On the SCRIBD thing:

For those of you who haven't been following this, there's a pretty good recitation of the facts on Jerry Pournelle's site:

http://www.chaosmanorreviews.com/open_archives/jep_column-326-a.php

Essentially a site called scribd.com has been posting works willy-nilly. SFWA became aware that many of the works were not released to the public domain and sent them a list of those works. Jerry describes in weeping detail the difficulty involved in doing so. I won't get into that except to say that the person who did the work could have used a couple of simple queries to cut out the 'problematic' authors. (Of which I was one and Weber was another. Doctorow is the only one that Jerry is aware raised a stink.)

It got down to 'lawyers, guns and money' and now SFWA is out of the business of 'protecting author's rights.'

Good. Good riddance. I joined SFWA briefly, found them to be poster children for active stupid and quit renewing quickly. Some of them are very bright people who have the common sense of a duckling. Others are just too stupid to pour sand out of a boot with the instructions printed on the heel. They very nearly got me involved in a lawsuit and I'M NOT EVEN A MEMBER. A lawsuit where I should have been on the side (at least where my works were involved) on the side of the defence.

In case it's not clear, I don't want SFWA 'helping' me. I don't need SFWA 'helping' me. I don't want SFWA to be anywhere near me. Please!

Jerry says that 'absent SFWA' no one will protect the rights of the authors. In a way, he's correct. But authors shouldn't have to defend their rights.

That is what publishers are for.

If the work is currently in circulation and the publisher does not support 'free range' ebooks, let the publisher's legal department handle it. They have lawyers and paralegals and all the rest. They may even have database people who can create a simple query. 'If: book = free-range Then: Don't Sue'

Oh, you say that there is no publisher for that book? That it came out many years ago and those evil publishers no longer stock it?

And thus the 'loss' to 'pirated' ebooks is... what?

I won't get into the whole 'ebooks work as a marketing tool' thing. They do, many authors don't agree and I do agree with Jerry that in the future it may be an almost 'pure ebook' market as music is becoming.

But the music industry is the model that publishers and many writers are following. 'The Wave is Coming! Build the Seawalls Higher! Create Dykes! Stop the Wave! DRM is Your Friend!'

And as is becoming apparent, the mp3 wave is crushing them.

Ebooks are a wave. I grew up, mostly, in Florida. I learned to ride waves, literally, before my first conscious memory. I also learned that there are three ways to deal with waves:

You can fight it and it will crush you.

You can let it pass and lose all it's benefits.

Or you can try to ride it. It may still crush you, but if you ride it right it will carry you safe to shore. (And it's a hell of a ride.)

I don't want to be passed by. I don't want to be crushed. My only choice is to ride. I may live or die riding, but I will have taken the only viable choice.

www.webscriptions.net

Ride The Wave