Excelsior the book

Nobody would buy a blank book.

It has not stopped many (most) people here from linking images willy-nilly all over the board the rest of the time though, which semanticallty isnt far removed from what this is about, to my mind (you may not agree tho). I'm guilty of it myself, of course.

I dont think the book is a good idea, but only cos I think it is stupid.

I also think everyone's just been superbly trolled. Dropt a bomb and walked off, he has. Hasnt anyone noticed how quiet he went? Hmm.

Let this ruin everyones good natured friendships, if y'all like...

xpost: Andrew, nobody would have bought this one anyway. I mean c'mon. IT WAS A TROLL.

No way! That ILB thread was quoted in German newspapers, Italian newspapers, Australian newspapers, British newspapers, BBC radio, and even a magazine and NO ONE was ever contacted for permission.

say if we had been using an ad-supported forum provider we'd have made money for the forum for linking to those images that will make people read these threads more and give more ad exposure.

Sure, that's the thing -- on one end, it's not like image leeching; on the other, it's not like anthologizing peoples' published work without their permission, either. It's not the same as anything. It's its own thing.

(And I can't believe it's trolling, not only because Mark Grout is not exactly a name to leap to mind when I think of trolls, but because it would be such a bizarre thing to try trolling with -- and a CafePress shop takes some time and work to set up, if he didn't just fake the .pdf -- especially since it's something people have suggested before.)

Mark if that wasnt your aim, FFS speak up, your silence is deafening and suspicious.

I CAN'T HEAR A FUCKING THING.

(J0hn leaving is a big deal, of course, if he doesn't change his mind; but I think the fact of that and the size of the thread are making people overestimate the severity of general response.)

(xpost; oh okay, sorry -- but still, you see what I mean? Mark would be a criminal genius to have been able to predict this.)

I might have something to say about the fairness of that.

That is so absurd.

How come? If I suddenly found that ILX was a direct reason for me getting a $1,000 excess bandwidth bill (and normal use of pix of mine doesnt worry me, I might add), I'd be shitty at that; if I was quoted in a printed copy of something no one will make money let alone profit from, it wouldnt bother me at all.

And I am a published writer. I also have works of mine online. Someone could potentially take those and make a book of it on cafepress without asking me. But I still wouldnt be pissed off - because it still says I wrote it (assuming nothings been changed, as I assume here also), and no one else is making money off my work. Net result, I get more exposure, which any writer wants.

I know thats not the point here though, but still. Anyway this has all become a bit silly.

To make an analogy (and I hate making analogies between the 'real world' and the internet simply because they are always both limited and misunderstood) it's a bit like this: the publishing of a web page is akin to providing a series of little packages in a storefront. Each package contains either an image, a slab of text, or layout instructions. There's one package labelled "pick me first!" which usually contains information on what's in the other packets, and how to assemble a 'front page' from a collection of image packets and text packets. Each of these packages must be taken separately and assembled by the viewer.

Complaining about image leeches is akin to this shop owner saying "Hey! You can't just buy that image packet! Sure, I'm providing it here, but you're supposed to use it in conjunction with these other packets over there!" There are 'real world' ways in which this store owner can enforce his packets are taken in specific groupings, just as there are ways image leeching can be prevented online. (it is ridiculously simple technically to prevent images from being linked from other sites, it's just most people would rather complain and whinge than try to solve the problem)

Ugh, that was rather unclear but I hope it makes my position known.

This book hurts no one. There is no potential for it to cause harm - it costs no poster income (as copyright infringement is designed to protect), and it doesn't increase public exposure (as everything included in the book is already public and Googlable).

Thus, bandwidth-leeching is inherently more harmful and thus worse than this book, because the former has the potential to do harm, where the latter doesn't.

Neither is something the average ILX poster needs to worry about, but saying that one is irrelevant to the other, or that image-leeching pales in comparison to this doesn't hold a lot of water.

Monetary damage is a visceral thing, yes. And reputational damage, among other things, is harder to prove, yes. But the latter can lead to the former.

Bandwidth-leeching can be easily controlled by your hypothetical site's owner. ILX threads published through Cafe Press cannot. The one thing to Mark's credit is that, even though he didn't ask beforehand, he at least notified ILX. What if ILX is not so lucky next time?

Anyway, clearly there's never going to be a consensus on this, and I disagree with a few things on here, but there's nothing more to be said than that, really.

If the comments were edited or altered in the book, that would be one thing. But a straight copy wouldn't raise any issues, as the words poss. causing damage to someone's reputation continue to exist at ILX.

A couple totally irrelevant things I'm still confused by: (a) Tep, the whole "charging for binding" thing is ridiculous; even above the fact that they don't sell blank books, I'm guessing we've both run enough profit/loss statements on print-on-demand books to know that price point leaves as much profit as any publisher. It may not be much, and who knows what percentage kicks to Mark, but it's a book for sale like anything else. (b) Reprinting those particular threads may not be likely to inflict monetary harm on anyone, but I can think of instances where the precedent certainly could: I've noticed time and again that a lot of the paid critics on ILM wind up gussying up things they've said on the forum for use in paid articles. There are also people over there whose words, based on their reputations alone, are inherently sellable, and therefore maybe worth protecting, in whatever limited way.

In any case: a whole lot of people have made the point on here that this particular book is completely meaningless and won't be bought by anyone except as a joke and so on. Which, sure, fine. The point here is one of principle, which is why I'm loving the slippery-slope pics. Throw the copyright rule out the window and I'll be the first one sitting in DaCapo's lobby with my edited-down "Selected Conversations Between Several Music Critics Whose Books You've Paid to Read Before."

Well then no one would know, no one would buy it, and no fighting!

If professional critics are even vaguely considering using something as a money-making effort, they shouldn't be posting it or talking about it on a public forum to start with. The concept of stealing someone else's work wholesale has been around since, I dunno, Guttenberg. (Steve)

If you took a "selected conversations" book to a commercial publisher or stood to profit off of the content - which CafePress technically doesn't, as I read it - then you'd have to pay the "several music critics" to start with, and everyone wins.

14 cents per unit, I think he said; if and only if it adds up to more than $25.

It's a printing service, not a publisher. It's ridiculous to see it as anything else, independent of how you feel about Mark's using the service. Sure, they make a profit -- again, so does Kinko's, so does a Xerox machine, etc.

If you honestly can't see the difference between this and a book from a publisher ... then I really don't have any interest in putting anything after the ellipsis.

Jesus, Milo, you don't have to go to fucking law school to see the precedent: Milo's just republished, wholesale, in a different context, copyrighted works that people have not permitted him to take off of this server! If you allow that, you've just shattered whatever modicum of control the copyright is supposed to allow us!

And if site-owners can be allowed, in milo's hypothetical, to use "I just didn't know any better" about their ignorance of image-link-blocking, we might as well say it's fair that site-posters can use "I just didn't know any better" about anything they post here. Obviously I'm not on the side of that.

Except it's up there on the page right next to a bunch of other unrelated stuff which seems like it might possibly draw a crowd. Sure, most people probably wouldn't buy it on spec just cause it's next to a Beth Orton calendar...but you know, maybe it might happen.

OTOH, I'd love to see people band together, like some of us did on a usenet group Im on, to contribute stories and poetry etc for a book we could work on and print up. Stuff written not here, not online at all - but FOR a book.

It seems there's people here with a talent for great ideas - we should use them constructively :)

The odd superstitions touched upon were all prevalent among children
and slaves in the West at the period of this story--that is to say,
thirty or forty years ago.

Although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and
girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account,
for part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what
they once were themselves, and of how they felt and thought and talked,
and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in.

THE AUTHOR.

HARTFORD, 1876.