for issues like museum displays and the Kafkaesque trial over ownership of Kafka's papers.

• In a somewhat technical — but admirably clear, once one gets past the needless polysyllablary in the underlying opinion — explication of how telephone ringtones fit into copyright, the IPKat's "American correspondent" discusses a UK opinion on the mess. This is exactly what one should expect for not defining a term in a statute; consider that the US Copyright Act never defines "publication" for anything except (ironically enough) recorded audio... even though the longest section in the statute is the section of definitions at the beginning (17 U.S.C. § 101).
• The passive voice is not evil, except if you're an Anglocentric SOB who has no knowledge of other languages that require it. Passive voice has specific purposes and uses, and does tend to be overused... but that's not the same thing as "evil." For that matter, speech-tagging ("He said") is oft-overused, too.
• This blawg will be getting even more unpredictable than usual, as I head for the World Fantasy Convention later this week. Note to potential burglars: The house will remain occupied, and the remora is feeling bloodthirsty.

  Speaking of bloodthirsty, though, I'll be one of the panelists for a session on the Google Book Search litigation. I had to promise the programming director that I would refrain from bloodshed at that panel; getting blood out of the carpet in a hotel ballroom is both annoying and quite expensive... I didn't say anything, though, about refraining from inflicting blunt-language trauma.

Labels: arts, copyright, intellectual property, miscellany, publishing

link to: 12:59 [GMT-6]

• While out and about yesterday dealing with medical paperwork, I stopped by the local outlet of [famous menswear store's name deleted to save embarassment — on their part] and began browsing. I noted a new display for different monogramming options for dress shirts, and busted out laughing at part of it:

  RNWII
   
  monogram may include up to 4 letters

  demonstrating a distinct lack of numerical literacy... that it took half a minute to explain to the store manager.

• GBS minor update/kerfluffle As expected, someone has filed a pro forma objection to the parties' proposed schedule for dealing with the forthcoming "revised" proposed settlement agreement (see Doc. 760 (22 Oct. 2009)). Now let's see if they follow up by doing it correctly: Filing a motion to extend time after the "revised" proposed settlement agreement gets filed.

  I find it a bit tactically naïve that the "notice" filed by the EFF et al. does not raise the parties' proposed schedule as an additional subissue implicating adequacy of representation. In my experience dealing with class actions, judges tend to derogate adequacy attacks that are less than pervasive and continuous (however much those attacks are — in consumer litigation — improper, they're not here). Perhaps I'll have something to say... since I'm a putative class member, and even opting out won't protect my interests against the economic effects of this settlement <vbeg>.

• Professor Rebecca Tushnet is summarizing a number of paper and panel presentations at a conference on the intersection between copyright and "digital reality" (which is, to my mind, an oxymoron akin to "honest politician"... or "military intelligence"). Too bad the conference is at Vanderbilt, which sits in the circuit (the Sixth) farthest removed from reality on copyright! Part I and Part II are already up, and provide an interesting counterpoint to the procedural issues Professor Tushnet summarizes from a paper presented at a different conference on whether the Federal Circuit has been successful (by Professor Rochelle Dreyfuss).

  Kudos to Professor Tushnet for making these pretty clear and accessible to non-expert audiences; even though they include a lot of the jargon, they do so in a self-defining manner, which also serves to educate for the next controversy. (If you give a friend a pirated song, he can enjoy it now; but if you teach your friend to use LimeWire, he can enjoy all pirated songs forever. Or something like that.)

Labels: copyright, intellectual property, jurisprudence, life, miscellany, publishing

link to: 18:07 [GMT-6]

• Bigger isn't always better, as Professor Johnson notes. Now apply this lesson to "big media" — not just NewsCorp, but Pearson, and Bertelsmann, and Hachette, and Viacom, and... while remembering that it's not just the economy that's at issue when Big Media gets too big: It's the First Amendment (historians may recall the Hearst situation of a century ago).
• In contrast, in some respects one can have too much competition. One of the frustrating aspects of both legal doctrine and actually practicing law in this country resembles Europe's too-often-forgotten stepchild: the Balkans. One judge in New York recently remarked on a particularly obvious aspect of the problem — the "geographic lodestar" that ignores the reality of communities. The problem reaches far more substantive issues, too, such as the law that applies to seemingly simple business disputes in many metropolitan areas and even to parties' choice of counsel. The less said about the idiocy of state-level regulation of the bar, the better.
• An interesting contrast: Ten major plagiarism scandals v. Professor Tim Wu's exegesis of fair use (which seems pretty theoretically/laboratory sound, even if it doesn't match the litigation data all that well... which is hardly Professor Wu's fault).
• Last, and all too amusingly timed, the Chancellor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign finally resigned... very close to Halloween. I have too much respect for the late Chancellor Cribbet's family, or I'd go to the graveyard and try to resurrect him for the job. Even if it was unsuccessful — even if all I ended up doing was putting his gravestone into the chair in the Chancellor's office — it would be a considerable improvement. Had Chancellor Cribbet been around, there wouldn't have been even a hint of "Category I."

  And, meanwhile, there need to be search committees going for the top three jobs at UIUC: President of the U of I system, campus Chancellor, and campus Provost. Faculty members beware!

Labels: copyright, culture, intellectual property, law practice, mass media, miscellany, politics, publishing

link to: 11:55 [GMT-6]

• Dance has nothing to fear but dance itself. And critics. And the public. And the financial downturn. And the music available for dance. And...
• If you really, really need any proof that the S&M dorks are in charge in publishing, ponder S&S's decision to sign up a YAish trilogy based on an iPhone app. And while you're at it, ponder whether there's a rep for that.
• Dan Glickman has decided to abdicate his throne resign as head of the MPAA. Glickman is actually an improvement over his predecessor Emperor Palpitine Jack Valenti, if only because he hasn't been so stridently (and cadaverously) unwilling to accept that there was anything — anything at all — wrong about the film industry. Not enough of an improvement to excuse the MPAA's continued violations of antitrust law and attitude, but I think I'm supposed to be thankful for small favors. With my luck, they'll appoint Ben Silverman or a Redstone or Dick Cook — all notoriously hostile to "the talent" and notoriously prone to NIH (not invented here) Syndrome. <SARCASM> Of course, antitrust considerations are irrelevant. <SARCASM>
•    It was twenty years ago today
     Maggie Thatcher told the band to play...
  and the thought of the Baroness in paisley as a lead singer (or, worse yet, still in office) is just as frightening, if not more so, as the implications of the historical revisionism in that review essay, the books under review, or Europe's view of itself. Of course, it could start by considering the deep-seated hostility in Europe to the US's First Amendment... which we adopted largely because of Europe's own history. At least Europe has better beer: Even light-bodied Europilsners are better than the diluted horsepiss that passes for "beer" over here, particularly from the American brand in question in that lawsuit.
• Speaking of stuff that only us boomers really remember, the LAT proposes a bunch of things from m-m-m-m-my generation that should be allowed to die. My list would be different (for one thing, anything and everything related to Led Zeppelin would replace the horror of Beatles reissues)... but they can pry my first-month-of-issue vinyl copies of Who's Next and Dark Side of the Moon from my cold, dead pectoral fins (if the remoras don't get them first).
• Writer Beware — a SFWA writer-protection effort also sponsored by the MWA — contrasts the (un)ethics of referral fees with Thomas Nelson's new "self-publishing" arm.
• Professor Lipton muses on what do authors really want from copyright? Of course, she could have invoked much older situations, too: Marion Zimmer Bradley, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro... the list goes on. However, this aspect of copyright is not being considered at all in the Google Book Search settlement — yet more proof that the purported class representatives are inadequate.
• Last, and far from least, the Supreme Court has issued its first actual decision of the October 2009 term (PDF), summarily reversing a rather elementary civil-and-appellate-procedure gaffe out of the Seventh Circuit. At the moment, therefore, the Ninth Circuit is not the most disfavored circuit! We'll see how long that lasts...

  Also this morning, the Court agreed to hear a critical case on whether judges may order GITMO detainees released into the US. Although technical this is a more important case than it appears, because it will go a long way toward revealing just how devoted to federalism the newer justices really are.

Labels: arts, censorship, copyright, intellectual property, internet, jurisprudence, mass media, miscellany, politics, publishing

link to: 14:26 [GMT-6]

As I noted a couple of days ago, Sergey Brin (one of the founders of Google) had his seemingly empty head handed to him in a very short, sharp response at the NYT to his bloviating, imperceptive, self-aggrandizing editorial drivelling. Ms Baratz-Logsted's responsive letter is a model of brevity. Being trained in the law, I'm going to substitute fifty words where five would ordinarily do and explain even more about the ignorance behind Brin's position.

To begin with, consider his invocation of the Library of Alexandria. We'll leave aside the ineptness of the comparison to begin with; recall that the Library of Alexandria consisted almost entirely of hand-copied scrolls, that were acquired by force without any compensation. If one brought a printed work into the city, one was required to deposit it at the library for copying. Although there was a security deposit, that deposit was solely as security for the physical article; when the printed work was returned by the library, the owner of the printed work had to return the security deposit to the library. And, of course, there was no compensation to the author of the work copied, nor to the owner of the physical item based upon its rarity if not returned (the later Ptolemies were notorious for not returning particularly rare items). The deposit requirement was enforced by searches of ships at the docks and of caravans at the gates... which bears a disturbing resemblance to what has happened in the GBS scanning program, albeit with a little less tar and sand at issue.

Of course, there's another problem with comparison to the Library of Alexandria: At that time, there was a decent chance that the copy that strayed into the limits of Alexandria was one of, at most, a handful of extant copies of that work. For particularly rare books, I suppose that is a possibility now with Google Book Search; however, it is actually quite rare for a university library to have copies of works printed in editions of less than 1,200 or so, except for materials produced by its own graduate students... which are scanned in a different program by University Microfilm anyway. Further, the then-denominated Google Library Project essentially ignored the rare books collection at Michigan. So, on that ground, too, Mr Brin's invocation of a disaster in the past — and, one should add, a nonaccidental disaster — crumbles to dust.

The most disturbing implication of Mr Brin's misguided diatribe, though, is at a more-metaphoric level, and becomes apparent largely through its comparison to Ms Baratz-Logsted's response. The floor underneath Mr Brin's position is that he should not be required to interact with any human being — ever — if he wants a particular bit of textual stimulation. Those with much knowledge of the history of speculative fiction should spot some echoes of both H.G. Wells and, in particular, E.M. Forster's "The Machine Stops" (1909). Ironically enough, Forster himself had a substantial connection to Alexandria during his lifetime (1879–1970); and, even more ironically, under the copyright law of his home country (and most of the world), "The Machine Stops" (US only) remains in copyright!

Forster's story posits a society in which all human contact is via a black-box "machine" that substitutes for communication and personal experiences, and in particular for physical and personal interactions. When the machine stops, both individuals and society collapse. This bears more than a hypothetical relationship to reinventing a Library of Alexandria with cultural artifacts: The proposed settlement would essentially establish a deposit requirement without a security deposit, without a branch library, and all inside of Google's monolithic machine... so that Mr Brin need not interact with so annoying a person as a "reference librarian," and can instead get his (unproofread) reading materials of dubious origin without leaving his room. Ever again.

The best defense that life has against extinction is diversity in numbers. Despite Brin's invocation of that problem, the Google Book Search settlement would actually return us to the Library of Alexandria problem, mediated by the Machine. I'm no Luddite; that model is not "Progress in the Useful Arts," or indeed progress of any kind at all. I learned all of the information presented above from print materials; the links are for user convenience only.

Labels: copyright, culture, intellectual property, internet, mass media

link to: 12:18 [GMT-6]

• GBS Status Update Two appeals by disgruntled, rejected intervenors have been filed (docket numbers 752 and 756). In the ordinary course of things, this would immediately divest the District Court of jurisdiction, and throw the whole matter into the Second Circuit, making the 09 November target date for announcement of the "New, Improved Settlement (With 50% Greater Obfuscation!)" moot. This is not, of course, the ordinary course of things. I'm not even certain that, under CAFA, an interlocutory appeal by a rejected intervenor on the class's side of the v. remains proper (a possibly unintended consequence). In any event, it's not the kind of appeal that stops the trial court's activities in the first place... yet. The appellants could apply to the Second Circuit requesting a stay in the District Court pending appeal, but I've seen no sign of such papers being filed as of yet. I'd be far from surprised to see such papers filed on/shortly after 09 November, though.
• (HT: Professor Froomkin) Sergey Brin recently made some statements in defense of the Google Book Search settlement... that appear to have originated in another galaxy. A NYT reader quickly demonstrated just how far removed from reality he is... but neglected to note that that initial, "official" name of the project at Google was the Google Library Project.
• And Professor Desai bangs even harder on the unintentional self-parody theme for Google in his discussion of in a discussion focusing on academic books. In turn, this brings to mind the ultimate problem with the copyright system that we have: It is strictly binary; the alternative — letting lawyers make decisions on how "original" or "artistic" a particular protectable, original expression is, and then granting/denying rights based on those decisions — is vastly worse. Remember, lawyers (obviously in common-law jurisdictions, less obviously — but still essentially — so in civil-law jurisdictions) are trained under the meme that one wins a dispute, or establishes the meaning of law, by demonstrating that someone else has said almost exactly the same thing before: That is, by denying the value of originality. And that's before we consider the inartful writing endemic in the law...
• Professor Goldman explains why the "blogger sponsorship/gift disclosure" guidelines announced by the FTC will benefit only the lawyers: they violate a relevant statute.
• Oh, those awful Canadians: As Professor Rebecca Tushnet manages to explain without once questioning the sanity of those making the claim, Canada tuk Hollywood's bukkit.

Labels: copyright, intellectual property, jurisprudence, publishing

link to: 09:29 [GMT-6]

The first obligatory comment concerns the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to President Obama, and perhaps the Nobel Prizes in general. I suspect that Obama was awarded that prize for being, in a sense, an honest politican: He didn't promise American acquiescence to world opinion, but American engagement with world opinion... and he followed through. For the first time in half a century, an American leader sought world opinion before pontificating on The Way Things Should Be, even if he didn't always accept the content of that world opinion. In short, this Peace Prize is for holding actual conversations with and about (real and potential) adversaries, which is rightly regarded as the first step toward lasting peace. In that sense, perhaps it is a bit premature; it's merely not as premature as many critics would proclaim.

In a more general sense, it's interesting to note the American-centrism of the Nobel prizes this year... except for the prize for Literature. This continues a forty-year trend toward increasingly recognizing American contributions to discrete subsets of the intellectual toolbox while simultaneously rejecting American integration of that toolbox and whatever materials lay at hand into an artistic whole. This is an amusing contrast with the substance behind this year's Peace Prize, and reflects poorly upon the awards "system."

The other item requiring comment sooner rather than later is, in a roundabout way, a sideways glance at the Literature Prize. An item in The Economist describes "successful" new media companies as subscription-based, but utterly fails to consider the content implications of a subscription basis: Timeliness, common structures and themes, and meeting — not challenging — of subscribers' expectations. The obvious tension between this view and Conde Nast's "advertising-based" decisions — which, in reality, were more about which magazine's staff had a greater tendency to criticize potential advertisers and therefore had to go, because just a mass makeover doesn't work on a subscription model — feeds back into the Literature Prize debate with a simple observation: Despite the praise lavished upon Literature Prize winners by the Academy, with very rare exceptions they simply do not translate (either linguistically or culturally) to greatness outside their own origins. Just look at the laureates of the 1990s: Only Günter Grass and (maybe) Seamus Heaney produced works that would have had a chance of survival under a subscription model. One wonders how many members of the Academy had actually read Kenzaburo Oe's poems in Japanese, keeping their origin in mind, before awarding him a prize based upon translations...

Just some food for thought along with that coffee.

Labels: arts, copyright, culture, life, mass media, politics, publishing

link to: 12:53 [GMT-6]

The Settlement (in essay form)
The Lawsuit (in essay form)

This is a status update only; I am working on some more-substantive responses to Professor Tim Wu's recent piece, which fit in nicely with where the long-form-version of the comments on the settlement was going anyway. (Quick preview: Well considered, but ultimately fails to integrate a couple of major problems with market definition that end up driving the "correct" — or, at least, consonant with reality — outcome.)

As far as the settlement's procedural posture goes, the status hearing this morning produced few surprises. Nobody even came close to acknowledging adequacy of representation, or the elephant in the room (see the next paragraph). The lawyers who did speak anticipated providing a new settlement by 09 November 2009 (or, in all probability, 12 November 2009 — with the Veterans' Armistice Day holiday in there, I suspect it really will slip a couple of business days). They also proposed a short objection period, limited to the changes in the settlement (does that mean they're going to give us a redline? I doubt it), of about two months. Judge Chin appeared to accept this from the bench, but also requested a status update should the parties be unable to present a settlement. In a not entirely surprising response, the lawyers for the AG — further calling into question their own adequacy — indicated that document discovery is almost complete, but that "some" depositions would be required. Judge Chin has not yet issued a written order via PACER, but it looks like the revised schedule will be something like this:

• The existing parties will file their proposed revised settlement on or about Monday, 09 November 2009
• Objectors — and, although it's not entirely clear from the summary I got of the oral proceedings, presumably new opt-outs — will be allowed approximately two months to file; that would be Monday, 04 January 2010 (another reason I think the schedule will shift)
• Objectors will probably be limited to commenting only on the changes in the settlement, although I suspect that a short comment objecting to the failure to change aspects already the subject of other objections would be proper
• A fairness hearing would then follow in early to mid February, 2010; despite the nomination to the Second Circuit, I suspect that Judge Chin would handle this himself, as the confirmation process will almost certainly be incomplete
• Should the settlement not be approved, or timely appealed, all bets are off

Which leads to the elephant in the room: Muchnick. Oral argument was held in the Supreme Court this morning. I'll have more details once the transcript becomes available later today, if warranted; otherwise, I'll just fold them into something else. The bottom line is this: The oral argument indicated five, and probably six, votes for reversal... on some grounds.¹ If that happens, though, it will almost certainly not be issued in time for the revised settlement to consider its effects by 09 November, and probably not in time for objectors to discuss it by early January. Again, I call on Judge Chin to stay the GBS cases until after the Supreme Court rules in Muchnick... if only so that the class definitions will be legally sound.

Update after reading the transcript of the oral argument It appears that my informant may have been a bit optimistic; my reading of the tea leaves shows a significant chance of a 4–4 split and no definitive decision on the jurisdiction issue. This creates a real problem with the jurisdiction/element of the claim issue that nobody grasped: The distinction seemingly made between "US works" and "non-US works"... which, as a matter of logic, should not be jurisdictional, except under the "a court always has jurisdiction to consider its own jurisdiction" meme, which — in turn — is inconsistent with the (admittedly non-self-executing) requirements of the Berne Convention. In short, it's a mess.

My approach is to look to a part of the Copyright Act of 1976 that was not codified in Title 17: 28 U.S.C. § 1338; a part of the Copyright Act of 1976 that was codified in Title 17: § 301; and the language of the ugly § 411, which is what is at issue here. In the same statute, Congress said "jurisdiction" explicitly twice (the first two) and did not the third time, which implies to me that the difference was on purpose. Further, contrary to Chief Justice Roberts' remarks during the oral argument, the language in § 411(a) is not operatively different from that in Arbaugh that was found nonjurisdictional, precisely because of duties implicitly imposed by the Berne Convention (and powers created in the Constitution) that put the Copyright Act right back in the same "box" as the employment statute at issue in Arbaugh.

1. As I noted previously, Justice Sotomayór has recused, so the Court will decide based on eight participating justices. That still means that five votes are necessary to actually decide the matter; a 4–4 tie results in affirmance of the decision below without precedential effect, which in this case would mean that the settlement process has to go back to the District Court and that the class definitions must be limited to registered copyrights. Then, of course, we get to argue over whether a "registered copyright" is one that was initially registered, but not renewed... and whether the publisher's registration of an entire issue covers the individual works.

   Disclosure: The counsel selected to present oral argument — Professor Deborah Jones Merritt of that school in Columbus — was at Illinois when I was there, and was Associate Dean. She was also the instructor for Advanced Torts when I took it, which turned out to be largely devoted to the reputational rights: defamation, privacy, publicity. And I'm sorry, Professor Merritt, but you're in the wrong on this one... which is almost inevitable, and not your fault, because the Supreme Court appointed you to argue on behalf of a decision that all of the parties below (and even potential intervenors!) held was wrong as a procedural and constitutional matter. I think your merits brief's criticisms of the unfairness of the actual process and substance of the settlement is correct; that, however, is outside the scope of the question presented by the Supreme Court.

Labels: copyright, intellectual property, jurisprudence, politics, publishing

link to: 13:55 [GMT-6]

• Here's a shocking chunk: A well-reasoned piece on what faces the publishing industry. From an insider. At the Huffington Post (which does contain well-reasoned articles, in a minority... which is, I suppose, a half-compliment, because the noticeability of such pieces at HuffPo is much less than the noticeability of such pieces in the MSM). It's really a semiironic, reflexive comment on the article itself: Just as the foundation for a long-term successful publisher is going to be its backlist, the foundation for a long-term successful news-and-comment organization is going to be its reputation — based on the equivalent of its backlist. Snide implications concerning the idiocy of allowing beancounters to control editorial policy are purely intentional.
• In some more-than-moderately interesting and reflexive irony: C.P. Snow couldn't count, either. This being approximately the anniversary of his notorious "two cultures" speech, The Times notes:

  Leavis was right: C. P. Snow was not a great intellect, or a great novelist. But you do not have to be either to say something that is true: and Snow did say something which was true, in his Rede lecture of 50 years ago, entitled The Two Cultures. There is something wrong with a civilisation, he said, where knowledge is so compartmentalised that people can count as highly educated and yet be wholly ignorant of huge swaths of what other highly educated people know. How could scientists not read Shakespeare? How could literary people never have heard of the second law of thermodynamics?

  The problem with this statement, though — which is an all-too-accurate representation of Snow's lecture (yes, I have read the published version) — is that it undercounts the number of subcultures in the competition... by a factor of two. Instead, what we've got is a conflict among four cultures, each of which is almost entirely ignorant of the other three:

  • Waldegrave's article, from Snow's perspective, accurately criticizes the literati for "never hav[ing] heard of the second law of thermodynamics." My proposed solution to this is the one silently adopted by my undergraduate institution three decades ago: Everybody must take at least one, core, considered-sufficient-for-majors class in the natural sciences... and the university did not offer math courses below calculus for undergraduate credit (even the basic statistics class required at least concurrent registration in the "slow and careful" introductory calculus course). That's not to say that universities shouldn't ever offer lower-level classes; they just shouldn't count toward graduation, even for art majors.
  • Waldegrave's article, from Snow's perspective, accurately criticizes science nerds for "not read[ing] Shakespeare." Again, my proposed solution is one of greater rigor in the terrifying undergraduate distribution requirements. Survey courses are all well and good; they provide necessary introductions to fields for those who haven't had the opportunity to study in an area previously (what high school really provides an adequate introduction to political science?); but they shouldn't count toward graduation, or at least only count when combined with a follow-on course in greater depth. No more 100-level American history classes, please! Knowing when Shay's Rebellion occurred is one thing; understanding that Shay's Rebellion was a matter of context and fundamental disagreements on the very nature of society is what's important, and a 100-level course doesn't get there.
  • Snow never did understand that there was a third element of equivalent "conflict" within even the rarified atmosphere of the British university system: The social sciences, which have tried in the years since Snow's lecture to import something resembling math and science into areas that had been traditionally treated as the domain of the literati. Depending upon one's perspective, that importation either created a new chimera, or failed utterly; one cannot, however, argue that it did not at least reify a difference in methods of thought so great in degree that it has become — and arguably was when Snow gave his lecture — a difference in kind. Even in the 1950s, both the thinking and the research in economics, politics, sociology and psychology, and even law were moving away from a strict, Battle of the Booksish struggle between old and new authority toward numerical methods. Today, it's even more extensive: Hardin's seminal article "The Tragedy of the Commons" (leaving aside its ultimate incorrectness) would probably not be publishable today (or at least not in a journal of equivalent prestige) without extensive statistical and/or mathematical derivations and appendices... except, perhaps, in a mathematics-hostile forum as an editorial.
  • Last, and far from least, there's a class-based distinction perhaps best epitomized by a distinction in vocabulary. In the US, an "engineer" is a well-educated university graduate with at least a strong grounding in the basic sciences; in the UK, an "engineer" may be anyone who deals with an "engine"... such as Archibald Tuttle, Heating Engineer. Snow was culturally blind to this distinction. And, in a bit of irony that both b-school and engineering undergraduates don't recognize, it's the same issue: the struggle between new theory and analysis on the one tentacle and immediate, profitable application of existing theory and analysis on the other tentacle. This really is a fourth cultural divide, even within the contemporary university: Engineering and business faculty (and, I suppose, such specialized crossbreeds as "agricultural sciences" and "communications" and "leisure and recreation"... and "education," ironically enough) against the rest. If you need proof that this is relevant, consider the recent experiences of one of the newest Nobel Prize winners.¹

I suppose I'm saying that Snow was twice as right as he thought he was. Or, perhaps, only half as right as he should have been. Either way, it's a bit of an embarrassment to pretend that half-right is good enough half a century later.

• Mark Kleiman (Political Science, UCLA) is on a roll: And it certainly relates to sausages and what goes into them. One item he posted Sunday concerns the contents of your burgers, with some bonus historical context. And the rest of his blog is usually of interest, too.

  But that's only half the story. As an exercise for the student, consider Kleiman's discussion of "agency capture" of the Department of Agriculture regarding both the Register of Copyright and the antitrust divisions of the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission, and how that relates to both the Google Book Search litigation and copyright reform in general.

1. Sorry about the secondary source that breaches a paywall, but the actual text is quite important... and the primary source's theory of why it owns the copyright is unlawful and unethical, which is an interesting contrast with the article itself. Consider this a bit of civil disobedience.

Labels: arts, culture, mass media, miscellany, politics, science

link to: 09:19 [GMT-6]

I offer only one bite of internet sausage links this morning (I sneezed on the rest of the sausage, so — like a typical cheap breakfast place — I just cut that part off and kept it for a casserole), and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the sexual proclivities of New York-based talkshow hosts: One American export that seems to be doing especially well is, well, the legal system. Those who think we're a "litigious society" (said with a sneer, usually while making a reservation at an exclusive restaurant for a meal costing a week's wages for the people who actually serve it) think that's a bad thing; I ask them to consider the alternatives for a moment, which usually involve bloodshed... In any event, the United Kingdom has just opened its new Supreme Court — a successor of sort to the Law Lords — with some interesting timing: The same time as the US Supreme Court opens its 2009 Term of Court.

The UK Supreme Court is going to make mistakes. All courts and legal systems make mistakes... at a rate slightly less than that of democratic political systems and substantially less than that of theocracies and other totalitarian political systems (or, for that matter, religious hierarchies). What's important here is that — for the first time — the UK will have a court system that is not supervised by the legislative and/or executive branch(es) of government.

Labels: culture, jurisprudence, life, politics