Google Statement on Italian Legal Decision

In late 2006, students at a school in Turin, Italy filmed and then uploaded a video to Google Video that showed them bullying an autistic schoolmate. The video was totally reprehensible and we took it down within hours of being notified by the Italian police. We also worked with the local police to help identify the person responsible for uploading it and she was subsequently sentenced to 10 months community service by a court in Turin, as were several other classmates who were also involved. In these rare but unpleasant cases, that's where our involvement would normally end.

But in this instance, a public prosecutor in Milan decided to indict four Google employees —David Drummond, Arvind Desikan, Peter Fleischer and George Reyes (who left the company in 2008). The charges brought against them were criminal defamation and a failure to comply with the Italian privacy code. To be clear, none of the four Googlers charged had anything to do with this video. They did not appear in it, film it, upload it or review it. None of them know the people involved or were even aware of the video's existence until after it was removed.

Nevertheless, a judge in Milan today convicted 3 of the 4 defendants — David Drummond, Peter Fleischer and George Reyes — for failure to comply with the Italian privacy code. All 4 were found not guilty of criminal defamation. In essence this ruling means that employees of hosting platforms like Google Video are criminally responsible for content that users upload. We will appeal this astonishing decision because the Google employees on trial had nothing to do with the video in question. Throughout this long process, they have displayed admirable grace and fortitude. It is outrageous that they have been subjected to a trial at all.

But we are deeply troubled by this conviction for another equally important reason. It attacks the very principles of freedom on which the Internet is built. Common sense dictates that only the person who films and uploads a video to a hosting platform could take the steps necessary to protect the privacy and obtain the consent of the people they are filming. European Union law was drafted specifically to give hosting providers a safe harbor from liability so long as they remove illegal content once they are notified of its existence. The belief, rightly in our opinion, was that a notice and take down regime of this kind would help creativity flourish and support free speech while protecting personal privacy. If that principle is swept aside and sites like Blogger, YouTube and indeed every social network and any community bulletin board, are held responsible for vetting every single piece of content that is uploaded to them — every piece of text, every photo, every file, every video — then the Web as we know it will cease to exist, and many of the economic, social, political and technological benefits it brings could disappear.

These are important points of principle, which is why we and our employees will vigorously appeal this decision.

Sample Takedown Notice

SAMPLE TAKEDOWN NOTICE (from Scribd)

Pursuant to 17 USC 512(c)(3)(A), this communication serves as a statement that:

1. I am [the exclusive rights holder [the duly authorized representative of the exclusive rights holder] for [title of copyrighted material being infringed upon, along with any identifying material such as ISBNs, publication dates, etc -- or, if the material is a web page, the URL];
2. These exclusive rights are being violated by material available upon your site at the following URL(s): [URLs of infringing material];
3. I have a good faith belief that the use of this material in such a fashion is not authorized by the copyright holder, the copyright holder's agent, or the law;
4. Under penalty of perjury in a United States court of law, I state that the information contained in this notification is accurate, and that I am authorized to act on the behalf of the exclusive rights holder for the material in question;
5. I may be contacted by the following methods (include all): [physical address, telephone number, and email address];

I hereby request that you remove or disable access to this material as it appears on your service in as expedient a fashion as possible. Thank you.

Regards,
[your full legal name]

Publishing's Grumpy Old Visionaries

Publishing's Grumpy Old Visionaries: True Believers in Books' Digital Future Science's Doubtful Advance

By Chris Allbritton and Sara Nelson

It's probably safe to say that no one really knows what lies ahead for the post-literate, corporatized, bottom-line-focused publishing industry. More than 400 years old, the business of books has, to say the least, been one of the most resistant to the changes brought about by the Internet and other new-media technologies.

Some would say only the young and fleet of foot have any chance of staying on top of what's happening in the $10.3 billion trade-book industry. Those people would be wrong. Three veterans of the publishing business—former Random House editorial director Jason Epstein, outspoken agent John Brockman and agent-turned-e-publishing-impresario Richard Curtis—have spent the bulk of their collective 200 or so years on Earth in this business, and their experience has given them their own ideas of where it's all going.

Epstein recently published Book Business: Publishing Past, Present and Future (W.W. Norton), an expansion of a much-discussed article in The New York Review of Books, of which he is a co-founder. His take: print-on-demand can revitalize a business that he says was practically destroyed by the rise of chain stores in the suburbs.

Brockman—who is an early pioneer of online book submissions; a founder of Edge.org, a site that addresses the ''digirati'' culture; and an agent for science and nonfiction projects—thinks the industry can't be saved, which is O.K. with him as long as his clients keep getting their checks. And Curtis thinks the key to publishing's survival is in agents morphing into publishers, which is what he has done by releasing his clients' works—most of them nonfiction by such authors as Harlan Ellison—in digital form.

Will publishing as we know it cease to exist? Will virtual book-buying become the norm? Will everybody in traditional publishing lose his and her job? Will readers take to the newfangled technology and contraptions designed for digital reading? While it may take a generation to find out, [INSIDE] took an afternoon to harness the trio's collective intellect and glean what these e-geezers have to teach the business's new kids.

[INSIDE]: How have the traditional roles of agent, publisher and author changed?

EPSTEIN: I said in my book that agents would very likely be the publishers of the future.

CURTIS: I'm doing it, and we're starting with backlist books, because backlist books are branded by previous publications and the names of the authors. We have now acquired a total of 1,200. We don't need editors at this point because we're not yet publishing original books.

EPSTEIN: Why do you think other agents haven't done this? They seem like the most likely people to do it, more likely than publishers.

CURTIS: Because agents are paralyzed by inertia and fear. They realize that—and John, you can really speak to this——they're in danger of becoming irrelevant as the relationship between buyer and seller intensifies and the need for a middle person decreases. Most agents will have to become more relevant to the digital process, [doing things] such as creating Web sites for clients and operating them as promotional vehicles for their clientele. Otherwise, authors are going to wake up and say, ''What do I need you for when I can go directly into the buying and selling process?''

EPSTEIN: That means there will have to be independent Web site managers, so to speak, who will handle these authors. And that's what publishers could become. It's the most natural thing in the world.

CURTIS: The hardest thing for an agent—and I'm sure this is true of you [indicating Brockman]—one of the reasons why agents are paralyzed is because of the conflict of interest. Because we've all grown up in a time when the roles were very clear-cut. There's an author who's represented by an agent; the agent goes to the publisher. For an agent to become a publisher, that sets off all sorts of conflict-of-interest bells. And most agents don't know how to emotionally handle that or address that.

EPSTEIN: I think Richard's idea [about agents becoming e-publishers], which I'm delighted by, is the future. I think it's going to be a little premature, because I think people will not want to read on screen as much as they want to read in book form.

BROCKMAN: There is a whole recent trend of thinking in the cognitive sciences of looking at the human as a machine made out of machines, and the mind as a computational device. And there are people like [physicist] Freeman Dyson who think about these questions from another point of view: whether we're meant to be analog devices. And the whole bit of the keyboard interface to the screen has always been very kludgy to me, and unnatural. Using my Palm and all these devices you're talking about, there's something about them I just don't like. And if anybody is going to like computers, it's me.

CURTIS: I say you guys are too old! There are generations growing up today who access information on a keyboard, for whom reading on a screen and manipulating information on a screen is second nature.

EPSTEIN: Are these the same kids who bought all those copies of Harry Potter?

CURTIS: The point is, children are growing up completely comfortable with handheld devices, whether it be a pager, a GameBoy, a reading device, a handheld radio. These same children can walk to school with a single multimedia device that will carry all their homework. This is already happening. Then you're just one step closer to a device that is not only a homework device and a schoolbook device, but also a reading-for-pleasure device. And those same devices, which today have only limited capacity for carrying text, those same devices will carry video. They'll be in color, they'll carry audio, they'll carry music. You'll be able to play a movie on it, play a game, call home, send an e-mail.

[INSIDE]: So despite all the turmoil that the Web has been going through, you still believe the industry will be radically transformed. Which traditional publishing jobs as we now know them do you think are going to get squeezed?

EPSTEIN: There will come a time when young people in publishing won't even know what the words ''sales conference'' mean. Or ''returns.'' Or ''warehouses.'' If it's possible for the contents of the book to be delivered from the author's mind via his or her Web site, then we can eliminate buying paper, ordering a printing, storing the books in a warehouse, sending reps out on the road to sell them. Marketing books will be different than dealing with Barnes & Noble and Borders, and taking returns. Those functions represent about 35 percent of a publisher's revenue, or a little bit more. Those sums will be redundant; you won't need to do that in the future. And the people who perform those tasks will probably be redundant, too. I'm sorry to say that, because some of them are good friends.

[INSIDE]: So who gets all the money publishers won't be spending on printing and storage and distribution? Authors?

EPSTEIN: I think so. The authors in this case will contribute much more value to the publishers than in the past, so they'll be entitled to a larger share of proceeds. I think 50 percent will be the minimum, and it may be 60 or 70 percent. But I think a Web publisher with a stable of 20 or 30 authors could do very well even with 15 percent of the proceeds. And, of course, the price to the end user will be much less because the costs of publishing will be much less.

CURTIS: There are authors who will say, ''Well, you can't pay me an advance, but the idea of getting a 50 percent royalty in the long run becomes very intriguing.'' And as the industry shifts to such a model, you're going to find the whole nature of thinking about advances changing. And advance prices may very well come down.

BROCKMAN: Do you think you're doing your clients a favor?

CURTIS: Remember, you're talking to a publisher.

BROCKMAN: All right, fine. But who's representing your old authors?

CURTIS: I am. I am. I think crossing the traditional lines where one can be both agent and publisher is a very attractive model. It gives maximum flexibility. As long as my authors are aware—full disclosure—and I conduct my business with integrity, the authors are really getting the best out of the flexibility.

EPSTEIN: I think in the electronic future, the competition will not only be represented by advances to authors, but by authors' shares of revenue. I think there will be tremendous pressure on that 50 percent. There's tremendous pressure right now for publishers to pay more than they can afford for a book. In the future, authors will be contributing most of the value, and all Web site publishers will be approximately alike. There will be some brilliant ones, some less brilliant ones, but my guess is they'll be pretty interchangeable.

BROCKMAN: I love Bertelsmann, and I love HarperCollins. Why? Because no one else is going to fork over millions of dollars on a book deal. Authors like that.

EPSTEIN: That's like saying Willie Sutton likes banks.

[INSIDE]: What do you think will be the biggest change in how buyers get and read books in the future?

EPSTEIN: My hunch is—and it's more than just a hunch—I think books will not be downloaded in any electronic form, they will be downloaded in a printed form on a machine that is capable of printing one copy at a time on demand, automatically. There will be no human intervention except to load the paper in. These machines will be at innumerable random locations. Like ATM machines, except for books.

[INSIDE]: Do you think ''big publishing'' will cease to exist?

EPSTEIN: Of course I think so. These companies won't be broken up, but they're untenable as they now exist. For one reason, trade-book publishing has never been profitable, and it can't be profitable. It's not in its nature to be profitable. It's been sustained historically by other publishing operations in the same corporation-textbooks, bibles, whatever. Or by rich people like Bennett Cerf [co-founder of Random House in 1925], who were very passionate about doing this but didn't have to make a living doing it. When these people got to the point of wanting to sell these businesses, they were getting old and had no succession. They sold their business to corporations; the corporations thought these were glamorous businesses. They used words like ''synergy,'' thinking that one thing leads to another. But that doesn't happen in the real world.

[INSIDE]: So you think synergy is a myth?

EPSTEIN: Of course.

CURTIS: I agree. Many publishers are acquired by entertainment complexes and conglomerates that have the idea that the books an editor acquires this morning will be on the producer's desk this afternoon. And we'll buy not only the audio, we'll do the movie, we'll do the merchandising. And it never materializes.

EPSTEIN: That synergy business never amounted to anything. When GE bought RCA and found that it also bought a company called Random House, it took one look at it and said, ''This isn't what we wanted. There's no way to make money at this. We've got to get rid of this.'' Eventually, a very, very rich man bought Random House [S.I. Newhouse of Advance Communications] because he liked the idea and he wanted to be associated with it. He ran it as well as he could. S.I. was a pretty good businessman. And after 12 years he saw the same thing: you cannot make money doing this. So now, Bertelsmann and Holtzbrinck have bought all these imprints, the ghostly remains of once-interesting publishing companies. And once they get rid of their redundant overhead, combine the warehouses and that kind of thing, they, too, will end up with a bunch of unprofitable trade-publishing companies.

CURTIS: You will see a day, I think and hope, when the fast companies eat the slow ones, and the small companies will eat the big ones.

EPSTEIN: But the price of entry will be very low. So there might be a great many little companies that do this. And I think the more the better.

CURTIS: You can make a profit selling 100 copies of a book, and you contrast that to a company like Random House or Harper or Bertelsmann that loses money selling 500,000 copies of a book. This is a bizarre world.

BROCKMAN: I tell you what, Richard. You represent that first book. I'll represent the one that loses money.

CURTIS: I have the greatest respect for you, [John], but it's kind of a strip-mining way of approaching publishing—get your money out quickly. It's basically a way of making huge short-term profits.

BROCKMAN: You say that as a wise man looking down from the mountain. If you're representing an individual, you have a fiduciary responsibility to do the best you can, every deal you make. That's what I do. I like to do good books, but it's about business, something nobody's talking about at this table. Maybe you guys are working with the wrong authors. The whole world is not The New York Review of Books. I'm just saying that the culture's changing, and people may be reading different things.

[INSIDE]: So is it good, then, that the chain book stores exist and flourish?

BROCKMAN: It's not a bad thing for the public that people all over America can get to a bookstore.

EPSTEIN: It's a wonderful thing, but they can't find all the books we would like to sell them or all the books they would like to find.

BROCKMAN: No, you mean all the books you and your friends write to each other ... You talk about, with sadness, the sophisticated, independent booksellers. But I don't feel like I have to have a relationship with people who work in bookstores.

[INSIDE]: O.K., but a lot of people have relationships with books themselves—with the physical paper-and-ink product. What happens to that emotional and cultural resonance when you go from having a physical object to a virtual one?

CURTIS: Everybody saves the books that he or she reads. Your home library is basically a repository and extension of your intellect and your memory and your mind. So when I'm surrounded by my books, I feel like I'm surrounded by the totality of what I've read. And if that didn't exist there, I don't know if I would be the same person. But on the other hand, half of the books that I've read are no longer there, because they got sold, they got given away, I moved.

[INSIDE]: So will e-books replace ''real'' books, or will the next generation have both?

EPSTEIN: They'll co-exist.

BROCKMAN: For people our children's age, nobody knows. They'll figure it out for themselves

Harlan Ellison's Statement on Piracy

WE FILED A LAWSUIT AGAINST THE ABOVE PARTIES TO STOP THEM FROM POSTING MY WORKS ON THE INTERNET WITHOUT PERMISSION. THIS IS COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT. RAMPANT. OUT OF CONTROL. PANDEMIC.

AOL, REMARQ/CRITICAL PATH AND A HOST OF SELF-SERVING INDIVIDUALS SEEM TO THINK THAT THEY CAN ALLOW THE DISSEMINATION OF WRITERS’ WORK ON THE INTERNET WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION, AND WITHOUT PAYMENT, UNDER THE BANNER OF “FAIR USE” OR THE IDIOT SLOGAN “INFORMATION MUST BE FREE.” A WRITER’S WORK IS NOT INFORMATION: IT IS OUR CREATIVE PROPERTY, OUR LIVELIHOOD AND OUR FAMILIES’ ANNUITY. WHY SHOULD ANY ARTIST, OF ANY KIND, CONTINUE CREATING NEW WORK, EKING OUT AN EXISTENCE IN PURSUIT OF A CAREER, FOLLOWING THE MUSE, WHEN LITTLE INTERNET THIEVES, RODENTS WITHOUT ETHIC OR UNDERSTANDING, STEAL AND STEAL AND STEAL, CONVENIENCING THEMSELVES AND “SCREW THE AUTHOR”? WHAT WE’RE LOOKING AT IS THE DEATH OF THE PROFESSIONAL WRITER!

THIS IS NOT ONLY MY FIGHT, I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE WHOSE WORK IS BEING PIRATED. HUNDREDS OF WRITERS’ STORIES, ENTIRE BOOKS, THE WORK OF A LIFETIME, EVERYONE FROM ISAAC ASIMOV TO ROGER ZELAZNY: THEIR WORK HAS BEEN THROWN ONTO THE WEB BY THESE SMARTASS VANDALS WHO FIND IT AN IMPOSITION TO HAVE TO PAY FOR THE GOODS. (BUT GAWD FORBID YOU TRY TO APPROPRIATE SOMETHING OF THEIRS…LISTEN TO ’EM SQUEAL!) THE OUTCOME OF THIS CASE WILL AFFECT EVERY WRITER, EDITOR, PHOTOGRAPHER, ARTIST, MUSICIAN, POET, SCULPTOR, ACTOR, BOOK DESIGNER, PUBLISHER AND READER. WHAT WE’RE LOOKING AT IS THE ANARCHY OF IGNORANT THIEVES RIPPING OFF THOSE WHO LABOR FOR AN HONEST PAYDAY, BECAUSE THEY CONVENIENTLY HONOR THE LIE THAT EVERYTHING SHOULD BE THEIRS FOR THE TAKING.

LOOK, THIS IS YOUR FIGHT, TOO. IF THAT DEMENTED, SELF-SERVING MISUNDERSTANDING OF THE WORD “INFORMATION” PREVAILS, AND EVERY ZERO-ETHIC TOT WHO WANTS EVERYTHING FOR NOTHING, WHO EXISTS IN A TIME WHERE E-COMMERCE HUSTLERS HAVE CONVINCED HIM/HER THAT THEY’RE ENTITLED TO EVERYTHING FOR NOTHING PREVAILS, AND THEY ARE PERMITTED TO BELIEVE INFORMATION MUST BE FREE, WITH NO DIFFERENTIATION MADE BETWEEN RAW DATA AND THE CREATIVE PROPERTIES THAT PROVIDE ALL ARTISTS OF ANY KIND WITH AN ANNUITY, TO ALLOW THEM TO CONTINUE CREATING NEW WORK, THEN WHAT WE’RE LOOKING AT IS THE EGREGIOUS INEVITABILITY OF NO ONE BUT AMATEURS GETTING THEIR WORK EXPOSED, WHILE THOSE WHO PRODUCE THE BULK OF ALL PROFESSIONAL-LEVEL ART FIND THEY CANNOT MAKE A DECENT LIVING.

DO NOT, FOR AN INSTANT, BUY INTO THE CULTURAL MYTHOLOGY THAT ALL ARTISTS ARE RICH. A FEW ARE, BUT MOST HAVE A HARD ROW TO HOE JUST SUBSISTING, HOLDING DOWN SECOND JOBS. MOST CREATORS PRACTICE THEIR ART BECAUSE THEY LOVE IT. IF IT WERE ONLY FOR THE BUCKS, THEY’D FARE BETTER AS DENTISTS, PLUMBERS, OR STEAM FITTERS. I’M FIGHTING FOR MYSELF, OF COURSE, BUT I’M ALSO DOING THIS FOR AVRAM DAVIDSON, WHO DIED BROKE; FOR ROGER ZELAZNY, WHO HAD TO WORK LIKE A DOG TILL THE DAY HE PITCHED OVER; AND FOR GERALD KERSH, WHOSE WORK WAS REPRINTED AND PIRATED IN SIXTY-FIVE COUNTRIES, WHILE HE HAD TO BORROW MONEY FROM FRIENDS TO FIGHT OFF THE CANCER. THIS IS YOUR FIGHT, TOO, GANG… AND NOW WE NEED YOUR HELP!

FOR THE PAST TEN MONTHS, MY ATTORNEY AND I HAVE FOUGHT THIS ALONE. ALTHOUGH WE ARE LOATH TO ASK, WE DO NOT HAVE THE ENDLESS DEEP POCKETS AND LAWYERS (14 AT THE LAST COUNT) THAT BENEFIT LARGE, ARROGANT CORPORATIONS. WE NOW NEED YOUR FINANCIAL HELP. AS TO THE MONEY BEING SPENT FOR THE DAVID-vs.-AOL GOLIATH LAWSUIT: YEAH, IT’S BEEN A BEAR. WE’RE ABOUT FORTY GRAND OUT OF POCKET, AND I’VE HAD TO SELL OFF A FEW PERSONAL POSSESSIONS AND MAGAZINE FILES TO MEET ATTORNEY COSTS. BUT WE’RE ABOUT TO ENTER THE “DISCOVERY PHASE” OF THE LITIGATION, AND AOL, REMARQ/CRITICAL PATH, ET AL ARE CLEARLY TRYING TO “PAPER US OUT,” AND WHAT WE’VE SPENT UP TO NOW WILL SEEM LIKE A FART IN A SIROCCO. SO, YES, OH YES LAWD, CONTRIBUTIONS ARE GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED IN THIS FIGHT TO STAMP OUT INTERNET PIRACY.

TO MAKE ABSOLUTELY DEAD CERTAIN THAT NO ONE CAN EVEN REMOTELY SUGGEST THAT CONTRIBUTIONS WENT ANYWHERE BUT TO FIGHT THIS INFRINGEMENT OF WRITERS’ RIGHTS, WE ARE SETTING UP A NEW POST OFFICE BOX ADDRESS, SPECIALLY AND ONLY FOR RECEIPT OF CONTRIBUTIONS TO WHAT WE ARE NOW CALLING KICK INTERNET PIRACY. AND ALL CHECKS MUST BE MADE PAYABLE DIRECTLY TO OUR ATTORNEY, M. CHRISTINE VALADA, TO HELP COVER COSTS AND LEGAL FEES. (AND WHEN WE ARE ASKED, “WELL, WHAT IS KICK AN ACRONYM FOR?” WE RESPOND, “IT’S FOR KICK ’EM IN THE ASS!”)

IF YOU WANT TO HELP PROTECT YOUR RIGHTS, AND THE CAREERS OF WRITERS WHOSE WORK YOU ENJOY, PLEASE SEND YOUR CONTRIBUTION—A FEW BUCKS, OR A LOT OF BUCKS—TO:

KICK INTERNET PIRACY
POST OFFICE BOX 55935
SHERMAN OAKS, CA 91413

Complete Text of Google Blogger Announcement

Dear FTP user:

You are receiving this e-mail because one or more of your blogs at Blogger.com are set up to publish via FTP. We recently announced a planned shut-down of FTP support on Blogger Buzz (the official Blogger blog), and wanted to make sure you saw the announcement. We will be following up with more information via e-mail in the weeks ahead, and regularly updating a blog dedicated to this service shut-down here: http://blogger-ftp.blogspot.com/.

The full text of the announcement at Blogger Buzz follows.

Last May, we discussed a number of challenges facing[1] Blogger users who relied on FTP to publish their blogs. FTP remains a significant drain on our ability to improve Blogger: only .5% of active blogs are published via FTP — yet the percentage of our engineering resources devoted to supporting FTP vastly exceeds that. On top of this, critical infrastructure that our FTP support relies on at Google will soon become unavailable, which would require that we completely rewrite the code that handles our FTP processing.

Three years ago we launched Custom Domains[2] to give users the simplicity of Blogger, the scalability of Google hosting, and the flexibility of hosting your blog at your own URL. Last year's post discussed the advantages of custom domains over FTP[3] and addressed a number of reasons users have continued to use FTP publishing. (If you're interested in reading more about Custom Domains, our Help Center has a good overview[4] of how to use them on your blog.) In evaluating the investment needed to continue supporting FTP, we have decided that we could not justify diverting further engineering resources away from building new features for all users.

For that reason, we are announcing today that we will no longer support FTP publishing in Blogger after March 26, 2010. We realize that this will not necessarily be welcome news for some users, and we are committed to making the transition as seamless as possible. To that end:

o We are building a migration tool that will walk users through a migration from their current URL to a Blogger-managed URL (either a Custom Domain or a Blogspot URL) that will be available to all users the week of February 22. This tool will handle redirecting traffic from the old URL to the new URL, and will handle the vast majority of situations.
o We will be providing a dedicated blog[5] and help documentation
o Blogger team members will also be available to answer questions on the forum, comments on the blog, and in a few scheduled conference calls once the tool is released.


We have a number of big releases planned in 2010. While we recognize that this decision will frustrate some users, we look forward to showing you the many great things on the way. Thanks for using Blogger.


Regards,

Rick Klau
Blogger Product Manager
Google
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

[1] http://buzz.blogger.com/2009/05/ftp-vs-custom-domains.html
[2] http://buzz.blogger.com/2007/01/blogger-custom-domains.html
[3] http://buzz.blogger.com/2009/05/ftp-vs-custom-domains.html
[4] http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55373
[5] http://blogger-ftp.blogspot.com/

----
This e-mail is being sent to notify you of important changes to your Blogger account.

What Is an Apocalypse, and Why Can't People Just Call It Doomsday?

Introduction to How to Prosper in the Coming Apocalypse

The most important things for you to concern yourself with in the coming bad years is, Who's responsible and how can I get even? It is essential that we find someone to blame and really beat the hell out of him. Sure, the tragedy of the past is that we are condemned to repeat it, but does that make you feel any better? No! Your first task is to find a scapegoat.

It will be recalled that Germany in the 1930s blamed the Jews for its economic woes. Jews are good scapegoats because with their long pointy tails they are easily visible, but they are definitely not to blame for the present recession. True, one memorable bar mitzvah did wreck the economy of Scarsdale in the summer of 1976, but Scarsdale's economy had been shaky for some time anyway, what with the inordinate amount of money the town had spent on wall-to-wall carpeting for its sewer system.

Modern Americans are fortunate in having many scapegoats to blame: the Arabs for their oil pricing, the Russians for the arms race, the Japanese for their exports, the Federal Reserve, the bankers, welfare recipients, stockbrokers, Republicans, Democrats, the President, the Governor, the Mayor. Our common sense, however, tells us that none of these can accurately be cited as the source of America's financial doldrums.

That is because the true source of America's financial doldrums is the old American Basketball Association. This nation was doing just fine until the merger of the A.B.A. with the National Basketball Association. Our national debt just prior to the merger was a manageable five hundred billion dollars; only ten million people were out of work; and only fifteen million more people on welfare drained the nation's lifeblood; murder, rape, burglary, larceny, arson, and vandalism caused untold suffering to no more than one person in every three households.

But observe the astonishing change on the very day the A.B.A. and N.B.A. inked their pact: the balance of world geopolitics was violently and permanently altered, social unrest escalated at an unprecedented rate, and international recessionary trends manifested themselves with unwonted ferocity. Plus, it rained like hell that day--flooded subways, battered umbrellas, not a taxi to be had for love or money! What a mess!

It should be particularly noted that on that day, the cost of garbanzo beans registered an incredible 8.9 fluctuation on the Kremnitzer-Fergenmacher scale. Because garbanzos are vital to the production of reinforced pantyhose, they are traditionally used by social scientists as the most sensitive and accurate barometer of economic change. A mere three-ounce fluctuation in any given month has proven time and again to be a harbinger of good times or bad, and on A.B.A.-N.B.A. merger day you couldn't find a single can on the shelf of the A&P on Madison Avenue and Eighty-seventh Street. The very next week you had the Great Pantyhose Scare.

Note, too, the significant dip in sales of long-playing polka albums, virtually a mirror image of the growth in pro basketball salaries. Goddamn things fell right off the chart!

So I say, let's get these basketball players and hurt them bad. Break their fingers! Smash their kneecaps! Now, you say that punishing basketball players won't bring back a stable economy. Not true! In February 1978, when pro basketball was suspended for three days to allow for conversion of player heights to the metric system, the Dow Jones average soared, consumer prices leveled out for the first time since the McKinley assassination, and put-and-call volume on the Chicago sowbelly exchange hit a peak unmatched before or since. Actually, there weren't that many puts, but the calls! "Sowbellies! Sowbellies!" You couldn't cross Michigan Avenue without hearing some damn fool hollering, "Sowbellies!"

Copyright (c) Richard Curtis

Authors Guild Recommendation re Google Settlement

Authors Guild Statement: To RIAA or Not to RIAA. That was the Question

As you may be reading in today's paper, the Justice Department in its filing regarding our settlement with Google continues to see legal problems with the settlement, focusing on class action law but also continuing to raise some antitrust concerns. We disagree with the Justice Department's reading of the law. At the same time, it's good to see the Department recognizes the settlement's many benefits. In our view, it's best for everyone that out-of-print library books be made available through reasonable, market-based means to readers, students and scholars. Without a settlement, that won't happen. It's also best that authors have direct control of the scans that Google has made, with the power to compel Google to hide, display or remove those scans. Without a settlement, authors have no such control. Google's scanning and use of authors' books would continue until the lawsuit was finally resolved.

Some authors and authors' groups have asked why we didn't press the litigation through to the end. The answer (besides the benefits we saw for authors in creating new markets for out-of-print works), in part, is that copyright litigation is uncertain. Fair use law is complex. One could fill a good-sized law-school classroom with copyright professors who believe that Google's scanning of your books is a fair use. We don't agree with that view, but our opinion may not have prevailed. If we'd lost, it would then be open season on scanning of your out-of-print and in-print books. All one would need is a scanner and a friend with a little bit of technical knowledge to start displaying "snippets" at your science fiction, humor, Civil War, or Harry Potter website. All perfectly legal; all without obligation to authors to properly secure those scans. Nothing gets illegal file-sharing going quite so much as millions of unsecured digital works floating around the Internet.

We also could've won. That would've been sweet. But here's the thing: copyright victories tend to be Pyrrhic in the digital age. Our settlement negotiations went on with full knowledge of what happened to the music industry. The RIAA (the Recording Industry Association of America) won victory after victory, defeating Napster and Grokster with ground-breaking legal rulings. The RIAA also went after countless individuals, chasing down infringement wherever they could track it down.

It didn't work. The infringement just moved elsewhere, in unpredictable ways. Nothing seems to drive innovation among copyright pirates as much as a defeat in the courts. That innovation didn't truly abate until Apple came along with its iPod/iTunes model, making music easily and legally available at a reasonable price. By then, the music industry was devastated.

All that couldn't happen to the book publishing industry? Sure could. The technologies are out there.

The stakes are even higher for authors than they've been for musicians. The ace in the hole for musicians is that they're not as dependent on copyright as book authors are. Music is a performing art: people buy tickets to see musicians. Writing is decidedly not a performing art. Nearly all authors give away their performances, through book tours and readings, and are glad for any audience they can find. For most authors, markets created by copyright are all we've got.

Protecting authors' interests has always been our top priority: in this case a timely harnessing of Google was the best way to do it.

John Sargent Statement: Amazon "working very, very hard and always in good faith"

To: Macmillan Authors and Illustrators
cc: Literary Agents
From: John Sargent

I am sorry I have been silent since Saturday. We have been in constant discussions with Amazon since then. Things have moved far enough that hopefully this is the last time I will be writing to you on this subject.

Over the last few years we have been deeply concerned about the pricing of electronic books. That pricing, combined with the traditional business model we were using, was creating a market that we believe was fundamentally unbalanced. In the last three weeks, from a standing start we have moved to a new business model. We will make less money on the sale of e books, but we will have a stable and rational market. To repeat myself from last Sunday's letter, we will now have a business model that will ensure our intellectual property will be available digitally through many channels, at a price that is both fair to the consumer and that allows those who create and publish it to be fairly compensated.

We have also started discussions with all our other partners in the digital book world. While there is still lots of work to be done, they have all agreed to move to the agency model.

And now on to royalties. Three or four weeks ago, we began discussions with the Author's Guild on their concerns about our new royalty terms. We indicated then that we would be flexible and that we were prepared to move to a higher rate for digital books. In ongoing discussions with our major agents at the beginning of this week, we began informing them of our new terms. The change to an agency model will bring about yet another round of discussion on royalties, and we look forward to solving this next step in the puzzle with you.

A word about Amazon. This has been a very difficult time. Many of you are wondering what has taken so long for Amazon and Macmillan to reach a conclusion. I want to assure you that Amazon has been working very, very hard and always in good faith to find a way forward with us. Though we do not always agree, I remain full of admiration and respect for them. Both of us look forward to being back in business as usual.

And a salute to the bricks and mortar retailers who sell your books in their stores and on their related websites. Their support for you, and us, has been remarkable over the last week. From large chains to small independents, they committed to working harder than ever to help your books find your readers.

Lastly, my deepest thanks to you, our authors and illustrators. Macmillan and Amazon as corporations had our differences that needed to be resolved. You are the ones whose books lost their buy buttons. And yet you have continued to be terrifically supportive of us and of what we are trying to accomplish. It is a great joy to be your publisher.

I cannot tell you when we will resume business as usual with Amazon, and needless to say I can promise nothing on the buy buttons. You can tell by the tone of this letter though that I feel the time is getting near to hand.


All best,
John