October 15th, 2007
by
Yonmei
I have been a fan of Ursula K. Le Guin’s since I was 7. Possibly even younger, but I’m fairly sure that I was about that age when I first read A Wizard of Earthsea. I wasn’t much older when I first read The Dispossessed.
This current argle-bargle therefore distresses me a lot.
To begin: Le Guin sent a one-paragraph short story to Ansible, in July 2007.
Cory Doctorow quoted it entire on Boing Boing. So did Jon Carroll of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Le Guin, via her agent, contacted Carroll and requested an apology. (And promptly got one.) For some reason, however, neither Le Guin nor her agent chose to contact Cory Doctorow direct: instead, they decided to contact the e-piracy committee of SFWA.
However, the e-piracy committee of SFWA had just recently made the mistake of launching an attack on Scribd (and, among other non-infringing works, had had removed Cory Doctorow’s novel) and had – apparently as a direct result of this stupid behaviour – been dissolved. (For further information, click here, here, here, here, and here. (The last link is Ansible’s own news account of it).
So instead of contacting Doctorow direct, and instead of asking someone at the SFWA to contact Doctorow direct, Le Guin and her agent asked someone else to write a letter about it which would be posted on someone else’s website. And that is the point, when reading Le Guin’s own account of the situation, at which I just, abruptly, lost all sympathy for her. Yes, she had a right to be annoyed at having a story reprinted entire on someone else’s website, especially under circumstances which made her worry that it might void her copyright, no matter how short the story. But, the first solution should have been to contact the person direct – which is exactly what she did with Jon Carroll – and ask them to apologize and remove it.
Le Guin summarises this as:
My agent and I had just decided to ask the e-piracy committe of SFWA, which I had come to count on in similar situations, to intervene on my behalf — when we found that the committee had suddenly been dissolved, following complaints about unauthorized interference, issuing from Cory Doctorow.
The irony of this situation is fairly visible. While Doctorow was making a huge fuss over an honest mistake, which when discovered was immediately redressed, he was publishing another writer’s work without asking permission and in clear violation of copyright.
With my consent, Andrew Burt exposed Doctorow’s piracy in a letter printed on Jerry Pournelle’s web site. Doctorow scoffed, blustered, made no apology to me for misidentifying my work and using it without permission, and behaved as if his action was legitimate, although the Fair Use exception explicitly does not cover reprinting an entire article or poem no matter how short. But he took part of the piece off his site.
If Cory Doctorow had reacted badly to a direct request from Le Guin or Le Guin’s agent, I would have thought very badly of him. (He didn’t, though. When he finally heard from LeGuin’s agent directly, he behaved perfectly correctly and has taken down the story, apologized to Le Guin via the agent, and issued a public apology and considerable explanation for his behaviour.)
But as far as I can see… Cory Doctorow acted with good intentions throughout. Ursula K. Le Guin seems to have behaved with extraordinary obtuseness, failing to contact Doctorow directly, complaining that Doctorow reacted badly to a public letter, not from Le Guin, posted on someone else’s website, and throwing in some superfluous and confused criticism of Doctorow for objecting to his own novel being removed from Scribd into the bargain.
Why didn’t Le Guin’s agent contact Doctorow in the first place? It seems to me that would have resolved the whole issue right away. (And even though Le Guin seems to have had no confidence that it would, it seems to me that it would have been the right thing to do as a first step.)
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Yonmei at
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Filed under Books & Literature, Writers & Artists, fandom | Comments (26)
Possibly because she wanted to raise the issue to the SFWA and its surrounding communities. Which, given your posts, if that was her intention she has succeeded.
Also I have no idea about her previous relationship with Doctorow. Maybe they have clashed on such issues privately before.
In any case, a traditional newspaper like the Chronicle has clear policies and expectations on attribution and lawyers and all. She could count on action from a simple phone call because it could be assumed a reporter would have been acting in good faith and plausible ignorance. In the SF & F community, however, there is widespread debate about the what the rules should be regarding online publishing and reproduction. I don’t think there has to be a “bad guy” or a “good guy” in this situation, just two people playing Marco Polo in these muddy, muddy waters.
” her previous relationship with Doctorow. ”
I think it bears keeping in mind that the person responsible for publicizing LeGuin’s letter, and it seems, for giving LeGuin some of her information, has a gigantic problem with Doctorow.
I am glad to see cooler heads prevail. Thanks for the heads-up.
Though I’m also shaking my head at Le Guin due to this, I think the real “problem” here is Andrew Burt. Without knowing exactly who talked to whom first, it seems like Burt, who was publicly embarrassed by Doctorow not that long ago, has his fingers in all the little pies here. I particularly suspect he’s behind most of the bad behavior on Ursula’s side because of the language she includes that the e-piracy committee should be reinstated LIKERIGHTNOW! Does she actually know why they were disbanded to begin with? If she does, she’s had the story from Burt. Would having the committee in place have changed the outcome of her going to SFWA at all? Nope. So why does she care? Seems like someone is urging her to care.
This whole thing kinda stinks. It also smacks of the same technophobia that surrounds most of SFWA in general. the future is only for stories, people! Now put away your computers and take up ye ole typewriter before anything else bad happens.
Johne Cook: me too. (I found out via Sideshow. I had taken no prior interest in the SFWA/Scribd brouhaha, though while it was going on, I happened to visit Charlie Stross, who declared with blazing eyes and beard-aflame that he had just offended most of his peers – I think by saying something related to this.) But I am very pleased that LeGuin’s agent finally cut the crap and contacted Doctorow direct: it was the right thing to do, and got results.
Mandolin: I think it bears keeping in mind that the person responsible for publicizing LeGuin’s letter, and it seems, for giving LeGuin some of her information, has a gigantic problem with Doctorow.
Indeed. He does appear to be a classic example of the kind of person Terry Pratchett describes in Soul Music as going “Hutt. Hutt. Hutt.”
t a b w: Though I’m also shaking my head at Le Guin due to this, I think the real “problem” here is Andrew Burt.
Um, yeah. At the very least, he should have told LeGuin when she asked him to speak to Cory Doctorow that he himself was not the right person to make contact, ask some other member of SFWA. (Or, you know, supply e-mail address and suggest LeGuin’s agent do it.) And the letter he wrote for Jerry Pournelle’s site was definitely fuel to the flame.
Copying an entire work, even a short one, is hardly fair use.
Most people, even Doctorow’s friends, seem to agree that he was in the wrong — even if his error was accidental.
But I’m really getting disturbed by seeing so many people more upset with how LeGuin reacted than upset with Doctorow’s original infringement.
One person actually complained that she should’ve handled this thru “a polite email … asking him nicely”
She should swallow her anger, and be nice and polite, even when she’s the wronged party…
When Doctorow confronted SFWA over their takedown notice of his works, he didn’t contact them direct; he sent a massive broadside from Boing Boing. And I don’t remember anybody criticising him over tactics.
I don’t have enough examples to say that the unbalanced criticism of LeGuin is sexist, but to my view it certainly feels uncomfortably like blaming the victim.
I think you go too far, Lis Riba. Doctorow was wronged, too. Wrong exists even if he had it coming to him.
Why were Burt’s broadside on behalf of Le Guin, and Le Guin’s broadside on behalf of Burt, treated differently than Doctorow’s broadside on behalf of himself and other authors SFWA had screwed around with? I’d say it was because Burt and Le Guin show significant ignorance in their letters: the whole “putting the story under a Creative Commons license” bit is just plain ignorant. Also, their toolishness is an attempt to snap back at a whistleblower who caught Burt with his pants flapping in the breeze, for which Burt never admitted fault. Toolishness in self defense is more appealing than toolishness in the service of a coverup.
Lis: Copying an entire work, even a short one, is hardly fair use.
I agree, and I’m happy to see that you’ve come round to this position too, since we had that argument about your reposting an entire work on your journal without the author’s permission, in which you consistently claimed that it was fair use, and protested loudly when the author got you to take it down. That was only January 2005, remember? (The discussion is gone, thanks to livejournal, but my original post has been saved to IJ, with links to your complaints on your own journal that you were entitled to repost an entire work that you knew the author had friends-locked.)
She should swallow her anger, and be nice and polite, even when she’s the wronged party…
You didn’t seem to be very happy about Ginmar’s anger when she was the wronged party and you were in Cory Doctorow’s position. In fact, as I recall, you and your husband both were arguing that she should have swallowed her anger and been nice and polite to you and you would then have considered taking down the entire work of hers that you had reposted.
Straightforwardly, though: LeGuin’s position is fairly different from Ginmar’s then. LeGuin has an agent empowered to act for her in situations like these, and LeGuin is not on active service in Iraq, as Ginmar was then. Further, LeGuin and her agent clearly understood that the best way to get her story off the San Francisco Chronicle website was to contact Jon Carroll direct and tell him that her story was not public domain and he should apologise: and I can’t see for the life of me why she/her agent didn’t do exactly the same for Cory Doctorow. If Doctorow had then refused to take the post down, or complained about having been asked (as you complained) I would say that he had put himself thoroughly in the wrong.
But I’m really getting disturbed by seeing so many people more upset with how LeGuin reacted than upset with Doctorow’s original infringement.
Doctorow behaved perfectly properly when contacted directly by LeGuin’s agent: he took the story down and apologised. (When you did the same thing as Doctorow, you took the original work down and complained.) LeGuin, on the other hand, didn’t contact Doctorow direct: didn’t even contact DMCA: she contacted Andrew Burt at the SFWA, and appears to have gone with Andrew Burt’s truly biased view of Cory Doctorow rather than looking into any of the other information available about what had actually happened.
It’s been nearly three years and I’m really tired of you guys rehashing old scores, but I will point out that nobody contacted me direct either. All I received was an official DMCA takedown notice *ordering* me to remove the fair use quotes. [I provided the full text as an addendum to avoid accusations I was cherrypicking excerpts.]
but I will point out that nobody contacted me direct either.
You’re right: Ginmar, though the wronged party, did not swallow her anger and send you “a polite email … asking you nicely”. Admittedly, you had taken her post from behind a friends-lock, notifying her only by posting a comment to a post from which she had already said she would no longer receive comments, when Ginmar was on active service in Iraq with limited access to the Internet.
and I’m really tired of you guys rehashing old scores
Then perhaps you should refrain from sanctimonious comments about someone who behaved less badly than you did initially, and responded more graciously than you did when called on your bad behavior.
to remove the fair use quotes
“Copying an entire work, even a short one, is hardly fair use.”
Also, when we talk about what Ginmar should have done in response to your copying her entire post from under a friends-lock to publish on your journal, we should consider that we have the advantage of perspective and distance. We’re not the one who was put on the spot by an unpleasant and unwelcome surprise. Ginmar was the victim of your behavior – and yet you have continued to scrutinize her responses much more than you’ve scrutinized your own behaviour in wronging her. “It’s a rude and potentially dangerous habit, and may be worth a little self-examination before continuing to perpetuate this kind of discourse.”
About whom am I supposedly making sanctimonious comments?
I’m not criticizing Cory Doctorow; I thought this was a site for feminist discussion of sf and I was pointing out possible gender-based difference in people’s reactions to various situations.
See also http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/1019999.html
I was pointing out possible gender-based difference in people’s reactions to various situations.
Yet you don’t want your own behavior under discussion? You did to Ginmar something similiar to what Cory Doctorow did to LeGuin – a clear breach of copyright, which – unlike Doctorow with LeGuin – you knew you were doing actively against Ginmar’s wishes. And, also unlike Doctorow, you did not behave graciously when you were called on your breach of copyright, and, unlike Doctorow, you did not apologise publicly to Ginmar for your behavior. And, I see, you are still claiming that copying and publishing a work entire when you do it is “fair use”, even years after you had been warned it was not.
Is there a gender-based difference? There might have been in your angry reaction to Ginmar: certainly when your husband claimed he knew better than Ginmar did what she’d intended to say, I think that was a gender-based reaction.
But I think a lot of this double standard that you’re holding in your head – you were entitled to take a work of Ginmar’s, and post it in whole on your journal, and and call that “fair use”, and you resent the actions Ginmar took to protect her copyright – have more to do with a power differential between professionally-published writers and unprofessionals, than with a gender difference. Similiar to the row between the SFWA and Cory Doctorow, in fact.
lis –
On my part, the reason why I’m shaking my head more over Ursula’s actions than Cory’s is because, though Cory was in the wrong, I totally understand why he did what he did.
When I read the thing Ursula wrote, I thought it was commentary. A Letter to the Editor, as others have also said. Here on the Internets, we’re used to posting, in whole, short commentary from other blogs and websites and, 99% of the time, this bothers no one. The problem here arises when Ursula thinks of her piece not as commentary, but as a “story” or some other kind of piece of saleable prose. Not that she doesn’t have the right to think that way about her own piece, but the differences in classification are important here.
If Cory had any inkling that Ursula considered the piece anything other than commentary, like any other blog post, he and everyone else who posted it might have treated copying it whole differently. They might have only excepted or merely linked.
This is a classic case of someone who doesn’t understand Internet culture being thrown, headfirst, into Internet culture without a primer. Had Ursula understood ANYTHING about how we operate here on teh webs, she would have approached the situation differently.
Yes, I do feel that a note from her directly to Cory would have been the best course of action. Whether it need have been a polite note or not, I can’t say. Politeness, from ANYONE, is generally a good way to go if someone isn’t being malicious to you. Cory very obviously put the piece up out of admiration for Le Guin. If she had left a comment on BoingBoing saying “hey, this wasn’t meant for wider distribution, please remove it” I bet he would have. It’s not about expecting women to be delicate, polite flowers, it’s about courtesy.
Le Guin certainly comes across as kind of clueless here. But Doctorow isn’t exactly smelling like a rose, either, and the extent of the weird coincidental communication problems (Doctorow’s “killfiling” of email from Andrew Burt in particular) just makes it all seem like Mercury’s in retrograde… or something. Maybe this can be a learning experience for everyone involved?
As a side note, I have a plea: can we get the spelling of “Le Guin” straight? Don’t believe the millions of internet misspellings: there’s a space in that last name.
Therem: there’s a space in that last name.
*looks it up*
So there is. (I’ll edit the OP to add the space.) In fairness, I’ve seen it “spelled” with and without a space in all sorts of places, and on bookcovers, which is where I’ve mostly seen it, it’s not always clear that there is supposed to be a space between the e and the G.
therem: and the extent of the weird coincidental communication problems
Which didn’t happen with Jon Carroll, because Le Guin/her agent contacted Jon Carroll directly, and Carroll could respond directly.
Once you decide you’re not going to talk to someone, as Le Guin seems to have decided she wasn’t going to talk to Cory Doctorow, you run the risk of having weird communication problems when you are trying to communicate with them indirectly.
I’m having some trouble following the whole incident, but a few points:
(1) It is completely common in the world of writers and copyright alike to have agents.
(2) Expecting someone to respond to or act on an “open letter” — if in fact that’s what happened — is not, of course, reasonable, whether on the Internet or Back in the Day of the printed world.
(3) If there is anxiety about Le Guin from *my* side of the world (the copyright-balancers) I would like to point out that Le Guin has been *GOOD* on copyright, signing as with other writers to at least one pro-public interest amicus brief.
(4) The SFWA and a couple of other writer organizations have been hotbeds of copyright controversy for a while, and it is not surprising if many writers get dragged in on one side or another. Unfortunately, the problem is that when people get activist on the issue they are typically responding to bad acting — but different kinds of bad acting.
* Copyright reformers are responding to over-growth and abuse of copyright.
* Copyright enforcers are responding to (variously) individual infringements of the sort that have always occurred.
* Copyright maximalists are responding to cultural & technological shifts that have led to a lot of action that is ambiguous, and that they class with the old type of individual infringement.
In a complex situation like that, I think it would be really troubling to attempt to characterize someone’s position or cluefulness based on one set of acts or stated positions. Everybody is in flux and is learning things. And people get their information in dribs and drabs from different people at different times.
(2) Expecting someone to respond to or act on an “open letter” — if in fact that’s what happened — is not, of course, reasonable, whether on the Internet or Back in the Day of the printed world.
Well, that does seem to be what Le Guin says happened. (With the added confusion that Andrew Burt got involved, and he seems to be a s**tstirrer.)
In a complex situation like that, I think it would be really troubling to attempt to characterize someone’s position or cluefulness based on one set of acts or stated positions. Everybody is in flux and is learning things. And people get their information in dribs and drabs from different people at different times.
That, I agree with.
Supposedly, on the Internet, everyone is supposed to “own their own words”. That means you’re not supposed to copy and paste somone’s words on websites, mailing lists, email, etc., without first getting permission. If you don’t get the permission, you open yourself to charges of slander or plagarism.
But the fact is that this *rule* is grossly ignored and has been for years. I think Le Guin did the right thing by having her agent contact the SFWA instead of getting embroiled in some spat with Doctorow via email, phone, written word, etc. The SFWA needs to be aware that publishing and copyright laws are changing, and they’re changing because of challenges by individuals and groups like the Creative Commons.
To me, the Creative Commons is an ill-thought-through concept that denigrates artists and artistic works. Doctorow needs to stop thinking that he’s creating a revolution and find out more about what makes the publishing world tick.
Karen: To me, the Creative Commons is an ill-thought-through concept that denigrates artists and artistic works.
Having been part (albeit a minor one) of the process that “thought through the concept” of Creative Commons, I can attest that it was very well thought through, with the involvement of many, many people who have been very involved in creating content as well as delivering it and studying the laws that regulate its creation and delivery.
While one may disagree with its goals, means, and analysis, I’m sorry to hear that Karen thinks CC denigrates artists & artistic works. I would encourage anyone who feels that way to talk to artists who have used CC to understand what they’re getting out of it and why they don’t feel denigrated. If Cory Doctorow is pissing you off, check out someone with a different personal and rhetorical style.
“Own your own words” means something other than what you think, Karen: it refers to not trying to slip away and pretend you weren’t saying something. The internet is no different from the real world in taking honesty as a virtue; it’s just that here it’s easier to confront someone with their previous words, so there’s a lot more owning that you’re called on to do.
I’d be interested to see what recent changes in copyright law you attribute to the internet.
On the subject of word-owning, while it’s intriguingly interesting to see someone revealed as a hypocrite, it’s irrelevant to the argument, Yonmei. Unless it plays into the side that claims that Doctorow’s “hypocrisy” in having a different view of fair use than Le Guin invalidates his bodyslam on Burt.
Karen: I think Le Guin did the right thing by having her agent contact the SFWA instead of getting embroiled in some spat with Doctorow via email, phone, written word, etc.
It’s odd you should think that, since what actually got Le Guin’s story removed from Doctorow’s website was her agent contacting Doctorow direct: Le Guin’s getting embroiled in the spat that Andrew Burt of the SFWA was having with Cory Doctorow didn’t – as we know from Le Guin’s own account – help one bit.
Madelaine: On the subject of word-owning, while it’s intriguingly interesting to see someone revealed as a hypocrite, it’s irrelevant to the argument, Yonmei. Unless it plays into the side that claims that Doctorow’s “hypocrisy” in having a different view of fair use than Le Guin invalidates his bodyslam on Burt.
Eh, you’re probably right. Unless it’s relevant to point out that Lis Riba has markedly different standards of “fair use” as applied to what she claims as her right to republish other people’s work on her own blog, versus what she prescribes as the right thing for other people to do on their blogs. I suspect that we’re all a bit like that, though: “I only make fair use; you copy-and-paste shamelessly; they are copyright pirates!”
the extent of the weird coincidental communication problems (Doctorow’s “killfiling” of email from Andrew Burt in particular)
That was not the least bit coincidental–if Burt had not already had an ax to grind when Le Guin came to him with her problem, this would have been resolved much more simply–and Doctorow would never have killfiled him. But the fact of the matter is, Burt did have an ax to grind, with Doctorow in particular. I think Le Guin said, “Look, here’s this problem, can the copyright committee help?” and Burt said “Hoo, boy, here’s my chance to spank Cory Doctorow!”
Ann L wrote:
But the fact of the matter is, Burt did have an ax to grind, with Doctorow in particular.
I understand that. But he obviously didn’t know that all his emails were being sent directly to Doctorow’s trash. In this case the “killfile” caught a legitimate communication that, if received, might have avoided all this mess. That’s what I meant by “coincidental”. But maybe a more accurate word would have been “ironic”, as Le Guin said in her original comment. She obviously had the facts wrong, but there is definitely some irony present.
But he obviously didn’t know that all his emails were being sent directly to Doctorow’s trash.
But Andrew Burt did know that, given the then-recent events of Scribd/SFWA, he should have recused himself from carrying out Le Guin’s request. He could either have asked some other member of the SFWA to contact Doctorow, or he could have suggested to Le Guin that her agent contact Doctorow. (Further, we don’t know that Doctorow didn’t tell Burt “And I’m killfiling you!” in a parting shot.)
But the point for Le Guin was getting into communication with Doctorow, and it would certainly have avoided a lot of trouble if she had done so.
A heads-up for those interested: Charlie Stross has more about the continuing adventures of Andrew Burt.