SFWA vs SCRIBD and Cory Doctorow

Last week, the SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America) sent DMCA takedown notices to SCRIBD. This set off a storm as books by Cory Doctorow from Boing Boing were taken down. Cory is a big proponent of the Creative Commons, a copyright that allows copying and remixing. Cory posted about this over at Boing Boing with a more than a little rhetoric.

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America has used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to fraudulently remove numerous non-infringing works from Scribd, a site that allows the general public to share text files with one another in much the same way that Flickr allows its users to share pictures.

Included in the takedown were: a junior high teacher's bibliography of works that will excite children about reading sf, the back-catalog of a magazine called Ray Gun Revival, books by other authors who have never authorized SFWA to act on their behalf, such as Bruce Sterling, and my own Creative Commons-licensed novel, "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom."

Now Doctorow and his people are against the DMCA, where allowed fair use works are taken down with blanket takedown notices, and they are indignant, and rightfully so. Once a takedown notice is sent the offending work will be taken down immediately. Content providers have to, otherwise they are considered to be infringing. There have been cases where this has been fraudulently done or where the takedown notice is too broad and includes allowed works. One case happened last week.
I wandered over to SCRIBD and just after a minute of searching found a plethora of obviously infringing material. I don't believe the Dune books have entered the public domain. (Click for bigger image)


Now over at Jerry Pournelle's site, he lets loose at Cory.

I can say this: Scribd.com which Doctorow defends has the complete text of a number of works. One of them is Sheffield and Pournelle, Higher Education. I guarantee you that neither I nor Charlie's widow has given this outfit any permission to do this. They used to have more of my books, and Niven's, and many others. They also had a series of hoops one had to jump through to get those taken down. The procedure was onerous, and they didn't answer my emails.

I with other SFWA members asked SFWA to take action on our behalf. SFWA did. Some of the wrongs were righted. I would take that to be a Good Thing.

Corey Doctorow does not. Doctorow's comment on that is given in his screed above.

Hmm. Boeing Boeing. I note that Arwen Dayton's science fiction works have not been pirated by scribd. I don't know if that's relevant.

SFWA will have an answer to Doctorow. Doctorow does not seem to have done his homework regarding DMCA, but that too is hardly astonishing. DMCA has a number of legal requirements for both those asserting their rights under it and those asserting a right to post copies of works without the permission of the copyright owners. I am no expert on those matters, but SFWA has such experts among its membership and supporters.

The real question is whether there are any rights of authors.

The big issue is that many of the estates of science fiction authors are providing the sole income for their surviving spouse which is probably small as most science fiction writers are not rich. Plus, many of them are not technically savvy or have the resources to issue takedown notices. So they asked the SFWA to take care of it. and now they have caved.

A public announcement from SFWA

The Board has just passed the following motion by a vote of 5 aye, 1 no, and 3 abstain:

Motion: That, effective immediately, all of the the activities of the current ePiracy Committee be suspended and the Committee itself be disbanded until such time as the Board has had the opportunity to review the legal ramifications of sending out any additional DMCA notices, as well as to explore other methods by which SFWA may be able to assist authors in defending their individual rights, while ensuring that any such activity will not unduly expose SFWA to negative legal ramifications.

Further, that the Board shall issue a call for a temporary, exploratory committee of between five and nine individuals to investigate the views of the membership on issues of copyright, authors rights, what role the membership would like to see SFWA take on these matters and what level is risk (legal, public relations or otherwise) is acceptable to the membership in regards to that role, and what - if any - public policy statement SFWA might issue on these subjects on behalf of its membership.

Finally, that the Board, in conjunction with the findings of the above committee and its own deliberations, will work to develop a new, permanent committee with a clear matrix of operations and goals, whose purposes shall include, but not necessarily be limited to protecting the copyrights of our member authors who desire such protection in a way that complies with the applicable laws, and to help educate both our membership and the public at large in regards to copyright law.

Translation: Authors, you are on your own; SFWA will no longer act for you in defense of your electronic rights.

Congratulations are due to those who have won this battle. That includes EFF whose legal warning in defense of their client scribd doubtless played some part in the Board's decision. I have no consolation for those who lost.

I can take care of myself. I know how to generate DMCA takedown letters if I care to go to the trouble; Scribd has said they don't think this an onerous process. I disagree, but I know how to do it. I can't act on anyone else's behalf nor will SFWA.

I think they made the wrong decision. However, Pournelle gets it wrong by being annoyed that nicely worded emails to remove infringing documents are ignored. If it is not a correctly formatted DMCA takedown notice they don't have to pay attention to it. Whether that is right or wrong, it is the law. It is aimed more at corporations that have the resources to generate notices.
The little guy gets shafted.

Final words from Pournelle:

I understand that I must not call scribd.com a pirate site: it's just a place where anyone can put up a copyrighted document without any legal authority and scribd won't do anything until a legal notice by the owner is sent to them. Better be sure the notice is in the proper form. So although there's a lot of other people's work available at scribd without any permission from the copyright owners, it's not a pirate site. Keep that firmly in mind.

Now if I can compile that list in about ten minutes, then I'd say that scribd hasn't made much effort to find and delete works they have no right to publish. I may be uncertain about Elizabeth Moon or Fred Saberhagen's attitude toward this kind of thing, but everyone knows what Harlan Ellison thinks about it. And I would be astonished if Jack Chandler's estate, or Fred Saberhagen's estate, or Poul's widow Karen, had authorized any such posting. I'll ask her when I see her this week.

In any event, I understand that scribd and EFF are supposed to be the good guys here, and SFWA and Dr. Burt and now apparently me are the bad guys. They have the entire work of some authors, and much of the work of many authors, on line and available for download without any permission from the copyright owners; and we're the bad guys. It's an interesting world.

I am surprised that there is not a service to monitor and generate takedown notices on behalf of writers for an annual fee. A lot of the drudge work could be automated, searching and downloading documents and then making sure that the document is an offending one and not a fair use, and then generating and sending a takedown notice. It would also provide an interface for complaints and corrections. It couldn't cost too much or those who need this service would be unable to pay for it.