Thursday News: AAP numbers released, Hungary wants to tax the internet, NY court strikes down cyberbullying law, and The Poetry Brothel
Publishing Newsaudiobooks / brothel / children's lit / cyberbullying / Ebooks / First-Amendment / hardcovers / Internet / poetry / publishing / taxesComments Off on Thursday News: AAP numbers released, Hungary wants to tax the internet, NY court strikes down cyberbullying law, and The Poetry Brothel
Children’s fuels 2014 growth in US – The Association of American Publishers have released their numbers regarding what is and isn’t selling in US publishing. In addition to the boom represented by kid lit, audiobooks are on the rise (26.2%) and hardcovers saw a very minor decrease (0.3%). Ebook revenue is reported to have grown by 7.5% for January through July, as well.
Children’s drove a rise across trade publishing in the US generally throughout the period measured. Overall, the entire trade publishing sector was up 4.1% for the first seven months of the year, boosted by children’s and YA which experienced a 25.8% rise. Adult fiction and non-fiction dipped by 2.2% in comparison. –The Bookseller
Close To 100,000 Hungarian Demonstrators Protest Internet Usage Tax – I was listening to this story on BBC radio today, and could not find one story that captured the complexity of that newscast, including on BBC.com. NPR, at least, pulls from a number of stories, and really this is a pretty interesting story to follow, because it involves a lot of different dynamics, from an asserted need for freedom of speech and information (a number of the Hungarians interviewed in the story I heard talked about this extensively), the need to build infrastructure in a country that has a relatively low personal income tax (the government has now promised to use the money to build broadband in remote areas), and the political strategy of taxation on a resource that people already pay to use. A lot of relevant issues here, not just for Hungary both for many countries, developing and developed (e.g. net neutrality in the US).
According to Reuters, at first, the government planned to tax data transfers at a rate of 62 cents per gigabyte, but faced with protests, it decided to cap the tax at $2.89 per month for individuals and $20.62 a month for corporations.
The concession, however, was not enough to keep Hungarians from the streets. –NPR
NY high court says anti-cyberbullying law won’t pass First Amendment muster – So here’s the thing: these kinds of laws often have to go through an evolution, because lawmakers want to cover every single eventuality, which inevitably covers a lot of perfectly legal, legitimate, and in some cases desirable speech. “Vague” and “overly broad” are two of the most common terms used in rejecting a policy or statute on free speech grounds. Like how negative book reviews are in no way, shape, or form “cyberbullying.”
The court took issue with the county’s legislation, adopted in 2010, which defined the crime of cyberbullying as any act of communicating or causing a communication to be sent by mechanical or electronic means, including posting statements on the Internet or through a computer or email network; disseminating embarrassing or sexually explicit photographs; disseminating private, personal, false or sexual information; or sending hate mail, with no legitimate private, personal or public purpose and with the intent to harass, annoy, threaten, abuse, taunt, intimidate, torment, humiliate or otherwise inflict significant emotional harm on another person.
The New York court recognized that bullying “has been exacerbated by technological innovations and the widespread dissemination of electronic information using social media sites.” However, the court noted that its plain language showed the statute to be of “alarming breadth.” –ABA Journal
The Poetry Brothel – In a cultural environment where poetry is not ubiquitously in vogue, this is an interesting concept. At least it extends to both men and women, and it’s clever as hell. Not sure how ironized the “whoring” is, but it seems to me that in addition to private readings, there should be something about getting a poem written in return for a fee. Have any of you attended or participated?
The Poetry Brothel is a unique and immersive poetry event that takes poetry outside classrooms and lecture halls and places it in the lush interiors of a bordello. Based in concept on the fin-de-siecle bordellos in New Orleans and Paris, many of which functioned as safe havens for fledgling, avant-garde artists, The Poetry Brothel’s “Madame” presents a rotating cast of poets as “whores,” each operating within a carefully constructed character, who impart their work in public readings, spontaneous eruptions of poetry, and most distinctly, as purveyors of private, one-on-one poetry readings in back rooms. –The Poetry Brothel
