Teleidoscope

Fri, Aug 31, 2007

Luddites at SFWA

Posted at 5:22 pm MDT to Current Events

The officers of the SF Writers Association have done something very stupid and illegal. They sent DMCA takedown notices to a site called scribd.com for every document on the site that mentioned Asimov or Silverberg (not just documents that were written BY Asimov or Silverberg). This included book reviews and a course syllabus.

DMCA takedown notices can legally only be sent by the copyright owners or their legal representatives. They did not own or represent the owners of most of the documents

And forcing takedowns of reviews and such (and books that had been uploaded by their own authors) is kind of counter-productive if you want to pull in new readers for SF.

The current officers of SFWA seem to hate electronic media. To think that I once dreamed of becoming a paid SF writer and being able to join that organization.

Also discussed at Making Light.

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