Weaponized Procrastination

missrumphiusproject: libraryjournal: You told LJ about over...

Thu, 23 May 2013 21:51:38 -0400

libraryjournal:

You told LJ about over 390 of your favorite Tumblrs. Here they are, from most to least popular:

thelifeguardlibrarian, with 29 mentions

libraryjournal, with 16 mentions

fishingboatproceeds, with 13 mentions (sorry John Green, Kate & LJ won this battle)

librarianproblems, with nine mentions

nypl, with six mentions

oupacademic

schoollibraryjournal

todaysdocument

motherjones, with five mentions

neil-gaiman

slaughterhouse90210

theatlantic

theparisreview

therumpus

betterbooktitles, with four mentions

bookriot

chicagopubliclibrary

darienlibrary

doctorwho

edwardspoonhands

ilovecharts

johndarnielle

laura-in-libraryland

libraryadvocates

mentalflossr

nprfreshair

shortformblog

theartofgooglebooks

unypl

wilwheaton

Read More

Oh gee wow someone voted for me. You are only one person, and I don’t know who you are, but I love you.

That might have been me, maybe? I can’t recall who I listed…

duckyshepherd: freeings: Flexible Wooden Bookshelf Warps...

Thu, 23 May 2013 16:00:24 -0400

duckyshepherd:

freeings:

Flexible Wooden Bookshelf Warps to Wrap All Book Sizes

omgomg i want one

Lovely concept. But I think it would only hold the books that I’ve already started.

This looks so cool, but I don’t think that I would use it/them everywhere. As a functional art piece, sure, but not coating my house/apartment.

Amazon: Press Release on Kindle Worlds

Thu, 23 May 2013 08:00:19 -0400

Amazon: Press Release on Kindle Worlds:

text-block:

Amazon Publishing Introduces “Kindle Worlds,” a New Publishing Model for Authors Inspired to Write Fan Fiction

…
Amazon Publishing
will pay royalties to both the rights holders of the Worlds and the author. The standard author’s royalty rate (for works of at least 10,000 words) will be 35% of net revenue. As with all titles from Amazon Publishing, Kindle Worlds will base net revenue off of sales price—rather than the lower, industry standard of wholesale price—and royalties will be paid monthly.

Whoa. Let’s think about this for a bit— Amazon has found a way to turn both the fanfiction market as well as artists’ needs for self-promotion to its own profit.

I daresay that’s brilliant. I’m excited about what this will hold, and what it means for storytelling. We can start building epics the way they were originally built— out of a shared world by several authors, all adding pieces together to make a masterpiece. At first this sounds like the modern, online version of the minstrel tradition.

Still: what does this mean for copyright? I like the fact that this gives artists the option to share their creations— when before fanfiction was seen as playing hard and fast with copyright. But what about derivative works of derivative works? Who decides what is canon and non-canon. What actually happens to non-canon works?

If Kindle World brings more freedom to content creators, so that they can share their works with their fans as they see fit and profit, I’m all for it. But I worry that this may put fanfiction writers (who by and large contribute to the buzz and publicity that determine a book’s success) under great scrutiny and risk.

I can see how a portion of the fanfiction authoring community would accept this. I can even see how this makes a ton of sense for Amazon, and maybe even the rights holders. But I’m not certain that giving in to this type of copyright claim is good for fanfiction as a whole. If we accept that to distribute fanfiction requires a license and is not covered under fair use or purely as a transformative work, sets a terrible and lasting precedent.

On another note, here’s a different take on the matter:

Source URL for this other post

parislemon:

Todd Bishop on the new “Kindle Worlds”:

The company says it will license rights to popular books, games, movies and other content to let independent authors write their own stories based on those worlds, and receive royalties from sales of their fan fiction through the company’s Kindle Store.

Seems like a smart idea. Though I have to imagine the most popular worlds, like Star Wars, would never agree to this.

MG Siegler rightfully brings up the fact that most of the larger fandoms will not be covered by this initially anyway. Harry Potter, Dr. Who, Star Wars, Star Trek, Naruto, Supernatural, etc all would not be covered under deals like this, so what happens to those fandoms? Can they now be sued more easily now that there’s a model for “approved” fanfiction and these rights holders have clearly not agreed to participate?

Lastly, while this is framed as a way to sell your work, we don’t know what sort of creative control rights holders will have. Will they allow slash? What about character death, or crossovers, or what about genderbending? Uhg, or even the dreaded High School AU (if I had that type of control over a series, I would prohibit nearly all of them by default). It just opens up a huge set of issues that aren’t even close to being nailed down through an agreement like this.

There’s more though, from John Scalzi.

So, on one hand it offers people who write fan fiction a chance to get paid for their writing in a way that doesn’t make the rightsholders angry, which is nice for the fan ficcers. On the other hand, as a writer, there are a number of things about the deal Amazon/Alloy are offering that raise red flags for me. Number one among these is this bit:

“We will also give the World Licensor a license to use your new elements and incorporate them into other works without further compensation to you.”

i.e., that really cool creative idea you put in your story, or that awesome new character you made? If Alloy Entertainment likes it, they can take it and use it for their own purposes without paying you — which is to say they make money off your idea, lots of money, even, and all you get is the knowledge they liked your idea.

Essentially, this means that all the work in the Kindle Worlds arena is a work for hire that Alloy (and whomever else signs on) can mine with impunity. This is a very good deal for Alloy, et al — they’re getting story ideas! Free! — and less of a good deal for the actual writers themselves. I mean, the official media tie-in writers and script writers are doing work for hire, too, but they get advances and\or at least WGA minimum scale for their work.

Another red flag:

“Amazon Publishing will acquire all rights to your new stories, including global publication rights, for the term of copyright.”

Which is to say, once Amazon has it, they have the right to do anything they want with it, including possibly using it in anthologies or selling it other languages, etc, without paying the author anything else for it, ever. Again, an excellent deal for Amazon; a less than excellent deal for the actual writer.

Note that on its page Amazon makes a show of saying that the writer owns the copyright on the original things that are copyrightable, but inasmuch as Amazon also acquires all rights for the length of the copyright and Alloy is given the right to exploit the new elements without further compensation, this show about you keeping your copyright appears to be just that: show.

The argument here could be, well, you know, people who were writing fan fiction weren’t getting paid or had rights to these characters and worlds anyway, so only getting paid for their work once is still better than what they would have gotten before. And that’s not an entirely bad argument on one level. But on another level, there’s a difference between writing fan fiction because you love the world and the characters on a personal level, and Amazon and Alloy actively exploiting that love for their corporate gain and throwing you a few coins for your trouble. So this should be an interesting argument for people to have in the real world.

Basically, there’s so many issues brought up here. Are people basically going to be exploited just to get the veneer of “real” authorship?

Yeah, posts should be back up and running now at 2/day. Job hunt is the big time sink these days, so...

Wed, 22 May 2013 21:00:01 -0400

Yeah, posts should be back up and running now at 2/day. Job hunt is the big time sink these days, so I shouldn’t spend as much time finding too much more new cool stuff.

…But then should I go through all my feeds again and highlight sources that I would recommend? …Drat that takes more time too. Oh well!

futurejournalismproject: Bing Now Translates Klingon...

Wed, 22 May 2013 16:00:13 -0400

futurejournalismproject:

Bing Now Translates Klingon Language

Bing has just added Klingon, the language spoken by the Klingon warrior race of the Star Trek universe, to its language translator.

Via Mashable:

Bing worked with the linguistics Ph. D. Marc Okrand who developed the language for the series. It also turned to 10 people who are fluent in the language to train the systems, as well as the Klingon Language Institute who assisted in the process.

Bing users can now even translate entire websites into Klingon.

FJP: I think I speak for everyone when I say: HIja’ tlhuchtlh! — Krissy

Image: Today I Found Out

The more you know, the faster you can deal with that reference question in Klingon.

"The Califa Library Group and Contra Costa County Library (CCCL) today officially announced the beta..."

Wed, 22 May 2013 08:00:30 -0400

“

The Califa Library Group and Contra Costa County Library (CCCL) today officially announced the beta launch of Enki Library, a new ebook platform designed to host and lend library-managed ebooks using the Douglas County model.

Named after the Sumerian god of mischief, creativity, and intelligence, Enki went live at CCCL and the San Francisco Public Library (SFPL) on May 6, and will soon serve multiple libraries in California, beginning with members of the Bay Area Library and Information System (BALIS) consortium.

”

- Matt Enis’s Library Journal report.

Note that Enki is the second library-run ebook server, after the one started by Douglas County Libraries in Colorado. Counting among the participating publishers in Enki are Workman, Dzanc, Smashwords, Akashic, Crossroads Press, National Highlights, and Infobase.

I am watching with much enthusiasm and interest. Of course, I am curious if and to what extent, working in tandem with a traditional vendor platform like the Cloud, a system like Enki boosts a library’s overall circulation. That also has to be part of the appeal of implementation.

Context graph:

DCL pioneered the use of in-house Adobe Content Servers to manage ebooks purchased directly from authors, small publishers, and indie distributors such as Smashwords, and they were eager to help launch similar projects elsewhere.

(via cloudunbound)

This type of model really feels like it should be the one we push. It maintains the professional standards and mission that librarians espouse, as well as protects against future uncertainty.

The best thing you'll read on Yahoo buying Tumblr...

Tue, 21 May 2013 08:00:17 -0400

The best thing you'll read on Yahoo buying Tumblr...:

soupsoup:

comes from employee #2, practically the co-founder: Marco Arment

I was going to post this myself.

Basically see this as google buying YouTube, which was a good thing. New!Yahoo is not the same as it once was. Give it some time, and we’ll see what we get.

If it really fails, there’s Wordpress, squarespace, Medium, and Blogger still.

Tumblr Podcasting support is actually built in still

Sun, 19 May 2013 16:00:30 -0400

So I heard from Marco Arment, one of the original tumblr developers on the Accidental Tech Podcast #12 revealed that there’s some leftover built in podcasting RSS feed support (even iTunes valid!) in tumblr. It only works with externally hosted audio files though, so no free lunch.

Basically it will make a special RSS feed with the proper iTunes metadata for all audio posts that are hosted externally (by yourself, not via tumblr). You can find this feed at example.tumblr.com/podcasts/rss. I’ve not tried this 100% (checking it works in iTunes), but it did bring up a valid RSS feed in my feed reader.

Just figured that this info should be spread around the tumblarian community in case you’re looking for a place to provide a podcast feed now that feedburner is dead/dying.

Hope this helps people!

PS: I might be eventually looking to start a podcast on librarian stuff, or at least some skype conversations and see where that goes.

parislemon: Matt Novak: It’s easy to forget — even for a...

Sun, 19 May 2013 08:00:11 -0400

parislemon:

Matt Novak:

It’s easy to forget — even for a Disney nerd like myself — that before Walt Disney died of lung cancer in December of 1966, EPCOT (the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow) was supposed to be a real city. The code name “Project X” was given to the undertaking that would eventually become Walt Disney World, which today includes the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Disney’s Hollywood Studios and the Animal Kingdom parks.

Fascinating. And the rabbit hole goes deeper still.

[via Tim Maly]

Interesting. What is an amusement park should have been a living city.

Library tidbits: Google search reliance isn't wise ...

Sat, 18 May 2013 16:00:23 -0400

Library tidbits: Google search reliance isn't wise ...:

libraryissues:

If it’s not on Google, it doesn’t exist? Right?

Google the world’s most popular search engine has become engrained in our lives. When we are looking for a shop, a picture, a fact, a sports result, people will constantly say “Google it!” You never hear “Bing it” or “Yahoo it”.

However, as…

Exactly this. If google has everything, where’s the fun, really?

fredrin: As promised, a rough crack at the Pride of Chanur’s...

Sat, 18 May 2013 10:58:36 -0400

fredrin:

As promised, a rough crack at the Pride of Chanur’s crew as Foxgrrls rather than Hani, channeling CJ Cherryh’s “Pride of Chanur” series (one of my favorite hard boiled SciFi series). Yes, it’s a bit… well, it’s a lot of things, but its been a fun idea to sketch as a warmup to getting back into my drawing regimen. I’m amused by the idea of Mugi and several of her rougher cousins running a freighter. The real fun is going to be drawing the Kif as ShirtGuyDom Stick Figures, and Piro would totally be Tully (flawless matchup there)… yes, its sad, i actually did a lot of thinking about this while recovering from heart surgery. ^^;;

Yes I like Megatokyo. I have since 2001!

Also I like CJ Cherryh’s books too. Plus fox girls and stick guys.

Content Patch - May 17th, 2013 - Ep. 085 [Nintendo targets Lets...

Sat, 18 May 2013 08:00:18 -0400

Content Patch - May 17th, 2013 - Ep. 085 [Nintendo targets Lets Plays] (by TotalHalibut)

If you’re a fan of video game content on Youtube and across the internet, news to you might be that Nintendo has asserted their copyright via ContentID to place and/or claim the ad revenue on videos that includes their IP. TotalBiscuit, a well known youtuber goes into detail about the situation and some of the real-world consequences of the action.

This whole issue has come up due to the tricky nature of copyright with interactive media, something it’s not really had to deal with before. If people filmed a LARP, should the LARP writer get any ad revenue from it? It’s complicated from a legal perspective, but if this is how people, primarily youth, get to see copyright in action, then (as long as they remember) the whole copyright edifice is in trouble. As librarians, how do we inform te public and our constituents about these issues?

futurejournalismproject: Leaks, The Justice Department and the...

Thu, 16 May 2013 08:00:08 -0400

futurejournalismproject:

Leaks, The Justice Department and the Associated Press

Attorney General Eric Holder responded yesterday to the news that the Justice Department seized two months of Associated Press phone records. Security!

This was a very serious leak and a very, very serious leak. I’ve been a prosecutor since 1976 and I have to say that this is among, if not the most serious, it is within the top two or three most serious leaks I’ve ever seen. It put the American people at risk. That’s not hyperbole. It put the American people at risk.

Leaks! The government doesn’t like them. And Holder’s Justice Department has prosecuted more alleged leakers under the World War 1-era Espionage Act than all his predecessors combined.

In this case, the alleged leak lead to the AP reporting on a Yemeni-based plot to blow up an airplane.

Here’s some of what we’re reading on the story.

Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian: Justice Department’s pursuit of AP’s phone records is both extreme and dangerous.

The legality of the DOJ’s actions is impossible to assess because it is not even known what legal authority it claims nor the legal process it invoked to obtain these records. Particularly in the post-9/11 era, the DOJ’s power to obtain phone records is, as I’ve detailed many times, dangerously broad. It often has the power to obtain those records without the person’s knowledge (as happened here) and for a wildly broad scope of time (as also happened here). There are numerous instruments that have been vested in the DOJ to obtain phone records, many of which do not require court approval, including administrative subpoenas and “national security letters” (issued without judicial review); indeed, the Obama DOJ has previously claimed it has the power to obtain journalists’ phone records without subpoeans using NSLs, and in its relentless pursuit to learn the identity of the source for one of New York Times’ James Risen’s stories, the Obama DOJ has actually claimed that journalists have no shield protections whatsoever in the national security context. It’s also quite possible that they obtained the records through a Grand Jury subpoena, as part of yet another criminal investigation to uncover and punish leakers.

None of those processes for obtaining these invasive records requires a demonstration of probable cause or anything close to it. Instead, the DOJ must simply assert that the records “relate to” a pending investigation: a standard so broad that virtually every DOJ desire will fulfill it.

Emily Bazelon, Slate: Obama’s War on Journalists:

Whether a leak threatens national security is clearly not the standard Holder and his department are using. And the problem is that the standard is up to them. The 1917 Espionage Act, the basis for most of these cases, was written to go after people who compromised military operations. Back in 1973, the major law review article on that statute concluded that Congress never intended to go after journalists with it, or even their sources. Since then, legal scholars have proposed various ways of narrowing the Espionage Act—University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone wants to limit the law’s reach to cases in which there’s proof that a reporter knows publication will wreck national security without contributing to the public debate. But Congress has done nothing of the sort. Wouldn’t it be nice if the Republicans who are indignant over the AP investigation got serious about reform? Somehow, I doubt it. Instead, with a Democratic White House leading the charge, it’s hard to see who will stop this train.

Timothy Lee, Washington Post: In AP surveillance case, the real scandal is what’s legal

But here’s what’s really scary: The Justice Department’s actions are likely perfectly legal.

U.S. law allows the government to engage in this type of surveillance—on media organizations or anyone else—without meaningful judicial oversight.

The key here is a legal principle known as the “third party doctrine,” which says that users don’t have Fourth Amendment rights protecting information they voluntarily turn over to someone else. Courts have said that when you dial a phone number, you are voluntarily providing information to your phone company, which is then free to share it with the government.

Brian Fung, National Journal: What the AP Subpoena Scandal Means for Your Electronic Privacy.

It’s not just journalists and their sources who stand to suffer from an erosion of the legal barriers between government and businesses. Here’s a short list of your personal information companies can hand over to the feds without repercussion, and on little more than a subpoena: geolocation data, the PCs you’ve accessed, emails you’ve sent and text messages and content you’ve placed on cloud services like Dropbox.

Image: Boiling Water, by Tom Tomorrow, March 2011. Since this cartoon, the government has prosecuted a sixth alleged leaker under the Espionage Act. Select to embiggen.

Privacy, do we really have any left once anyone decides to look (especially the government)? Not currently. But we can try to force a change, or make sure that records are not held by third parties to turn over later.

Libraries figured this out during the Cold War with the FBI, so there’s really no reason it can’t be done again.

FreeCiv available in HTML5 browsers, worldwide productivity plummets | News | PC Gamer

Wed, 15 May 2013 16:00:24 -0400

FreeCiv available in HTML5 browsers, worldwide productivity plummets | News | PC Gamer:

Not really the news that I needed, but good to know anyway. (Free)Civ everywhere!

A Conversation on The Value of the LIS Degree

Wed, 15 May 2013 08:00:08 -0400

A Conversation on The Value of the LIS Degree:

Quite worth a read. I concur with the goals outlined by Jill Hurst-Wahl. While individual components might be addressed by other professions, the focused combination of them combined with the ethical and philosophical training is what makes MLIS professionals stand out.

Pop Up Archive: beta is here! | Pop Up Archive

Tue, 14 May 2013 16:00:22 -0400

Pop Up Archive: beta is here! | Pop Up Archive:

This looks like it could be a great resource/tool for those people collecting a ton of audio. Not sure how reliable it is, but it’s in beta still. If it works, it’ll be amazing.

futurejournalismproject: The Little People Working in our...

Tue, 14 May 2013 08:00:15 -0400

futurejournalismproject:

The Little People Working in our Machines

Via Wired:

Mark Crummett thinks modern technology is beautiful. To him the devices we’ve built, such as computers, are not only functional, they’re aesthetically appealing. Especially on the inside.

“I like the idea that [technology] looks the way it does because it has to look that way,” he says. “A hard drive is made out of round and shiny material because of what it has to do and how it has to do it.”

Crummett says he’s tried to highlight that beauty in a series of photographs he calls Ghosts in the Machine. He’s placed model railroad figurines inside the guts of old computers and other contraptions, making the processors and transistors form a kind of otherworldly cityscape. Computer fan vents become postmodern architecture. Motherboards become strange new ecosystems.

For more images, and how Crummett shoots, visit Wired.

Images: Selected photographs from Ghosts in the Machine by Mark Crummett, via Wired. Select to embiggen.

There’s some creativity here. Really good uses of machines and contextualizing them.

"Humphreys said one of the early conclusions from her research is the possibility that the mass media..."

Mon, 13 May 2013 16:00:37 -0400

“Humphreys said one of the early conclusions from her research is the possibility that the mass media of the 20th century was in fact a blip, a historical aberration, and that, through platforms like Twitter, we are gradually returning to a communication network that indulges, without guilt, the individual’s desire to record his existence.”

- Back to the future: What if the ‘mass media’ era was just an accident of history? (via courtenaybird)

Very interesting if true. The real question then for me is, what did the mass media era, and all of its practices give us that retains value? Once (if) we figure that out, we should then be able to work on finding ways of keeping that alive in whatever replaces it. And if mass media is going away, what does that mean for collection development within libraries? If not for the books themselves, but for how they purchase newspapers and magazines?

cartoongoblin: odditiesoflife: Book Sculptures Landscapes...

Mon, 13 May 2013 12:00:24 -0400

cartoongoblin:

odditiesoflife:

Book Sculptures

Landscapes carved and painted into old books by Canadian artist Guy Laramee.

I. Just. Wow.

Such wonderful art.

LCA Comments on TTIP trade agreement

Mon, 13 May 2013 08:00:33 -0400

LCA Comments on TTIP trade agreement:

arlpolicynotes:

Trade agreements that deal with copyright are all the rage. So far they’re mostly used as a way to avoid transparent, democratic processes while ratcheting up protection and locking in the worst aspects of US law. In these comments, LCA suggests the US change its approach and instead look to export user-friendly policies like the recent White House open access order, while eschewing efforts to harmonize our laws with the more draconian laws of Europe. The comments are brief and worth a quick read for anyone interested in the risks that these agreements pose to libraries.

These secretive agreements means that only those who propose them (copyright industry representatives) get any say at shaping things. This wouldn’t worry me as much as it does, but then they don’t want anyone to see it before it’s presented to us as a complete deal.