Excelsior the book

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)

The trucker hat/couch thread contained a post where I talked about a rather embarassing sexual encounter I had in the past. It is true that I posted it on the Internet for every potential googler to see; I'm not particularly sensitive about the these issues, and I would've probably allowed Mark to print it, had he asked beforehand. I don't care a shit about legal or copyright issues (I'm mostly anti-copyright, especially if it's for non-profit reasons), but there is the issue of trust. I don't expect a friend to tape a conversation we had and play it on the radio without my permission; similarly, I don't expect a fellow regular ILX-poster to put in a book what I've written without asking me first. Whether the book would've sold any copies or not, or whether Mark would've made any profit out of it is irrelevant; it's a matter of principle. I trust most of you folks to be sensible around such issues, and I hope that I won't lose that trust in the future. Also, I'd be similarly irritated if I'd find out some ILXor regular would have posted some personal things I said here to another Internet page without asking me first. The googlers and the lurkers are a whole different thing, that's the risk we all have to take, and that's why many of us post anonymously.

However, I do agree that this thing has caused perhaps too much fuss. Mark made a stupid mistake, but it's not like he did something irredeemably evil. He has apologized and reversed his actions, and I am willing to trust him in the future. The good thing about all this, that it does set a precedent: ILX regulars know now what reactions such an action might cause, so none of us won't hopefully make the same mistake in the future.

Mark, you've been very stupid indeed. Sorry for the lack of subtlety here but come on, MANY of us have what I'd basically call careers in belles lettres and would have felt massively compromised in intent if this went ahead. Also bear in mind that many writers are very much control freaks about how their work appears; if they hit 'submit' they agree to their work appearing *here* and that's fine. We take great pains to delist threads from Google and through the use of handles to also obscure certain identity issues to minimise any potential aggro we might get off perfectly allowable references to what we post in the media wherein 'poster x on internet messageboard talking about online craze y'-type quotes are used in news features.

Also the last time I appeared in a chapbook, I was like FIVE. What may be good enough for you...

[ps Nabiscothingy, mail me asap at suzy(lastname)@yahoo.co.uk - interesting news for you ;-)]

that was not what I was saying at all. I was saying fuck using cafepress, just print it up from your desk and hope your boss doesn't notice.

And maybe Suzy's right: maybe it's just a writerly habit to be very concerned about copyright, well before it officially "matters."

Just for the official record, here’s how I’d personally want the ILX copyright issue to be explained and observed. ILX is a collective publication with many contributors --- not unlike a fiction anthology or a magical magazine that lets its writers maintain ownership of their copy. By posting to this collective publication, we give permission to the entity as a whole to publish our posts here and here only, in perpetuity. It’d also be nice if we could agree to something like this: we give ILX, this "collective publication," the authority to take action on any infringement of the rights to large chunks of its material --- meaning that if someone swipes whole threads, and posters object, Andrew or any other representative of the group could demand action on their behalf.

"jel is a great person, and it's a shame he doesn't feature much in this here book"

"I like slayer"