Wednesday News: Two lawsuits, an author oversteps, and classic LGBT children’s books

JanetPublishing News50 Shades / children's literature / copyright / diversity / E. L. James / Film / LGBTQ / music / piracy / privacy / readers8 Comments

iiNet versus Dallas Buyers Club case starts with a reference to The Castle – A very interesting Australian privacy case involving Dallas Buyers Club, LLC, which owns the rights to the Dallas Buyers Club film, and their attempt to force iiNet to turn over identifying information on thousands of their users. DBC used a software program called MaverickEye to cull IP addresses of people who supposedly downloaded the film via torrent. Apparently they’ve already gotten almost 5K IP addresses and they say that can get even more on their next pass with the software. Then there’s this:

Both the courts and iiNet are worried that Dallas Buyers Club will use a technique known as speculative invoicing.

This involves sending a legal threat to someone saying that unless they pay a sum of money they will take them to court. Often that sum of money is a few thousand dollars, when the actual loss to the rights holders would have been no more than a few hundred, or even only $5 as iiNet’s lawyers argued yesterday.

People often choose to settle, whether the sum is fair or not, because it will cost even more than that to take the matter to court. –news.com.au

Copyright Mixtape: How The “Blurred Lines” Lawsuit Could Change Music Forever – If you’ve been following Marvin Gaye’s Estate’s claim against Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams over Blurred Lines, you know that the case is already somewhat unusual because Thicke had apparently made some comments suggesting that the Gaye song had been an inspiration. But it doesn’t end there, because not all of the Gaye song is actually copyrighted; that is, not every note and riff is recorded in the sheet music submitted to the US Copyright Office. And the judge has ordered both parties to come up with a version of the Gaye song that only includes its copyrightable elements, which the jury will use to decide the case. Which the Gaye Estate believes will leave a great deal of music unprotected and even unprotectable.

The Gaye estate agreed to this exercise only under protest, arguing that, basically, if we limit copyright protection to the things that copyright protects, it’ll lead to a free-for-all over the unprotected elements of other older recordings, like the Beatles and Elvis. In their words, “Adopting such a position would create dangerous and potentially devastating precedent to the owners of such intellectual property.”

To that, the Thicke and Williams camp says: well, yeah. Copying the uncopyrighted elements of a song is just a matter of musical influence, and it’s how the system works. See, e.g., Interpol trying their hardest to be Joy Division, Lady Gaga doing the whole Madonna thing, the now-sorta-chuckleworthy allegations that Coldplay just rips off Radiohead, etc., etc. –Ratter

E.L. James crosses a line – ABB Episode 4,876 (possibly an exaggeration), wherein a reader condemns 50 Shades for rape and abuse, and E.L. James exemplifies the many reasons an author should never try to “correct” readers or tell them how to read her books. We all know 50 Shades elicits strong responses, both from readers who love it and readers who hate it, and those responses are on display everywhere right now. So it’s no shocker that James is going to get some criticism, especially in a forum like Twitter. But her response to one comment in particular is Really Not Good. It’s bad enough that James calls this reader “ignorant,” and references a violent, book-throwing gif (of Melissa McCarthy in The Heat), but in this case the reader bases her reaction on being a “survivor of abuse,” which just makes James’s response appear jaw droopingly insensitive and inappropriate. Even though I disagree with the reader’s perspective on the book, I think James is doing more harm than good for her case with this kind of reaction. –Twitter

The Best LGBT Children’s Books: A Sweet and Assuring Celebration of Diversity and Difference – When I saw this post on Twitter, I figured it was a listing of new children’s books. Also, I always want to add “Q” to LGBT. Anyway, this piece is a survey of classics, and it’s really a lovely discussion of books from Heather Has Two Mommies, to King and King (two princes fall in love and leave the princess standing on the sidelines), to Maurice Sendak’s We Are All in the Dumps with Jack and Guy. Of Sendak’s book, Maria Popova writes:

Created at the piercing pinnacle of the AIDS plague and amid an epidemic of homelessness, it is a highly symbolic, sensitive tale that reads almost like a cry for mercy, for light, for resurrection of the human spirit at a time of incomprehensible heartbreak and grimness. It is, above all, a living monument to hope — one built not on the denial of hopelessness but on its delicate demolition.

But the book’s true magic lies in its integration of Sendak’s many identities — the son of Holocaust survivors, a gay man witnessing the devastation of AIDS, a deft juggler of darkness and light.

Jack and Guy appear like a gay couple, and their triumph in rescuing the child resembles an adoption, two decades before that was an acceptable subject for a children’s book. “And we’ll bring him up / As other folk do,” the final pages read — and, once again, a double meaning reveals itself as two characters are depicted with wings on their backs, lifting off into the sky, lending the phrase “we’ll bring him up” an aura of salvation. In the end, the three curl up as a makeshift family amidst a world that is still vastly imperfect but full of love. –Brain Pickings

Janet

isn't sure if she's an average Romance reader, or even an average reader, but a reader she is, enjoying everything from literary fiction to philosophy to history to poetry. Historical Romance was her first love within the genre, but she's fickle and easily seduced by the promise of a good read. She approaches every book with the same hope: that she will be filled from the inside out with something awesome that she didnʼt know, didnʼt think about, or didnʼt feel until that moment. And she's always looking for the next mind-blowing read, so feel free to share any suggestions!

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