Hmm. Been there. Done that. See my comment over at BoingBoing. It is literally the last word (with several typos, alas). And ditto Clifton @89.
This is not to say that Abi's firm should not undertake the effort, but that the unintended consequences might cause more fracas amongst customers (and amusement among employees). I should also like to note that if one were to add "chink" to these lists, one would deprive oneself of quoting from A Midsummer Night's Dream, and I am speaking both as a "Chink" and a fan of the Bard.
Now waiting for Cockney (ooh, ooh) Rhyming slang to get the proverbial chop.
@Teresa: Fresh, uncooked tomatoes? Is the scare over or do you have a trustworthy source?
It also occurred to me (while listening to the tomato story on The NewsHour) that back in the home country, my people have used night soil to fertilize their crops for possibly thousands of years. Why were e. coli and the like not regular scourges? Then I realized that Chinese salads were invented in California around the time of Jimmy Carter. Stir frying for the win! Not that it won't keep me from trying out the recipe myself. Sounds yummy.
debbie@49:
Of course, the Beornings should get their own series:
The Beorn Identity
The Beorn Supremacy
Little House on the Carrock
@Avram
I Still Known What You Did Sixty Years Ago
The Orc Who Shot Bilbo Baggins
South Farthing: Shorter, Stouter & Unstealthy
Lobelia
(featuring Radagast Radagast and a young Lobelia S-B)
About Bilbo
Bree Hill, 90210
Citizen Saruman
The Infernoing Tower (UK title: Faulty Tower)
Dragon Tales
An Inconvenient Ret-Con
Zarderiand
All Quiet on the Southron Front
J.R.R. Tolkien's Beren+Luthien
Sam & Frodo: The Early Years
(please shoot me now)
About those snow chains, practice putting them on while wearing the kind of clothes you expect to have on in snow conditions. Knowing how to put on your chains in a warm garage with lots of light is useful, but hardly accurate to the actual weather conditions in which you would need them.
When I bought cables for my car (not enough clearance between the tire and wheel well for chains), I first practiced putting them on wearing regular work clothes, then I did it again wearing my winter parka and ski-gloves. It was a very educational experience. If there was an easy way to arrange it, I would've tried it again in the snow. As it turned out, I've not had to use them yet, but I'm certainly better aware of what it might really take to put on chains or cables under field conditions.
So Ms. Lee has to share "something unique", which she admits to having been ghostwritten (possibly from Beyond), via a vanity press. Is this Bizarro Book Publishing World Day or a story from The Onion? My brain hurts.
First, can we all please replace "Property" in "Intellectual Property" with "Monopoly"? Because "property" is a terrible metaphor for non-concrete things such as Stranger in a Strange Land, the script Coca-Cola™ logo and 1-click shopping. Better yet, let's call copyrights "copy monopolies", trademarks "(trade)mark monopolies" and patents "process/product monopolies"[1].
Second, there has been rather few posts in which the poster advances specific alternatives to various copy monopoly issues, so I'll disclose mine and try to support them. I'll then follow-up with some observations on the non-monopoly aspects of this discussion.
How long should copy monopolies last?
28 years plus a single renewal term of 28 years; the renewal requires registration.[2] Copy monopolies can be assigned or willed. As has been said elsewhere in this thread, this limited monopoly is to give creators an incentive to create more, with all the works to be ultimately released into the public domain to enrich the common culture. If someone wants their grandchildren to enjoy the fruits of hir labor, sie should learn financial planning.
Question to those who can read the fine print better than I: where in Berne/WCT/TRIPS does it say that one doesn't have to formally register a work for copyright to apply? Berne Article 2.1 begins with:
The expression “literary and artistic works†shall include every production in the literary, scientific and artistic domain, whatever may be the mode or form of its expression[....]
Which implies that all creative works would automatically fall under the "Protected Works" umbrella, until one gets to Article 2.2:
It shall, however, be a matter for legislation in the countries of the Union to prescribe that works in general or any specified categories of works shall not be protected unless they have been fixed in some material form.
This seems to modify Article 2.1 in that a signatory country can decide for itself what category of work might not be protected or any particular work might not be protected "unless they have been fixed in some material form". How does this get turned into "you don't need to formally register a copyright?"
How broadly should copy monopolies apply?
Reproduction, distribution, public performance; for profit or otherwise. Fair use exemptions would include educational, criticism/analysis/review, parody/satire, private archival of electronic materials, indexing for searching/cataloging. I would limit so-called "moral rights" (which we should call "authorial rights") to attribution.
Beyond that, "authorial rights" seem way too subjective as the bases for reasonably effective laws. The one thing I can think of would be to give creators the monopoly to attach a "statement of acceptance/objection" be included with the publication/performance of the objected-to variant/context of the work. I would also have no problems if these "authorial rights" were also limited to 28+28 years, and independently assignable from the "economic" monopoly.
AliceB@177:
There had been, mounting over the course of a century, as the U.S. became more and more of a copyright exporter (think movies, magazines, music), and less of a copyright importer, some real concern in all entertainment industries that unless the US signed onto what was now an almost universal treaty that other countries would decline to enforce US copyrights.
This is what we call "blackmail", or "negotiating strategy" in NewSpeak. Has anyone thought to ask why the US was (and is) so successful in exporting its culture? More importantly, successful exports require one or more import markets. So who was doing all the importing, and why?
How do (trade)mark monopolies affect copy monopolies?
In my opinion, fanficcers should really be looking at (trade)mark instead of copy monopoly laws. To wit: popular books are not only being copyrighted at the moment, but their characters, settings, plot-lines, attire and sports are all being trademarked as well. From a 2004 edition of HPatPS:
Harry Potter, names, characters and related indicia are copyright and trademark Warner Bros. 2000™
For fanficcers, this means that it doesn't matter if we reduce copy monopoly to 10 years, or even 10 months. Even if JKR and her "authorial rights" assignees gave their full blessing, Warner Bros. might still have valid claims against HP fanfic. Maybe the lawyers reading this thread can point us to some useful reading on trademarks and how they have to be defended.
If fanfic==play, then authors and fanficcers are...?
1. Fanfic == play implies that
2. Characters/plots/universes == toys (playthings?)
So if:
3. author == toy owner, and fanficcer == kid coming to take the toys away, then
4. author has no toys
WTF? This is what we get when we call a limited monopoly "intellectual property" and proceed into a rhetorical rat hole.
The better metaphor would be the author as "toy" Manufacturer. George Lucas doesn't run out of "Han Solo-ness" because the warehouse is empty.[3] And just like real manufacturers, some allow more latitude of "play" than others. Think Mattel's attitude about Barbie™ versus Lego's attitude about their bricks, or even Black & Decker's attitude about their tools. Carry this metaphor to its logical conclusion, and authors who want no fanfic at all to be based on their works turn into the Franklin Mints of the world. (Though there certainly are fanfic possibilities in having the Confederates face the Army of Mordor on an Arthurian chessboard.)
The "r" word.
[rant=on]For the love of Pete, people!![rant=off]
Can someone tell me if "rape" is a good analogy for anything except rape? If not, we're tossing the word around why?
Also, we may have discovered a more divisive alternative to Godwin's Law. Yay us.
(Making annoyed Mutley sounds, if that doesn't violate someone's intellectual monopoly.)
[1] The Grammar Rock fan in me really wants to call this a "Thing Monopoly".
[2] If Berne Convention issues could be set aside, I'd prefer that the original term would also require registration.
[3] What does make Lucas run out of "Han Solo-ness" I leave as an exercise to the Reader.
[re: recognizing landscapes]
[snark]
And of course, everyone who's ever spent time in Dallas instantly recognized those famous mountains when watching the X-Files movie.
[/snark]
mitch wagner@235
Yes, I am saying that all stories written in the future are science fiction. Can you think of any counter-examples?
* The Prophecies of Nostradamus
* The Left Behind series
* Most religious texts
* The horoscope in your local paper
I'll exclude day-after-tomorrow type stories from that definition. For example, a political thriller set in 2009 might not be science fiction.
Why this exception? Day-after-tomorrow stories are one of the staples of SF.
I can't imagine calling "You've Got Mail" sf by any reasonable definition. If "You've Got Mail" is sf, then everything is sf.
You've Got Mail is not SF the way 2001 is, but it's more SF than, say, Cell. I'm not suggesting that either of the two newer works are canonical SF, but they both contain SF elements (though I'd consider "The Pulse" to be bad SF, if not purely MacGuffin-esque). As I've said before, I'm in the "labels as tags" camp. I believe that using these labels as boundaries will end up gerrymandering works into categories that become harder and harder to define, and cause people to focus more on which shelf a work comes from rather than how good it is.
jesr@200
I didn't include Farscape because I've not seen enough of it to make a judgement. Others in that category include: Lexx, Dark Angel, Star Trek: Enterprise, Heroes; For that matter, here are a couple of series that just didn't grab me as a viewer, though lots of people seem to hold them in some regard: Quantum Leap, Stargate, the rest of the Star Trek franchise.
I probably would not enjoy a marathon session of Lost in Space now, but I'd enjoy a couple of episodes here and there. I certainly enjoyed them in the late 70s when I watching them as after-school TV re-runs, while simultaneously discovering Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, Dickson, etc.[1] The fact that most of the series was cheesy was perfectly acceptable, even in light of my journey through "real" SF. I suppose I included it because of its influences (good and bad) on other SF shows and movies that come after it.
If we're going for a list of American SF shows for the ages, I would reduce the list to 5.5:
* Twilight Zone
* Outer Limits
* Star Trek: The Original Series
* Star Trek: Deep Space 9
* Babylon 5
* Firefly[2]
mitch wagner@201
Are you saying that all stories set in the/a future are science fiction? That casts a rather wide net, no?
As for You've Got Mail, since it's a remake of The Shop Around the Corner (1940), one might argue that they've just replaced snail mail with email/instant messaging. However, I'm willing to go the extra mile and suggest that You've Got Mail might just have some SF elements. Physical letters and emails are not the same thing, and neither of them are equivalent to IMs. There certainly are people who still consider email itself to be more science fiction than daily reality, and they probably would find this aspect of You've Got Mail to be as "science fiction" as GM crops and space travel. However, those people, and most of us, are probably not interested in watching Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks get into the nitty-gritty of SMTP servers and chat client minutiae. We are interested in seeing how much their "identity" differs in their online life vs. real life. And it is not lost on me the irony of having this discussion in the comment thread of a blog by people in the book business.
[1] Public library. I started at the A's. So I was a bit OCD. :-)
[2] In its current form, Firefly is an episodic mini-series at best. Serenity helped to complete it somewhat, but it was only 12 episodes, people! And I'm writing as a fan!
mitch wagner@180
Yeah, what you said what Damon Knight said. (My post@195 should've made it up back in the 170s but I noobed.) But it sounds like our personal definitions for SF and Fantasy are within a stone's throw of each other, and we're both in the same neighborhood as Heresiarch@188.
patrick@190
I'm all for having a relaxed attitude about categorizing fiction, and I mostly don't let how a work is categorized affect whether I'd be interested in checking it out (notable exception: Romance novels, though I'm willing to check out most "chic flicks"). Having said that, I also want some common vocabulary which identifies elements that works have in common. Perhaps it's better to think of labels like "SF" and "Fantasy" as tags in the "web 2.0" sense rather than categories in the "which section in the book store do I find this" sense.
And having said that, I would love to hear how and why you and other respondents might categorize/tag any of the following works:
* Star Wars: A New Hope
* Star Trek (original series)
* 1984 (book)
* Reign of Fire (film)
* Going Postal (the Pratchett book)
* Foundation Trilogy
* The Handmaid's Tale (book or film)
* Mad Max Trilogy
* The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
* The Magic Goes Away
andy brazil@83
top 10 best british tv sf of all time[...] Anyone fancy doing a USian version?
In nearly chronological order:
* Twilight Zone
* Outer Limits
* Lost in Space
* Star Trek (Classic)
* Star Trek: The Animated Series
* Star Trek: Deep Space 9
* Babylon 5
* Futurama
* Firefly
* Battlestar Galactica (new version)
Honorable mentions: Battlestar Galactica (original series), V, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Star Trek: The Next Generation, X-Files
graydon@157
Starship Troopers remake? Go anime! Call it "Fascist in the Shell". :-) But less un-seriously, power suits are nothing if not the ancestors of mechs, so they ought to know how to deal with them cinematically. And seemingly non-sequitur cuts between action sequences and philosophical discourses (in a high-school setting, no less; another anime sub-genre) are also de rigeur. It's an easy two-fer.
forrest@156/159
Had two entirely different sets of reactions to the two Dune adaptations: Lynch: Cool, but WTF? Sci-Fi Channel: I'm glad that scene made it in; couldn't they have budgeted for blue contact lenses for everyone? Enjoyed them both, but for very different reasons.
Also, your list of non-Dune Herbert books left out The White Plague, which (snark alert) might make a nice prequel to Children of Men, though I'd love to see the Jorj X. McKie books as movies. Having recently seen Hot Fuzz, I'd love to see those lads take a crack at messing around with SF tropes the way they did with action films in Hot Fuzz and the horror genre in Shaun of the Dead.
serge@162
Haven't seen The Saint in its Val Kilmer incarnation. But if the IMDB plot summary is in any way accurate, The Saint is no more a Science Fiction movie than most Bond films[1]. It seems like "cold fusion" could've been easily replaced with anything that makes a sufficiently big boom without affecting the integrity of the plot to any important degree. A MacGuffin, however SF-y, does not an SF film make.
While I'm on the subject of SF-y elements not being sufficient for making a film SF, I'll commit (potential) heresy by claiming that Star Wars (episodes IV-VI) is not SF. This is based on my (almost certainly non-original) corollary on Clarke's and Niven's Laws: Any medium which treats science like magic is Fantasy, and any medium which treats magic like science is Science Fiction.[2] Under this definition, Being John Malkovich could be SF, as evidenced by the experimentation with the "portal" by the characters (not to mention the nearly immediate desire to commercialize on the discovery). However, I desparately want to call it "magical realism", whatever that means.
mitch wagner@173
When something is set, or whether the science in it is currently possible shouldn't be the criteria for deciding if a work is SF or not. If that were the case, both 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and 1984 would not be SF. Even if we set aside my possibly idiosyncratic definition for SF aside, I think most people who are even aware of the question might agree that SF has something to do with imagining how science or technology affects one or more persons. From that perspective, The Truman Show is definitely SF.[3]
[1] Moonraker is a notable exception (for Bond films) by having SF elements--space travel, genetic engineering and human eugenics--that are actually tied intricately into the plot. E.g.: Jaws' willingness to save Bond ties directly into his (Jaws') and his girlfriend's rejection by Hugo Drax for inclusion into, literally, the new world order. Its like Gattaca without all the OCD washing.
[2] It follows that Star Wars: Episodes I-III are bad SF, due entirely to the inexplicable introduction (from a plot perspective) of "midi-clorians".
[3] It is arguable that Truman's life as a unknowing participant in his own reality show parallels the life of Siddhartha, both of whom were shielded from many of the unpleasant realities of the human condition by a father figure (the actual father in Siddhartha's case). Vg vf engure vafgehpgvir gb abgr gung va znal jnlf, Gur Gehzna Fubj raqf ng cbvag jurer Fvqqunegun'f yvsr fgbel zvtug or fnvq gb ernyyl ortva. Vg fhttrfgf gung FS (naq fpvrapr) vf nobhg gur qvfpbirel bs bowrpgvir ernyvgl, engure guna rayvtugrazrag.
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