Excelsior the book

Right, at least that's what the fair use doctrine says. But in a case like this, where the individual posts are, theoretically, all owned by the individual posters, then each post constitutes a separate document, constituting a "whole" unto itself, so that a quote of a single post is actually the same as wholesale copying. Except that I can't imagine that argument flying in a legal setting -- it would be like CBS alleging that every pixel of every image in every frame of a broadcast constituted a separate document.

seriously. everyone just calm the fuck down.

its a motherfucking internet message board. its supposed to be fun.

once again. die.

wouldnt that be nice?

Also this is an area of the law that makes me glad I quit lawyering.

I think there has been some massive overreation on this thread, but I guess I kind of understand why. I have no real comment on that.

He's asked me upthread not to talk about his previous attempt to do this, but honestly, from the amount of ruck caused by 3 or 4 people, he could perhaps have guessed a least a fraction of the controversy it would cause? The only person who objected to the former exercise was a known troll, so, I don't know. Who knows.

(Please note: the explanation he gave for why he tried it before was that he wanted to try out CafePress as a practice or sample for work purposes, and needed a large sample of text to be published, to assess their quality. A particular thread on ILX provided this opportunity.)

Anyway, I'm putting words in his mouth at this point, but I'm sure that he will log back on when his work is slow, make an apology and sort things out.

I shall read this thread and contact those who I have seriously pissed off.

Later.

Good luck. If you manage it you'll be doing better than me.

xpost - even better: print up what you think is funny at work without your boss seeing!

That's exactly why I did the book. (continuing)

Basically, it all boils down to two issues.

1) The copyright issue. I'm not a lawyer, and I don't pretend to know the in's and out's of international copyright law.

Shit happens all the time that I'm not entirely happy about, but you know, I'm more bothered by things like record companies putting out my songs and then "forgetting" to pay the mechanicals. If you're quotable, you get quoted. If I had a dime for every meme or phrase I've actually coined... I could buy a yacht off the royalties! Try googling a phrase which you have coined or used repeatedly - I did yesterday, and was amazed by how far some of my "trademarks" had got. Some people quote and attribute. Ironically, the person who used raised the biggest stink in the previous debate used my words and phrases without attributing.

Fair enough, if you're a writer and you make your living off your words, then you want to protect those words. But where do you draw the line? During my brief spell as a critic, I can't count the number of times I would see my quotes ending up in press releases. That's someone else - a band - trying to make money off my words. Am I OK with that?

2) The privacy issue. This is something above and beyond the copyright issue. There's been a lot of talk about "oh, this is just private and casual chatter with my friends".

The intimacy and familiarity of ILX *does* lull you into a false sense of security, that this is somehow a private place, outside of the real world. IT'S NOT. I had my peace of mind regarding ILX shattered quite rudely last year, but ultimately it did teach me an important lesson The internet is not private, and ILX is not "safe" and everyone should learn to police their *own* behaviour accordingly.

The great thing about ILX is that people feel free to speak without thinking. The terrible thing about ILX is that people feel free to speak without thinking. Freedom of speech implies a responsibility as well as a right.

I learned the hard way, don't write anything on ILX that you would not be comfortable with your mom, your ex-boyfriends, your internet stalker, your label boss, random music journalists reading. That might be an unintentional lesson which is perhaps more important than the ins and outs of international copyright law.

Seriously, thanks for all your opinions, anti, pro and support/defensive. You are all cool.

As hstencil said, I printed one
1) for me
2) to read away from work
3) to test out the 'book publishing' service.

I did do this a while ago, but the book came out at 67 pages, so was really just a big pamphlet. This one is much bigger and should show me what quality you can expect with smaller type/wider spine/etc. I did let the major contributors to the first know, privately. All were cool apart from one who was not cool and that was OK too. This was 'available' for about a month, withdrawn when I got the objection, and only 1 copy was produced.

As this one had a larger number of contributors, it would have been unfeasible to contact everybody. So, I posted this question yesterday morning. By the end of the day, 50 posts and no outright objections.

I had one e-mail to me personally, amater!st, who wished his contribs to be removed. I agreed obv.

I logged on and saw the general opinion was to withdraw the availability of the item. This I have done.

I shall contact J*hn D personally.

I apologise to all who feel they have been insulted, violated, or just plain rubbed up the wrong way. I thank the many erudite supporters and/or defenders, I don't feel 'ganged up' on, and that's thanks to you. I also dont feel 'guo' as even the vociferous anti people were still for the most part fair and good about it (If i've had real bile and/or insults I missed it)

My only regret is upsetting JD as much as I seem to have.

For what it's worth, I don't think any more than my one copy will get produced.

It may seem obvious, but I will not be doing any more books like this. In actal fact, I was not going to anyway. But that's beside the point I know.

Anyway, see you around.

What I always liked about ILX was that all the things I can say have some sort of permanence, and I have never said anything I don't believe, either here or anywhere else. (I haven't told any major lies either, life is a weird thing already)