stop. start. stutter.

So, in the past two weeks, I've had my brain utterly eaten by the series I'm reading! To the point where, when I finished book #10 in the series, instead of waiting until I could get to the bookstore, I bought book #11 in e-book. (And since it's published by Baen, I could buy it as an e-book ... ahem.)

For those who like military science fiction, or (oddly enough) those who enjoy Age of Sail stories and might like to read sf that deals with many of the same themes -- to the point of skating the roman a clef territory occasionally, which makes for entertaining reading -- I'd like to suggest you might enjoy David Weber's Honor Harrington novels, starting with On Basilisk Station and going for 11 books (and counting!)

There are moments where Weber's prose gets in the way of the story he's telling -- I wouldn't rate his prose anywhere above "workmanlike" at best -- but that's not why I've been devouring them like candy! No, the reason I love them so much is that Weber's cast of characters is brilliant. His heroine Honor Harrington is a complex, faceted character who manages to be good at many things without crossing the line into unrealistic Mary Sue (can you still call it a Mary Sue if the character's female and the author's male?), as well as being an excellent example of how male authors can write strong women characters, and the rest of the cast is just as compelling.

The "bad guys" in the first few installments of the series shade a bit too close to cardboard-cutout enemies for me, but the best part of that is that they apparently did the same for Weber, because as the series went on, we start to see up to half the book from the other side's point of view, a technique that allows for some fairly interesting ambiguities in reader response -- after all, the two powers are at war, and Our Hero often finds herself up against the people whose heads we were just in. Once Weber catches his stride with the series, the antagonists develop with just as much nuance as the protagonists, and by book 11, you're finding yourself unsure just where your sympathies completely lie -- which is, of course, Weber's point: in war, there are no "good guys" and "bad guys", just two (or more) powers trying to find the point between self-interest and self-defense.

Weber tackles a lot of complex issues head-on, and I've been consistently pleased with his treatment of gender issues, which I've been fairly well-sensitized to over the past week or so. (I'm less certain of my ability to be able to spot good treatment of racial issues, and there's a bit too much "it is so far post-diaspora that humanity's genes have intermixed for the most part" for me to be comfortable saying that Weber does truly well on that point, but there are several highly visible characters of color in prominent positions of authority, including the entire royal house of our hero's kingdom.) It isn't only a "o hai sexism is long dead" treatment, either, since a long-running plot thread is the interactions between Honor and a neighboring planetary system whose culture is less enlightened on matters of sexism, and how she handles the conflicts. And if nothing else, it's lovely to see a portrayal of complete gender balance in the Navy that Honor is a part of -- I honestly suspect Weber flips a coin to determine what gender his walk-on characters should be.

The books do portray war in all its realities, so there are some moments that might strike some as over-the-top (especially in the plotline involving the treatment of prisoners by the group that doesn't abide by the in-universe version of the Geneva Conventions), but in my eyes it never struck the point of gratiutious, just there to support Weber's underlying thesis that war carries costs that must be paid by honorable people.

The best part about this series is that Weber's published by Baen, which is -- as previously mentioned -- the only sf publisher that's actually intelligent about ebooks. They've released the first ten books in e-copy with no DRM, completely free, for distribution, and a fan maintains the list here, with the first ten "main line" novels plus several of the auxiliary anthologies and other novels in the universe.

1. One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer by Nathaniel Fick: This is an excellent triangulation point to Generation Kill; Fick was the Lieutenant of the Marine platoon that Wright was following along with. The scope of this book isn't just limited to the invasion of Iraq, though; Fick gives us a great description of the process of officer training and then continues on to take us through Afghanistan and Iraq from that officer's perspective. The heartbreaking bits come from one of Fick's observations: that it was the Gunnery Sergeant's job to bring the Marines home, while it was Fick's job to make sure they accomplished their mission, no matter what. Fick's memoir is a fascinating look at the spot that a Lieutenant occupies in a battle plan: detached from the enlisted men, but still responsible for them, in the face of upper command who (as he discovers) is often more concerned with their careers than their Marines. Not as good as Generation Kill, but still very worth a read.

2. The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell: An Accidental Soldier's Account of the War in Iraq by John Crawford: A National Guardsman's Iraq story, and I really wanted to like it, but I couldn't even finish it; I waited all through the first half of the book for Crawford to get to the freakin' point, and he just never caught my attention. Back to the library it goes.

3. The Numerati by Stephen Baker: Picked this one up after it was profiled in this month's Seed, and my disappointment with it doesn't mean you shouldn't read it. I'm mostly annoyed with it because I thought it was a very, very shallow piece (and at 250 pages, it's no wonder) that tries to cover a lot of ground quickly, and as a ground-covering overview of the topic, it's pretty good; my problem with it is that I already knew most of what Baker was covering, so there was nothing particularly fresh or interesting. As an introduction to our statistics-and-metrics-driven world (of business, politics, shopping, even online dating), it's good; for anyone who already knows anything about trend collection and analysis, skip this one and pick up Simson Garfinkel's Database Nation : The Death of Privacy in the 21st Century instead.

Disclaimer: Links to go Amazon; if you buy with the link, I get a kickback. Which I will use to buy more books. Please, allow me to buy more books.

Two books with participant journalism:

Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players by Stefan Fatsis. Fatsis begins as an observer and gets slowly drawn into the world of competition Scrabble, which is -- like any nerd-underground bastion of obsessive freaks (and I say that with the greatest affection possible, trust me) -- full of characters who are so strange they have to be real. He does a great job of mingling several through-lines: the history of Scrabble-the-game, the history of Scrabble-the-competitive-culture, the present-day (at the time of his writing) colorful characters ... and his own halting progress through the world of tournament Scrabble, watching his rating rise and fall, learning all the elements of strategy and forethought that turns a friendly home game where a hundred points is a good score into cutthroat competition games where 400 is an okay day. It's a joy to watch nerdy people being nerdy about the things they adore, and if nothing else, watching Fatsis learn all the pieces (memorization, anagrams, strategic thinking) will probably boost your home game a couple of points. (For the record, my record Scrabble high score was a 386. I have a ways to go before I could play on the national stage.)

Positively Fifth Street: Murderers, Cheetahs, and Binion's World Series of Poker by James McManus: McManus was sent to Vegas at the time of the 2000 World Series of Poker with two assignments: get the scoop on the murder trial of Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish (accused of killing Ted Binion, member of the family that had started the WSOP), and write an article on the growing prevalence of female players in the WSOP. McManus, though, had been bitten by the poker bug, and used his advance to "satellite in" to the Main Event of the WSOP, a $10,000-entry-fee No-Limit Hold-'Em tournament that's the poker tournament for people, amateurs and pros alike, to test themselves against. Comparison to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is overdone in the literary world, but there is a certain gonzo charm to McManus's prose; the reader is right there with him through the whole thing, and he is unrelentingly, brutally honest about his failures and flaws. One part poker memoir, one part trial coverage, one part meditation on the more colorful pieces of Vegas's history, and one part gaze at a WSOP that's changed utterly since McManus's day; if you go into it expecting the whole book to be any one part you'll be disappointed by the frequent 'digressions', but if you're ready to take the book as it is, you'll be rewarded with a snapshot of insight into a world that's foreign to most.

(Disclaimer: Links to go Amazon; if you buy with the link, I get a kickback. Which I will use to buy more books. Please, allow me to buy more books.)

1. Every Hand Revealed by Gus Hansen: Hansen has a bad image among poker watchers as a complete maniac. Which, let's face it, he is, but he's a maniac with smarts. This book is a recounting of his 2007 Aussie Millions tournament win, in which Hansen noted down every hand he played and reconstructs them for the reader, including his reasoning and his strategy, and it reveals that the times when he looks to be craziest, he's actually quite conservative -- if you know his reasoning. This is not for the poker novice -- if you don't understand the concept of "pot odds" and basic hold 'em strategy, for instance, you'll be totally lost -- but if you follow poker at all, it's a fascinating look into the mind of a pro, and Hansen proves to be capable of not only educating, but producing surprisingly solid writing. (Poker.)

2. Gaming the Vote: Why Elections Aren't Fair (And What We Can Do About It) by William Poundstone: Sarah brought this home from the library tonight randomly (the library messed up her reserve; she was aiming for another of Poundstone's books) and I read it over dinner; I couldn't put it down. Poundstone's book lies at the intersection of game theory, economic theory, and political theory, and it takes as his premise the challenge: plurality voting is obviously broken, so what would be broken less? He does a great job of explaining the theoretical problem for a layperson, a fantastic job of illustrating the pros and cons of alternate voting systems, and a pretty good job of mapping this onto the real-world American political process without partisan bias; the only place he falls down slightly is making the case for his preferred system, which was the shallowest of all the sections. His sense of humor rounds out the equation and carries the sections that would otherwise be quite dry. (Political game theory)

3. Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise by Ruth Reichel: This is the memoir of Reichel's years as the New York Times food critic -- both her struggle to broaden the range of restaurants that the Times reviewed, and her struggle to experience each restaurant as the average reader would and not as the "New York Times Food Critic" would. It's one part professional memoir, one part personal memoir, and one part meditation on class and privilege as it plays out in America (and particularly the American restaurant industry); in the hands of a lesser writer, this would be a horrible mishmash, but in Reichel's hands, it proves an excellent read indeed. (Memoir)

4. Moving Violations: War Zones, Wheelchairs, and Declarations of Independence by John Hockenberry: I like to crack that this is an absolutely stunning 275-page book that unfortunately clocks in at a merely-good 350 pages, which is glib but true; Hockenberry could have used an editor in a few places, and prompting to expand certain bits while paring down others. Still, this is a fabulous read; Hockenberry tells the tale of his years as the NPR correspondant in the Middle East (including through the first Gulf War). The catch? Hockenberry has been a paraplegic since a car crash at age 19. Like Reichel's book, this is one part personal-disability memoir, one part professional memoir, and one part meditation on American foreign policy and how Americans (particularly disabled Americans) are treated abroad; the glue holding this together is a little weaker, but still fabulous. Honest and candid, with both humor and rage driving it. (Memoir)

5. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely: "Behavioral economics" is a pretty new science; it deals not with how markets move, but the factors that influence and shape choices. The classic application of behavioral economics is in financial markets, but Ariely argues that the principles apply to just about every decision we make -- and he argues it pretty well. This is a short, quick read that's a must for anyone who works in any decision-making capability to help you understand the unconscious biases that are playing into your logical (or "logical") thought patterns -- and a double must for anyone who's working in marketing or wants to learn how to be more resistant to it. (Behavioral economics)

6. Once Upon A Number: The Hidden Mathematical Logic Of Stories by John Allen Paulos: Don't let the word "math" throw you; this is more theory-of-statistics than mathematics. Paulos does a lot of work on "math for math-haters" (his book Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences, which I link as a two-for-one here, is deeply angry at the state of math education, but does a fabulous job not only of pointing out what causes lack of math ability in your average American and why it's dangerous, but also explaining a lot of the things that people have problems with in a clear and completely understandable fashion). This is a good example; he connects math and storytelling in an interesting and engaging way, and oddly enough, reading this made me a better writer. (As a dyscalculaic who loves the concept of math, but has zero competence in the execution of math, trust me: if I can follow it, just about anyone can.) (Math)

7. Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky: Kurlansky is a systematic historian; he sees and synthesizes connections that might not be apparent to others, and more than that, he does so in a way that makes those connections obvious and self-evident when you read them. This is one of his best books; it traces the influence of salt on history through everything from politics to war to science to (obviously) cooking. Clear, cogent, and entertaining, as well as providing a bunch of fun anecdotes for your next dinner party. (History)

8. A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage: I'm not sure if I entirely buy Standage's theory that each era of history has had its signature beverage and that beverage was a major driving force in the development of that era -- but he argues the hell out of it, and it's an entertaining read. Like Kurlansky's book, this is an overview of anecdotes, and it falls shallow on detail in a few places, so if you're already a systematic-history buff you might not find much new here -- but it's still a good read. (History)

9. Blue Blood by Edward Conlon: This is a memoir of Conlon's time on the NYPD, from rookie to detective, including a whole section on his experiences on 9/11. It's brutally honest and unapologetic about the realities of cop life, both the good things and the bad things, and Conlon doesn't try to play for good impressions (or try to cadge political favor). He has a strong voice, and navigates through historical, political, and personal-memoir levels of detail at varying points; this isn't so much a collection of "cop stories" as a snapshot of Conlon's life, which means that people who are just there for the cop stories might find that it drags, but I came away from this liking Conlon as a person as well as a storyteller. (Memoir)

(Disclaimer: Links to go Amazon; if you buy with the link, I get a kickback. Which I will use to buy more books. Please, allow me to buy more books.)

The topic: Quantum computing
The book: Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos by Seth Lloyd

What is quantum computing? It's a computer built to take advantage of fundamental principles of quanta, using the idea that quantum particles can be used to store data and perform operations on those data. Which means that any book about quantum computing must explain not only computer science, but also quantum physics. And quantum physics is the new rocket science, in the sense of being the discipline that everyone thinks nobody understands. Fortunately, Lloyd seems to delight in the fact that even the quantum physicists don't understand quantum physics. He knows what he's talking about, clearly loves his topic, and has a sly sense of humor that often has me looking at the page and going "...did he just make a joke there? Yeah, he just made a joke there."

If you ask ten quantum physicists to explain quantum physics, you'll get twenty-five different answers, all of which contradict each other, and one really confused cat. But Lloyd does a really good job of explaining hard-to-explain pieces. This is a topic I wasn't expecting to understand as well as I understood this book, honestly; I've mentioned my problems with math, which meant that I often just gave up on my science education and have had to self-teach since then, which means that I've got some curious gaps. But Lloyd's one of those people who loves his discipline like nobody's business, loves the problems he's working on, and is willing to do a lot to make sure you think they're just as cool as he does -- which is my main criterion for a book on science, which you might have already guessed -- and on the whole, he manages wonderfully.

I did not expect to walk out of this book having had so many a-ha! moments about quantum physics as I did, and if I were at MIT, I'd audit Lloyd's classes just to have the privilege of hearing his theories directly.

(Disclaimer: Links to go Amazon; if you buy with the link, I get a kickback. Which I will use to buy more books. Please, allow me to buy more books.)

The Topic: Religious history: specifically, the Council of Nicaea
The Book: When Jesus Became God: The Struggle to Define Christianity during the Last Days of Rome by Richard Rubenstein

The Council of Nicea -- which is actually the First Council of Nicaea; there were others, but this is the one people most often mean -- is the point at which Christianity truly started to be shaped and codified. Before Nicaea, there were a bunch of different ways of looking at God and Jesus and the meaning of both, and individual churches taught and believed the version that they thought was most appealing. Rubenstein brings us through the argument (which actually displays surprising similarity to an Internet flamewar, although slightly more bloody-minded) providing just the right level of detail, and -- as is very rare for a book on religion -- without giving away which side of the debate he comes down on.

More than that, though, Nicaea was the story of Arius and Athanasius, the two main voices on both sides of the Christological debate, and Rubenstein gives us an excellent look at both men, their histories, their backgrounds, and their motivations, reconstructing very vibrant pictures of the two men from what's available to us today. This is a really good history book, well-researched and eminently readable, and very approachable for the layperson.

I think sometimes, in writing my characters -- in creating these people who walk around inside my head and on the page -- about kindness.

See, there are three interlocking concepts -- "nice", "kind", and "good" -- that most modern Western society treats as the same concept. I've heard a lot of people use the words synonymously, and I'm just as guilty as anyone else. They're not the same concepts, though. They recognize and inform each other, and they interrelate and pass pieces back and forth, but they're not the same. Treating them like they are does everything a disservice.

(In order to talk about a lot of this, I have to either wave my hands and start using synaesthetic words, or take you through a whirlwind tour of religious and philosophical writing since the Ancient Greeks. I'll go with the hand-waving, since I'm still dealing with the dislocated thumb and probably shouldn't even be typing this much.)

Being "nice" involves being pleasant and agreeable, being courteous, and being nice is important. But sometimes there's an element of falseness in it. There's an implication of vapidity, of shallowness, to the modern definition of "nice". Call it the darker side of nice: the part where the social pressure involves smiling pretty and saying meaningless lies while you ready the dagger to slip between someone's ribs.

But being kind lies in understanding and recognizing that we all hurt each other without wanting to, and seeking to mitigate that damage as much as possible. Kindness has to do with compassion; it has to do with empathy. It has to do with seeking to take a moment and view the world from someone else's viewpoint, and doing things for them that aren't how you personally would do them, aren't what you personally would need at that moment, but are what that person needs.

(It's the Sephirotic concept of chesed, really, which is often rendered in English as "mercy", but which is probably better translated as "lovingkindness" -- and it might take the form of an outstretched hand and it might take the form of complete silence or distance. It is, as one of the wisest men I've ever met says, the importance of recognizing the inherent dignity of every living being.)

In a lot of ways, kindness isn't a Western concept. Which is not to say that Westerners can't be kind. But inherent to the concept of kindness, or at least kindness as I'm sort of fumbling around with it, is the notion of non-self-centrism, and that's something that's very unfamiliar to the modern American mind. "Nice" is a model of the world where the individual performing the action is the center of that action. When you're thinking about being nice, a lot of times you're thinking about I, I, me -- what I need to do right here to be perceived as a "nice person". "Kind" is a model of the world where you have to actively engage with the other people around you -- to place your situational partner's needs and wants and reactions ahead of your own, and do things that will minimize their hurt and maximize their healing.

Kindness isn't easy. It's scary and it's frightening and it means that you have to stomp down your initial impulses half the time, because no two people have the same needs and wants and reactions at any given time. It involves a lot of listening, and a lot of giving, and a lot of struggle.

The world needs more kindness in it. (And sometimes less nice. Because often, being nice and being kind are actively in opposition.)

I'm not nice, and I'm not interested in being nice; I never have been, I never will be. And sometimes I'm good, and sometimes I'm not. But I always, always try to be kind, even when I'm doing something that isn't nice or isn't good. I don't always succeed, but it's important to me to try.

As a writer, I often have to write people who aren't nice or good or kind. It's important, though, for any writer to remember that nobody's a villain in the story of his own life, and nobody wakes up in the morning and looks herself in the mirror and says "yeah, I'm so evil". Every single human being I've ever met has been capable of moments of incredible kindness back-to-back with moments of incredible cruelty and moments of incredible carelessness, and fictional people who don't have the same depths to them ring flat and one-dimensional.

More than that, though, it's important for me to treat my characters with kindness -- even if they're not kind people. Even when they're doing awful things, I need to treat them sympathetically, even if they're not sympathetic characters; I need to respect their dignity. If I don't, it creeps into the text, and a reader winds up looking at the result and feeling like something's horribly wrong.

It's a hard problem to struggle with, and like so many of these meandering little essays, it's one I don't have a nice neat solution for. (I'm actually wondering if one of the problems I'm having with the main project right now is that I'm not being kind enough to one of the protagonists. Yes, Joey, I'm looking at you.) It's just something I've been thinking about lately as I try to explain my life philosophy to a few friends...

Watching the current SFWA debacle has been painful -- on every side. I've said for years that copyright is the most misunderstood concept on the internet; the sheer amount of misinformation is stunning.

I don't think that it's much of a surprise to anyone that I come down pretty firmly in the "pixel-stained technopeasant wretch" camp. (Since, you know, you're reading this right now, and if I were one bit less besieged by problems with the primary manuscript, you'd have more regular fiction to read here.) I know that there's a pretty sharp schism in the SFWA about electronic distribution channels -- even as an outsider, the fight's vicious enough to be visible from the ramparts, as it were, and I know enough people who are on the inside to know that it's even more vicious than it appears.

It's also, I know, not as simple as a case of "us" vs. "them", no matter what side you fall down on -- and I know enough to know that I do not want to get involved in the fight, no way no how. I have very, very firm opinions on copyright, digital rights management, and intellectual property laws -- in the way that only someone who's been enforcing those laws for the past five years, even (especially!) when I don't agree with them, can have. Whether we like it or not, though, the laws are the laws. And even the alternative-copyright "copyleft" movements, like the Creative Commons license and the GPL, take their legal protections and basis from existing copyright law; without the framework of existing IP law, you don't get copyleft any more than you can have copyright.

I'm making this post not to come down on any side or get my opinion out there, but to explain a little bit about the DMCA process that any online service provider will follow. (For those of us who are just tuning in, I spent five years on the abuse desk of a major blog service. I've seen a lot of DMCA notices.)

The thing that kicked off this whole brouhaha was a (badly-formatted) DMCA takedown notice. I've seen a lot of people in comments to Patrick Nielsen Hayden's post or Cory Doctorow's post, saying that it's ridiculous for Scribd to require takedowns to name each individual infringing work, and that a blanket notification should suffice. That is, unfortunately, not what 17 USC 512(c)(3)(A)(iii) says:

Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to locate the material.

As someone who's seen one (1) metric fuckton of DMCA takedown notices, trust me: a direct link to the URL of the allegedly-infringing material is pretty much the only way to be sure that you've gotten absolute identification. Every online service provider on the internet is going to require that. (The lawyers in my audience may be tempted at this point to point out ALS Scan, Inc. v. Remarq Communities, Inc. We argue about that one a lot. Nobody's got a clear consensus yet.)

I've seen a lot of DMCA takedown notices from everyone from the RIAA to major publishing houses to individuals. I've also seen people flip out when you tell them that their takedown notice doesn't conform to the standards set forth by law, and I've seen a lot of people say that they don't want to go through all the legal mess, so why can't you just take it down without having to do that? (I've seen a lot of people in the comments to various places championing this option; sort of a "gentleman's agreement" sort of thing, as it were.)

The law doesn't work like that, either. The DMCA requires that an online service provider must have "actual knowledge" of infringing activity before action must be taken (and the OSP's immunity from liability kicks in). And the filing of a properly-formatted (ie, conforming to all six points of the law) DMCA takedown notice is what constitutes "actual knowledge".

The good news is, it's really easy to write a DMCA takedown notice if your copyright is being infringed. (The other good news is that it's awfully easy to write a DMCA counter-notification if you're falsely accused of copyright infringement.) You don't need to pay a lawyer to draft it for you, although as always, I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice; if you have legal questions, contact a lawyer who's licensed to practice in your jurisdiction.

If your work is being infringed upon by someone on a commercial website, first go to the US Copyright Directory of Service Provider Agents. If you don't find the service listed there, check the site for a copyright statement. If that doesn't pan out, see if you can find out who hosts the site in question. (If I've lost you at this point, find a sympathetic geek and say the words "upstream provider". Your geek will nod knowingly and take care of it for you.)

Here's a sample DMCA takedown notice, which can be adapted by anyone who needs it:

========== BEGIN SAMPLE DMCA TAKEDOWN NOTICE ==========

Dear [name of copyright agent],

Pursuant to 17 USC 512(c)(3)(A), this communication serves as a statement that:

(1). I am [the exclusive rights holder | the duly authorized representative of the exclusive rights holder] for [title of copyrighted material being infringed upon, along with any identifying material such as ISBNs, publication dates, etc -- or, if the material is a web page, the URL];

(2). These exclusive rights are being violated by material available upon your site at the following URL(s): [URLs of infringing material];

(3) I have a good faith belief that the use of this material in such a fashion is not authorized by the copyright holder, the copyright holder's agent, or the law;

(4) Under penalty of perjury in a United States court of law, I state that the information contained in this notification is accurate, and that I am authorized to act on the behalf of the exclusive rights holder for the material in question;

(5) I may be contacted by the following methods: [physical address, telephone number, and email address];

I hereby request that you remove or disable access to this material as it appears on your service in as expedient a fashion as possible. Thank you for your kind cooperation.

Regards,
[your full legal name]
(Digitally signed)


========== END SAMPLE DMCA TAKEDOWN NOTICE ==========

It's not the best sample letter in the universe, and I'm sure your lawyer could draft a better one, but it's substantially compliant with 17 USC 512(c)(3)(A), and an online service provider can't ignore it.

Now, if you get a notice from your online service provider that you're violating someone's copyright, and you don't think you are (or if you are using someone else's material, but think that your use of the material is fair use), you might want to contact a lawyer, because by filing a counternotification, you're opening yourself up for civil and possibly criminal penalties if the person who filed the notification wants to sue you. (However, I can tell you that in five years of handling notification and counter-notification, we never once got notice that a use went to court.)

Filing counter-notification basically says "hey yo, I'm not infringing on this person's copyright; bring it on." The OSP is required by law to forward your counter-notification to the original notifier, and also required to remove the contested material for "not less than 10, nor more than 14, business days". (Most places, in my experience, just go with a straight 14 days.) Once counter-notification is filed, an OSP is out of the picture; it's between the notifier and the notifyee.

Chilling Effects has provided a Counter-Notification Generator, to save me the trouble of having to write one.

A lot of the shitstorm surrounding the current SFWA argument stems around the notion that filing a DMCA notification is a huge and arcane task. It's really not. Most OSPs will receive dozens, if not hundreds, of DMCA notifications in a week. It's all very simple and straightforward, and the reason for that is that most OSPs really don't give a shit who's "right" and who's "wrong" in any particular conflict. They just want to do what the law requires; most OSPs recognize and sympathize with the line between protecting rights-holders and encouraging free expression. And if you speak to them in the right language, they'll basically get the hell out of your way -- but if you speak to them in the wrong language, you waste everyone's time and frustration, including your own.

I hope the SFWA's lawyers are sitting down with Andrew Burt and explaining how the DMCA actually works, so that actual, legitimate violations of copyright (on Scribd and on other sites) can get dealt with swiftly and promptly and the people who have asked SFWA to be their copyright representative can get infringing uses of their material removed. I'm also glad to see that the SFWA ePiracy Committee has suspended operations until they can investigate further -- and, hopefully, come up with an effective process and procedure that benefits both fair and/or transformative use while also protecting the rights of copyright holders to have control over where and how their material is posted -- whether that control is a more traditional "nobody gets to use this, period" or a Creative Commons-style authorization of transformative work.

What saddens me are all the people who are speaking out against Scribd for not being more proactive in this case, including many of the commenters in Scribd's blog response. An online service provider can't be more proactive in matters regarding copyright violation; if they are, they lose some of the protections written into the DMCA for immunity from liability.

Yes, they're going to require that you file a DMCA notice of infringement for every instance of copyright violation on their service -- because by doing so, you initiate the process that's laid out in the law, and everyone involved, including you, have a number of protections as set forth in that law. (And everyone I know right now is terrified of the implications of Fair Housing Council v. Roommates.com, which sets a fucking awful precedent about CDA Section 230 immunity for OSPs -- and which came out of the 9th circuit court. When the 9th goddamn circuit court makes a decision like that, everyone gets nervous.)

I hate the DMCA. I hate it a lot. Most people I know who work for online service providers hate the DMCA too, with a passion that's usually reserved for Teletubbies and Fox News. However, despite how much I hate it, despite how fucking annoying it really is, there are certain narrow subsets of instances where even the second-worst copyright law ever passed can be useful -- and one of those useful cases is the immunity it affords OSPs, because without it, we probably wouldn't have an internet anymore.

So, basically, when you get a response from an online service provider that says, hey, we can't help you unless you jump through these hoops, please don't get upset or angry. The person on the other end of the screen probably agrees with you that the hoop-jumping sucks. But really, it's for everyone's benefit -- including the benefit of the rights-holder.

I am at the point in the book where I am just about ready to drop my primary protagonist down a deep dark well. I keep telling him: Joey, you're supposed to be a sympathetic character. And he keeps looking at me and saying: well, if people don't find me sympathetic, that's their own damn fault, isn't it? (To which I respond: well, yes, but if I don't find you sympathetic, we have a little bit of a problem.)

I'm thirty-one thousand words in now -- or about 30% of the way to "done" -- and the typical second-quarter problems are manifesting themselves; this one is constructed of three interlocking plot lines, all of which are scheduled to intersect at about the halfway mark and start driving each other. Typically speaking, I go into a novel knowing the first 25% of it with about a medium-zoom lens, the next 25% of it with a very high-level overview, and the ending, and see what develops as I go along; if I outline a book before I start writing it, the whole thing winds up being stale and dull for me.

This means that while I'm writing, I often wind up finding out the plot about one step ahead of my audience of cheerleaders. (It also often results in me pasting bits and chunks at people and saying, "Look! Look what the fuck they went and did on me! Can you believe this shit?") I don't outline, anything past a very high-level synopsis. This has worked for me so far, mostly because I've got a very well-developed editor's eye thanks to a lot of freelance work that I've done. If there's a problem with the book, I start to become aware of it when writing it suddenly starts to become like pulling teeth, and if that lasts for more than a few writing sessions (and is therefore not just a single bad day), I can step back, take a deep breath, and start picking apart the text with an eye for "which of the Ten Major Problems is this book demonstrating right now?" (I will make a post about the Ten Major Problems with a book at some point.)

I started getting that little subtle nagging sense of "something's wrong" with this one last week. Just a hint around the edges, which means that it's not a show-stopper; it's something (whatever it is) that I can deal with on a second draft. In some ways, though, that's worse, because those problems are so subtle that they're murder to diagnose and repair until you're well past them. In this case, I suspect -- though I'm not sure -- that it's an issue of pacing; I think that Storyline A and Storyline B might have intertwined a little too fast, while Storyline C is lagging along a bit more slowly. If that's the case, I'm not going to be able to spot it until all three protagonists are finally standing in the same room and staring balefully at each other, asking me what they're supposed to do now.

Writing is hard, dammit.

However, I kind of love my storyline-B protagonist (her name's Charlotte, but her grandmére is the only one who can call her that; she's 'Charlie' to you, thank you very much, and she works for the FBI's DNA Analysis Unit). And my storyline-C protagonist, whose name is Kit, is very obliging. Charlie and Joey are supposed to have the Moonlighting-style Maddie-and-David bickering going on, but time will tell; I think they might hate each other a little bit too much for that. (And no, I have no clue why, but Charlie's holding a grudge the size of Texas against Joey and the company he works for, and I fear I might have underestimated just how much she dislikes them. Which may make for some interesting twists later. You know, if she ever decides to tell me what it is.)

(One of the things I never stop being fascinated by is just how pushy my characters can be. I've seen a lot of writers talk about similar things; for instance, one novelist friend of my acquaintance just had her characters put their foot down and swap Planned Love Interests, without so much as a by-your-leave. There's nothing like having a mental outline that requires Character A to go and do something, and when you get there on the page, he or she looks at you and says: what, do I look like I'm stupid? This is why writers drink.)

So whatever the Little Nagging Flaw in the manuscript so far is, I hope I figure it out pretty quickly. I'm enjoying the world, and I like Charlie and Kit (and even Joey, who's being a bit of a douchebag right now, has his moments). There are a few scenes coming up a bit down the road that I'm looking forward to writing, even. I just have that little pulse of "HEY! Problem here!" going on in the back of my head.

If I'm lucky, it'll be a false alarm; if I'm only slightly less lucky, it'll be something easily dealt with. Of course, if I'm not lucky, it'll turn out to be a major, massive continuity-or-plot flaw that will require four drafts and a bottle of whiskey to fix up. In any case, I'm about four thousand words shy on word count for the week, the week ends in about another fifteen hours, and everyone involved is refusing to talk to me.

I have, thus far, bravely resisted the urge to declare "Rocks fall! Everyone dies!" But man, I've come close.