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.

29 November 2011

link to: 11:40 [GMT-6]

Leftover Delight

Slowly emerging from tryptophan hangover...

There's a fascinating list at Foreign Policy (yes, the descendant of that cold-war journal) purporting to identify the world's 100 most influential thinkers. The list is entirely consistent with FP's twin biases against science and the arts... by largely ignoring them. Of course, competing such "lists" have their own blind spots — but it says nothing complimentary about the education of FP's staff and editors that the only scientist represented on the list for anything resembling science is Stephen Pinker, and that there is no representation on the list at all from the arts. It almost makes one wonder how George Orwell might have been treated!
Example: They missed out on probing the relationship between, umm, side effects of antiseizure medication and bodily functions (NSFW if you're a fundamentalist; hysterically funny — pun intended — for everyone else).
Seth Godin unwittingly explains why his approach to literature and publishing won't work as he announces the end of his new imprint's frontlist:

By most of the measures I set out at the beginning, the project has been a success. So why stop? Mostly because it was a project, not a lifelong commitment to being a publisher of books. Projects are fun to start, but part of the deal is that they don’t last forever. The goal was to explore what could be done in a fast-changing environment.

(emphasis in original) That is, releasing an individual work, or even a handful of somewhat related works, can be an exercise in branding awareness... but being a publisher is about boring long-term logistics far more than it's about branding. Since Godin (in particular, but not alone) has shown a blithe disregard for logistics all along in his particular criticisms of publishing, that shouldn't come as much of a surprise (if at all).

None of this is to say that small, independent publishers/self-publishers can't be successful in the long term; it is only to say that there's a lot of boring administrative stuff to face after the first flush of enthusiasm over the newest of the new pales beside the recognition that there's work to follow. Neither is this to say that commercial publishers do that work competently on the whole now!
One of those logistics things: Intracorporate politics leading to stupid decisions about DRM. If it didn't work for Lotus 123, what makes you think it will work for something that contains not executable code that must be bit-perfect, but letters and numbers and punctuation? In less-formal terms, remember CopyIIPC and DeCSS; in more-formal terms, this is a necessary consequence of known-plaintext cryptanalysis.

Meanwhile, plans for world domination inch forward, even as the link sausages on this platter are presented for your virtual gustatory perusal with a flourish! Bwahahahahahaha!

Labels: arts, internet, politics, publishing, science

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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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