View 481 August 27 - September 2, 2007 (original) (raw)

Sunday, September 2, 2007

I find it interesting that the Electronic Freedom Foundation seems to be more concerned with the rights of file sharing than of authors; apparently the notion is that other people's work ought to be free as in beer. Authors can, by swearing on penalty of perjury, send a demand that their work be removed: first they have to find it, then they have to go to considerable trouble to generate a properly drafted document; and if, like SFWA which tried (perhaps clumsily, but the motivation was clear) to represent the interests of several authors living and dead, you don't get it all right, the Electronic Freedom Foundation will send a letter of warning on behalf of their clients. Their client is the commercial venture that allows anyone to put up files without regard to the ownership of the documents, and defends its right to leave them there, available, until someone swears on penalty of perjury that they don't have a right to put those up.

I confess I ought to stop thinking about this. And today I found some of Harlan Ellison's works available on that site. This may be interesting.

I confess that what infuriated me was that an author association which was doing no more than trying to help its membership keep their works from being openly and massively pirated has been made to be the bad guys, and EFF has taken the side of the file sharers. It isn't as if SFWA went to DMCA as first choice. SFWA has always tried to send polite letters reminding people that they are posting copyrighted material; in some cases all the authors have asked is that there be a link to the author's own freely posted copy of the work. Many "pirate" web sites are run by fans who respond to those letters, and everyone is happy. In the case of scribd.com there was not a hint of cooperation. Basically their policy is that they will respond to legal demands and nothing else; invoke DMCA or shut up. So if SFWA does invoke DMCA to protect the rights of members, then SFWA is compared to RIAA which actually sues individuals who downloaded music and movies.

The result is I have very little respect for ars technica and many of the self proclaimed defenders of the "rights" of the "internet community". And I really have work to do.

I may write this up as my column for the week, if I can manage to control my anger at SFWA being made the bad guy for trying to help authors keep some control over the publication of their works. And yes: I know that it wasn't as well done as it could be. Several people whose works were legitimately posted at scribd.com were listed and shouldn't have been. So far as I know they've all been restored: SFWA immediately removed them from the list when attention was called to the mistake; and at worst they lost a few hours of free exposure. But SFWA and the authors are the bad guys, and EFF and scribd.com are the good guys?

==============

Apparently there is some effect: I understand that an official of scribd.com is now saying that they are eager to cooperate. This is news, since Dr. Burt attempted to get some cooperation and as he put it, they blew him off. I know that in my case when I sent notes about my works, and Niven's works being up on scribd I got no reply, and several readers report the same experience.

Peter Glaskowsky speculates that scribd will find that venture capitalists are not eager to invest in organizations that have potential problems, either PR or legal, and that being known as a place where it is easy to find pirated works is not likely to be good for their image.

I have sent them a note indicating a dozen or more works that are probably not authorized, although I have no right to speak for the owners. Two of the documents available on scribd are by Harlan Ellison: I would be more than astonished to find that those are there with Harlan's permission. Nearly the entire work of Fred Saberhagen is available there. Some of Poul Anderson's work. In my note to scribd I pointed out that it was unlikely that they would be concerned about the Biblical warnings against doing harm to widows and orphans, but if they had any Masons on their board, or among their potential investors, that might be of concern.

Understand, I have heard nothing directly from them, but I have seen reports that they are commenting on what I have said on this web site. That makes me hopeful that they will read the column I am preparing.

What I have been sent (by a third party) is this:

Both yours and Jerry Pournelle's accounts of your experiences with Scribd are
not based in reality. In fact, Pournelle displayed his great facility for Science
Fiction on his blog by describing Scribd's copyright process as onerous and
unresponsive a full day before he bothered to file his DMCA notice. His request
was immediately fulfilled.

Scribd's copyright process is otherwise universally described as courteous and
expedient from the site's supporters and detractors alike. Those who would discredit
Scribd are best armed with facts, but the facts in this case are clearly on
Scribd's side.

Jason Bentley
Director of Community Development @ Scribd
jason at scribd dot com

I find that interesting: it certainly does not echo my experience of trying to communicate with them a couple of weeks ago when readers began informing me about scribd, and it does not echo Dr. Andrew Burt's attempts at soliciting their cooperation; but it's very good news. If they want to cooperate in future, that's a good thing.

It is certainly true that several hours after I sent a formal DMCA notice under penalty of perjury informing them that HIGHER EDUCATION was on their web site without my permission, they sent me a notice that it had been removed. Previous informal attempts had failed, but sending a properly drafted legal notice did the job. Here is what I sent:

To: trip@scribd.com

Cc: Jerry Pournelle

Subject: Higher Education

Dear Mr. Adler,

I am writing to you to avail myself of my rights under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This letter is a Notice of Infringement as authorized in Title 17, United States Code, Section 512c. I wish to report an instance of what I feel in good faith is an instance of copyright infringement on Scribd.

1. The material which I contend belongs to me, and appears illegally on the Service is the following:

The novel "Higher Education," written by Charles Sheffield and Jerry Pournelle.

2. The material appears at this website address:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/135948/Charless-Sheffield-Jerry-Pournelle-

Higher-Education

3. My contact information is as follows:

Jerry Pournelle

12051 Laurel Terrace Dr.

Studio City, CA 91604

(818) xxxxxxxx

4. I have a good faith belief that the use of the material that appears on the service is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or by operation of law.

5. The information in this notice is accurate, and I am either the copyright owner or I am authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner. I declare under the perjury laws of the United States of America that this notification is true and correct.

Further, I request that you take all necessary steps to discourage your users from uploading copyrighted documents without proper authority in the future, and that you implement measures to identify users who upload copyrighted documents without proper authority so that appropriate legal action may be taken against them.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Jerry Pournelle

Note that every paragraph of that letter is necessary, and only that letter got any response; perhaps Mr. Bentley does not think that generating a letter like that for each and every instance of unauthorized posting of copyrighted material is "onerous"; people do have different opinions on such things. But I'd think that most authors would find it onerous, and that many writers, and their widows, would find it intimidating as well as onerous to send any such thing. And in some cases tens to hundreds may be required for a single author. And they may need to be sent every day as new copies of their work are posted. I would call that onerous, myself.

At 2:46 AM last night I received:

Subject: Scribd Content Removal
2 September 2007

Jerry Pournelle
12051 Laurel Terrace Dr.

Studio City, CA 91604

Scribd.com provides an online library that permits users from around the world to post and/or read written works and other documents on the Internet.

Scribd.com takes the rights of intellectual property owners very seriously and complies as a service provider with all applicable provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"). Our policy is to respond to the valid notices of infringement we receive according to the DMCA by expeditiously removing infringing material and terminating users, when appropriate, according to our Repeat Infringer Policy.

On 2 September 2007, Scribd.com disabled access to the document(s) at the following URLs:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/135948/Charless-Sheffield-Jerry-Pournelle-

Higher-Education

<http://www.scribd.com/doc/135948/Charless-Sheffield-Jerry-Pournelle-Higher-

Education> pursuant to the notification dated 1 September 2007 we

Education> received

from Jerry Pournelle. We hope that our prompt action and attention to this matter has satisfied your request. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any additional questions or concerns.

Sincerely,

Jason Bentley
Director of Community Development

Scribd

211 Sutter Street, 2nd Floor

San Francisco, CA 94108

USA

408.230.2444

web: http://scribd.com

email:jason@scribd.com

Apparently they acted, finally, a couple of weeks after I sent an informal inquiry to them asking why Higher Education was posted on their site and got no answer, but a few hours after I sent a formal DMCA takedown notice. I presume this is what they mean by courteous and expedient.

Had they acted with courtesy when Dr. Burt attempted to work something out with them, SFWA would not have had to send DMCA takedown notices, and this whole flap would never have happened.

I have also sent, informally, a copy of something I posted on the SFWA discussion forum to scribd:

Keep remembering, these are the good guys whose rights the Electronic Freedom Foundation protects. I am not sure who looks out for the rights of the authors here. Perhaps they have none. Perhaps they don't want any. Anyway I find works by Harlan Ellison, Elizabeth Moon, Susan Schwartz, Poul Anderson, Fred Saberhagen, Norman Spinrad, and others.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/133989/Queen-of-Air-Darkness-by-Poul-Anderson I have no idea whether Karen has authorized this; I doubt that she's even aware of it.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/133932/11-1973-The-Year-in-Science-Fiction-by-Damon-Knight

http://www.scribd.com/doc/133982/SF-1965-1970 This one is hard to figure. It's probably legitimately up there; but it takes a while to figure out who owns what. Which may be relevant.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/132563/Fred-Saberhagen-Berserker-Base But I doubt they have any right to post this; the question is, who owns the copyright on this collaboration? Who legally can assert any rights here?

http://www.scribd.com/doc/246218/ccdbb Another odd one. It may legitimately be up there. It may not be. I have no idea whether Poul's estate has put some of his songs into public domain or authorized this publication; but of course Poul's song is only one of many here.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/132559/Fred-Saberhagen-Berserker-2-Brother-Assassin I don't suppose anyone is trying to protect Fred's rights now. I don't even know if he wanted them protected. It's not likely that anyone will care now.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/132572/Fred-Saberhagen-Lost-Swords-1-Woundhealers-Story There's plenty more Saberhagen here; I think perhaps his entire works.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/135672/A-Bertram-Chandler-Rim-World-The-Dark-Dimensions Most of Jack Chandler's works, too.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/136460/Harry-Turtledove-The-Best-Alternate-History-Stories-Of-The I don't know if HARRY TURTLEDOVE and SUSAN SCHWARTZ and others have authorized this or not. Sterling is in there too, perhaps with permission. So is Sanders. I am pretty sure Sanders hasn't authorized this since he's on record as agreeing with me. And Poul Anderson. It's not likely that anyone will get this taken off their site. Who would swear to have the right to demand that it be taken down?

http://www.scribd.com/doc/136447/Harry-Turtledove-7th-Chapter

http://www.scribd.com/doc/1973/Turtledove-Harry-Homeward-Bound

http://www.scribd.com/doc/2216/Harry-Turtledove-Into-The-Darkness

http://www.scribd.com/doc/2217/Harry-Turtledove-Marching-Through-Peachtree

There's considerable Turtledove; again I have no idea whether with or without his permission.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/133933/08-A-Thing-of-Beauty-by-Norman-Spinrad

There's not a lot of Spinrad today.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/136365/Harlan-Ellison-Pa I am pretty sure Harlan didn't authorize this

http://www.scribd.com/doc/136360/Harlan-Ellison-Alone-Against-Tomorrow Nor do I think Harlan authorized this, which contains I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. But perhaps he did?

Of course this is all mixed in with other works that are almost certainly up there with permission and encouragement of the copyright owners. It has taken me about ten minutes to compile the above list, and I haven't any idea which of those works is there by permission of the owners.

The model here is that they can keep it up until someone swears on penalty of perjury that it should come down; and the Electronic Freedom Foundation apparently stands ready to protect the rights of this site to do that. It is an interesting interpretation of freedom.

A day or so ago I didn't find works by Elizabeth Moon. Now there are a lot of them. I am unable to discern from what she has said in this forum whether or not these are posted with her permission.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/132352/Elizabeth-Moon-Aura

http://www.scribd.com/doc/132359/Elizabeth-Moon-Remnant-Population

http://www.scribd.com/doc/132353/Elizabeth-Moon-Fools-Gold

http://www.scribd.com/doc/132356/Elizabeth-Moon-Paksenarrion-1-The-Sheepfarmers-Daughter (Part 2 is here also) as well as many other Stories by Moon.

Jerry Pournelle

Chaos Manor

I sent this to scribd earlier today; I have received no acknowledgment or reply, but then I haven't expected one. I have not quite dared to call Harlan and tell him that a whole story collection of his is on line and available for anyone to download.

I understand that I must not call scribd.com a pirate site: it's just a place where anyone can put up a copyrighted document without any legal authority and scribd won't do anything until a legal notice by the owner is sent to them. Better be sure the notice is in the proper form. So although there's a lot of other people's work available at scribd without any permission from the copyright owners, it's not a pirate site. Keep that firmly in mind.

Now if I can compile that list in about ten minutes, then I'd say that scribd hasn't made much effort to find and delete works they have no right to publish. I may be uncertain about Elizabeth Moon or Fred Saberhagen's attitude toward this kind of thing, but everyone knows what Harlan Ellison thinks about it. And I would be astonished if Jack Chandler's estate, or Fred Saberhagen's estate, or Poul's widow Karen, had authorized any such posting. I'll ask her when I see her this week.

In any event, I understand that scribd and EFF are supposed to be the good guys here, and SFWA and Dr. Burt and now apparently me are the bad guys. They have the entire work of some authors, and much of the work of many authors, on line and available for download without any permission from the copyright owners; and we're the bad guys. It's an interesting world.

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