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.

21 December 2012

link to: 13:53 [GMT-8]

Fusillade

No internet link sausage platter today; instead, I'm going to expend some ammunition that was stored under questionable circumstances. Bring on the zombies!

My first bullet point today is inspired by a cross-reference between the World Health Organization's International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems § F60.2 (10th ed.) — the definition of dissocial personality disorder (the more-rigorous-and-less-culturally-bound successor to "sociopath"), requiring at least three of:

Callous unconcern for the feelings of others;

Gross and persistent attitude of irresponsibility and disregard for social norms, rules, and obligations;

Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships, though having no difficulty in establishing them;

Very low tolerance to frustration and a low threshold for discharge of aggression, including violence;

Incapacity to experience guilt or to profit from experience, particularly punishment;

Markedly prone to blame others or to offer plausible rationalizations for the behavior that has brought the person into conflict with society.

— and this morning's statement from the... individual who leads a major gun-rights group I shall not dignify by naming:

[R]ather than face their own moral failings, the media demonize lawful gun owners, amplify their cries for more laws, and fill the national media with misinformation and dishonest thinking that only delay meaningful action, and all but guarantee that the next atrocity is only a news cycle away. The media calls semi-automatic fire arms, machine guns. They claim these civilian semi-automatic fire arms are used by the military. They tell us that the .223 is one of the most powerful rifle calibers, when all of these claims are factually untrue, they don’t know what they’re talking about. Worse, they perpetuate the dangerous notion that one more gun ban or one more law imposed on peaceable, lawful people will protect us where 20,000 other laws have failed.

As brave and heroic and as self-sacrificing as those teachers were in those classrooms and as prompt and professional and well- trained as those police were when they responded, they were unable — through no fault of their own, unable to stop it. As parents we do everything we can to keep our children safe. It’s now time for us to assume responsibility for our schools. The only way — the only way to stop a monster from killing our kids is to be personally involved and invested in a plan of absolute protection.

The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Would you rather have your 911 call bring a good guy with a gun from a mile away or from a minute away?

(reparagraphed for clarity) which sounds exactly like the kind of central-to-the-definition-of-mental-illness person who shouldn't be trusted behind the trigger under his own criteria as disclosed in other speeches.

If there is a real point to gun rights for persons not part of the state apparatus — that is, to those who are not part of a well-ordered militia (like the speaker quoted above) that is (purportedly) essential to the security of the state — it is to allow the body politic to respond to force-imposed tyranny with force of its own. Disobedience of this kind extends well beyond "civil", or "nonviolent." However, claiming that preservation of private ownership outside of a militia of antipersonnel firearms is a necessary counterweight to government tyranny (or even corporate tyranny when it goes as far as Marsh) is at best a tautology. Those who will find it necessary to oppose tyranny with force are already outlaws for other reasons (even if they are protesting unjust laws).

Then, too, this presumes not just the presence, but the effectiveness, of an armed guard in deterring and responding to the deranged. Given that the organization in question spends exactly no time in any of its "weapons-safety" courses on target acquisition, it's highly unlikely. Shooting at targets is not like shooting at people... unless the shooter has a different class of "moral failings." (Such a "protector" is probably in uniform and thereby a better target him/herself...) And it's not like there aren't other, and more effective, ways of standing up to bullies...
... like ensuring that culture doesn't become a con game. Guns don't work too well at that.
Meanwhile, over across the pond, the UK is trying to relax some of the digital-copying annoyances by modifying its interpretation of copyright law. I'm still pondering all of the effects, but I will note that it leaves several loopholes wide enough to pilot the RMS Titanic through, including the definition of what constitutes "personal" for "personal copying" and the failure to confront the distinction between an owner and a licensee — not to mention the information/expression dichotomy that UK courts only marginally understand (but is at the core of both the US constitutional enablement and the Berne Convention, however much data aggregators try to deny it).
In the steadily-deepening-neepery of trademark theory, Nike's recent sale of Umbro raises the " it's a floor wax and a dessert topping" problem, in a slightly different fashion. Is branding a designation of origin or an investment — or both? Or merely a litigation bear of very little brain (PDF)? One of the real problems with trademark theory is that it has become part of the "intellectual property" toolbox, but originated in the "consumer protection and unfair trade practices" toolbox.

OK, have the children (and authors who don't think ahead) been scared off by the neepery? Good. This stuff matters. Consider, for example, the recent sale of Lucasfilm to Disney, and combine that with the ongoing consolidation in the publishing industry. Just thinking out loud, are any media-property print works antithetical to Sternkriege (auf deutsch to avoid certain search results) presently distributed by Penguin... and about to be distributed by Random Penguin? Inquiring minds (and inquiring royalty-statement auditors) want to know!

Dammit, my magazine jammed. Please hold back the zombies for a few minutes while I clear it... No! I swear I checked this ammo yesterd

Labels: copyright, culture, intellectual property, jurisprudence, 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 (UC-Irvine)
- Professor Brian Leiter (U of Chicago Law/Philosophy)
- 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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