…that is, about as far from a childless catlady as one can get…
OK, I lied; I will make an endorsement here. I hereby endorse ensuring that your voter registration is up to date (non-US citizens, too, but the link is for 'murikans). Many jurisdictions (not just US, either) have thirty-days-prior-to-election restrictions, such as not being allowed to vote in non-Federal elections if registration is updated less than 30 days prior to the election. And that's even more common outside the US.
- Although I'm hesitant to give this self-righteous jerk a platform, the MIT Technology Review already did, so the marginal damage is minimal. Chris Lewis bloviates — on behalf of the organization of which he is President, and I'm burying the lede here — that the Second Circuit's decision declaring that the Internet Archive's piracy is not protected by fair use will lead to the downfall of western civilization, brutal whipping of puppies, and destruction of all libraries anywhere. I'll grant that the current "ecosystem" is unfair to libraries, but this sort of "self-help" solution has already been rejected rather thoroughly in the context of book availability.
If Apple is suggesting that Amazon was engaging in illegal, monopolistic practices, and that Apple's combination with the Publisher Defendants to deprive a monopolist of some of its market power is pro-competitive and healthy for our economy, it is wrong. This trial has not been the occasion to decide whether Amazon's choice to sell NYT Bestsellers or other New Releases as loss leaders was an unfair trade practice or in any other way a violation of law. If it was, however, the remedy for illegal conduct is a complaint lodged with the proper law enforcement offices or a civil suit or both. Another company's alleged violation of antitrust laws is not an excuse for engaging in your own violations of law. Nor is suspicion that that may be occurring a defense to the claims litigated at this trial.
US v. Apple, Inc., 952 F.Supp.2d 638, 708 (S.D.N.Y. 2013) (emphasis added), aff'd, 791 F.3d 290 (2d Cir. 2015). (Ironically, many of the publishers Lewis would attack regarding their e-book pricing policies "pleabargained down" in that matter.)
The real problem here is that Lewis is conflating publisher misconduct — and a pattern and practice of imposing publishing contracts that facially violate the Rule Against Perpetuities is certainly a window onto misconduct — with the impact on the author community of the so-called "CDL" (far worse than musicians legitimately complaining about Spotify). Any claim that his organization and/or the Kahlebros are merely engaging in "civil disobedience" paints the wrong house with too broad a brush, because those who will be most harmed by involuntary "CDL" acquisitions are the authors who have no control over pricing policies… and, because "commercial publishing" is in the strange position of being both an oligopoly and monopsony, never reaches the actual interior-decoration misconduct.
Then, too, the broad brush spatters all buildings (and appurtenances) as if they convey only mere "fact," without regard to originality of expression. But that's for another time… and, more to the point, careful examination of the "lending records" to discern both (a) how much is nearly-pure creative expression like "fiction" and "poetry" and (b) how much it's just an attempt to move Grokster's goalposts without ever admitting that's what they're trying to do.
- Speaking of Apple, schade. It's worth pondering how this relates to the conduct at issue in US v. Apple; whether a quick note of parallels, a deeper examination of repeat behavior of (unpunished) natural-person miscreants, or a broad-ranging consideration of how bullying relates to multinational corporations, that pondering will be disquieting.
- As Judge Côte implied in that quotation above, there just might be an antitrust problem in the part of publishing that is Lewis's legitimate concern: Scientific (and quasiscientific) journals. (Keep in mind that, because PW has more conflicts of interest in reporting on industry financials than the world-champion catlady has cats, the financial figures appearing in the article substantially understate the profitability of those journals.) All before citations themselves go rogue, which is at the opposite end of the problem and reflects the "academic politics are so vicious because the stakes are so low" meme.
- Interestingly, we may learn more about Ozymandias and other portions of the classical "canon" for which we have only fragmentary third-hand descriptions. Advocates of "original public meaning originalism" should ponder the equivalent — discovery of a trove of documents from the 1770s and 1780s reflecting the thoughts of ex-slaves (manumissed or otherwise) and how they used and understood terms like "person."
- Offered without further comment, there are changes afoot for prepublication review.