Showing posts with label Copyright. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Copyright. Show all posts

Friday, December 10, 2010

INCEPTION in Real Time

As a strong supporter of Intellectual Property rights, I am often hesitant to post links to videos that might cross the line away from "fair use" of other's IP. This video featuring a "real time" interpretation of the "heist" sequence from INCEPTION is a rare exception. I think that its imaginative use of footage and the way it presents a concept discussed in the film, combined with the fact that it in no way presents an alternative to the original IP make this video a clear example of fair use. This is one of those rare instances where the creator of a derivative property has not only made an interesting work of art, but has added to my affection for the originating IP and reminded me that I need to buy the DVD of INCEPTION as soon as possible.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Responding to Things We Think About Games:When is a Game Actually Considered "Dead"?

In yesterday's blog post, I mentioned a couple of older games that had game mechanics that simulated or encouraged mundane activities in games devoted to heroic activities. These activities ranged from the item creation and crafting rules in Dungeons and Dragons Third Edition and DC Heroes post-character creation Gadgeteering rules to the Karma rules of Marvel Super Heroes and the kingdom governing rules of D&D's Birthright Setting. Looking back at that list, I realize that quite a few of those games are what can be considered "dead" properties. This got me to thinking about an entry in Will Hindmarch & Jeff Tidball's book Things We Think About Games:

STATEMENT 88
A game that is no longer supported is called "dead."


But that's business jargon. Don't let the state of a game line's release schedule determine whether or not you play it. Play it because it is fun.

Gamers who are active in the "Old School Renaissance" community are definitely followers of this maxim. Since the creation of the Open Gaming License, which put the mechanics of the 3rd edition of D&D into the Open community, the "Old School Renaissance" has been actively promoting the play of older role playing games. Some of the games that have benefited from this community's efforts include Dungeons and Dragons (Original, Advanced, and Basic editions -- I'm still waiting for the OSR 2nd Edition and the storm of controversy that will cause in the community), Gamma World, TSR's Conan RPG, and Marvel Super Heroes. Every one of these games has had an OSR reboot designed to introduce new players, or rekindle the imaginations of old school players, to the joys of those early systems.

These homage editions vary between efforts that retro-fit the rules set made open by the OGL and efforts that are designed under the assumption that the specific wording of rules can be copyrighted but not the underlying mechanics. Regardless of how technically correct those who design games under the second assumption may or may not be, they have all made a concerted effort to avoid use of undeniable product identity. Zefrs and 4C fall into this category and demonstrate how one can make an engaging rpg while stripping out the underlying trademarked source material.

I carefully couched my words in the above paragraph for a couple of reasons. The first is that I don't actually agree with the premise that the underlying mechanics aren't copyrighted with the other parts of the intellectual property. I would argue that those mechanics constitute the actual intellectual property and not the particular phrasing of those mechanics. Second, I think that these creators are doing us a great service. These products have been completely abandoned by their creators, with regard to the underlying mechanics, and a copyright system that doesn't take into consideration the concept of "abandonware" is in need of revision. Third, the Old School Renaissance community I was very active in during the late-nineties and early aughts took a very different approach to the issue -- and even that approach has some interesting complications.

I was a very active member of the DC Heroes online community, a community so active in the support of its game system that some of its members licensed the right to produce another game based on that system in order to keep it alive. That game, Blood of Heroes wasn't the most professional looking product with regard to illustrations, but it contained a meticulously playtested version of the underlying mechanics of the game. What is interesting is that even though Pulsar Games, a company made up of fans of the DC Heroes' MEGs system, licensed the use of the rules, they still may not have been perfectly within the law.


According to Ray Winninger
, the author of the 2nd edition of the game and of a derivative work called Undergroung:

As for DC HEROES itself:

1) Our contract with DC specified that DC Comics holds the copyright on every product we released. If you check the indices, you'll note they all say "Copyright (C) DC Comics Inc." The contracts didn't specify anything like "Mayfair owns the copyright to the actual game rules, while DC retains the rights to its IP" or anything similar, just "all DCH products are copyright DC Comics-period." This would suggest that DC actually owns DC HEROES. I know for certain that DC *believes* they own all rights to the game and everything produced for it and I suspect they're probably right.

2) Greg Gorden believes that his contract specified that he retained ownership of the DCH game system once DCH was out of print. When I was at Mayfair I looked for this agreement and couldn't find it-but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. One potential problem is that it's unclear that Mayfair could have made such an arrangement with Greg in the first place. Remember, the DC licensing agreement specified that DC would retain full and perpetual copyright over everything we released.

3) Pulsar licensed DCH from Mayfair but it's not 100% clear that Mayfair ever had the necessary rights to grant such a license in the first place (#1 and #2 above). I believe that Pulsar later made a separate arrangement with Greg.

4) UNDERGROUND uses a variant of the DCH system-none of its specific text, tables or charts. The copyright to UNDERGROUND is not tied to the rights to DCH in any way. Mayfair no longer owns the rights to UNDERGROUND.

What is technically legal with regard to underlying rules hasn't been truly tested in a court of law, even though the Copyright Office has articulated that it is only the "form" of the rules that is currently protected -- tbone has some discussion why this should disturb the freelance game designer here. Personally, I favor greater protections for the game rules than the law currently holds, but I also am a huge advocate of greater creator rights and a diminishing of the dreaded "work for hire" that pervades the industry. There is no reason that Wolfgang Baur shouldn't have some ownership, in the form of residuals at minimum, if Hasbro decides to make derivative product from Dark*Matter except that the system of work for hire is broken.

On the positive side, the Wild West nature of the protections given to underlying mechanics do mean that we don't have to wait for a company to officially declare that something is abandonware before we start producing products using a reworking of the underlying mechanics for a neglected fan base -- and that's what we are really talking about here.

In a world where roleplaying game products can be stored on servers, at close to zero cost, for fans to purchase at any future time there is no excuse for a company letting a game "die." A company's bottom line with regard to a product doesn't determine the life span of play. It does determine the "product life span," but not the play life span. It is fans, and creators working after a product has "died," who determine whether a game is truly dead. And the internet has ensured that so many games aren't actually dead.

I still receive daily digests from the DC Heroes Yahoo Group. Every day someone is reworking the rules and converting characters. Savage Worlds would likely never have gained the audience it has today were it not for digital distribution and devoted fans writing for digital fanzines. The OSR is reviving games that I actually thought were genuinely dead. I was surprised to learn that people still play White Box D&D. I think it is awesome, but I was surprised.

In a post-internet world, when is a game truly dead? Does it require distributed support, even fan support to be counted as alive or does it merely need players?

What are your thoughts?

Thursday, September 17, 2009

"Classic Hollywood Versions" of Gen X Classic Films

Stefan Blitz, of the excellent Forces of Geek blog, posted a couple of youtube videos yesterday. The videos were mash ups of classic Hollywood films cut into "fantasy" trailers for films like Raiders of the Lost Ark and Forrest Gump. In the fantasy versions, the starring role of Indiana Jones is played by Charlton Heston and Forrest Gump is portrayed by Jimmy Stewart. The concept alone is inspired, but what makes the clips work is Ivan Guerrero's dedication to detail. His use of scenes from Harvey and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington as key moments in the life of Forrest Gump is brilliant, particularly the scene from Harvey which captures the "feel" of Forrest Gump to a T.

It doesn't matter if you are familiar with the works Ivan Guerrero uses in his Raiders clip, as he also tends to release a "clip by clip" comparison with notations describing the scene he selected, where it is from, and why. I don't know exactly were this falls within the copyright wars raging around the world now, but I will say this. This is exactly the kind of content that those who are reasonable on the copyleft are trying to protect. It also happens to be something that I think, especially with the "annotated" versions, could become a poster child for what could be considered fair use. At no time is Ivan trying to profit from, or dilute the value of, another IP, instead he is trying to share a love for Classic film and classic Gen-X films.

Here is the Raiders of the Lost Ark trailer.



Here's the Raider's trailer with annotations.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Paizo vs. RPGNOW (aka DriveThruRPG): Two Different Ways to Satisfy Consumers

When Wizards of the Coast decided to remove all availability to purchase their gaming products (past, present, and future) as PDF files, the decision left ripples throughout the gaming industry. Wizards left due to rampant piracy of their products and the effects that piracy was having on physical (and digital) sales. Last week, I wrote that I thought this was both a good and bad decision by Wizards -- good on the new products and bad on back catalog.

I also argued that this would be a good thing for the gaming industry overall. It was my belief that gaming companies would look to take advantage of the void left in the wake of Wizards leaving the market. This occurred rather quickly with several publisher joining in a Celebration of PDFs, where they offer their current PDF products at a significant discount. This has had mixed reviews from the brick and mortar retailers, but I think it is a smart move. You can read some of the brick and mortar reactions here, here, and here.

What I didn't expect, and maybe should have, was the different ways that different online stores would respond.

Stewart Wieck and Sean Patrick Fannon of RpgNow (and DriveThruRpg), who shut down access to Wizards pdfs instantly (earlier than he was requested), went quick to work negotiating limited access for his customers who had previously purchased products from the Wizards catalog from his sites. He notified his customers that starting tomorrow customers will be able to download previously purchased Wizards pdfs for a 24 hour period. After that period, all the material will be gone for good. Stewart was seeking to both satisfy his customers, who had previously paid for access to material, while adhering to Wizards' wishes. Kudos to you Stewart and Sean.

Paizo, on the other hand, appears to have made no such offering to their customers and it looks unlikely that they will do so. Where RpgNow left dead links of my former products, so that I could at least see what I had purchased -- and so they could negotiate the deal they negotiated, Paizo removed all references to Wizards products I purchased from their website. This not only demonstrates that it is unlikely that Paizo is negotiating a deal with Wizards, it exhibits three weaknesses in Paizo's customer service.

First, it hinders my attempts to draft a letter to Wizards demonstrating how they have benefited from my digital consumership (I will have to go through my files to manually figure out which I purchased from Paizo and which from RpgNow). Second, it demonstrates a lack of foresight that Wizards might be up for some negotiations. Third, it demonstrates that Paizo cares more about its own publisher business than it does about any business revenue it acquires as a digital game store -- a short sighted view in my opinion.

Paizo is a very successful publisher, but I have found that they are a poor retailer. Physical orders from their site take inordinate amounts of time to be fulfilled as they seem to carry very little inventory. Rather it appears that they use your order as the basis for an order from a distributor. This causes delays in fulfillment and exhibits poor command supply chain dynamics. Their pdf response seems to exhibit this same poor command.

Their response to Wizards removal of pdf was two fold. First, they discounted their "in house" pdfs by 35% (all of the products they publish are discounted). This is a smart move by a smart publisher. Second, they removed the Wizards pdf -- apparently without negotiating with Wizards to have an "Download Recovery Day." This is a bad move by an online retailer.

The problem here is that where RpgNow (and DriveThruRPG) are viewing me as a consumer of all the products they offer, Paizo seems to be viewing me primarily as a consumer of their in house products and not of their store in general. This is a mistake that runs the risk of alienating me as a customer, since it appears they only want my business when it directly benefits them and not when they only receive a percentage of the proceeds.

Paizo should offer a recovery day as well. Failure to do so will not cost them my business, I am a loyal Superscriber, but it might cost them other consumers who are on the fence.

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

Wizards Pulls PDFs: Good and Bad for Wizards, Just Good for Competitors

Yesterday, I read a tweet that Wizards of the Coast would be ending all pdf sales of its current and back catalog of products. Wizards required that all of the web-based stores that sell their pdfs not only cease selling pdfs (as of midnight last night), but that they also remove the capability to download previously purchased pdfs from patrons who had purchased pdfs in the past. I regularly purchase pdf products from DriveThruRPG (I use their RPGNow gateway) and from Paizo Publishing. Like many consumers, I am disappointed that Wizards of the Coast will be -- at least temporarily -- suspending all digital sales of their products.

The twitter news was verified by both RPGNow and Paizo. In fact, Paizo sent me an email reminding me to re-download any products that were not currently on my hard drive. The email read as follows:

Wizards of the Coast has notified us that we may no longer sell or distribute their PDF products. Accordingly, after April 6 at 11:59 PM Pacific time, Wizards of the Coast PDFs will no longer be available for purchase on paizo.com; after noon on April 7, you will no longer be able to download Wizards of the Coast PDFs that you have already purchased, so please make sure you have downloaded all purchased PDFs by that time.


At the time, Wizards had given no reason for the cease and desist on all sales, but it quickly came to light that it was response to rampant piracy of their products. Wizards has recently taken eight individuals to court for illegally distributing their recently published Player's Handbook II.

While I am disappointed in Wizards' decision, unlike a lot of people on the internet, I am not angry. In fact, I understand and think that in the long run this choice may be good and bad for Wizards and just plain ol' good for the industry as a whole.

Before I begin my analysis, you should know that I am a strong advocate for creator rights. This means that I am very much pro-copyright and anti-piracy, though it also means that I am highly critical of corporate "work-for-hire" agreements. I understand some need, in a company like WotC/Hasbro, for "brand ownership" of a property for the purpose of continuity, but I think most writers should receive royalties based on current and future sales of IP they helped create. The fact that Gygax and Arneson saw little money from D&D after they were no longer directly contributing to new editions was a tragedy, as is the fact that Wolfgang Baur sees no royalties from Dark * Matter. The gaming industry could learn a lot from the film, tv, and music industries (particularly the film and tv industries) when it comes to acknowledging creator rights.

In addition to being pro-copyright myself, a friend of mine is former Senior Counsel, Content Protection Litigation at Fox. Not only do I think that he isn't evil for suing the hell out of pirates, I think he was right to do so. This is especially true since Section 512 of the DMCA affords Internet service providers with general immunity for transmitting, routing, or providing connections for materials through their networks. The law prevents companies like Fox from attacking the "deep pocket" highways that allow for the illegal transmission of data, and forces Fox to go after the actual criminals who -- lacking deep pockets -- are often sympathetic compared to big companies like WotC and Fox.

I think Section 512 is good and necessary (because I am a fan of free speech and I don't want corporations deciding what I can and cannot write...as I wrote I am a fan of creator ownership and control), but that the current environment forces corporations to act as "law enforcement" which is potentially bad for everyone. By making corporations the enforcers, the law forces corporations to act against their own interests while acting in their own interests. This is the situation that WotC/Hasbro find themselves in. They must defend their property, because no one else will, but in doing so they will alienate fans and cost themselves money.

So, what do I think they should do? According to Landslide (the American Bar Association's IP trade publication), entertainment piracy is "estimated to cause $18 billion in trade losses around the world last year." The ABA information was based on the International Intellectual Property Alliance's Special 301 Letter to the U.S. Trade Representative dated February 11, 2008. This isn't an industry ending problem, but it is a significant one. There is very good news regarding the majority of IP providers cooperating with IP holders when there is alleged infringment, (according to the same source) "ISP compliance rates remain high even in jurisdictions where the framework of intellectual property laws generally is perceived to be weak." But there is also bad news in that there are (once more according to the same source) "rogue sites and ISPs that refuse altogether to play by the DMCA's rules. One of the most notorious examples is the Swedish torrent index site The PirateBay...it has been estimated that The PirateBay enables more than 40 million downloads of protected content every month."

We have a serious problem, and it's a problem that doesn't merely affect big corporations. I have been a patron of Wolfgang Baur's Open Design Project since its inception and have contributed to every project he has worked on so far. The purpose of the project was to create a product that only the funders would have the ability to use. It isn't cheap to participate at the "Patron" level, and I have never felt so used as a consumer when I discovered Open Design Projects listed in bit torrent indexes. While it is true that small companies can actually benefit from file sharing, it can replace advertising for these firms, it is also true that word of mouth without file sharing could work just as well. There is such a thing as fair use and while the particulars of fair use are vague, it certainly includes reviews on websites and message boards.

This problem isn't limited to entertainment either. The AP recently announced that it will be taking a more active role in enforcing the proper use of its content on the internet. For years, people have been cutting and pasting AP articles without paying for the right to publish them and have been contributing to the strains on the news industry. The news industry certainly has other problems as well, but it is still true that the "information wants to be free yo" crowd are helping to nail the coffins in on that industry. And if you think that web ads are going to pay for everything and allow for all the free content you want, you might want to read this article in The Register. Apparently, YouTube "will lose parent Google $470m this year, because it can't generate worthwhile income from advertising." And if advertising won't make up the difference for what is given away free, Atlas will Shrug and the content will go away.

And that is exactly what happened with WotC. Atlas Shrugged and essentially told the world that it was taking its digital toys home and not letting anyone else play with them. This has made a lot of fans very angry. And while it certainly won't stop pirates, it will allow WotC to look for ways to better predict the impact of piracy on their profit margin and provides them an opportunity to look for alternate ways to offer the products digitally.

And here's where I finally write how this is good and bad for Wizards, and just good for the industry.

THE GOOD AND BAD FOR WIZARDS

The good is that Wizards is protecting their intellectual property and is showing a genuine desire to proactively go after pirates. The music industry lawsuits may have been onerously expensive and cost the labels a lot of goodwill, but they also reduced piracy. The lawsuits work. People are actually rational actors and weigh the costs of paying a small fee for a song or potentially getting sued. Wizards actions will likely reduce the amount of piracy they are suffering.

The bad, well...it's the same as the good. Wizards' fans are beginning to feel as if they are the ones being attacked. I don't personally understand how any non-pirate could ever feel this way, but many do. Add to that the fact that Wizards' isn't just suing the fans who are pirates, they are punishing fans who have done no wrong by removing the product from the internet and you have a public relations disaster. This is bad for WotC/Hasbro and is more evidence that the current legal team at WotC have no idea how to deal with their consumers. The first was their awful attempt at a Game System License for 4th edition -- it was too restrictive and like yesterday's action seemed to punish those who wanted to work in WotC/Hasbro's best interest.

I think it is a good thing that WotC/Hasbro removed all of their newer product from digital availability. They still have publishing costs on most of this stuff. They have physical product, which is far more expensive to produce than digital, that needs to "turn over." The 4th edition stuff, contrary to naysayers, is selling well, but it would sell better if piracy were minimized. This is moderately sound business.

I think it is a bad thing that WotC/Hasbro have removed access to all of the out of print product. The bandwidth costs for the products was being absorbed by the online stores, so these were nothing but a revenue stream for WotC/Hasbro. Now the only way to get these products is through second hand distribution, legal and illegal. Either fans hunt the books down on eBay or fans download them illegally. They have no other options. This is bad business.

What WotC/Hasbro need to do is make the old and new available in ways that minimize, because you cannot eliminate, the affects of piracy. The first thing they can do is use a World of Warcraft/Music Subscription model for their digital content. By using a Flash based reader they can allow DDI subscribers to access all of the 4th edition books currently available. They should do this at two fee levels, the player fee and the DM fee. "Players" would be able to access, with an internet connection, any and all player oriented books that are currently in publication -- in addition to other DDI materials -- anytime they want. They will be allowed to read the books for no additional charge. When the core books were the only books, this would have meant just the Player's Handbook, but as time passes it includes more and more books for the same fee. "DMs" should be allowed to read all publications, on Flash Paper, that are in publication for the current edition. It is up to Hasbro whether they want to allow the printing of these books, rather than just the reading of them, but I would recommend that they do.

They should also make available Kindle editions of the books...just for me.

Second, they should allow the purchase of all older editions through either traditional channels or their own pdf store. Piracy is no more, and actually less, a problem with these products when they are available for sale. Currently, you can get the entire catalog on various bit torrents, but you cannot buy them. Let consumers buy them and minimize the damage that piracy is doing to your bottom line. Do this now!

This may be what they are planning, but WotC/Hasbro have been silent on the issue and this is costing them loyalty and goodwill. This also provides a wonderful opportunity for small businesses to fill the gap.

JUST GOOD FOR COMPETITORS

By pulling out of the digital marketplace, WotC/Hasbro have left a large number of legitimate consumers in search of a product provider. Smart companies like Paizo (they are offering their Pathfinder PDFs for 35% off the regular retail price through the end of April), Rogue Games, Louis Porter Jr. Design, are immediately seizing the opportunity. With lower overhead, and lower advertising budgets, than WotC/Hasbro they have much to gain through goodwill and less to lose from piracy. Companies like WorldWorksGames still worries about pirates, but they beg their fans to not become them. They use their small size as a marketing tool to dissuade piracy, and it works...a little (see Open Design comment above). Companies like Pinnacle Entertainment Group couldn't have survived some pretty rough patches if it weren't for digital sales. They still suffer piracy, but their rules and products are also inexpensive so hopefully many pirates become customers in the long run. As I wrote earlier, piracy can serve as word of mouth for these companies. One imagines that few people are so callous as to acquire all of their products through piracy. But it is still true that the same word of mouth could be achieved without piracy.

Nothing will stop these smaller companies from risking the seas of piracy, as they have less to lose than WotC/Hasbro -- and that is a good thing. It is good for the hobby if more companies are competing for your dollar, it leads to innovation in gaming. Savage Worlds, Pinnacle's excellent RPG, wouldn't exist if they hadn't needed to find a new way to compete. The Indie Press Revolution is filled with excellent games, available digitally, looking for your gaming dollar. As long as WotC/Hasbro stay out of the digital market, these companies will have a chance to grow, and that is good for the industry.

It might be bad for WotC/Hasbro, but that depends on what they do in the next few weeks. And I think that is all they have before to announce where they are going digitally before the ill will will overwhelm them.

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Why Copyright Theft is Bad

Look, I know as well as anyone that "free is easier than paying." Given the power of the internet, "free is often better than buying." If I want to buy something, I usually have to either leave the house or wait for product delivery. The rare exception to this is ebooks, but if I buy them I still have to pay for them and as I wrote earlier "free is easier than paying."

But you also know what getting all your stuff for free means? It means that people will stop making the stuff that entertains you. If there is no money to be made, then people will stop working hard to produce things that entertain you. Case in point? Stephanie Meyer. Somebody leaked part of an early draft of her next book, and she's postponed indefinitely the writing of that installment.

It's hard work to write something worth reading and that work can be devoted to other profitable ventures. Those who have the talent, and discipline, to be creative in an entertainment field are also fully capable of making money other ways, and they will migrate away.

Don't tell me that "advertising" will eventually pay for all this great free stuff, and perpetuate the myth of the "economy of free." Sure, a lot of stuff we are currently paying for -- maybe even Meyer's books -- will be free due to ads, but at some point there has to be a purchased product to pay for the advertising that supports the "economy of free." It's economics 101. Heck, it's even more basic than that. Rousseau understood this when he wrote ON THE ORIGIN OF INEQUALITY. If you want people to create entertainment, then they need time and resources to be able to make that entertainment. If you want talented people, then the compensation has to be commensurate.

Go ahead and disagree, but don't come crying to me when all that is available to entertain you are mmorpgs, porn made in someone's basement, and Kirk/Picard slash fiction.

Monday, October 15, 2007

Ursula K LeGuin, Cory Doctorow, and Copyright

I have been wondering for some time now just how long the SF/Fantasy community will allow themselves to be swindled by Cory Doctorow's attempts to undermine copyright protections for writers. He's been incredibly crafty in his arguments. He has adeptly, and accurately, demonstrated how corporations often claim the copyright instead of the authors who created a product, but he uses this to shift the issue away from "creator ownership" issue into an "us vs. the corporate overlords" argument. Doing so he simultaneously points out a genuine injustice while misdirecting our ire toward the concept of copyright, which in fact protects creators (at least when corporate overlords don't hijack the rights). He has also pointed out that SF/Fantasy fans tend to both download and purchase hard copies of the things they like. In essence, the SF/Fantasy fan steals a peek, then buys the product, thus doing no "real" damage to the right holder.

I have never found Mr. Doctorow's arguments, and he has others, all that convincing. They seem to be overly concerned with "audience" rights and not with creator rights, which are necessary if people want to be able to make a living from this stuff. Certainly, there is some pretty wacky copyright legislation out there (lifetime plus how many years?), but that doesn't mean that the creator of a product doesn't have the right to profit from his or her creation. They should, and do, and current laws protect such rights.

In the past, the majority of the people I've read who seem to have any agreement with me have been corporate shills, and I don't want to just hang out with corporate shills -- or just them and Harlan Ellison (registered trademark) for that matter. So you can imagine my joy at finding that Ursula K. LeGuin also finds Mr. Doctorow's crusade a little too aggressive. It appears that Mr. Doctorow printed "in its entirety, a one-paragraph story that Ms Le Guin sent to the fanzine Ansible." LeGuin took issue and Mr. Doctorow eventually took action and apologized. You can read the original story at LeGuin's website.

LeGuin has accepted Mr. Doctorow's apology, but I'd like you to look at a couple of key phrases in Doctorow's apology which hint that he is also practicing more than a little self-righteous self-justification.

Andrew Burt, the person whom Ms Le Guin chose to communicate the matter to me, is someone with whom I had put in a killfile following an altercation. I delete all emails from him unread, and if he sent me a message, I did not see it.


Unless Andrew Burt (you can read a copy of a letter he wrote Jerry Pournelle here) and Mr. Doctorow engaged in a serious brawl, it seems a bit petty for Mr. Doctorow to have put his emails in a "killfile." I don't believe that Judd Apatow put Mark Brazill in his killfile, even after being told to "Get cancer." But I don't know the nature of the "altercation," I just know that Mr. Doctorow has used a word which has some heavy implications. Though given his frequent use of rhetorical techniques which might make Gorgias blush, I think it might be little more than a heated email/comment section/message board flame war.

In fact, it seems that Burt's major sin (according to the Doctorow piece) is that Burt believes in copyright protection, "Burt is the Science Fiction Writers of America VP who had previously sent a fraudulent takedown notice that resulted in my novel being removed from an Internet document server." So Burt tries to protect Doctorow's copyright, making an error that forces a takedown notice, something LeGuin describes as "An overworked committee mistakenly identified a few works, among many, as infringing copyright; the mistakes were promptly admitted and redressed, with apologies." That appears to be our "altercation." Which makes me think that Mr. Doctorow is a bit like Mark Brazill in all of this, even his apology seems snide and canned. This is implied by his assertion that, "My understanding is that she is unsatisfied and remains upset with me." When LeGuin is on the record as writing, "It may be a bit clouded with arguments and self-justification, but apologising is hard, and apologies are rare and valuable. I accept his in all good faith." Who seems to be the one most in need of justification here?

As for me, I agree with LeGuin's hope that, "In my view, the best thing that could come out of my brush with the Doctorow Doctrine would be this: the honorable reinstatement of the SFWA e-piracy committee, with an expression of appreciation from SFWA officers and members of the honest and effective work they have done for us for so long."