#legally sell e-books

[batboyblog]

Copy Right and Public Domain in 2024

Happy 2024 all! its also Public Domain Day! a magical holiday here in America where things enter the public domain. Works published in the year 1928 (or 95 years ago!) have entered the public domain, which means they belong to us, all of us, the public!

Mickey's Back!

Yes! I'm sure you've heard, but Mickey Mouse (and Minnie Mouse too) is entering the Public Domain today. This has been news for a few years and indeed Disney's lobbying in the late 1990s is why our copy right term is SO long. So what exactly is now public domain?

Most people know about Mickey's first appearance Steamboat Willie, but a second short film, Plane Crazy was also released in 1928 so will also be public domain. So what's public? well these two films first of all, you're allowed to play them, upload them to YouTube or whatever without paying Disney. In theory you'll be allowed to cut and sample them, have them playing in the background of your movie etc. Likewise in theory the image of Mickey and Minnie as they appear (thats important) in these films will be free to use as well as Mickey's character as he appears in these works will be free to use. Now Mickey's later and more famous appearance

will still be protected. Famously the Conan Doyle Estate claimed that Sherlock Holmes couldn't be nice, smile, or not hate women in works because they still held the copyright on the short stories where he first did those things even though 90% of Sherlock Holmes stories were public domain. It's very likely Disney will assert similar claims over Mickey, claiming much of his personality first appeared in works still copyrighted.

Finally there's copyright vs trademark. Copyright is total ownership of a piece of media and all the ideas that appear in it, copyright has a limited set term and expires. Trademark is more limited and only applies to things used to market and sell a product. You can have a Coke branded vending machine in your movie if you want, but it couldn't appear anywhere in the trailer for your movie as thats you marketing your movie.

Where trademark ends and copyright begins and how trademarked something in the public domain is allowed to be are all unsettled areas of law and clearly Disney in the last few years as been aggressively pushing its trademark not just to Mickey in general but Steamboat Willie Mickey in particular

Ultimately the legal rights and wrongs of this might not matter so much since few people have the money and legal resources of the Walt Disney corporation so they might manage to maintain a de facto copyright on Mickey through legal intimidation, but maybe not?

And Tigger Too!

All the talk about Mickey Mouse and Steamboat Willie has sadly overshadowed other MAJOR things entering the public domain today. Most people are aware Winnie the Pooh entered the public domain in 2022, but they might not realize his beloved friend Tigger didn't. Thats because Tigger didn't appear till A. A. Milne's second (and last) book of Pooh short stories, The House at Pooh Corner in 1928.

Much like Mickey Mouse only what appears in The House at Pooh Corner is public domain so the orange bouncy boy from the 1960s Disney cartoon is still on lock down. But the A. A. Milne original as illustrated by E. H. Shepard is free for you to use in fiction or art. His friend Winnie the Pooh has made a number of appearances since being freed, most notably in a horror movie, but also a Mint Mobile commercial so maybe Tigger too will have a lot of luck in the public domain.

Other works:

Peter Pan; or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up

Peter Pan is a strange case, even though the play was first mounted in 1904, and the novelization (Peter and Wendy) was published in 1911, The script for the play was not published till 1928 (confusing!) meaning while the novel as been public domain for years the play (which came first) hasn't been, but now it is and people are welcome to mount productions of it.

Millions of Cats

The oldest picture book still in print, did you own a copy growing up? (I did)

Lady Chatterley's Lover

The iconic porn novel that was at the center of a number of groundbreaking obscenity cases in the 1960s and helped establish your right to free speech.

All Quiet on the Western Front and The Threepenny Opera in their original German (but you can translate them if you want), The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie, and Orlando by Virginia Woolf will also be joining us in the public domain along with any and all plays, novels, and books published in 1928

for Films we have The Man Who Laughs who's iconic image inspired the Joker

Charlie Chaplin's The Circus, Buster Keaton's The Cameraman, Should Married Men Go Home? the first Laurel and Hardy movie, Lights of New York the first "all talking" movie, The Passion of Joan of Arc, The Wind, as well as The Last Command and Street Angel the first films to win Oscars for Best Actor and Best Actress respectively will all be entering public domain

For Musical Compositions (more on that in a moment) we've got

Mack the Knife by Bertolt Brecht, Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall in Love) by Cole Porter, Sonny Boy by George Gard DeSylva, Lew Brown & Ray Henderson, Empty Bed Blues by J. C. Johnson, and Makin’ Whoopee! by Gus Khan are some of the notables but any piece of music published in 1928 is covered

Any art work published in 1928, which might include works by Frida Kahlo, Georgia O'Keeffe, Alexej von Jawlensky, Edward Hopper, and André Kertész will enter the public domain, we are sure those that M. C. Escher's Tower of Babel will be in the public domain

Swan Song, Public Domain and recorded music

While most things are covered by the Copyright Act of 1976 as amended by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, none of the copyright acts covered recordings you see when American copyright law was first written recordings did not exist and so through its many amendings no one fixed this problem, movies were treated like plays and artwork, but recorded sound wasn't covered by any federal law. So all sound recordings from before 1972 were governed by a confusing mess of state level laws making it basically impossible to say what was public and what was under copyright. In 2017 Congress managed to do something right and passed the Music Modernization Act. Under the act all recordings from 1922 and before would enter the public domain in 2022. After taking a break for 2023, all sound recordings made in 1923 have entered the public domain today on January 1st 2024, these include.

Charleston by James P. Johnson

Yes! We Have No Bananas (recorded by a lot artists that year)

Who’s Sorry Now by Lewis James

Down Hearted Blues by Bessie Smith

Lawdy, Lawdy Blues by Ida Cox

Southern Blues and Moonshine Blues by Ma Rainey

That American Boy of Mine and Parade of the Wooden Soldiers by Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra

Dipper Mouth Blues and Froggie More by King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, featuring Louis Armstrong

Bambalina by Ray Miller Orchestra

Swingin’ Down the Lane by Isham Jones Orchestra

Enjoy your public domain works!

#Copyright #public domain #public domain day #2024 #happy new year #Disney #mickey mouse #minnie mouse #Tigger #Winnie the Pooh #Peter Pan #Charlie Chaplin #buster keaton #cole porter #louis armstrong #M. C. Escher

[mariacallous]

In a product demo last week, OpenAI showcased a synthetic but expressive voice for ChatGPT called “Sky” that reminded many viewers of the flirty AI girlfriend Samantha played by Scarlett Johansson in the 2013 film Her. One of those viewers was Johansson herself, who promptly hired legal counsel and sent letters to OpenAI demanding an explanation, according to a statement released later. In response, the company on Sunday halted use of Sky and published a blog post insisting that it “is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice.”

Johansson’s statement, released Monday, said she was “shocked, angered, and in disbelief” by OpenAI’s demo using a voice she called “so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference.” Johansson revealed that she had turned down a request last year from the company’s CEO, Sam Altman, to voice ChatGPT and that he had reached out again two days before last week’s demo in an attempt to change her mind.

It’s unclear if Johansson plans to take additional legal action against OpenAI. Her counsel on the dispute with OpenAI is John Berlinski, a partner at Los Angeles law firm Bird Marella, who represented her in a lawsuit against Disney claiming breach of contract, settled in 2021. (OpenAI’s outside counsel working on this matter is Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati partner David Kramer, who is based in Silicon Valley and has defended Google and YouTube on copyright infringement cases.) If Johansson does pursue a claim against OpenAI, some intellectual property experts suspect it could focus on “right of publicity” laws, which protect people from having their name or likeness used without authorization.

James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and internet law at Cornell University, believes Johansson could have a good case. “You can't imitate someone else's distinctive voice to sell stuff,” he says. OpenAI declined to comment for this story, but yesterday released a statement from Altman claiming Sky “was never intended to resemble” the star, adding, “We are sorry to Ms. Johansson that we didn’t communicate better.”

Johansson’s dispute with OpenAI drew notice in part because the company is embroiled in a number of lawsuits brought by artists and writers. They allege that the company breached copyright by using creative work to train AI models without first obtaining permission. But copyright law would be unlikely to play a role for Johansson, as one cannot copyright a voice. “It would be right of publicity,” says Brian L. Frye, a professor at the University of Kentucky’s College of Law focusing on intellectual property. “She’d have no other claims.”

Several lawyers WIRED spoke with said a case Bette Midler brought against Ford Motor Company and its advertising agency Young & Rubicam in the late 1980s provides a legal precedent. After turning down the ad agency’s offers to perform one of her songs in a car commercial, Midler sued when the company hired one of her backup singers to impersonate her sound. “Ford was basically trying to profit from using her voice,” says Jennifer E. Rothman, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who wrote a 2018 book called The Right of Publicity: Privacy Reimagined for a Public World. “Even though they didn't literally use her voice, they were instructing someone to sing in a confusingly similar manner to Midler.”

It doesn’t matter whether a person’s actual voice is used in an imitation or not, Rothman says, only whether that audio confuses listeners. In the legal system, there is a big difference between imitation and simply recording something “in the style” of someone else. “No one owns a style,” she says.

Other legal experts don’t see what OpenAI did as a clear-cut impersonation. “I think that any potential ‘right of publicity’ claim from Scarlett Johansson against OpenAI would be fairly weak given the only superficial similarity between the ‘Sky’ actress' voice and Johansson, under the relevant case law,” Colorado law professor Harry Surden wrote on X on Tuesday. Frye, too, has doubts. “OpenAI didn’t say or even imply it was offering the real Scarlett Johansson, only a simulation. If it used her name or image to advertise its product, that would be a right-of-publicity problem. But merely cloning the sound of her voice probably isn’t,” he says.

But that doesn’t mean OpenAI is necessarily in the clear. “Juries are unpredictable,” Surden added.

Frye is also uncertain how any case might play out, because he says right of publicity is a fairly “esoteric” area of law. There are no federal right-of-publicity laws in the United States, only a patchwork of state statutes. “It’s a mess,” he says, although Johansson could bring a suit in California, which has fairly robust right-of-publicity laws.

OpenAI’s chances of defending a right-of-publicity suit could be weakened by a one-word post on X—“her”—from Sam Altman on the day of last week’s demo. It was widely interpreted as a reference to Her and Johansson’s performance. “It feels like AI from the movies,” Altman wrote in a blog post that day.

To Grimmelmann at Cornell, those references weaken any potential defense OpenAI might mount claiming the situation is all a big coincidence. “They intentionally invited the public to make the identification between Sky and Samantha. That's not a good look,” Grimmelmann says. “I wonder whether a lawyer reviewed Altman's ‘her’ tweet.” Combined with Johansson’s revelations that the company had indeed attempted to get her to provide a voice for its chatbots—twice over—OpenAI’s insistence that Sky is not meant to resemble Samantha is difficult for some to believe.

“It was a boneheaded move,” says David Herlihy, a copyright lawyer and music industry professor at Northeastern University. “A miscalculation.”

Other lawyers see OpenAI’s behavior as so manifestly goofy they suspect the whole scandal might be a deliberate stunt—that OpenAI judged that it could trigger controversy by going forward with a sound-alike after Johansson declined to participate but that the attention it would receive from seemed to outweigh any consequences. “What’s the point? I say it’s publicity,” says Purvi Patel Albers, a partner at the law firm Haynes Boone who often takes intellectual property cases. “The only compelling reason—maybe I’m giving them too much credit—is that everyone’s talking about them now, aren’t they?”

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Apple fucked us on right to repair (again)

Today (September 22), I'm (virtually) presenting at the DIG Festival in Modena, Italy. Tonight, I'll be in person at LA's Book Soup for the launch of Justin C Key's "The World Wasn’t Ready for You." On September 27, I'll be at Chevalier's Books in Los Angeles with Brian Merchant for a joint launch for my new book The Internet Con and his new book, Blood in the Machine.

Right to repair has no cannier, more dedicated adversary than Apple, a company whose most innovative work is dreaming up new ways to sneakily sabotage electronics repair while claiming to be a caring environmental steward, a lie that covers up the mountains of e-waste that Apple dooms our descendants to wade through.

Why does Apple hate repair so much? It's not that they want to poison our water and bodies with microplastics; it's not that they want to hasten the day our coastal cities drown; it's not that they relish the human misery that accompanies every gram of conflict mineral. They aren't sadists. They're merely sociopathically greedy.

Tim Cook laid it out for his investors: when people can repair their devices, they don't buy new ones. When people don't buy new devices, Apple doesn't sell them new devices. It's that's simple:

https://www.inverse.com/article/52189-tim-cook-says-apple-faces-2-key-problems-in-surprising-shareholder-letter

So Apple does everything it can to monopolize repair. Not just because this lets the company gouge you on routine service, but because it lets them decide when your phone is beyond repair, so they can offer you a trade-in, ensuring both that you buy a new device and that the device you buy is another Apple.

There are so many tactics Apple gets to use to sabotage repair. For example, Apple engraves microscopic Apple logos on the subassemblies in its devices. This allows the company to enlist US Customs to seize and destroy refurbished parts that are harvested from dead phones by workers in the Pacific Rim:

https://repair.eu/news/apple-uses-trademark-law-to-strengthen-its-monopoly-on-repair/

Of course, the easiest way to prevent harvested components from entering the parts stream is to destroy as many old devices as possible. That's why Apple's so-called "recycling" program shreds any devices you turn over to them. When you trade in your old iPhone at an Apple Store, it is converted into immortal e-waste (no other major recycling program does this). The logic is straightforward: no parts, no repairs:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/yp73jw/apple-recycling-iphones-macbooks

Shredding parts and cooking up bogus trademark claims is just for starters, though. For Apple, the true anti-repair innovation comes from the most pernicious US tech law: Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

DMCA 1201 is an "anti-circumvention" law. It bans the distribution of any tool that bypasses "an effective means of access control." That's all very abstract, but here's what it means: if a manufacturer sticks some Digital Rights Management (DRM) in its device, then anything you want to do that involves removing that DRM is now illegal – even if the thing itself is perfectly legal.

When Congress passed this stupid law in 1998, it had a very limited blast radius. Computers were still pretty expensive and DRM use was limited to a few narrow categories. In 1998, DMCA 1201 was mostly used to prevent you from de-regionalizing your DVD player to watch discs that had been released overseas but not in your own country.

But as we warned back then, computers were only going to get smaller and cheaper, and eventually, it would only cost manufacturers pennies to wrap their products – or even subassemblies in their products – in DRM. Congress was putting a gun on the mantelpiece in Act I, and it was bound to go off in Act III.

Welcome to Act III.

Today, it costs about a quarter to add a system-on-a-chip to even the tiniest parts. These SOCs can run DRM. Here's how that DRM works: when you put a new part in a device, the SOC and the device's main controller communicate with one another. They perform a cryptographic protocol: the part says, "Here's my serial number," and then the main controller prompts the user to enter a manufacturer-supplied secret code, and the master controller sends a signed version of this to the part, and the part and the system then recognize each other.

This process has many names, but because it was first used in the automotive sector, it's widely known as VIN-Locking (VIN stands for "vehicle identification number," the unique number given to every car by its manufacturer). VIN-locking is used by automakers to block independent mechanics from repairing your car; even if they use the manufacturer's own parts, the parts and the engine will refuse to work together until the manufacturer's rep keys in the unlock code:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

VIN locking is everywhere. It's how John Deere stops farmers from fixing their own tractors – something farmers have done literally since tractors were invented:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/

It's in ventilators. Like mobile phones, ventilators are a grotesquely monopolized sector, controlled by a single company Medtronic, whose biggest claim to fame is effecting the world's largest tax inversion in order to manufacture the appearance that it is an Irish company and therefore largely untaxable. Medtronic used the resulting windfall to gobble up most of its competitors.

During lockdown, as hospitals scrambled to keep their desperately needed supply of ventilators running, Medtronic's VIN-locking became a lethal impediment. Med-techs who used donor parts from one ventilator to keep another running – say, transplanting a screen – couldn't get the device to recognize the part because all the world's civilian aircraft were grounded, meaning Medtronic's technicians couldn't swan into their hospitals to type in the unlock code and charge them hundreds of dollars.

The saving grace was an anonymous, former Medtronic repair tech, who built pirate boxes to generate unlock codes, using any housing they could lay hands on to use as a case: guitar pedals, clock radios, etc. This tech shipped these gadgets around the world, observing strict anonymity, because Article 6 of the EUCD also bans circumvention:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/10/flintstone-delano-roosevelt/#medtronic-again

Of course, Apple is a huge fan of VIN-locking. In phones, VIN-locking is usually called "serializing" or "parts-pairing," but it's the same thing: a tiny subassembly gets its own microcontroller whose sole purpose is to prevent independent repair technicians from fixing your gadget. Parts-pairing lets Apple block repairs even when the technician uses new, Apple parts – but it also lets Apple block refurb parts and third party parts.

For many years, Apple was the senior partner and leading voice in blocking state Right to Repair bills, which it killed by the dozen, leading a coalition of monopolists, from Wahl (who boobytrap their hair-clippers with springs that cause their heads irreversibly decompose if you try to sharpen them at home) to John Deere (who reinvented tenant farming by making farmers tenants of their tractors, rather than their land).

But Apple's opposition to repair eventually became a problem for the company. It's bad optics, and both Apple customers and Apple employees are volubly displeased with the company's ecocidal conduct. But of course, Apple's management and shareholders hate repair and want to block it as much as possible.

But Apple knows how to Think Differently. It came up with a way to eat its cake and have it, too. The company embarked on a program of visibly support right to repair, while working behind the scenes to sabotage it.

Last year, Apple announced a repair program. It was hilarious. If you wanted to swap your phone's battery, all you had to do was let Apple put a $1200 hold on your credit card, and then wait while the company shipped you 80 pounds' worth of specialized tools, packed in two special Pelican cases:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/22/apples-cement-overshoes/

Then, you swapped your battery, but you weren't done! After your battery was installed, you had to conference in an authorized Apple tech who would tell you what code to type into a laptop you tethered to the phone in order to pair it with your phone. Then all you had to do was lug those two 40-pound Pelican cases to a shipping depot and wait for Apple to take the hold off your card (less the $120 in parts and fees).

By contrast, independent repair outfits like iFixit will sell you all the tools you need to do your own battery swap – including the battery! for $32. The whole kit fits in a padded envelope:

https://www.ifixit.com/products/iphone-x-replacement-battery

But while Apple was able to make a showy announcement of its repair program and then hide the malicious compliance inside those giant Pelican cases, sabotaging right to repair legislation is a lot harder.

Not that they didn't try. When New York State passed the first general electronics right-to-repair bill in the country, someone convinced New York Governor Kathy Hochul to neuter it with last-minute modifications:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/12/weakened-right-to-repair-bill-is-signed-into-law-by-new-yorks-governor/

But that kind of trick only works once. When California's right to repair bill was introduced, it was clear that it was gonna pass. Rather than get run over by that train, Apple got on board, supporting the legislation, which passed unanimously:

https://www.ifixit.com/News/79902/apples-u-turn-tech-giant-finally-backs-repair-in-california

But Apple got the last laugh. Because while California's bill contains many useful clauses for the independent repair shops that keep your gadgets out of a landfill, it's a state law, and DMCA 1201 is federal. A state law can't simply legalize the conduct federal law prohibits. California's right to repair bill is a banger, but it has a weak spot: parts-pairing, the scourge of repair techs:

https://www.ifixit.com/News/69320/how-parts-pairing-kills-independent-repair

Every generation of Apple devices does more parts-pairing than the previous one, and the current models are so infested with paired parts as to be effectively unrepairable, except by Apple. It's so bad that iFixit has dropped its repairability score for the iPhone 14 from a 7 ("recommend") to a 4 (do not recommend):

https://www.ifixit.com/News/82493/we-are-retroactively-dropping-the-iphones-repairability-score-en

Parts-pairing is bullshit, and Apple are scum for using it, but they're hardly unique. Parts-pairing is at the core of the fuckery of inkjet printer companies, who use it to fence out third-party ink, so they can charge $9,600/gallon for ink that pennies to make:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

Parts-pairing is also rampant in powered wheelchairs, a heavily monopolized sector whose predatory conduct is jaw-droppingly depraved:

https://uspirgedfund.org/reports/usp/stranded

But if turning phones into e-waste to eke out another billion-dollar stock buyback is indefensible, stranding people with disabilities for months at a time while they await repairs is so obviously wicked that the conscience recoils. That's why it was so great when Colorado passed the nation's first wheelchair right to repair bill last year:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/06/when-drm-comes-your-wheelchair

California actually just passed two right to repair bills; the other one was SB-271, which mirrors Colorado's HB22-1031:

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB271

This is big! It's momentum! It's a start!

But it can't be the end. When Bill Clinton signed DMCA 1201 into law 25 years ago, he loaded a gun and put it on the nation's mantlepiece and now it's Act III and we're all getting sprayed with bullets. Everything from ovens to insulin pumps, thermostats to lightbulbs, has used DMCA 1201 to limit repair, modification and improvement.

Congress needs to rid us of this scourge, to let us bring back all the benefits of interoperability. I explain how this all came to be – and what we should do about it – in my new Verso Books title, The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation.

https://www.versobooks.com/products/3035-the-internet-con

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently

Image: Mitch Barrie (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Daytona_Skeleton_AR-15_completed_rifle_%2817551907724%29.jpg

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

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kambanji (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/kambanji/4135216486/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

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Rawpixel (modified) https://www.rawpixel.com/image/12438797/png-white-background

#pluralistic #vin locking #apple #right to repair #california #ifixit #iphones #sb244 #parts pairing #serialization #dmca 1201 #felony contempt of business model #ewaste #repairwashing #fuckery

[justallihere]

Hi there! Welcome - I'm Alli (she/her). I like concerts, books, and science. My favorite color is pink and my favorite band is Fall Out Boy. At this time I'm writing fics for The Empyrean (Fourth Wing) series, but someday in the future I might expand that list. Thanks for joining the chaos!

Most of you probably know me from AO3 by the same username. Below you can find my entire masterlist of fics as well as some frequently asked questions. If there's something you'd like to know that isn't addressed below, my ask box is always open 🫶🏻

✨ masterlist:

storm in the quiet (E)

Xaden/Violet, arranged marriage AU, > 200k words, ongoing

It took only a few minutes for Violet to figure out what purpose she served. No one said it out loud—not yet, but they’d get there—but they kept throwing out words like formalizing alliances and uniting two groups, and she understood. Violet was a sacrificial lamb, and Xaden Riorson was the wolf, and her slaughter would be their marriage.

(find sitq deleted moments here, here, and here)

simmer (E)

Xaden/Violet, one shot, 4.1k words, complete

The night that Tairn began channeling to Violet, she didn’t stumble upon Xaden in the snow. She found someone else to take care of her, and when Xaden realized, he was less than amused.

violence in my veins (E)

Xaden/Violet, one shot, 4.1k words, complete

The Riders’ Quadrant had something of an obsession with piercings. The only person Violet Sorrengail knew without any was, of course, Xaden Riorson. Or so she thought.

invisible in a violet sea (E)

Xaden/Violet, one shot, 2k words, complete

“It’s just me here, love. Tell me what you need so badly, Violence.” There was something about the way he said the private nickname in this context, with his voice low and husky, that made it feel entirely different from every other time he called her that. Like it was reverent and special and it, like her, belonged only to him. “You,” she said. “I need you, Xaden.”

void of all composure (E)

Liam/Violet/Cam, one shot, 2.8k words, complete

Liam Mairi figured it couldn’t be that hard to keep Violet Sorrengail out of trouble. Unfortunately, he didn’t account for the fact that her version of trouble was Cam Tauri, and Liam was certainly going to go down with her.

somehow i still love you more (G)

Xaden/Violet, kid fic, one shot, 800 words, complete

Xaden’s favorite time was the middle of the night, when his wife slept peacefully and he got to hold his daughter and watch the snow falling.

✨FAQs:

Do you have an update schedule?

Nope. Fanfic is a hobby for me—I have other responsibilities and a full-time job. I write because it’s fun, and in order for it to stay that way I write and post as I’m able, and sometimes I step away for a week or two to maintain my own sanity. Unless I specifically say it, I promise my fics aren’t abandoned just because it’s been a few days without a new chapter. Please don’t ask me about updates!

Do you take requests for fics?

I do not. I write things that I love or am inspired by. Trying to conform to specific requests kind of sucks the joy out of writing for me.

Can I write something inspired by your fics?

Go for it! Fanfiction is fanfiction. At the end of the day we’re all just playing in the same sandbox, and the tropes and ideas I use aren’t unique. Twist them however you want, and have fun writing your own take on them. If you want others to know where your inspiration came from, you can use the “inspired by” function on AO3, or link back to my fic in some way if you’re posting your work on another site. That can also be helpful for readers to find similar works.

Can I bind your fics?

Yes, for personal use only. You may not commission any third party that would make a profit off binding the fic to do the work for you. You may not sell bound copies of my fics. Everything I’ve written has been done for free, as my own personal love letter from me to fandom. Keep fanfiction safe and legal. And send me pictures—I’d love to see your finished projects!

Will you ever write your own book?

I'd love to one day! I have lots of ideas floating around at all times, even though I don't talk about them much. I promise if I ever publish any original works, you'll know.

How long will storm in the quiet be?

Right now I’m estimating about 55-60 chapters—that’s just a best guess, if it changes as we get closer to the end, I’ll update this answer.

Will storm in the quiet have a sequel?

Nope.

Are you going to kill Liam?

No. I promise. I know you’re all traumatized, but please read the tags on AO3. There’s one that says “Liam lives!” and it means he lives all the way to the end and it’s not a joke 😅

When will Xaden and Violet fuck?

Never if you keep testing me. Enjoy the slow burn! I’m begging! (And if you can’t, go check out my one shots. They’re very smutty.)

✨ other info:

Find some of my favorite book recs here

Some great Fourth Wing fic recs here (my own faves and a lot of other good ones that I missed in the comments)

If you’re interested in what I might be currently reading, click here

#about me

[meeedeee]

When is a library not a library? When it’s online, apparently

"If you buy a physical book, you are allowed to sell or lend it because of a legal principle known as the “first sale doctrine,” which gives the owner of a (physical) object the right to dispose of that object in whatever way they wish, regardless of copyright. The Archive argued that the same principle should protect the sale or lending of a legally purchased digital copy, pointing out that all the copies of books it lent out had previously been acquired lawfully by libraries.'...

The Internet Archive’s lawyers also pointed to a Supreme Court decision, from the nineteen eighties, ruling that using a Sony Betamax video-cassette recorder to make a copy of a TV show was fair use. The Archive argued that its digital copies of print books similarly “improved the efficiency of delivering content to one entitled to receive the content” in a way that didn’t “unreasonably encroach on the commercial entitlements of the rights holder.” "

#fair use #first sale doctrine #your VCRs #your DVR #You're right to record a TV show to watch later #controlled digital lending #digital libraries #libraries #archiving #preservation #digital preservation #the internet archive #internet archive #copyright abuse

[erenaeoth]

PLUSH BOOKS COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT

I received several comments this morning informing me that one of my fanfictions has been stolen and published for money by a company called "Plush Books". A group of saints on twitter have been helping fic authors who's fics have been stolen, and have been providing information on what to do if you are affected. Please reblog this so that fanfic authors can check if they have been plagarised and learn what to do if they have.

Plush Books have been using FicLabs to download entire fics then upload them and sell them as e-books and paperbacks on multiple different sites including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Abe Books and others.

Twitter user KokomRoily has been calling for help with contacting affected authors and a spread sheet in Google Docs of contacted authors has been made here. You can find the full list of works published by Plush Books here.

KokomRoily provides a good template to use with the Amazon DMCA takedown form (X, text version), which has limited characters, however, you will also need to search other sites too. Other sites have different legal requirements, and I'm copying the template I used here. A good way to find most of the places you need to contact is to look on Good Reads, which lists lots of the marketplaces selling the book.

Make sure you add an author note on the original story stating that this company do not have the rights to publish your fic. I strongly suggest sending this email from the email address that your fic account is registered to, in case you need to provide further evidence. Here is an email template that I put together based on the one above and modified according to the legal demands required on Barnes and Noble's takedown help page:

To whom it may concern,

I affirm under penalty of perjury that I am [YOUR AUTHOR NAME ON YOUR FIC], the author of the work "[YOUR FIC NAME]" posted at [LINK] (entire work) as a free-to-read story. My work has been stolen and published and you are currently listing the work as for sale at the following location [LINK ON MARKETPLACE] as "[BOOK NAME]" by Plush Books.

Under statute 17 USC 512, [MARKETPLACE] has a legal obligation to take down Plush Books' "[BOOK NAME]" in response to a valid DMCA takedown notice by the author. According to this statute, if "[BOOK NAME]" is not taken down, you are making [MARKETPLACE] liable to be sued. Please check with a manager to verify.

I will not be filling in my contact information such as home number and address and I am not required to do so in order for my claim to be valid. I have written in the author's note section of my story that I have not given Plush Books permission to use my work, which is proof enough that Plush Books has stolen the work from someone. If you would like more proof, I can email you screenshots of comments/kudos I've received from my readers from [DATE], the original date of publication, that are still in my inbox.

I have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law. The information in the notification is accurate, and I swear, under penalty of perjury, that I am the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

Please take ""[BOOK NAME]"" down.

Sincerely,

[YOUR AUTHOR NAME ON YOUR FIC]

#plush books #fanfic copyright #copyright infringement #fanfic help #psa #fanfiction #writing #fanfic #ao3 #writing help

[justinspoliticalcorner]

David Smith at The Guardian:

Joe Biden has shown no mercy to Donald Trump with a series of barbed jokes about his election rival, telling a gathering of Washington’s political and media elites: “I’m a grown man running against a six-year-old.”

The White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) dinner on Saturday night provided the ideal platform for Biden to continue a recent run of taking the fight to Trump with more aggressive rhetoric, cutting humour and personal insults. But the jovial mood inside the room contrasted sharply with raucous demonstrations outside the Washington Hilton hotel. Hundreds of protesters shouted “Shame on you!” at White House officials, journalists and celebrities as they arrived at the dinner, condemning Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza and the media’s coverage of it. As speculation about a debate between the two men intensifies, Biden – wearing tuxedo and black tie – opened his roast with a direct but joking focus on Trump, calling him “sleepy Don”, in reference to a nickname Trump had given the president previously. “The 2024 election is in full swing and yes, age is an issue,” noted Biden, 81. “I’m a grown man running against a six-year-old.” The president also skewered Trump over a recent speech in which he described the civil war battle at Gettysburg as “interesting, “vicious”, “horrible” and “beautiful”. Biden said: “Speaking of history, did you hear what Donald just said about a major civil war battle? ‘Gettysburg – wow!’ Trump’s speech was so embarrassing, the statute of Robert E Lee surrendered again.”

Biden then made a reference to Trump’s falling out with his former vice-president, Mike Pence, who defied him over the 2020 election result. The president said: “Age is the only thing we have in common. My vice-president actually endorses me.” Vice-president Kamala Harris, sitting nearby on stage, laughed and applauded. The president moved on to Trump’s criminal trial in New York, where he is accused of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to adult film performer Stormy Daniels. Biden said: “Donald has had a few tough days lately. You might call it Stormy weather.”

And then he brought up Trump’s new scheme to sell “God Bless the USA Bibles” for $59.99. “Trump’s so desperate he started reading those Bibles he’s selling. Then he got to the first commandment: ‘You shall have no other gods before me.’ That’s when he put it down and said: “This book’s not for me’.” Biden also poked fun at his own age and delivered some one-liners at the expense of the media. “Some of you complained that I don’t take enough of your questions. No comment.”

President Joe Biden delivered a masterclass at last night's WHCD, including quips about "stormy weather" in reference to Stormy Daniels and naming Donald Trump "Sleepy Don" and referring to him as a "six-year-old."

See Also:

HuffPost: 'Rise Up': Biden Issues Urgent Call On Trump Threat At White House Correspondents' Dinner

#Joe Biden #Donald Trump #WHCD #2024 WHCD #White House Correspondents Dinner #Nerd Prom #People of New York v. Trump #Stormy Daniels #Colin Jost

[pastafossa]

Hi honey! How are you? How’s your mom doing? I hope she’s better now🥺💚

I’ve recently decided to learn how to book bind bc it’s a must to have my fav fanfics as actual books. I’m still learning and it’s probably gonna take a while before I get the results I want but I wanted to ask you if it was okay with you to book bind The Red Thread? Obviously it would be just for me, I would not sell it or make any profits. (And if it turns out how I want to, I would love to gift you one👀)

It’s one of my favourite fanfics of all time, like it’s a masterpiece and I would love to have a physical copy of it<3

And I know it’s not finished yet but it’d probably have to be a few volumes anyways bc it’s a lot so😅

She's doing ok! Progress is slow but it's definitely happening! She's graduated from at-home physical therapy to outpatient, which is a HUGE thing. We've gotten the house pretty well set up too now (chair lift for a section of stairs not covered before, new railing on the front steps), and between me, dad, and sis's various sleep schedules, we're all able to make sure she has someone nearby when she needs help getting around or opening things. I'm still in caretaker mode and trying to balance everything, but she's getting there, so I hold onto that! As for me, I'm doing... ok I think, considering how exhausting and brutal the past few months have been. I'm taking @shouldbestudying41 's advice and just trying to be kind to myself, and I'll admit my brain seriously needed the break. I continue to miss Cato something awful, but I've felt a little more settled since his ashes came home, and I think I'm starting to adjust to sleeping without him next to my pillow. I also got my follow-up today with my cardiologist on my heart issues and their answer was basically a shrug and a, 'we have no idea why your heart's doing this, but it's getting better every time we test you, so keep doing what you're doing!' Which could be worse. So... I'm getting there. Slow and steady!

And oh my gosh, you absolutely, ABSOLUTELY can bookbind TRT, thank you! 😭The idea anyone would love it enough to bookbind makes me SO FUCKING HAPPY! Hell, if I could sell copies at cost I would, but sadly that's a huge no no and all I can do legally is tell people, YES you can bookbind TRT for your shelf! I'm 100% supportive basically (also I would D I E if I got one, like no pressure at all cause D A Y U M it's a long thing to bind, and also just knowing it's out there on someone's shelf is more than I ever expected would happen so I'm delighted even if you just bind for you!).

TRT volumes one to ten maybe??? LOL. I know I had it planned as a series originally before I decided to just kinda keep it in one thing since we were all already there LOL.

#the red thread #pasta life update #basically mom is doing really well recoverywise! and i'm getting there #the witchy shop has been amazingly supportive and i have people here who've been helping talk me through it along with fam #and the kitties have all been very good cuddlers to me while feeling down about cato #so that's been nice! #and OF COURSE YOU CAN BOOKBIND I LOVE THE IDEA OF BOOKBINDING #i know i've said this before but i never really thought TRT would take off so the idea of ANYONE wanting to bind it is HUGE to me #i always intended it to be a series too and then i just wound up keeping it all in one spot #because... i can't remember #i think i was just feeling lazy when we hit the 'final' chapter of book one and went 'ya'll mind if i keep it all here' #and got a resounding YES THAT'S FINE WE WANT MOAR #and so off we went LOL

[olderthannetfic]

I know, right? It’s easier than ever to publish e-books. That’s what I did!

Just write something original. Not only will you have less legal trouble over the work itself, but you’ll have all the rights to sell t-shirts based on it.

[mightyflamethrower]

Donald Trump gave one of his best and most conciliatory speeches of his political career after his win in the recent Iowa primaries—that might explain why the media would not cover it. Later, to answer an ad hoc ambush reporter’s question whether he would hold grudges, he emphatically said he did not.

Yet after his win in New Hampshire, Trump went ballistic at Nikki Haley’s earlier charges that he, rather than Joe Biden, was cognitively challenged, past his prime, and a perennial loser of popular votes.

In response, Trump shed his short-lived Iowa temperance. He went wholehog after Haley’s dress and her affectations and trashed her character. He tweeted that she was a “birdbrain,” and on and on.

For six years, observers have noted the disconnect between Trump’s stellar record of governance, his occasional sense of humor and even self-criticism—and his ad hominem venom that often turns off the 3-7 percent of the electorate in the suburbs who otherwise might vote for him.

Reasonable calls to tone it down by pundits, aides, and friends do not work with Trump, and perhaps for several understandable reasons.

One, Trump is reactive in his “they started it, I finish it” mode. His theory of deterrence is to be disproportionate in retort to eliminate future preemptive attacks. Almost all of Trump’s crudeness was in disproportionate response, sometimes even to minor offenses.

In such a world of Trump deterrence, if you do not relish a crude Trump, then don’t first talk about cutting off his head, blowing him up, stabbing him, shooting him, or lighting him on fire, or don’t spread lies like “Russian collusion,” “laptop disinformation,” or that the influence-selling Biden consortium was innocent of shaking down foreign interests for millions of dollars that were routed into the clan’s coffers.

To put it another way, remember how Barack Obama went ballistic over the yarns, often fueled by Trump himself, that he was born in Kenya (a mythos he himself fueled by allowing his book to be plugged as the work of a Kenyan-born, exotic-named author, e.g., “born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.”).

But what would a prickly Obama have done had right-wing prosecutors, mirror images of a Letitia James, Alvin Bragg, Fani Willis, or Jack Smith, indicted him over his garnering and intentionally not reporting the names of major contributors in 2008 (rather than the federal election commission taking five years to fine Obama $375,000 for what was essentially campaign fraud).

What would Obama have said or done had a federal prosecutor indicted him for bribery, extortion, or tax fraud over the illegal Tony Rezko lot deal? What would have been his reaction to his “wingman.” Eric Holder’s, being jailed for his refusal to obey a congressional subpoena (such a transgression may well earn both Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro jail sentences).

Trump was pilloried for the Russian collusion farce. But the reality was that the 2015-17 Russian collusion conspiracy farce was discussed and greenlighted in the West Wing by a lame-duck but knowledgeable Obama, who unleashed his FBI, CIA, and DOJ to do whatever, legal or not, it took to stop Donald Trump.

Currently, Donald Trump was just fined $83.3 by a left-wing New York jury presided over by a left-wing judge in a suit filed by a left-wing writer who was funded by a left-wing Silicon Valley billionaire—all possible because a left-wing state legislator had recently lifted the statute of limitations on allegations of sexual assault to allow three-decade-old charges like E. Jean Carroll’s to be refiled.

So Trump blew up and charged out of the courtroom, lost his cool in the courtroom, and hurt any slight chance he had to escape such an outrageous and politicized fine. But again, note the surreal nature of the suit. Carrol cannot remember even the year in which she and Trump, she claims, ended up in a department store dressing room. She was mistaken about the dress she wore on the day of the assault. Long after the alleged assault, she praised Trump’s Apprentice as her favorite TV show. She created an app game called Damn Love, described as: “You’re shown two people who are madly in love. Your object is to break them up. Shown a pair of options, you choose the ones more likely to stir up shit, given each person’s personality and proclivities, and the quicker you can make them split, the more you increase your evilness and rise through the ranks. Carroll’s narrative about being sexually assaulted in a department store dressing room is eerily almost the identical narrative of a 2012 “Law & Order: SVU” episode that focused on an alleged sexual assault in the lingerie dressing room of the very same Bergdorf Goodman department store. Coincidence or inspiration? And thus, to refute all the above, Trump was criminalized as a defamer and fined $83 million. Under such rules of evidence and damages, what would Joe Biden have had to pay when his former senatorial aide, Tara Reade, accused him of a sexual assault, only to be widely defamed by legions of Biden’s left-wing flacks? So much of Trump’s rage is an understandable reaction to the sustained, unhinged venom of the media and left.

Two, Trump’s base, unlike his other supporters, does not differentiate between Trump’s solid governance and his volatile character. They see what he does and says not as antithetical but complementary. Trump, in the base’s view, gets things done precisely because he displays open, unfiltered contempt for the swamp, the bipartisan political class, the globalists, and the media.

His 24/7 bellicosity, MAGA diehards feel, ensures he will always be hated by the media and establishment—and thus not compromised even if he wished to be. In other words, for MAGA, whom a president is despised by is more important than by whom he is liked. For the base, the role of a mercurial and disruptive Clinton Eastwood gunslinger is preferable to that of a jolly Roy Rodgers crooner.

Three, Trump is seen as the MAGA rabid pit bull, who, from time to time, is to be unleashed and pointed in the proper direction. For those who were smeared collectively and nonstop by Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, or a late John McCain variously as clingers, deplorables, irredeemables, racists, sexists, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, chumps, dregs, semi-fascists, hobbits, bizarros, and crazies—and as smelly and toothless by the media—Trump is their payback.

Has a Rachel Maddow, Joy Reid, or Adam Schiff ever apologized to the nation for daily lying to the American people that the Biden family was never compromised by or profited from Hunter Biden’s skullduggery, that Christopher Steele’s dossier was authentic, that Hunter’s laptop was cooked up in Moscow, or that COVID sprung from a bat or pangolin?

So for the Trump voter, those nightly, serial lies had more deleterious consequences for the nation than a leaked Trump private conversation in which he supposedly said Haiti was a “sh-thole” country.

All of the above may explain, though not defend, what appears to the bicoastal elite and even many Trump supporters as irrational, if not self-destructive, behavior.

However, why Trump does what he does still does not address the central question of 2024—what is now in Trump’s own self-interest—and the country’s?

Before answering that question, most would object that it does not matter. Trump cannot help himself even if he tried, as if Heraclitus was right that a man’s nature is his fate (ἦθος ἀνθρώπῳ δαίμων, often loosely translated as “character is destiny”).

Yet there are reasons to suggest that Trump, in fact, could scale back the ad hominem invective.

One, in the past, he has been magnanimous and certainly did not go after enemies or subvert the levers of government in the manner of the Obama administration that weaponized the DOJ and had West Wing meetings, where the Steele dossier and Hillary Clinton’s subterfuge were openly condoned, if not abetted.

Two, the 2024 election is different from both 2016 and 2020. There is no longer a COVID ruse to change voting laws or conduct a surrogate campaign.

Instead, the left is open now about its intentions to put Biden on ice in his basement, outsource the campaign to handlers and the media, count on billions from big tech and finance to ensure 70 percent of swing state balloting is not on Election Day, and blast Trump as a January 6 insurrectionary and murderer of women in need of abortions.

They will seek to keep him off the ballot in dozens of states and coordinate four prosecutions to jail him during the campaign season. The near billion dollars infused into the election to alter voting laws in 2020 will be seen as child’s play in 2024.

More importantly, the country is imploding in 2024 in a way it was not in 2020, when there was still a border, deterrence abroad, coherent energy policies, deterrent police, and a semblance of the rule of law.

Now there is simply no margin of error.

To be elected, Trump will have to win the popular vote by at least 4-5 percent. What’s more, the error/rejection rate on mail-in/early balloting in most states will be a fraction of what it had been pre-COVID. 2020 taught us that the more purple states are flooded with massive non-election ballots under 2020 altered ballot rules, the more the normal rejection percent of unsubstantiated or illegal ballots declines.

Trump has an enormous responsibility in 2024 to stay calm, reach out, and get even rather than mad.

Why? For millions, he is now seen as the last and only obstacle to what more than half of America believes is the sustained, left-wing attempt to turn the nation into something unrecognizable—an imploding country of open borders, with two million illegal entries per year, racial separatism and tribal chauvinism, the end of deterrence abroad, soaring crime and homelessness, $35 trillion in debt with $2 trillion annual deficits, wars on natural gas and oil, and warping of the administrative state and the law to punish enemies and reward friends.

In sum, Trump should ignore Haley and his old vulture critics in the media and on the left as much as he can.

He must concentrate on the disaster of the Biden administration and reiterate nonstop the agendas of 2025 that will save us from tottering on the brink. That forbearance demands that he speak and campaign in the only way that can win the election: unite the Republican Party, the conservative movement, the MAGA base, independents, disaffected Democrats, minorities, and even Never Trumpers into an eleventh-hour coalition to stop the revolution in our midst before it consumes us all.

[femmefatalevibe]

Hello! Hope you're doing well! Do you have any tips or advice for someone who doesn't know what they want to do in life?

Do you have any suggestions for jobs that don't involve traditional 9-5 s or losing privacy (like social media may result in)?

Hi love! I'm sharing my Tips For Self-Discovery & Mastering Personal Branding in the hyperlink. For additional resources, I recommend checking out these 3 Post+ posts:

Femme Fatale Guide: How To Build Your Personal Brand & Self Concept

Femme Fatale Journal Prompts: Questions For Self-Reflection & Growth in 2023

Femme Fatale Secrets: How To Master Your Shadow Self & Embrace Your Dark Feminine Energy (Journal Prompts)

Some entrepreneurial jobs that aren't being an influencer and allow you to keep your privacy include:

Virtual Assistant

Ghostwriter/writing e-books and courses, blogs, running interest or industry-focused social accounts, etc. with a pseudonym

Graphic designer

Copywriter

Coder/Programmer, Developer (like Website building)

Social media manager/strategist

Photographer

Selling your photography, art, or designs online

Videographer/Video Editor

Reselling (clothes, shoes, homeware, etc.) and flipping items/property

Publicist/Marketing specialist

Accountant/Bookkeeper

HR professional

Legal consultant

Translator

Data analyst

Business consultant

Project manager

SEO expert

Data analyst

#female entrepreneurs #freelancing #entreprenuership #female writers #content writing #women business #female founders #femmefatalevibe #femme fatale #dark feminine energy #dark femininity #it girl #high value woman #the feminine urge #female excellence #high value mindset #dream girl #queen energy #female power #life advice #life design #skilldevelopment #level up journey #money making #online income #freelance jobs #q/a #self discovery #personal branding #dream life

[naturalrights-retard]

E. Michael Jones is a prolific writer and editor of Culture Wars magazine. He has a Ph.D. in English Literature from Temple University and is the author of numerous best-selling books, including Barren Metal: A History of Capitalism as the Conflict between Labor and Usury, Logos Rising: A History of Ultimate Reality, Libido Dominandi, Dionysos Rising, The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal as Ethnic Cleansing, Monsters from the ID: The Rise of Horror in Fiction and Film, The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit and Its Impact on World History, etc.

Alexis: In January of 2015, the Washington Times opened one of their articles with these words:

“There’s a solitary man at the financial center of the Ferguson protest movement. No, it’s not victims of Michael Brown or Officer Darren Wilson. It’s not even the Rev. Al Sharpton, despite his ubiquitous campaign on TV and the streets.

“Rather, it’s liberal billionaire George Soros, who has built a business empire that dominates across the ocean in Europe while forging a political machine powered by nonprofit foundations that impacts American politics and policy, not unlike what he did with MoveOn.org.”[1]

Soros, we are told, gave at least $33 million in one year to support subversive movements such as Black Lives Matter (hereafter BLM) under the name of “social justice organizations.”[2] Soros has also been accused of subverting the moral and “and political systems around the world…” Executive Intelligence Review Editor Jeff Steinberg declared that

“Soros’ support for drug legalization is part of his twisted notion of ‘open society and he uses his vast network of NGOs [non-governmental organizations] to destabilize regimes that he sees as opposing Western liberal ‘open society. For Soros, the open society is the permissive society, in which a kind of hedonistic calculus prevails.

[kaija-rayne-author]

Not going to reblog it in order to respond, but lets talk about piracy, specifically of books.

It's a fraught discussion. Many people take the black/white stance on it. I personally do not pirate, because I know the cost to authors. If piracy had been a thing in the xtian cult I grew up in, I probably would have. We were an hour away from the closest library. It wasn't safe for me to read the queer books I needed.

I've been poor enough (am now) where I can't afford books. I've been far enough away from a library that it wasn't a viable option. My library really doesn't have the books I want to read. I've requested them, but they haven't shown up. Some countries don't even have libraries. Some people can't read the works they want to because of external pressures.

There's more to it than good/bad.

Firstly, the most likely person to pirate a book is a cis, white, western male who makes 70k or more/year. That's just sheer entitlement and yes, it's wrong. Period.

But what about the poor people, the queer people who don't dare check out the queer books they need? What about, what about, what about... I get it. I really really do.

I'm an author whose books are pirated a lot. If I had a nickel/5 cents for every copy of my work that's been pirated, I wouldn't be edging on homelessness right now.

Some truths.

1. Most authors aren't wealthy. Most aren't even financially stable. Like any industry, there's the golden show ponies that make ridiculous amounts of money. Then there's the rest of us, who, if we're lucky, make 10k a year on our books. (I never have.)

2. It takes anywhere between 8 weeks of ridiculously long days to actual years to write a book. And these are niche, hard to acquire skills. Not everyone can write. I think almost anyone can learn how to write well, but it’s not inborn, and most people don't dedicate themselves to it. These are skills we've had to learn. So a person who pirates is also taking that from the author too.

3. Writing isn't easy. It's blood, sweat, tears, and so much time away from the people who love us to make that book. If there's no reward for us in it, why would we continue publishing? I wrote for myself far longer than I have for publication. People tell me I'm a great writer. If there's nothing in it for me beyond the joy of writing, why should I add the extra work of making my stories publishable? And there's sooooo much extra work and hours that go into that.

4. Piracy reduces the chance that that author can keep writing. It really does. We have to eat and pay bills like anyone else. Every single piece of great art we, as a species, have comes from people who had a place to live, money for supplies, and both time and energy to create. If you're living in poverty, like me, it can be nigh impossible to create. So you're taking that too. If you love an author's work, you're making it less likely they can either finish the series you've pirated books from, or even write at all.

5. Boycotting Amazon doesn't hurt Amazon, but it sure as hell hurts authors.

6. If you are in a position where piracy is your only option... email the author, their publicist, or their publisher and request a review e-copy. We'll usually send it in hopes of a review. It's likely to be cleaner and more readable than any pirated copy. Plus, it's legal.

7. If you have to pirate, at least have the basic decency to do something for the author in return. That can be a lot of things. Leaving a review at any site you can access that accepts reviews is probably one of the best. Reviews really do sell books for us. Good or bad reviews, it doesn't matter. Obviously, positive is better, but even a negative review can prevent another negative review by warning people of things they might not enjoy in the work.

Send them an email if you loved it. Writing is a lonely profession, and fan mail has absolutely kept me writing on hard days. It means a lot to get positive fan mail. (I've never even heard of an author who has asked where you got the book.)

Drop a dollar into their Kofi if you can. Or become a patron. Especially if you can afford it and love our work, you can help us keep writing that way too. If my patron were filled to the point where I could afford to write more, I could be easily getting 3 books out a year vs the 1 every couple of years I'm currently managing to do. And my books are free for my patrons.

Fan art can also be a nice thing to receive.

Important! Talk about our books with anyone who might possibly be interested (if it's safe for you to do so) word of mouth is still the best advertising there is. Mention them on your social media too.

8. Piracy is very far away from a victimless crime. You are (whatever your reasons) harming the author who wrote the book. Even if you weren't going to buy it, you're still encouraging people to rip the books and make them available illicitly.

9. I did mention most of us will send a copy out to those who ask for one, right? Especially if we're indie with little to no marketing budget. We're hoping you'll review it, but there aren't any reviews police. Most authors who are decent people will just send it and hope. (I've been harassed for reviewing a book before, so I'd be remiss if I didn't say there wasn't a risk of the author asking you about the review. It's considered incredibly rude to do so in publishing circles, but there's still some authors who will. Use a throw away email.)

10. Sign up for Netgalley and Edelweiss. These are sites where publishers put books up for requests for reviews. You request the book, (for free unless something has changed recently) then, if you get it, you're supposed to review it. But again, there's no review police. (Please do review if you can.)

11. If you do have access to a library, you can ask them to order it. A lot of the time they will. And libraries have to pay the author/publisher to license the work, so we get paid by libraries too. You're helping an author by using a library, not harming them.

12. Lastly, check your entitlement. The world we currently live in doesn't value art (and writing is art) enough to pay a living wage for it. If you want art, someone has to pay us to do it, because otherwise we can't pay the power bill. Or any other bills. Writing shouldn't be the sole province of the wealthy and well off. Yet, I've seen so many writers stop writing because they just can't afford to. I'm there right now. If you want a world where authors can afford to give our work away for free, start voting for things like social programs and UBI. So that we can create art without worrying about the bills.

I'll probably think of more later, but those are the basics.

Don't bother arguing with me. You know it's wrong to pirate. It's, as noted, something that some people need to do because of poverty or lack of access or, or, or. Unless it's a disability issue, just wanting the e-copy vs the paper copy your library has isn't enough of an excuse. You can email the author or get it legally from a reviewing site. And if you're one of the well off folks who pirate? Fuck you. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

You do not have the right to steal from authors for any reason, much less your convenience. Talk about privilege and entitlement.

There are extenuating circumstances, and there are also non-piracy ways to get books.

#piracy #book piracy

[hirik0]

BTW guy if you see people selling FANFICTION one sites like easy report it, its illegal the only reason fanfiction and fanart are in a legal grey zone its because it FREE!

Also the ABSOLUTE AUDACITY to sell them as E-books

Report all of them

If you bind fanfiction for yourself keep doing that it's fine but making profit is NOT!

#ao3 #on fanfiction #on fandom

[johannestevans]

BristolCon Looms!

Good evening!

BristolCon is coming up on the 21st of October, and I've ordered all the books I'll be selling there, plus have a bunch of badges ready to sell. I won't be on any panels this year, but I will be doing a reading in the evening, and I'll of course be available to chat, answer questions, or sign books.

If you're in or around Bristol, make sure to book your ticket and come along - if not, I'll be filming answers to questions on my TikTok, which I'll also repost on Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, etc. You can send questions here on this Google Form.

As far go media recs, I have a few - obviously I've been enjoying the newest season of Our Flag Means Death, and I've started a rewatch of Boston Legal, which is a classic show that I love absolutely to death.

I also have some movies to rec!

Talk To Me (2022, dir. Michael & Danny Philippou) - This movie has everything. Utterly fucked up miserable possession horror, scary jumps and slowly building dread, great character writing, incredible editing, TikTok trends, a pair of side characters made up of an extremely hot Samoan guy built like a rugby player and an extremely hot transmasc person who absolutely fucks shit up, good jokes, good banter, utterly fucked up gore and violence! It's so well-written, it's so well-paced, it fucking rocks!

Swallowed (2022, dir. Carter Smith) - Is this movie good? No. But must a movie be good? Can't a movie effectively be a bugfuck tortureporn flick where a straight guy with a huge dick secretly in love with his gay best friend who's about to leave for Los Angeles to be a pornstar is erect for most of the movie because he ate a magical bug that has an aphrodisiac effect on him whilst trying to traffic those bugs for money, and the gay best friend has to fist him to pull some of the bugs out of his guts? And also Mark Patton is in it and dressed gorgeously and fruiting it up the entire time?

Layer Cake (2004, dir. Matthew Vaughn) - This wasn't a groundbreaking flick or anything, but it was fun and it was pretty gay and sexy. It's got a great cast, really good pacing and choreography - as you'd expect from Mr Vaughn - and a really fun, tightly-written script. Lots of room for male objectification in this one, and that's honestly why I'm reccing it.

We also watched No One Will Save You (2023, dir. Brian Duffield) - I recommend this with a caveat, in that like... So Swallowed is obviously a bit of a shit flick, but has a lot of great stuff going on despite that - No One Will Save You is incredible... for the first two acts. The aliens are haunting in their movements and design, the world feels so real and rich, we get a deep insight into someone utterly consumed with agony and regret at the worst thing they'd done in their childhood. The third act is a complete fumble, and the last ten minutes particularly had me fucking raging. I still think that the rest of the film is so good the movie is worth watching - Kaitlyn Dever really carries it beautifully whilst having no dialogue at all - but just. Be prepared for a shit ending, that's all.

New Works Published

Our Flag Means Death Fanfiction Update: Repentance & Forgiveness

Rated E. Izzy/Frenchie. 49k+, WIP. On the Queen Anne, Frenchie can't sleep.

Desperate to just get whatever he can away from Blackbeard's crew, he knocks on Izzy's door and invites himself in.

Chapter 13 on Ao3 / Chapter 14 on Ao3

Romance Short: Workplace Connections

A junior secretary makes a friend at work, and some more besides. 

10k, rated M, F/F. A young woman makes friends with one of the only male secretaries in her workplace. 1960s Manhattan, featuring lavender marriages, period queerness, misogyny, etc. Light-hearted age gap cheeriness. Adapted from a TweetFic.

Read on Patreon / / Read on Medium

Erotic Short: Yes, Sir

A criminal accountant’s goon obeys his orders, then takes them a bit further.

3.6k, cis M/trans M, rated E. A criminal accountant has his big bear muscle guy fuck him, and the bear does so until the accountant is a whimpering mess. Vaginal sex, size difference, rough sex, objectification, implied overstim, power dynamics and role reversal, age difference.

Read on Patreon / / Read on Medium

Erotic Short: A Gift for the Wolfmen

A young man in a brothel is invited to join a quartet of hulking wolf-like warriors.

6.4k, rated E. Two trans men, both being gangbanged by four cis wolfmen with huge cocks.

Fantasy universe with adventurers and so forth. Featuring stuck-through-wall and grope boxes, body writing, vaginal, oral, and anal play, huge come inflation, size difference, knotting, power dynamics, virginity kink, objectification and dehumanisation, degradation, humiliation, breeding kink, body modification, mentions of lactation and pregnancy, and enthusiastic consent throughout.

Read on Patreon / / Read on Medium

#musings #original fiction #our flag means death

[adornesibley]

IT'S GONNA BE MAY: a Newsletter

Reading: The Land of Lost Things by John Connolly, How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix

Finished Reading: Horrorstör, My Best Friend’s Exorcism, and We Sold Our Souls by Grady Hendrix, The Secrets we Keep by Shirley Patton, The Vegetarian by Han Kang 

Podcast: Unwell: A Midwestern Gothic Mystery

Playing: God Hand and Nier (Jank is Good, Jank is Life)

Making: Doom levels

Writing: Project E and *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧NEW THING*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ (which I will talk about below)

Word Count: Word counts are just a way the patriarchy can arbitrarily muffle voices it doesn’t like… but it’s 167338 

TLDR: I talk about my new short story anthology project, word counts and the desperation of doe-eyed newbie authors, the insular nature of TTRPGs and nerd culture jargon, glossary provided for her pleasure.

Firstly, new thing! *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ  I’m working on a super secret idea which I’m going to keep secret until precisely … now. It can be summed up in five words: TECHNO HORROR ANTHOLOGY FLOPPY DISK. Take yourself back to a bygone era, where the hair was big and often mulleted (wish that trend stayed dead, crimped hair stayed away but mullets came back? WTF humans) to when everyone is reading their Goosebumps or playing with their Tamagotchis. Close your eyes. Can’t you hear the dial-up now. Smell your breakfast cooking in your George Foreman grill. I know I’m talking about a large year range but for most of us millennials the 80s and 90s is just a blob monster of slow computers and corded phones and Scrunchies and listening to the radio, waiting for your fav song to play so you can hit record on your cassette player. I will keep you posted here on the progress and continue to give hints as to the full plan with all the gory details of its taxonomy. For now, this is all you get.

Project E’s progress was not so bad. I’m actually really proud of this word count. I shaved off so much this month. I was productive AF. And yet I feel compelled to continue on. The average scifi novel length is up to 150k words and I’m still well above that. Then you go to the average DEBUT scifi novel length and psht… 120k. If I remove 50k from Project E, that’s a whole book on its own!  

I’ll admit that sometimes, a book is really and truly longer than it needs to be, but let’s also admit that plenty of books get published that are CERTAINLY longer than they should be. I’m looking at you, Herman Melville! So to act as though this is an aspect which would make it impossible to publish a novel is disingenuous. The shit reality is simply that more words means more ink and pages, and publishers are scared of losing money, so unless you’re well established or the concept is a “sure thing” then they’re unlikely to give you the time of day.

I have no proof, and this is not a statement I’d backup in any legal capacity, but I’d imagine it’d also be quite easy to find a manuscript which says things you don’t like, and then force the author to gut it to fit your requested word count. Once it barely resembles its initial form, then it’ll be toothless enough to be allowed to get by. New authors are desperate to have their stories accepted. We’ll do anything. ANYTHING. This isn’t to say that Lit Agents and publishers are mustache-twirling villains. I’m saying that shitty people exist in every corner of society, and those folks would likely be happy to abuse their positions of power.

So, a month and a half ago I watched a video about the TTRPG community and its insularity. Well, technically the video was about ShadowDark, but Indestructoboy spent a significant part of the video discussing this problem. I’ve never considered how impossible it would be to understand folks in our community when we’re discussing games. “So I just got to try out a new OSR1 TTRPG2, it’s a Roll Under3 3d64 system with no Death Saves5, or HP6 and it’s entirely GMless7!” Just imagine for a second that you don’t have access to the acronyms or specialized jargon. That sentence would be word salad!

Shit, just TTRPG is useless to anyone not already in the community. Tabletop Roleplaying Games have the power to be an incredible tool for community building and a creative outlet, but by creating so much shorthand, we force folks to learn a tertiary language to even engage with the simplest examples of this style of game! I think that a good stop-gap would be a Glossary of terms in the back of tabletop roleplaying game books, but long term I think it’s pretty important to consider that maybe doing away with the acronyms at LEAST would benefit the community significantly. (Or if you’re gonna use them, consider explaining them somewhere in your post/ book/ video.)

Support weird. Support indie.

OSR either means Old School Revival or Old School Renaissance. What these means is up for discussion and debate, but the “Revival” side appears to be focused on literally reviving old-school games like Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition while the “Renaissance” side takes ideas from these old Tabletop game systems and adapts them to more modern game design sensibilities. OR AT LEAST THOSE ARE MY DEFINITIONS.

TTRPG is simply short for Tabletop Roleplaying Game(s) which generally involves a certain level of imagining the actions (theatre of the mind) of a character whom you embody in that game, where you must take on the role of someone who likely does not think or act like you would.

Roll Under is a type of system where you will be rolling dice to try to get a number lower than your character’s ability scores. (The numbers that represent their Mental and Physical aspects) If you do, you succeed, and if you don’t, you fail to complete whatever task you were attempting.

d6 is shorthand for six-sided dice, which is the cube dice most folks think of when they hear “dice.” In this example, there is a 3 at the beginning which tells you that you would be rolling three six-sided dice and adding them together.

Death Saves are a concept from Dungeons and Dragons. When your character loses all of their health points/ hit points (a number representing how healthy your character is) then they fall unconscious and are forced to roll a twenty-sided dice each time their turn comes around. If they fail to roll a 10 or higher, then they have a “failed” death save. If they roll a 10 or higher then they “succeeded”. Traditionally you need three of either of them to finish being in this unconscious state. If you get three failures, you die, and if you get three successes, your character “stabilizes” but remains unconscious for some time. There are more rules, but those are for someone running a game to explain, this gives the basic understanding, I feel.

HP is short for Health Points or Hit Points. This tells you how much damage a character can receive before they fall unconscious or die.

GMless. So, first, a GM is a “Game Master” and their job is to narrate what happens around your characters and to roleplay pretty much everyone in existence that isn’t your character. In Dungeons and Dragons they’re called “Dungeon Masters” or DMs. So, a game that is GMless simply means that there is no Game Master and instead the players are cooperatively telling the story together, usually by allowing the outcomes of dice to tell them whether they are succeeding or failing at certain tasks.

#A E S T H E T I C #indie ttrpg #ttrpg community #writblr #horror #scifi #osr #floppy disk #tamagotchi #trapper keeper #am writing #authors of tumblr #publishing industry #strawman #Youtube #techno horror #short story anthology