The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Polotet:

"But thanks to PC, I need to watch anything I say or do because there's a chance I might accidentally offend someone in some completely unintended way."

That's like saying "Thanks to people's voices, I need to watch where I walk, because there's a chance I might step on someone's foot in an unintended way and they'll complain." The reason that it's problematic to insult a woman using witch-related imagery is not that some consortium of liberals has declared it "officially un-PC." The reason is that our culture has imbued the comparing of women to witches with sexist implications, and so people who have suffered from sexism or care about others who have suffered from sexism have legitimate reasons to find such comparisons offensive, regardless of your intentions.

@259

Also NAL, but I believe you are more or less right as far as the technical aspect of the law goes; on the other hand, I think it should be clear to anyone familiar with fair use that the cases at issue would without question be found to be fair use by a court based on a reading of the law and on precedent. When I playfully tap my friend's arm with my fist, sure it's possible that under certain contexts that could be assault, and only a court could give a definite ruling, but I'd still argue that it's colloquially correct to call what I did "perfectly legal."

Mr. Coleman, will you say that the AP's behavior in this case has been irresponsible and reprehensible and that their initial position was legally wrong? You don't have to use those exact words, but it would make me feel at least a little better if I thought someone associated with MBA understood that this really isn't a case where both sides have valid points, but rather one of a large corporation trying to punish and charge little guys for things that are perfectly legal.

One thing that concerns me is that in talking about the situation, here and in other places, Robert Cox seems to emphasize the reasons that AP felt justified their notices (the previous C&D letters) and to focus on defending AP from attacks he feels are unfair (the iCopyright thing). I haven't seen a single post from him that suggests that he agrees it was completely ludicrous for the AP to send takedown notices for contextual quotes ranging from 33-79 words. In addition, Liza from the CultureKitchen, who seems to be a reliable source on this whole issue, claims that a lawyer from AP told Rogers "anything more than 5 words has to be licensed. That sounds suspiciously like a reference to iCopyright to me; is it really "complete and utter horsefeathers," given that information and the iCopyright site, to suspect that they might be connected?

That leads me to a simple question. Does Robert Cox realize how utterly in the wrong the AP are in this issue? Does he plan to tell the AP that it was legally irresponsible and immoral to send the takedown notices that they did, and that they need to recognize that Rogers was well within the bounds of fair use and bloggers don't need a set of AP written guidelines to tell them when and what they can quote? Or does he plan to get Rogers out of trouble (which certainly is a good thing), and then simply rubberstamp some set of quoting rules set up by AP? Because if he does, this is only going to get worse in the future, as next time AP can whine that they worked with the MBA to set up these rules and they don't understand why the person they're C&Ding couldn't just follow them.

One thing that bothers me about this initial response is that it recognizes only one of the things that was screwed up in this situation. It's certainly a big deal that the SFWA falsely claimed to represent the copyright holders of certain works and had those works taken down, but I think it's important not to forget that even if every work on the list was a violation of an Asimov copyright, Andrew Burt would have been doing a number of things wrong.

There's no reason the SFWA shouldn't work to get copyright violations of members who have asked for help taken down; however, DMCA notices should either be written by the SFWA's lawyer, or by someone who has been closely advised by a copyright lawyer on exactly what a DMCA notice should look like. When Andrew Burt claimed that his initial email "wasn't idle musing, but a DMCA notice," he was lying, and falsely claiming that a document has that kind of legal effect seems like a big deal to me. There's also his problematic suggestions on how Scribd could deter piracy; should they be interpreted as the official stance of the SFWA? If they aren't, why were they presented that way?

I'm not a member, so maybe my opinion doesn't matter, but what I would like to see is an acknowledgement by the SFWA that beyond the improper inclusions on the list, their entire approach to Scribd was handled incredibly improperly, a promise that in the future they will deal with copyright issues that they do have the authority to address in the proper legal manner, and some kind of statement on the organization's position related to Andrew Burt's requests of Scribd.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that agenda comes from the noun agenda, agendae, for which agenda is the singular (although I'm pretty sure its original derivation was from the future passive participle of ago, which has agenda both as a singular feminine form and a plural neuter), while data comes from datum, dati, for which datum is the singular (although I'm pretty sure its original derivation was from the perfect passive participle of do, which also has datum as a singular form). And I'm sure that's far more than anyone wanted to know about anything related to the issue, but I couldn't resist.

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