Friday News: Adobe supposedly fixes ADE 4, Joan Didion Kickstarter campaign, corporate commentary on Gamergate, and a former slave bests his “master”
Publishing NewsAdobe / crowdsourcing / documentary / DRM / Ebooks / Gamergate / harassment / History / Joan Didion / Misogyny / privacy / racism / slavery17 Comments
Adobe Updates Digital Edition, Stops Sharing User Info With the Internet – Nate Hoffelder reports that Adobe has stopped sending data on the books you’re reading back to Adobe in plain text. Adobe insists that: “Enhanced security for transmitting rights management and licensing validation information. With this latest version of Digital Editions 4.0.1, the data is sent to Adobe in a secure transmission (using HTTPS).” I don’t distrust Hoffelder on this, but I’m sure as hell not read to trust Adobe yet – on anything.
Update: I’ve heard from another tester who identified that Adobe was using SSL, and that it didn’t appear to be sending any data at all (for DRM-free ebooks). But if you activate a DRMed ebook Adobe does send a lot of encrypted information. Removing that DRMed ebook stopped the app from sending info. Thanks, Michael!
Second Update: I have an independent confirmation that Adobe only uploads data after a DRMed ebook has been activated. –The Digital Reader
For $2,500 You Can Now Own Joan Didion’s Sunglasses – Yet another meditation on the art of author branding from the New Republic, but this one decidedly less excited about the new Kickstarter campaign for a documentary on Joan Didion, which filmmaker Griffin Dunne — Didion’s nephew — is co-directing. The “undignified” campaign, which seeks to raise $80,000 (they’ve already surpassed that at $119,452, with almost a month yet to go), provides some interesting incentives to donation, including a couple pairs of the writer’s own sunglasses.
I don’t know – how is this any worse than auctioning off Queen Elizabeth’s knickers on eBay?
Didion is one of the greatest living writers, but her legacy at times seems at risk of being subsumed by her lifestyle brand—thin, chic, Californian. “They were my aunt and uncle but they were also probably the hippest people on earth,” Griffin Dunne says about Didion and her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, in a video about the project. It’s hard to imagine that Dunne, with all his connections (he’s been producing/directing/acting for over two decades, and his father was the Vanity Fair writer Dominick Dunne) had no other way to get this film made than by hawking his aunt’s fingernail clippings. –New Republic
INCREDIBLY, GAMERGATE IS WINNING – BUT YOU WON’T READ THAT ANYWHERE IN THE TERRIFIED LIBERAL MEDIA – Note: I have used donotlink, so the site will not be logging traffic from DA for this story.
I was originally going to post the story about Felicia Day, but when I was Googling to see what else was going on around that story, this Breitbart link came up, and while it contains a lot of extreme rhetoric, I think it’s also important to see the kinds of opinions Breitbart has allegedly solicited from some corporate executives, like the Intel VP who insisted that Gamergate is “‘doing great work.'” I’m definitely starting to agree with the arguments being made that this is part of the new culture wars, but I think we also need to recognize that it’s all of a piece with anti-choice initiatives, persistent discrimination against women and minorities in the workplace, and other mainstream expressions of misogyny and fear of women and gender (and racial) equality.
How do I know? Because I’ve spent the last fortnight quietly soliciting the opinions not only of senior executives at AAA video game publishers, but also at some of the companies linked to GamerGate’s boycotts and activism, such as Intel, Mercedes and BMW.
Perhaps it won’t surprise you to learn that microchip manufacturers and car companies are pretty sympathetic to the concerns of male consumers. But some of the things said to me–all, sadly, on condition of anonymity–have been nothing short of remarkable. . . .
Then consider the product manager, who was happy to be identified as “senior management at a German car manufacturer”, who told me that, “the violence against women is unacceptable and we cannot support it, but we will not financially support people who insult our customers either”. –Breitbart
Bygones – A poignant exchange of letters between former Kentucky slave Henry Bibb, who later became a Canadian abolitionist, and his “former master,” William Gatewood. After one of Bibb’s pamphlets made it into the hands of Gatewood, the Kentucky plantation owner sent a letter to Bibb, providing news of the farm in a casually gossipy way, imparting news like “your mother is still living here and she is well” and “George is sold.” To which Bibb responds with a letter possessed of such intelligent and clever dignity that I couldn’t help but contrast it to the obscene Economist review complaining that Edward Baptist overstated the horrors of slavery.
You wish to be remembered to King and Jack. I am pleased, sir, to inform you that they are both here, well, and doing well. They are both living in Canada West. They are now the owners of better farms than the men are who once owned them.
You may perhaps think hard of us for running away from slavery, but as to myself, I have but one apology to make for it, which is this: I have only to regret that I did not start at an earlier period. I might have been free long before I was. But you had it in your power to have kept me there much longer than you did. I think it is very probable that I should have been a toiling slave on your plantation today, if you had treated me differently. –Futility Closet
Wow. Can we get a list of every corporations who’s gone full d-bag in GamerGate so we can avoid them?
The whole Zoe Quinn thing is mind-boggling to me. What she does in her personal life is just that, personal, and her sleeping with a journalist did not affect the reviews of her game ( my source is the Kotaku itself: http://kotaku.com/in-recent-days-ive-been-asked-several-times-about-a-pos-1624707346).
The only reason I see for that witch-hunting is plain and simple misogyny taken to extreme levels. And that’s very worrying.
While its not hard to believe the GG article, since when did white men have trouble finding supporters, it does have a “the lurkers support me in email” feel to it.
Yea I am gonna believe the writings of a self confessed hater. I have however stopped buying any item related to the ones that actually agreed to pull ads. I just built a new desktop. I did not purchase any Intel hardware nor adobe apps. They tend to forget that unlike anyone who perhaps is still living at home, I have the disposable income to buy the overpriced gaming items.
The problem with the boycott of Gawker by Mercedes Benz, Intel, Adobe, et.al., is that if you wipe through the gloss of Gawker, you find their own ethics questionable. They were very vocal in renouncing Huffington Post for not paying their interns, yet Gawker didn’t/doesn’t either. Losing the millions of advertising dollars is a huge hit. But the interns were not paid with any of that money. That isn’t to say that I am not worried of these corporations stance, I am. But it is extremely difficult to wade in support of Gawker. Plus, Brietbart. Such a beacon of respectability. I didn’t read the article, I just took a shower and don’t want to feel unclean.
To bring it back to books, John Scalzi is on their hit list. He responds: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2014/10/23/how-to-boycott-me-i-mean-really-boycott-me/. It’s a thing of beauty.
I am happy that Adobe cleaned up it’s code. But if the data is encrypted, I remain concerned. What are they grabbing and why? I wonder whether this has any ramifications for publishers. Does any of the data swept up by Adobe, such as records of other ebooks, get passed on to publishers?
Hi Janet,
Thank you for including that civil, yet ironic correspondence between Henry Bibb and his former master William Gatewood.
“Liberty forever.” I just love that line.
I loved reading the correspondence between Bibb and Gatewood. Thank you for sharing that.
Wow, those letters! Thanks for sharing.
The Dunne thing sadly lacks the power to shock me after some of the Kickstarter and GoFundMe stuff I’ve seen lately. I saw a published author soliciting “sponsorship” for NaNoWriMo yesterday ($500 & up!). I just don’t get it, but apparently we’ve turned the corner on the “ask and you shall receive” new paradigm of funding everything from art to prom.
In other news: I feel really, really old.
Note that Brietbart is a rightwing nut job site, and take their contentions with a grain of salt. It is true that a couple of sites have lost advertising, but I interpret that as running away from controversy rather than affinity for the Gamergate gentlemen.
@Deb: Thank you for the Scalzi link. He has a link to a Bingocard of possible lame Gamergater sentence starters in his comments section that was hilarious. I’ve become a big fan of John Scalzi this last year. I haven’t read a single book of his, but I follow him on Twitter and I’ve seen him fighting the good fight. A year and a half? ago there was a shit storm over the treatment of women in Sci fi that he led the charge in stomping out. Now he’s bravely stepping forward and telling Gamergate to take this crap and shove it. If I ever met him IRL I’d turn into a giggly fan girl and run up to him to shake his hand, And I guess I’d have to buy a book….:)
The letters between the former slave and his former master were jarring. What jumps out at the reader is, that in the end, the former slave was mos def the master of the English language.
Thanks Deb for the link to the John Scalzi piece. It “is” a thing of beauty.
I enjoyed reading the letters from Bibb to Gatewood……thank you.
Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne led an interesting life both professionally and domestically. I would go to see a film about them, but the Kickstarter campaign rubs me the wrong way.
@Michele Mills: if you want to try something by John Scalzi, The Android’s Dream was really great and funny. I listened to it on audio and loved it.
Heh. The guy saying he is getting secret messages from executives at AAA publishers saying yay Gamer Gate? News to those executives working at the AAA publishers!
For the record, I work for the second-biggest AAA publisher of video games and the support for women at our company is at an all-time high with the offices rallied around and fiercely protecting people, and this has been the office/spam mail list talk for the last month… not a single person has even tried to say “well there are two sides” or “you know BOTH sides are at fault” when it comes to this stuff. Full stop, people are saying THIS IS NOT OKAY at every level — I have NEVER seen this kind of support, it is incredible and I am thankful for it, but it should also be a no-brainer. Friends of mine? Work at the other two of the big three. Same thing. Oh, folks at the console manufacturers? SAME thing. The people who make games are saying “This is fucked up, stop!”.
But you know, this guy. He’s got secret messages. From EXECUTIVES! We should believe him because he says it’s true, and everyone knows men don’t lie. Especially not on the internet.
Oh, and car companies learned that women were their largest market years ago, so I sincerely doubt the official Mystery Car Manufacturer’s statement is “insulting men is JUST AS BAD as assaulting women”.
The Bibb/Gatewood letters made me curious to know more of these people’s stories. What became of them? Did Mr. Bibb ever see his mother again? Poor George. Did he ever gain his freedom? What even possessed Gatewood to write that letter? So many unanswered questions.