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Scrivener's Error| null | |
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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. |
link to: 12:23 [GMT-6]
Since I often feel like the publishing industry wouldn't just be glad if I was burned at the stake — it would sell pseudocelebrity personal reflections on the otherwise-unheard-of incident...
In this instance, the main interest is in defining what the buggywhip is... and who the buggywhip manufacturers are, and how they got into the business. As the lovely and talented Sarah Weinman implies in the first link in the preceding paragraph, the "problems" are not with either all bookstores or even all kinds of books; they are, instead, with a submarket: Event-laden, brand-driven bestsellers (and cheap knockoffs thereof). Haven't we seen this relatively recently in American retail? Perhaps in the demise of Montgomery Ward; the bankruptcy of K-mart; the transmogrification of Sears, including the sordid subtales of Dean Witter and the Discover card; even the bankruptcy of Borders (which, not at all coincidentally, was driven by the expectations and corporate culture forced upon it after K-mart bought the chain in the early 1990s)... My point is that the "marketplace," such as it is, is changing at a substantially greater velocity than the expectations, perceptions, and abilities of land-based-wealth investors, including both shopping-center landlords and the gentleman-farmer-and-mine-owner investors who control so much of publishing itself (specifically, the foundations for the fortunes that created von Holtzbrinck, Bertelsmann, Pearson, and Lagardere). That is, the "proper place" for bookstores is for noncommodity publishing — which requires treatment almost from beginning to end that is at odds with the notions of efficiency taught (however ineptly and however incorrectly) in business schools across the globe.
Although not the first decision announced, I'll deal first with the one that authors (among others) are waiting for: Brown v. Entertainment Merchants' Ass'n, No. [20]08–1448 (PDF). By a 7–2 count, led by Justice Scalia, the Court held that California's attempt to prohibit sale and/or rental of "violent video games" to minors violates the First Amendment... if nothing else, because it failed to include so much else in the prohibition that is at least equally questionable:
Even taking for granted Dr. Anderson’s conclusions that violent video games produce some effect on children’s feelings of aggression, those effects are both small and indistinguishable from effects produced by other media. In his testimony in a similar lawsuit, Dr. Anderson admitted that the “effect sizes” of children’s exposure to violent video games are “about the same” as that produced by their exposure to violence on television. And he admits that the same effects have been found when children watch cartoons starring Bugs Bunny or the Road Runner, or when they play video games like Sonic the Hedgehog that are rated “E” (appropriate for all ages), or even when they “vie[w] a picture of a gun.”
Slip op. at 13 (citations and footnote omitted). And this, of course, is the other meta-inquiry that the preceding item implicates: Would it be equally inappropriate for an individual to cross into Canada with a copy of the novel Lolita? How about a copy of either the Kubrick (1962) or Lyne (1997) films? How about a graphic-novel adaptation thereof? Worse yet, how about that individual's sketchbook for a graphic novel thereof? As Neil Gaiman says in the second of the two videos from him linked today, we (fortunately) have a first amendment to deal with things like this; unfortunately, Canada does not. The ultimate point is that we do not want governments (in theory) or low-paid government employees actually encountering this stuff without adequate supervision (in practice) making these decisions... any more than we want lawyers deciding artistic similarity (third bullet point).
More later today, or perhaps tomorrow; for the moment, Life calls.
Labels: arts, censorship, civil rights, culture, mass media, 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.
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