Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
Scribd is the youtube of text. It has some of everything--legit ebooks, legal documents (pdfs of rulings of court cases), bootleg ebooks, random articles by bloggers (legitimately posted or not), and so on.
The SFWA, acting on behalf of a few of its members, served Scribd a DMCA takedown notice demanding it remove all content it claimed to be infringing on copyrights--over 1500 links. Scribd did so. However, the SFWA didn't have permission from many of the copyright owners to request removal of that content--including Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, which is legally available pretty much everywhere online that has ebooks.
Several authors were disturbed to get notices that said, "this content has been removed from Scribd at the request of they copyright owner." Since they'd put the content on Scribd themselves, this was news to them. Boingboing had much to say about it. The SFWA has their own writeup
of what happened.
Accusations flew; apparently, SFWA had come up with a list based on keyword searches without bothering to check the specific contents at each link. Potential lawsuits for false DMCA reports bounced around, to which the SFWA reacted by saying basically, "oh, that wasn't a DMCA takedown notice" ('cos if it was, they were guilty of a serious felony by claiming to represent people they didn't), "it was just a polite please-remove-this request." To which Scribd said, umm, we don't remove stuff just because someone asks us.
AFAIK, no lawsuits were filed, but the SFWA's rep still hasn't recovered; part of the fallout was the then-current VP saying, " I'm also opposed to the increasing presence in our organization of webscabs, who post their creations on the net for free."
(April 23 has become Pixel-stained Technopeasant Wretch day.) |
Yeah, it does seem that SFWA way overstepped its authority from its members. And it seems clear that it was the Mr. Jones of this incident. ("Because something is happening here, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?"- Ballad of a Thin Man, Bob Dylan)
To me, the very interesting thing is the stuff about the Berne Convention on Copyright, because it intersects with another issue that I'm interested in, namely, the relationship of treaties to the Constitution.
But the reason I posted that was to suggest that (1) we will never see a copyright term of "under life plus 50" and (2) copyright/DCMA are inextricably bound up with international treaties and no country is a free agent in making its own laws in the area.