Judge Indefinitely Bans “Coming Through The Rye”

If there is one thing I learned during almost ten years developing feature film scripts, is that there is no such thing as a completely original idea.

Every script I read (well into the thousands) could be seen as being derivative of a pre-existing work.  In fact, if one eliminated every script from Hollywood that was derivative of a pre-existing work there wouldn’t be any screenplays left.

The same can be said for the world of novels.

Unfortunately, one Judge Betts disagrees and has indefinitely banned the wholly original novel “60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye” which imagines what  Holden Caufield would be like at the age of 76.  While clearly building from the foundations of “A Catcher in the Rye” there is nothing in the new work that is a direct quote or paraphrase from the original.

Judge Betts has rejected the defenses’ argument that the new novel…

…did not violate copyright laws because it amounted to a critical parody that had the effect of transforming the original work.

This is one of the major elements of the “fair use” defense and one that did not strike me as even a bit far-fetched.  Instead, Judge Betts claimed:

“Both narratives are told from the first-person point of view of a sarcastic, often uncouth protagonist who relies heavily on slang, euphemisms and colloquialisms, makes constant digression and asides, refers to readers in the second person, constantly assures the reader that he is being honest and that he is giving them the truth.”    LINK

If that’s enough to ban a this book, I’m sure there is an endless stream of young adult fiction that should certainly be given the same treatment.

Seeing judges ban books is never a good thing.  Seeing a judge ban a book for such flimsy reasons as this is downright frightening.  If her ruling stands, expect to see a long line of similar suits in the near future.

Kindle Users Learn Difference Between Licensing and Ownership

In the simple days before the internet and digital technology the concept of buying a book was pretty simple.  You went to a bookstore and you gave the bookseller money and he or she gave you a stack of bound paper with words (and sometimes pictures) printed on the pages – a book, if you will.  Once the transaction was complete that book was yours forever.  You could resell it any price the market supported.  You could trade it or loan it or use it as toilet paper.  It didn’t matter.  The book was yours.

Unfortunately, as ArsTech points points out, in the current time of eBooks, the idea of buying a book is not quite so simple:

Amid the general love-fest over the Amazon Kindle, its DRM is beginning to bite some users in the butt as they are getting locked out of their accounts and, subsequently, their e-book purchases. The incidents highlight once again that the customer doesn’t really own the content when it comes to DRM; even when it’s so loose that it’s not apparent day to day, it can still hurt you in the long run.

Whether due to a change in “terms of service” or due to violating exisiting agreements, Kindle-owners have found themselves actually locked out of accessing books they had already purchased.  I like ArsTech’s metaphore:

A bookstore that locks you out because you treated it like a library doesn’t take away the collection already sitting on your bookshelf, after all.

There is a reason that even iTunes has given up on most DRM for music and it won’t be all that long before book publishers will have to follow suit or find themselves fighting a similar losing battle against “pirates” who think it is unfair for a company to control access to content once the customer has completed their purchase of said content.

LINK

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Self-Employed revolution

The internet is the backbone for a revolution in self-employment opportunities.  While many have tried and failed in this pursuit, many have also tried and succeeded.  There doesn’t seem to be a magic formula for success, but one key element of many plans is tapping into the many niche communities living on the web.

Caroline Middlebrook has written a book exploring one such way to do this:

“One of the most common ways to make money on the Internet today is to pick a popular topic and put together a small website consisting of articles related to that topic and monetize the site with ads. The traffic comes from search engines and once the site is setup, it just runs on auto-pilot. ”

She is providing a free download of her book and uses WordPress (a free software package) as the foundation of her technique.  Very interesting reading.