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.

23 August 2010

link to: 11:45 [GMT-6]

Chunky First-Day-of-School Link Sausages

Today's sausages are exceptionally chunky on this first day of school for both remoras. Now I have the house back during the day! But these chunky sausages come with more than the usual disclaimers.

Non Sequitur, 23 Aug 2010

Surprised?

Several disparate stories on internet rights have some implications for 'netizens that may escape a quick glance. First, an Argentinian court has denied a libel claim based on search results... which marks a considerable change from ordinary practice in Latin America. It may also be a recognition of reality under the SPEECH Act, which would prevent a successful claimant from enforcing a judgment in the US against the search engines, because under First Amendment principles truthfully pointing someone to x does not vicariously import the content of x for libel purposes. (It may for other purposes, such as copyright infringement, or unauthorized disclosure of classified information, to name two live issues.) Of course, this still turns on defining the meaning of "true" and "false" in context in a defamation action.

Next up, the fight at recess over 'net neutrality is turning into a Sharks v. Jets encounter, but without the musical score. Some groups (like the Creature That Devoured Nashville) are urging special treatment, not neutrality, for music... while they're still not equitably distributing their fees to captive artists. Meanwhile, competitors are filing objections to the NBCU-Comcast transaction. This is much more an instance of "the enemy of my enemy acts like my friend" than anything else — Earthlink's notorious silent censorship (and origin) make it not a friend of free speech and/or open competition.
The second chunky sausage revolves around the availability of written works. One of the more-seemingly inane bits of gristle arises from Stieg Larsson's lover's refusal to turn over the fourth Millennium Saga manuscript on the grounds that Stieg would have been displeased with the way the world has treated the first three books. As crazy as that sounds, it reflects a certain sense of ownership well beyond that of copyright law, which certainly doesn't have universal acclaim... even after considering the source of that piece (both directly and indirectly).

But just making the haystack available for searching with a magnet doesn't mean that you'll find a useful needle — just that you'll find some piece of ferric or otherwise-magnetized metal in there. That's what Google Book Search does, and some scholars are quite displeased. There's a fundamental reason that this matters: The limits of language-based searching. Even more than in scientific inquiries (let alone the social sciences and humanities!), the quality of the question determines — not just influences — the quality of the response in a natural-language search. For example, compare the search results for a common misquotation of 1984 with those for the correct quotation:
- "He who controls the present controls the past" (wrong)
- "Who controls the present controls the past" (right)
and note that even many of the responses to the correct quotation refer to the incorrect version!
And the third chunky sausage — and the chunks are even more dubious than usual — turns on copy distribution. Over across the Pond, there's a price war going on over e-books; authors, now do you understand why a "net receipts" basis is just another way to avoid paying you? Meanwhile, two collections of egotistical tyrants continue to fight to control B&N while the underlying business model continues to fail, if not for the reasons that the publishing press would have you believe: Changes in law and communications (especially, but not just, the 'net and FedEx) have made consignment operations in nonlocal markets legally dubious and economically untenable. In short, it's the returns system that's killing bookstores... even though it's supposed to operate to their benefit.

Combine this with the loss of economies of scale in the distribution of copyrighted material and things get really, really interesting. One implication — and it's on balance a good thing — is that "management consultants" will no longer be in a position to come in and either asset-strip (as Burkle wants to do formally at B&N, in opposition to the more-subtle effort that the Riggio family has been engaged in for years) or apply nonjudgmental, numerical-predictor models as the only criterion for successful management in the entertainment industry. That's not to say that the profit motive is going to go away; it's just that the entertainment industry (even more than the automobile industry!) will demonstrate that it requires actual judgment to maintain long-term success, not numeric models drawn from dubious datasets by B-school denizens with no knowledge of the underlying math. (Hint: Leaving aside the GIGO problem, divide-by-zero is still undefined, even if your spreadsheet implies that you can cancel it out against something else most of the time.)

I suppose that's better than trusting art dealers, though, which exposes the next level of inquiry: What kind of judgment matters? Unfortunately, I don't have a good answer for that one... which is precisely the impetus for the numerical methods that try to take judgment out of the decision-making process.
Zombies have more civil rights and protection from unlawful arrest than do Canadian teenagers. And more (or at least better-written) academic interest, too. Discuss.

Labels: civil rights, copyright, intellectual property, internet, jurisprudence, publishing

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.

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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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