Copyright

Tags for this page: 200903 copyright index law

Lulu, the self-publishing platform through which I'm distributing some of my work, recently announced that now they're doing "eBooks." Interesting piece of "news," since they've offered electronic distribution right from the start of their operation, and I've been using it myself for years already. What's new? It turns out the actually new part is that instead of just allowing people to buy and sell downloadable PDFs, now they're going further to support commercial "eBook" devices... and they're claiming an additional $1.49 out of every download sold on top of their previous claim of 20% of the retail price (it's going to be interesting if they try to take $1.49 out of my Japanese syllabary flash cards, which are currently priced at $1.00)... and (for another $0.99) they'll let you apply DRM to your "eBook."

I'm inclined to think that at the very least, I shouldn't publish with Lulu again; and, probably, I should also withdraw my existing publications from their system and find some other print-on-demand outfit. Is that an overreaction?

ETA: They've posted a response, see below.

(17 November 2009)

Submission to the 2009 copyright consultation

I've not had much enthusiasm for the copyright wars in the last few years, and I've mostly stayed on the sidelines in the current consultation. It's important stuff, though, and there are only a few days left to make submissions, so this morning I took some time out to prepare the following. You should take a look at the Speak Out On Copyright site and put in your comments, too.

(9 September 2009)

Bill C-61 (Canadian DMCA) at first reading

No sooner did I go out of town than the Conservatives introduced Bill C-61, the long-awaited copyright legislation. It's pretty much as we feared: giving the US corporations everything they want with only a nod to the rights of Canadians. Now would be a good time to write some letters. Michael Geist has been covering it in some detail. I'm somewhat out of touch myself, but quickly getting back to speed. Below I'll summarize my clause-by-clause skimming of the Bill, and in future postings I'll probably talk about what we need to do about it. Here's the Hansard transcript from when the Bill was introduced.

(23 June 2008)

Payment in Credit

Commentary on a Rebecca Tushnet article on fandom creation. (11 October 2007)

The terrible secret of Livejournal

I'm hearing another round of rumours about Six Apart, the company that runs Livejournal, and its deletion of Livejournal users. It sounds like they've changed their code to make it less obvious when a user has been deleted (by hiding usernames or something, instead of showing them in strikethrough), and they're continuing to not follow their stated policies of issuing warnings and conducting reviews and so on. The fandom community is up in arms, and the current situation is seen as an example of Six Apart not sticking to the promises it made last time there was a round of deletions. I think the time has come for me to reveal the terrible secret of Livejournal - the one big issue behind this situation, that neither side wants to admit even to themselves. Because of this one big issue, I think that fandom is making unreasonable demands of Livejournal. This is a sort of open letter or reality check for the fandom community: you can't expect Six Apart to give you what you're demanding, and you need to recognize why. (9 August 2007)

Captain Copyright

Links and resources on Access Copyright's ill-fated "educational" campaign from 2006. (1 June 2006)