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.

14 January 2013

link to: 10:14 [GMT-8]

Public Health Warning

As interested as I am in food safety, I'll freely admit that — like any other sausage-maker — I'm probably less scrupulous than I should be with these internet link sausages. After my bout with something picked up elsewhere this weekend, out of an abundance of caution I'm going to start washing the sawdust in boiling water.

Learning from history so one does not repeat it (Santayana) is not about learning facts so much as it is about learning historical principles, like the law of unintended consequences.
Two bits of publishing "news" in the NYT — both of which qualify as history and not news — resonate with the struggle between publishers and authors for control over both publishing and money. A magazine publisher is now trying to cram a rights grab for film and TV rights down its term-contract authors' throats. I'll just note, as an aside, that most book publishers don't even ask for this in their boilerplate contracts any longer... and that the publishing house in question is far from the most reputable in its accounting (and that's saying a lot). I suppose it could be worse, though: It could concern jailbreaking of scholarly works that have been unethically treated as works made for hire — and not just by the evil that is R___ E____, but by academic presses on the Charles River (and you know who you are; you too; and the same goes for the NYT itself.).

That almost seems like breaking news compared to this OMGish bit of naïveté on the relationship between social media and dead-author "survival" that rather blithely ignores that this is several years old even for social media; that we went through it with blogs, and with the web, and even with Usenet; and that one could see that the "punchline" would somehow relate to Virginia Woolf within a couple of paragraphs.
I'll start my annual "awards are too quick" rant now. The Golden Globs (typo intentional) were last night. They do their minimal credibility no good at all by being presented for last year when one of the "major candidates" (Zero-Dark Thirty) became available outside of New York and Los Angeles only two days previously, during this year. Not acceptable. Not intellectually honest. Not even intellectually dishonest... just "privileged," if "privileged" means being a member of an organization of that nature.

The Oscars will be no better: Nominations for "best of 2012" closed barely into 2013, when people had no opportunity to actually think about anything. That way lies 1979, when the Academy not only got every recipient of the "big six" awards wrong, but had a 50% error rate in the nominations, too. Nobody should be even thinking of awards until at least three months after everything has been available in "wide" distribution... and nominations shouldn't close for at least a couple of months after that. Unless, that is, we're going to finally admit that these awards systems have not a goddamned thing to do with recognizing worthiness, but are instead about stroking egos and reigniting marketing campaigns.
Hats off to the Seachickens for making the "road disadvantage" seem meaningless. I have always smiled about the obsession with home advantage and playing for a draw on the road in real football (aka soccer)... because those guys don't understand "road trip." To put it in perspective, the Chickens put in 8000km of air travel across six total time zones in a week — a fairly routine event in American sport — and came within a whisker of winning both games instead of just one of them. I agree with the estimable Mr King (that nutcase member of the House of Reprehensibles from NY should be forced to change his name to avoid consumer confusion <vbeg>) that TV marketing memes (that often bear no relationship whatsoever to reality) should not be allowed to diminish the competitive nature of a game, which probably made things just enough more difficult.

Labels: culture, mass media, politics, publishing, science, sport

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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

Links open in a new window.

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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