Harlan Ellison vs. AOL Judgment Reversed 253
Robotech_Master writes "An appeals court has issued a decision reversing the summary judgment of a lower court that AOL qualified as a "safe harbor" under the DMCA. At issue is the fact that Ellison sent his notification of copyright violation to an email address at AOL, which AOL never received because the abuse submission address had been changed." The complete decision is available here as a PDF file; read below for an excerpt.
"AOL changed its contact e-mail address from "copyright@aol.com" to "aolcopyright@aol.com" in the fall of 1999, but waited until April 2000 to register the change with the U.S. Copyright Office. Moreover, AOL failed to configure the old e-mail address so that it would either forward messages to the new address or return new messages to their senders. In the meantime, complaints such as Ellison's went unheeded, and complainants were not notified that their messages had not been delivered. Furthermore, there is evidence in the record suggesting that a phone call from AOL subscriber John J. Miller to AOL should have put AOL on notice of the infringing activity on the particular USENET group at issue in this case, "alt.binaries.e-book." Miller contacted AOL to report the existence of unauthorized copies of works by various authors. Because there is evidence indicating that AOL changed its e-mail address in an unreasonable manner and that AOL should have been on notice of infringing activity we conclude that a reasonable trier of fact could find that AOL had reason to know of potentially infringing activity occurring within its USENET network."
Its the law (Score:4, Insightful)
Looks like actual notice to me.
Re:Its the law (Score:3, Informative)
Sorry, AOL. You got served. You've got lawsuit.
Re:Its the law (Score:4, Insightful)
This is fscking nuts. Email is not a reliable means of delivering information. It's great when it works, but there's too many things that can throw a wrench in the works. Registered mail has none of these problems, which is why it's historically been used.
BTW, send me an email, and my mail server doesn't keep a log of what messages it received. It logs what spams were dropped, but that's it. What the hell would they do then? Because it wasn't dropped, therefore it was received?
Bah. I can just see a bunch of CEOs getting on the email bandwagon. "Registered Mail costs are eating our frivilous lawsuit budgets alive! Email is free!"
Re:Its the law (Score:2)
If you don't have logs of dropping the item as spam, and they have logs that showed your server accepted it, there's a reasonable assumption you recieved it.
In this case though, the issue is that AOL had a registered address on file, and did not bother to check it. There is no dispute over if the email arrived, and could have been read.
Re:Its the law (Score:3, Insightful)
If you send an official communication to someone, and don't get a reply within a day or so, then send registered mail, or a phone call.
Re:Its the law (Score:3, Insightful)
relying on e-mail was his mistake.
In most cases I would probably agree with you, but in the case of America On-Line, an internet service provider, I think it is perfectly reasonable to expect them to have the technical nous to be able to process and audit messages which are sitting on their mail servers.
Re:Its the law (Score:2)
Are you gay or something?
No, but the couple who live across the road are and their two kids would probably like their parents to be able to marry.
If "w" finds sex same and boring he should maybe have a talk with Laura, buy her something nice, or if he really can't stand 'same sex' with her seduce an intern. I don't see why we have to change the constitution just because Laura is no
Slashlaw (Score:5, Funny)
Its Usenet? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Its Usenet? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Its Usenet? (Score:4, Informative)
Then again, how many people who know how to get binaries off USENET use AOL?
Re:Its Usenet? (Score:2, Interesting)
They can if its their users who posted it and if the material is being hosted on servers they own.
Re:Its Usenet? (Score:2)
Re:Its Usenet? (Score:2)
Judges matter (Score:2)
If judges are appointed, you can write to the governnor and the confirmation committee.
Complacency will just result in more judicial decisions based on misunderstanding of technology.
Solution for AOL (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Solution for AOL (Score:2)
Thanks,
And I still find the idea of Joan Collins watching a Clark Gable movie awfully funny. I'm not sure why that is, though.
Dear ghod... (Score:5, Interesting)
I've never heard nor seen USENET refered to as a "peer to peer" file sharing network.
Or a hyphenation of "news-group".
Re:Dear ghod... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dear ghod... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dear ghod... (Score:5, Insightful)
Given a reasonably broad definition of "peer to peer", I'd say it's a reasonable description (if a politically loaded one at the moment) of how Usenet servers treat each other. It's a little more complicated, because each peer then serves many actual clients, and typically every server has a full copy of the content in question (i.e. it's not "on demand" as are most peer to peer systems seem to be). Still, the end result is something that's a lot closer to peer-to-peer than client-server.
Re:Dear ghod... (Score:2)
Re:Dear ghod... (Score:2)
Just settle (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Just settle (Score:2, Insightful)
Why doesn't AOL just settle with Ellison, maybe offer him like 5,000 free hours instead of the normal 2,500?
* Hours must be used within the 45 day trial period.
(Hint: how many hours in 45 days?)
Seems strange to trust email so much... (Score:5, Interesting)
Skimming the papers, it sounds like email is the legally acceptable way of contacting an ISP about a copyright issue... which seems kind of surprising. I mean, when you sue someone, they generally have to be notified either by certified mail or in person. If the U.S. Postal Service can't be trusted to deliver a supena, is it reasonable to trust email with a takedown notice and punish the recipeient for not acting?
Re:Seems strange to trust email so much... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Seems strange to trust email so much... (Score:2)
If it were my work being distributed illegally, I'd have emailed, telephoned, sent registered mail and kept at them until something was do
Re:Seems strange to trust email so much... (Score:2)
E-mail doesn't technically generate a good enough proof of delivery. However, if you can grab the server logs from whomever was being served and then show your message was mentioned in those laws... there's some proof that notice was served. That's a little harder to get, but in this case he got it, and he also got a phone record that shows that an AOL user called to point this out and AOL took no acti
Depends on the argument... (Score:2)
But when you're legally required to have a correct address registered with the copyright office, and fail to do so, I fail to see the problem. That's like relocating, and not informing the copyright office because any regular mail could have been lost anyway.
The more interesting question is if AOL is resp
Re:Depends on the argument... (Score:2)
Why is that strange? I don't think you would find anyone (well not many people, at least) who would consider warez and mp3 groups to be as much of a threat to society as paedophiles.
Re:Seems strange to trust email so much... (Score:5, Informative)
ANY form of communication can constitute a valid contract, some are just harder to prove than others.
A written piece of paper with real original signatures, including several witnesses, is fairly hard to fake. That's why important legal documents have so many signatories.. it's to show that yes, all parties understood the contract, and yes, all parties willingly agreed to it.
In this case, AOL *registered* their email address with the copyright office as a valid way to contact them about copyright issues... that's the point. Had they not done this, they could have insisited on some other method probably.
But they said "this is the address that we will accept complaints on".. then they proceeded to ignore those complaints through mismanagement.
Harlan Ellison Fights for Creator's Rights! (Score:2, Flamebait)
Re: Harlan Ellison v. Stephen Robertson, America Online, Inc., RemarQ Communities, Inc., Critical Path, Inc., Citizen 513, and Does 1-10, Federal District Court, Central District of California Civil Case No. 00-04321 FMC (RCx)
22 February 2001
FOR THE PAST TEN MONTHS MY ATTORNEY, M. CHRISTINE VALADA, AND I HAVE BEEN HIP-DEEP FIGHTING A LEGAL BATTLE, WHAT WE THINK IS AN EXTREMELY IMPORTANT CASE:
TO PROTECT WRITERS' CREATIVE PROPERTIES.
WE FILED A LAWSUIT AGAINST THE
Re:Harlan Ellison Fights for Creator's Rights! (Score:3, Funny)
Dammit Harlan, if you quit SHOUTING at us, we might actually listen!
STOP SHOUTING ALREADY (Score:2)
Original text from Harlan here [harlanellison.com], perhaps someone reply with a bit of SHIFT-F3.
Aha! (Score:3, Funny)
Fuck you, Harlan. (Score:5, Insightful)
You know what? I was a teenager from a poor family. No father and an overworked mother going to school and holding down a full-time job at the same time bringing in barely minimum wage. No child-support. Living with her parents (our grandparents).
My main exposure to good books was online, through Project Gutenberg and various shared copies of e-books (fair use?). I had never even HEARD of Ellison until I read a copy of one of his books online.
I find spending $20 on a CD to be ludicrous and criminal. But you know what else I find criminal? Spending $20, $30, $40 or even $50 for a book of fiction. Christ, it's a couple hundred half-sheets of paper glued and bound into a set of thick cardboard covers for fucks's sake.
It's cheaper to get full platinum digital cable with every movie channel and HBO and all the channels your cable provider offers each month than to afford a book per week reading habit. Books are fucking criminally expensive and I can't blame people for sharing them.
People like Harlan not only want people to not share ebooks, but he doesn't want them to share real physical books either. They don't like libraries, they don't like used book stores. They don't like auctions for used books. They don't even want you to give a copy of a book to a friend when you're done reading it. They want every person who ever reads their work to have to pay for it all over again.
So excuse me if I don't cry you a fucking river, you pompous prick. And excuse the fuck out of me if I don't send you a check for your stupid "kick internet piracy" bullshit.
Re:Fuck you, Harlan. (Score:4, Insightful)
That $100 bill in your pocket -- it's just a blend of linen and cotton, for fuck's sake. But you'd probably get upset with me if I relieved you of it, even if I paid for you for the value of it's constituent components (probably just a few cents) first ...
Re:Fuck you, Harlan. (Score:2)
Re:Harlan Ellison Fights for Creator's Rights! (Score:4, Interesting)
How is this possible, Harlan? How much is the average fiction book these days? $20? $30? How much does it cost to produce each copy? I mean, it's a bunch of flimsy paper with black ink on it, surrounded by a thicker set of paper or some sort of cardboard cover. If you can't survive on the markup between cost and sales on an item like that - at a price like that - talk to your publisher, not us!
Further, you're lucky that you're even being read by people and that you are being published. Do you know how many people in the world write excellent material but aren't considered by the publishing giants these days? It's harder to even get an agent today than it was to get a *publisher* three decades ago. The average author who *is* published only makes an average of $8,000 to $10,000 per year from it.
I have been writing novels my entire life and am dying to be published. I give out my material for free. When someone shares my writing with another person - or whole groups of people, I don't freak out and demaned $20 from each and every person that read it. I'm just appreciative that they like my work. That they appreciate my art. That it has an audience. Remember. It's ART.
Also, if you can't make a living, then I suggest you contact Cory Doctorow of boingboing.net. He has written two very popular best-selling books and made a lot of money from them. BUT HE ALSO GIVES THE FULL BOOKS AWAY ONLINE FOR FREE. Imagine that!
One thing that he has forgoten to do ... (Score:2)
Oops, they will sue him for copyright infightement then
FUCK THE BASTARDS! (Score:2)
Now I understand why some of the Russian-language literature is disappearing from the Internet libraries
Re:FUCK THE BASTARDS! (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm with you. This "life + 70" shit is often justified as a way to "bequeath the business to one's family", but that's a load of crap. If a man is a carpenter and wants to leave his carpentry business to his son, he better teach the kid carpentry. The business of an author is writing, so it satnds to rea
Stop it already! (Score:2)
I'd like to see the look on Harlan's face if you told him that in person. I think his head might explode.
More info (Score:5, Informative)
Harlan Ellison's webpage [harlanellison.com]:
From his NEWS page [harlanellison.com] he's been on a campaign to Kick Internet Piracy [harlanellison.com].
According to this site [speculations.com], he's been fighting to prevent unauthorized posting of books/creating work on the intarweb without the authors consent...he believes AOL was partly responsible for his works being posted.
TO PROTECT WRITERS' CREATIVE PROPERTIES.
WE FILED A LAWSUIT AGAINST THE ABOVE PARTIES TO STOP THEM FROM POSTING MY WORKS ON THE INTERNET WITHOUT PERMISSION. THIS IS COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT. RAMPANT. OUT OF CONTROL. PANDEMIC.
What I find surprising is that the lower court sided WITH AOL in what looks to be a one sided case in favor of Ellison. How can the lower court support the DMCA and still side with an evil corporation...are they that corrupt now? Do we need federal courts to provide simple justice to the common man now?
Re:More info (Score:2, Informative)
Look up the problems with Harlan's anthology "The Last Dangerous Visions", where Harlan got various copyright agreements with contributors, then violated them by never publishing the book but has never released the original works back to the authors so
Re:More info (Score:2)
Perhaps the lower court thought that Mr. Ellison is a crackpot jousting at windmills, and that if all he could manage was to send a couple emails (apparently not bothered enough to send an actual letter or even pick up a phone), then he really couldn't say he'd held up his half of the DMCA requirements (in spirit at least).
Re:More info (Score:2)
Re:More info (Score:2)
From what I've heard from a few sources, Harlan is kind of an ass anyway so I really can't pick "sides" in AOL vs. Harlan, not that who I'd advocate for makes much difference in the courts.
That's right, but it's not in time. You lose. (Score:5, Insightful)
However, in order to qualify for that protection, the ISP has to register a contact point with the Copyright Office for all complaints to be sent, and must respond to all properly formatted requests sent to that contact point. It turns out this request to kill a Usenet posting from AOL's servers got lost because the copyright owner sent it to the registered address, but it turns out nobody was reading it since they had established a new address and didn't change their registration.
Therefore, the plantiff followed the law correctly, and AOL missed their chance to escape punishment by letting the time run out. Therefore, the safe harbor clause of the DMCA doesn't apply here, and AOL's going to be open to liablity here.
Usenet Precident (Score:2, Interesting)
It is possible that this judgment could some way be construed to hold all ISPs who give subscribers access to USEnet liable for copyright infringement?
Re:Usenet Precident (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, you are liable if you distribute copyrighted works (that aren't yours and you don't have rights to distribute) and do not fall under the safe harbor clauses. This decision just says that AOL may have not completed all the paperwork correctly to fall under the safe harbor clause.
Moral: Do your paperwork correctly.
Re:Usenet Precident (Score:3, Informative)
What happened here is that AOL got a notice to their registered e-mail address, and didn't do the takedown in time. They were 99% in compliance, but this went through the 1% hole in their lawsuit shield.
Nothing too drastic. (Score:2)
This is not the case, #include IANAL.txt, from what I can tell. It seems that the summary, ie just automatically granting AOL rights as a safe-haven was reversed... Instead the actual desision was remanded back to the court to look at to determine if AOL actually does qualify for that provision.
They also affirmed that AOL did not act in a vicious maner in reguard to the posting of the material and thus I assume
Re:Nothing too drastic. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Nothing too drastic. (Score:2)
Re:Nothing too drastic. (Score:2)
It also helps define negligence, intentional ma
AOL vs the DMCA (Score:4, Insightful)
Well since AOL apparently bothced their get-out-of-jail feee card I wonder if they are going to spend some of that cash pile of theirs to put a big dent in the DMCA to get of the hook.
Or if the AOL part will just bend over and take it so that the Time Warner part can keep their beloved DMCA intact.
/greger
It's about the future of USENET (Score:5, Insightful)
Harlan thinks of some turkey posts his book on USENET, he should then be able to attack all the zillions of people running a USENET server.
In his first round, he didn't do well, but he did have this one technicality -- AOL didn't handle their complaint address properly. And AOL getting dinged for this is fine. What we need to worry about is what the precedent means.
I mean, we've all had email go astray before, had servers go down, had mail drop on the floor. (Happens daily in the world of overactive spam filters.)
This might mean that some sites will decide there is too much legal risk in hosting content or usenet servers.
This part of the DMCA (little relation to the circumvention parts) was meant to make it easier to be an ISP, though at the cost of making them obey every takedown without requiring proof in some cases.
Re:It's about the future of USENET (Score:2, Informative)
The court case only arose because AOL utterly fucked up in the procedure they used for reporting copyright violation.
Re:It's about the future of USENET (Score:4, Interesting)
Gosh...an ISP might decide to not carry alt.binaries groups whose main purpose is to distribute copyrighted material without permission?
This is suppose to bother me how?
Re:It's about the future of USENET (Score:2)
ObCynic: If ISPs stopped carrying alt.binaries.whatever, the pirates would just flood other groups. Do you propose ISP just stop carrying all non-moderated groups?
Re:It's about the future of USENET (Score:2)
So, you would rather have people like him go to 3rd party usenet provider or some other distribution system? That, my friend is what will suck bigtime bandwidth. As it is now, usenet is a relatively distribution mechanism - articles are only transferred between sites, across the internet where bandwidth is scarce, once. Then at each site's intranet, where bandwidth is plentiful, each user transfer's a copy to their loc
Re:It's about the future of USENET (Score:2)
Re:It's about the future of USENET (Score:3, Interesting)
No, it is not. It's about upholding existing laws, whether or not any computer is involved at all. In this case they happen to figure prominently.
"Harlan thinks of some turkey posts his book on USENET, he should then be able to attack all the zillions of people running a USENET server."
Harlan thinks no such thing. What Harlan thinks is that the law gives him (or his lawyer) a way to notify people with infringed material of his on their server that it's there, and ask them to remove
complaining old man... (Score:5, Interesting)
Paperbacks are still relatively cheap and available. I much prefer an actual printed book for $7 to having to scrunch up in front of a computer and strain my eyes for several hours to read a book. Sure I can read it on a teeny tiny PDA screen, but that sucks too. Books are probbably the _least_ susceptible to copyright violation, and have withstood the onslaught of copy machines for decades. Printed books are simply a better technology than electronic books, and probbably will be true for the forseeable future. While Ellison certainly has a right to complain about his works being posted on usenet, it seems more akin to some old man yelling at kids to "get off my lawn!".
Re:complaining old man... (Score:2)
Always remember: copyright law is not evil in and of itself. Without it, the GPL would be meaningless: anyone could steal GPLed code to use as s/he want
Re:complaining old man... (Score:2)
A fly on the wall of Ellison's attorney's office.. (Score:3, Funny)
Love you Harley.
A new public funding model for artists... (Score:4, Interesting)
What type of mail server do they use? (Score:3, Interesting)
serve notice the old fasioned way (Score:2)
steps to abuse the process:
1. write a book or song
2. get it legally copyrighted
3. post it to usenet using a "Free 10 hours" account
4. send notices to all ISP's in the world that offer usenet access
5. sue the ones t
Let's see... what do I hate more? (Score:2, Funny)
Or Harlan Ellison... er... the aging bloated fraud whose presence annoys intelligent tech savvy people, and who will savagely destroy anyone who he percieves as a threat to his ability perpetuate a tired business model...
Oh well... never mind...
Posting anonymously so Harlan won't be able to find me and
Bogus expectations (Score:2)
So yeah, AOL screwed up. And Harlan sent an email that didn't bounce and didn't get read. SO FRIGGING WHAT? I, for one, am very nervous about any policy that says that _sending_ an email constitutes a legal notification.
So AOL should apologize, sure. And the fact that Harlan sent an email should be unadmissable... it's irrelevent (unless AOL counter-sues claiming tha
The Other Reason (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is that although the publisher has rights to reprint the e-book, the copyright holder is still responsible for the work, and for seeing it isn't published in like form outside the contract. If the author went to someone else and had it done, they'd be liable. However, even if someone else does it without permission, the copyright holder is still responsible and liable. They must act is a reasonable manner to reverse that. Failure to do so could result in loss of the contract, demands for repayment of the money already paid, sued for damages for inability of the publisher to now make money on the e-book, etc.
Very few authors have the knowledge guts, money, and ornery it takes to track down (or have tracked down) the people doing the pirating and take action. Harlan does. After seeing how hard it has been for someone like him with a team full of intellectual property and computer specialists to protect his own work, it becomes obvious how hard a lesser known (and paid) author would have to work, and what their chances of success would be.
Has any publisher ever tried this yet? No.
Are any ever likely to? Not anymore.
Re:Unfamiliar... (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically, the accusation is that AOL stopped checking the address they had on file at the copyright office, and therefore has lost its protections in any case that was submitted to that address during the unchecked timeframe.
Re:Unfamiliar... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Unfamiliar... (Score:5, Informative)
This appeal decision is basically a higher court saying, "Oh, no you're not in full compliance...not only did you change the email address without telling anyone, someone had already told you about it when your email address worked. Let's send this through that lower court one more time."
IANAL and all that, of course.
Re:Unfamiliar... (Score:2)
Rebuttal (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Summary. (Score:4, Insightful)
AOL's got no hope of winning this case now.
Re:Summary. (Score:3, Informative)
Granted, this can be abused easily if frivolous cases are constantly being brought to hand by a vexatious copyright holder (in the SCO mold who may not even own copyright). If you find your copyrighted work is being distributed illegally then it's your job to report it and get something done about it, sitting around after firin
Phone call is useless with any large organisation (Score:3, Insightful)
In any large (even medium) organisation, there is no guarantee that your complaint has been heard *by the right person*. That's like serving verbal notice on McDonalds by talking to the guy who gives you your fries.
Email leaves a permanent record. It's a much better medium than the phone for this sort of thing, and AOL are meant to be an internet company. Normally, I would say registered mail - but in this case, it appears that AOL r
Re:Wow (Score:5, Funny)
Get real!
They are a CD-Company, always sending out these so called AOL-CDs.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, imagine that a law was passed to penalize big businesses from dumping garbage in rivers, and it would cost them $100,000 per incident. But since "incident" was so vaguely defined, even dropping a gum wrapper off a canoe would mean you violated the law. So the gov't could sue you for $100,000, but they offer to settle for $3,000. A lawyer would cost you $3,000 anyway, so what the hell do you do? You're damned if you do and damned if you don't.
I think the best that could come out of this is that the law will be declared unconstitutional on the basis of "penalty doesn't fit the crime" (via cruel/unusual punishment). If the RIAA successfully prosecuted everyone they've contacted for one song each (over 2000 by my count so far?) and got the maximum penalty of $30,000, they would have been awarded $60,000,000 dollars! WTF? Were they really damaged $60,000,000 by the sharing of 2000 songs? Those 2,000 people could have been sharing the same single song to at least 10 people, so even if the RIAA lost $20 worth of missed-album purchases, they'd still be only be $40,000 in the hole. And that's not even considering that the record companies pocket just a percentage of each album's sticker price.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Informative)
This isn't a core problem with the law, it's a core problem with most people's understanding of the law and the way it's applied in our current legal setting. The law allows for something like $100k penalty or damages per copyright violation if you are found to have done that. However, there are a lot of fair use provisions that protect many uses of copyrighted material from falling under this, i.e. educational use, personal use, backups, etc. To prove you violated copyright in these cases, the court typically looks at four things, among them whether or not you profited from the violation and whether or not you knew you were doing it. I would honestly be very surprised to find that someone who downloaded a single copy of a story from an online site that claimed it was free to download would ever be found guilty of copyright violation and pay any penalties.
That being said, there was a recent disturbance in the force -- the DMCA. That makes it easier for copyright holders to cause problems for people, basically by putting many of the original fair use provisions on hold in a way that hasn't found its way through the courts yet. I'm hoping it will and it will be smashed down, but it hasn't happened yet. This doesn't change the basic premise of the law as I tried to describe it above.
It also put the copyright holders in a position they had never had before where they feel emboldened to go around rattling their swords. The RIAA can threaten people with very expensive lawsuits which, even if those people won (which they probably would given a fair shake), they would have to pay craploads of money defending themselves. Estimates of copyright case costs are somewhere around $200,000 per case. In most cases it's way cheaper just to pay the fine unless you can find some kind soul to protect you for the eventual win. The other downside is that the person sued for copyright violation doesn't come out ahead ever even if they win. At their most lucky, they could win court expenses, but that's not even a guarantee. So you won your case, but you're still out $200k. And that's how these big companies can pull it off. It has nothing to do with the law about copyright, which was never meant to be applied in these cases anyway.
Re:Wow (Score:2)
I look forward to your explanation of how someone who takes the time to scan in or retype Harlan Ellison's stories, split them into USENET-sized chunks, and upload them to a newsgroup remains blissfully unaware that they are sharing files.
The reality is that some people enjoy distributing copyrighted content
Re:Where's the problem? (Score:4, Informative)
Completely and utterly false. This is the lie that Gene Roddenberry perpetuated, despite repeated pleas from Harlan to knock it the hell off. In Harlan's original script (see Ellison's "City On The Edge Of Forever", ISBN 1565049640, for his complete original teleplay) it was some no-name crewman who was dealing drugs. Gene changed it because we can't have people selling drugs in the perfect Trek universe (that would too....human.) Gene also made many other claims about Harlan's script that were false (e.g., it was too expensive to shoot.)
The complete story is in the previously mentioned book.
Re:Harlan Ellison is a nut case. (Score:3, Insightful)
Neither of which should have any relevance to the case, of course. Nut case or not, good writer or not, he should have the same rights - no more, no less - as anyone else. Likewise, AOL should have the same rights as any other ISP.
Re:Harlan Ellison is a nut case. (Score:2)
(Actually I haven't seen much new from him in a long time.)
Re:Harlan Ellison is a nut case. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Harlan Ellison is a nut case. (Score:2)
Or should "Speculative" be prounounced "Pretentious"?
Not to say that the work is in itself pretentious (I wouldn't know), but coining a new genre when none is necessary throws up a red flag in my mind.
Re:Harlan Ellison is a nut case. (Score:2, Informative)
Speculative
Function: adjective
1 : involving, based on, or constituting intellectual speculation; also : theoretical rather than demonstrable
Fiction
Function: noun
1 a : something invented by the imagination or feigned; specifically : an invented story
Speculative Fiction
An invented story involving, based on, or constituting intellectual speculation.
Novels about alternate possible historical timelines are SF. "Normal" historical fiction is also somewhat speculative as the
Re:Harlan Ellison is a nut case. (Score:5, Funny)
City on the Edge of Forever (Score:4, Funny)
I heard that Ellison's original script had some low-level Enterprise crew doing drugs which leads to this time-travel incident, but the Hollywood suits took that out because the Enterprise crew are all Eagle Scouts and that would never happen in the Star Trek universe, so they rewrote the script to have McCoy accidently inject himself with a dangerous (legit) medication when the Enterprise hits a space-time "air pocket" (you know, one of those things that tosses everyone out of the seats that they are not belted into).
If you write scripts for Hollywood, having someone else do a rewrite for any of a number of pandering reasons is part of the landscape, and as far as making the Enterprise crew Boy Scouts who would never use drugs, whoever is supervising a series has to keep the episodes consistent with a vision or else it turns into Superman Comics where Superman keeps getting more powers in each episode that they have to hit some kind of reset button.
Getting back on topic, Ellison may not be a nut case, but he has a track record of pissing into the wind on matters of principle that turn out to be no-win situations.
I Take It You Didn't Read The Script (Score:2, Informative)
Personally, I liked the idea of Kirk being willing to give up everything (including his oath and his integrity) for love, but Roddenberry didn't see it that way.
If you're gonna rip on someone, at least have the decenc
Re:City on the Edge of Forever (Score:2)
Now, now...you have to remember that they didn't have much control over the Guardian, and hence they couldn't know about Dynasty or Empire of the Ants, though I bet that they were one reason Khan Noonian Singh was so sure he was superior.
Re:Since When is Stealing OK? (Score:2)
Taking a book without the permission of the owner, and not giving it back, is stealing. Copying a book without the permission of the copyright holder is copyright infringement. Now if you can explain what is wrong with copying something then feel free, but save us the lame anaolgies with taking stuff.
Re:Copyright Infringement == Stealing (Score:2)
Not according to the law it isn't. Copyright infringement and theft have different constitutional bases, are covered by different statutes, fall under different jurisdictions, incur different penalties, require different types of proof, and are subject to a different range of acceptable defenses. In the law there is no overlap between theft and copyright infringement whatsoever.
When was the last time you heard of someone being able to defend themselves against a charge of
Re:The Library is Different (Score:3, Insightful)
They can when you rip all the pages out and pass them along a line of people
However, I don't see why simultaneity really matters: libraries can still rent out the same book to hundreds of people before it's replaced. Whether they're reading it serially or in parallel is irrelevant, they're still not buying the book.
Every book in a library 'costs' the author a sizable amount of money, unless they're so crap that no-one would want