"A dime's worth of longitude."

[greygirlbeast]

Just wanted to remind everyone that two of our current eBay auctions will be ending early this evening. This includes the letter X of Tales from the Woeful Platypus, which comes with a beanie platypus sewn by my own two hands. Also, the auction for a copy of the trade hardback edition of Frog Toes and Tentacles will be ending. So, please have a look, and if you are of such an inclination, please bid. Proceeds will mostly be going to cover recent and ongoing medical bills (no insurance for this freelancer), so thanks to those who do bid.

Last night, we watched Nicolas Cage in Lee Tamahori's Next (2007), which is very, very loosely based upon Philip K. Dick's short story, "The Golden Man" (1954). I'd say it was, at most, suggested by Dick's story. Anyway, it wasn't great cinema, but it was an enjoyable film, possessed of a certain lopsided charm, which is more than can be said for Cage's two other recent genre outings, Ghostrider and the lamentable remake of The Wicker Man.

Oh, and scarletboi had this to say regarding anextropian's comments that writers should not and do not own their creations, and I feel like quoting it:

I've run across this ludicrous sort of denial before, the idea that we should not expect any sort of protection or recompense for the ideas that we, if not generate, at the very least aggregate. It has its roots in the hacker/hippy culture that brought us a lot of wonderful advances and horribly out-of-touch demagogues like Richard Stallman. The democratization of ideas is all well and good, until you realize that the signal-to-noise ratio has reached overload. In theory, the good writers and artists and musicians will rise to the top, wheat and chaff and all that...

But if you take the tack that "information wants to be free" means that there should be no copyright, no trademark, and that all media should be free to anyone who wants to enjoy it, then you have to accept that the quality of media will largely disintegrate. If an artist cannot rely on compensation for their work, two things are sure to happen: that artist will have to get another job, and will either stop creating art, or at the very least, they will not have the output they surely would have had if they could work at their art full-time.

Just five days left until Cephalopodmas. If anyone is feeling gifty and generous, here are links to my Amazon wishlist, and another link to Spooky's. What we really want is a modest harem of nubile young Asian cyborgs (all three genders welcome) with tentacle implants in just the right places...but, alas, I couldn't find any of those on Amazon.

Comments

[derekcfpegritz.livejournal.com]

"But if you take the tack that "information wants to be free" means that there should be no copyright, no trademark, and that all media should be free to anyone who wants to enjoy it, then you have to accept that the quality of media will largely disintegrate."

That is, it degrades into awful fan-fiction full of tentacle rape and incest. *Shudder*

Even as a vicious technolibertarian who despises the current copyright system, I find anextropian's comments to be a little ludicrous. Every author has a right to claim authorship of a certain text. Now, if people wish to write their own works based on a piece...well, what's to stop them? NO ONE can copyright ideas--only words. But, to paraphraseBioShock, "Is not a person entitled to the sweat of er own brow?" Of course! Your words are your own and you have every right to claim them as your own, and to lambast any jackass who would defraud you of your authorship by claiming them for erself.

[scarletboi.livejournal.com]

I would definitely agree that the current copyright/trademark/patent system is broken. I'm also a definite fan of "new media." I adore mashups,, experimental, hyperlinked fiction completely tagged with various bits of metadata, and so on, and I even support the idea of fan fiction to the extent that everyone involved doesn't fool themselves about what exactly we're doing here.

You can compare fan fiction to the "working in someone else's sandbox" aspects of licensed fiction all you want, but realize that you're doing just that: working in someone else's sandbox.

But here's the thing: It's ridiculous to take some sort of "moral high ground" that the contribution of the original author isn't worth anything. Obviously their work has value, or else you wouldn't waste your time writing in their world.

[derekcfpegritz.livejournal.com]

BINGO. That says it all. It's a simple-enough concept that many today just do not seem to get. Unfortunately, with so much idiotic rhetoric being spouted by Big Media concerning the rights of "artists" (that is, Big Media's right to exploit the products of the artists they supposedly "represent"), a just-as-idiotic backlash from folks opposed to those old-regime rules has almost become inevitable.

But, as I always say, when zealots babble, the simple truth is always lost in endless obfuscation. If only some people would think for a minute about what they're saying before opening their mouths....

An early bit of Cephalopodmas for you.

[stsisyphus.livejournal.com]

Saw this (http://www.nataliedee.com/121807/theyre-in-love-duh.jpg) in my morning webcrawl, immediately thought of you and Spooky. Wish there was a T-Shirt of it.

[jacobluest.livejournal.com]

You should check out this person's photography. It's amazing and I think you'd like it:

http://nicolashenri.ch/portfolio.php?galleryid=1

On topic, I think there's a big problem conflating art and information when talking about it wanting to be free. I personally am one of those who think that information does want to be free...but of course the devil's in the details, or definitions--in this case "information" and "free". Saying art wants to be free seems a little...I'll be kind here and say wrong-headed.

I'm a big fan of the non-commercial creative commons license...I suppose for me it boils down to ©apitalize. I don't mind people deriving stuff off my stories or photos, but I sure don't want them making money off it. I should be the one that gets to decide whether or not I play that game. Because nothing would feel rawer than me having to keep my day job while someone else gets to live the dream.

That said...I work as a freelance web designer, not a freelance writer, so I'm sure I'm more easygoing than you are, and deservedly so! The problem with these people is that they're so caught up in re-appropriation they've started seeing stories as toolboxes, not unitary works that possess their own integrity. A little more respect is needed! And anyone that gets that bent out of shape about their own fanfiction needs to re-focus that energy on an original work. About the only thing fanfiction has on all other writing is the fact that you write it, and let it go.

~Jacob