The Settlement (in essay form)
The Lawsuit (in essay form)
Technical difficulties (with my back) have really cut into my blawgging time this past week. In any event, I leave you with this, umm, "dialog":
- In her usual, understated fashion, Ursula K. Le Guin — a giant of American letters who gets less respect than she should because some of her books are marketed as YA, and others as science fiction/fantasy — publicly resigns from the Authors['] Guild in protest over the GBS settlement.
- The AG then turns around and tries to justify its position. Recognizing the realities that "one might lose" in litigation is a good thing; as I've pointed out since the inception of the lawsuit, though, one's chances of winning are a lot better when one adopts a sensible legal theory from the outset. And, even so, after Grokster and Tasini, there is actually quite little chance of losing a properly constructed case (rats, there's that problem again). Of course, all of that presumes the validity of the economic "analysis" found in the AG's rejoinder... and it's trivial to demonstrate that it makes no sense either mathematically or in the real world. (Hint: When your conclusion requires ignoring multiple divide-by-zero errors through handwaving — or is that Invisible Hand-waving? — it's not valid. And when your conclusion requires ignoring the majority of the verifiable data available, it's not sound.)
And I really will — after an unanticipated month-long break — return to the tangent I started on 19 November about antitrust and the GBS settlement. Really. I promise. Then I'll have to get around to filing my own objection...
So happy holidays. I think.