It’s remarkable how quickly things can blow, and how rapidly good intentions can explode into very large mistakes, but the internet makes many things possible at much greater speed than ever before.
Specifically, the current fiasco in the making exploded all over the blogosphere today in nothing flat. Apparently, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA)’s Vice President Andrew Burt sent a letter to Scribd.com which may or may have been properly formatted under the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Scribd is a text file-sharing site similar to Flickr, allowing users to upload documents for public sharing. Burt’s letter was to request the removal (as per provisions of the DMCA) of works posted on the site that infringe copyrights. So far so good; the DMCA is designed to give copyright holders easy recourse in situations where they feel their property rights are being trampled on. One of SFWA’s roles is to act for its members who have requested such assistance in cases just like this.
The part where it gets interesting is that Burt’s follow-up communication drove Scribd to remove many files that were not covered under SFWA’s mandate, including, apparently school reading lists (which mentioned the authors under discussion, but did not post their books) and books posted under Creative Commons licenses (which explicitly allows their posting and downloading in just such a manner).
Speeding the explosion was Cory Doctorow’s post calling SFWA to task for overstepping its bounds and interfering with his own work. Later in the day, SFWA President Michael Capobianco issued an apology to Doctorow, as well as the following general mea cupla:
I want to respond to the flurry of activity that has resulted from Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) mistakenly identifying several works as infringing copyright. First, some background. There have been discussions within SFWA for several months regarding websites that allow users to upload documents of all sorts for other users to download and share. Many hundreds of copyrighted texts have been put online at these sites, and the number is growing quickly. Some SFWA members complained about the pirating of their works to SFWA’s e-Piracy Committee and authorized the committee to do something about it. SFWA contacted scribd.com, one of these sites, about removing these authors’ works and generated a list of infringing works to be removed.
Unfortunately, this list was flawed and the results were not checked. At least three works tagged as copyright infringements were nothing of the sort. I have personally apologized to the writers and editors of those works. If you are a creator who has had material removed and has not yet been contacted, please email me at president@sfwa.org.
SFWA’s intention was to remove from scribd.com only works copyrighted by SFWA members who had authorized SFWA to act on their behalf. This kind of error will not happen again.
Michael Capobianco
President, SFWA
At press time, everyone seems to be piling on SFWA for this mistake. SFScope is not joining the fray, but simply reporting the incident as we see it now. It’s likely to mutate in the coming hours and days, as well-meaning people from varying points of view seem to have made some mistakes.
[Edited 1 September 2007 to add this link to Jerry Pournelle’s view of the brouhaha. He comes down on the side of SFWA. As we imagine this debate will continue to spread far and wide, SFScope does not anticipate adding more links to the ongoing commentary. If we hear of something new or interesting, of course, we’ll report on it. But we don’t plan to merely continue the debate.]
[Edited 3 September 2007 to note that SFWA has suspended the ePiracy committee.]
[Edited 5 September 2007: That’s what I get for saying “No.” Last night, I was strongly urged to continue updating this article with links to what others are saying. I’m not going to get involved, but there’s nothing wrong with sharing the words of others, so following are some of the (major) pages where others are talking about the issue. If I’ve missed any, feel free to point them out:
Ars Technica’s commentary, dated 31 August, was here.
On 3 September, Vera Nazarian as Norilana Books leapt in withthis post.
On 4 September, Jerry Pournelle posted a longer opinion on his site. Pournelle also continues to update what he wrote here (see 1 September edit).
John Scalzi, the last-minute write-in candidate for SFWA’s presidency, had this to say.
On 5 September, Doranna Durgin chimed in with this post on Writers Plot.
Nick Senger has an interesting view of using the whole kerfluffle as on object lesson in copyright issues.
Tobias Buckell’s link-heavy commentary is here.
10 September 2007: SFWA President’s statement on creative rights
15 October 2007: More fall-out appears. In this post, Ursula K. Le Guin takes Cory Doctorow to task for reposting a letter she wrote without permission. She complained to SFWA’s ePiracy committee, but since it was disbanded in the wake of the above to-do… well, you can see where this is leading. Doctorow responded by removing the offending material and apologizing in this post. And so it goes…
30 November 2007: SFWA has revived the ePiracy Committee, which was disbanded in the wake of this scuffle. See this article.
More updates as we get them, and I’ve learned my lesson about saying “Never.”