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.

27 July 2010

link to: 12:57 [GMT-6]

An Unremarkable Platter

... unless, of course, you're a USDA inspector of internet link sausages, in which case I'm unavailable and in a meeting.

Publisher overdiversification, like that at Pearson (corporate parent of Penguin), has some interesting, odd, and on the whole negative effects. The critical point is this: Advancement to management at the top level of the company will be determined, at least in part, by comparative performance, and there's no way for contemporary accounting practices to compare the actual performance at a publisher to anything else without driving the publisher toward just-in-time inventory and short-term cost minimization. Since long-term profit in publishing requires the opposite by definition, this kind of bad comparison attracts fewer great (or even competent) CEOs than short-term profit maximizers who are incapable of dealing with adversity — or even invite adversity. That's not just apples and oranges; it's apples and orangutans.
The long list (semifinalists) for the Man Booker Prize has just been announced. This £50k annual prize for a book-length work of fiction published in the UK in English is also, amusingly enough, a fairly popular subject of wagering every year, and I'd bet that less than 5% of the wagers come from people who've read more than a third of the books on the longlist. On the other hand, there aren't a lot of bets on the Kentucky Derby from people who've ever been on a horse, let alone raced one...

... which leads, in a particularly sick and twisted way (not, on this blawg, unexpectedly so), to Cat Rambo's musings on the future of publishing, which are both plausible and implausible. They are plausible within one relatively narrow portion of publishing: Category fiction (sometimes called "commercial fiction," but that's both too broad and too narrow due to that outlier "literary fiction"). That's the tail, however. In prestige terms, it's a Labrador's tail, fully capable of sweeping everything — the TV remote, the wineglasses, the scattering of magazines and books — off the virtual coffee table onto the carpet. In economic terms, though, it's a Rottweiler's tail, fully capable of annoying the owner without having one damned thing to do with the rest of the dog; all of book-length fiction is (in purely publishing terms) less than 15% of the publishing industry, whether by titles published or revenues. Rambo's musings bear some consideration, and point out a possible path; I suspect, however, that reality will prove far stranger.
The horror of copyediting can be avoided by choosing copyeditors with more than a modicum of educational attainment... which, of course, means that they probably don't play nicely enough with others to get off the bottom rung in publishing. And that's a really low rung, one that these days is probably poorly paid freelance work to boot.
The libel law problems in the UK continue in front of its (still new) Supreme Court. Just like in criminal law, though, the real problem with many of the cases that actually make law (and anyone who says that judges just "clarify" or "discover" existing law probably believes that the internet is just a series of tubes, too) is that so often, that defendant whose rights a just must ultimately decide to uphold is at best an utter sleazebag. Taking one's revenge on one's former client on one's blog is more than a little bit sleazy, Mr Spiller — no matter how valid your feelings, the way you went about it was inappropriate (and unEnglish), even if it should be outside of libel liability.
Speaking of developments in UK law, a current case discussed by my prolific colleague Dr Phillips at the 1709 Blog reveals that the UK may (or may not) be edging closer to embracing the formal distinction between copyrightable expression and uncopyrightable recitation of facts in a case about reverse-engineering a programming language and programs. OK, I'm an IP nerd; I find these things inherently of interest by themselves. But they're also relevant to authors... and, potentially, to the so-called "hot news" doctrine that provides quasicopyright protection to facts that are not otherwise protectable as sufficiently original to merit copyright.
An interesting procedural side note in another matter indicates I may have been too hasty in assuming that "normal practice" would be following in the Google Book Search matter. "Normal practice" is that when a federal judge is elevated from the district court to the circuit court of appeals, that judge leaves all of his/her district court cases behind for reassignment — particularly when the circuit court is short on judges even after his/her arrival. Ordinarily, circuit court judges do not handle trial matters by designation for at least two years after their arrival at the circuit court. Judge Chin, however, just issued an internet-related opinion (discussed by Professor Grimmelmann) by designation. What is puzzling to me is that neither a reassignment nor a designation order has yet been issued in the GBS matter, so we just don't know. Perhaps the parties "know," or at least have been told, what is planned.

That longwinded preface aside, we're now getting into the most-probable period for Judge Chin to issue a decision on the class settlement, if he's going to be the one to do so. There's a strong impetus to have one's current clerks finalize everything possible, and particularly everything possible that is based on a large record, before the semiofficial changeover in late September/early October. That's why there's always a flurry of long opinions from federal district and appellate courts beginning in early August and running up through mid-September. I won't say "watch this space," but still...
Worry less about free (or even expensive) broadband for everyone and more about library access... if only because any decent reference librarian has access to, and knows how to get at, material that is not now (and probably never will be) in a queriable database.

Labels: civil rights, copyright, culture, internet, miscellany, politics, publishing

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Sausages?

Internet link sausages, as frequently appear here, are gathered from uninspected meaty internet products and byproducts via processes you really, really don't want to observe; spiced with my own secret, snarky, sarcastic blend; quite possibly extended with sawdust or other indigestibles; and stuffed into your monitor (instead of either real or artificial casings). They're sort of like "link salad" or "pot pourri" or "miscellaneous musings" (or, for that matter, "making law"), but far more disturbing.

I am not responsible for any changes to your lipid counts or blood pressure from consuming these sausages... nor for your monitor if you insist on covering them with mash or sauce.

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.

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 Rebecca Tushnet (Georgetown 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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