Thank you, everyone, for the great weekend.

(What can I say? I enjoyed the first podcast from the site that I downloaded so much that now I’m trying to get more and more!)

Neil

http://www.flickr.com/photos/debbieohi/sets/72157605279062178/

and am also in progress of posting an online report.

Allison, Jodi and I had a fantastic time as the Music Guests; we loved Balticon. I hope to come back as a regular attendee sometime!

Debbie

1. I completely left out talking about the whole alcohol hand-gel concept - as opposed to anti-bacterial soap, those do work, and kill via direct toxic effect on bacteria and viruses… much in the same way that bleach does. Speaking of which:

2. There are several varieties of bacteria that are resistant to bleach’s killing effects. Fortunately, none of them have caused any significant disease in humans as of yet. Here, I mean “bleach” as in some strong dilution of a pure bleach solution. There are bacteria in hospitals that do cause human disease that have developed the ability to subsist, and thrive, in various cleaning solutions, but these are not typically composed of pure bleach.

See you in a few days!

Thanks for the plug

See you in two weeks…when we let loose the Bad-Ass Faeries en masse!

Best,

D-

Sorry no to be there at the next balticon, a con I always enjoyed.

Stu Shiffman
Seattle

I’ll email you.

-Paul

I’ve heard plenty of chit chat with JCH and almost skipped this episode — i’m gald i didn’t.

I dug what you had to say about the fan “box.”

FanFic would appear to be the ideal application for Creative Commons licensing, though publishers are hardly likely to take CC on board given their leary attitude to anything that might necessitate a lawsuit, especially as CC hasn’t been sufficiently tested in court.

Paul:

As I guessed, there are a few resources on the subject. The one I recommend is the FAQ by http://www.chillingeffects.org. It’s a great little primer, outlines much of what we talked about last night (but doesn’t include the Gone with the Wind ref I discussed), and includes a little more on the trademark angle.

http://www.chillingeffects.org/fanfic/faq.cgi

A thing I wanted to mention: Slavish copying was a bit of a misstatement — its better to say, copying of a character that is uniquely original to the story ( e.g., Spock from Star Trek, Harry Potter). Note: There is no protection for “stock” characters (the gay best friend, or the girl next door), even if you slavishly copy them. These are the characters I discussed as ‘archetypes.’

I’ve been thinking about this a lot and really wondering about the source of the information. I have two theories on this:
1) Lawyers at various publishing firms have been telling authors that reading fan fic about their work, and interacting with fans could possibly open them up to law suits. While this is true, it is not likely. It is even less likely that the law suits would be successful. But if they occur, they would still be a loss of time, energy, and money for the author and the publisher.
2) There is dogma in the industry that is passed between the various employees of publishing houses, agents, and authors. The idea that something could happen to an author if they interact with fans or fan fic authors permeates the culture. And although there is very little likelihood of it happening, maybe even less than getting hit by a bus while crossing the street, the authors are convinced by the dogma that they should not step off this curb.

I liken number 2 to The Monkey Experiment. No one really knows why they tell others not to do something, they heard it and believed it. I think maybe it’s time for the dogma to end and for people to do real risk evaluation on this.

My advice, if you really want to interact with your fans and read their fan fic, talk to a copyright lawyer. Find out how many law suits of this type have ever been filed, what it would cost to fight one if some jerk did file one, and what the possible legal outcome would be.

I see no fault in being risk averse. But it seems to me as though some people are risk averse for the sake of the thing. Risk assessment requires some time and some thought. In this case, the upside is a tighter bond with your fans. Only you can decide if it’s worth it to you.

Also listen to this Conestoga Podcast and read my comments in the article for another example of how some authors seem to not really understand the issues around copyright.

-Paul Fischer

If a fan wanted to sue an author for plagiarism, that fan would have to show that the _words_ and not just the ideas had been copied. But I am not a lawyer. How about interviewing someone who could give a definitive answer on this?

I really liked the discussion about the overuse of antibiotics and explanation of how soap works. There is a bacteria in soil that helps to fight depression. So, this explains why some people love gardening, working with the earth. http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jul/raw-data-is-dirt-the-new-prozac

Thanks for posting to the corrections thread. Just to be clear I probably did say that there were 3000 people or something close to it, and on that account I was wrong.

We appreciate you putting in a correction in the next issue. Is there any chance the correction will include a link to our podcast website?

-Paul

My aplogieis for the errors. I haven’t gone back to the audio of our conversation, but I’m guessing I misheard you in a few places. I’ll get a correction into the magazine as soon as possible. We’ve already closed the August issue, I’m afraid.

-shelly

I had a blast at the time I did the interview and I had even more fun listening to now. And just in time for Balticon, which is great

See you there, and watch out…it’s going to be whirlwind!

My best,

Danielle

-Paul

I disagree. Most of the media went nuts over the headline, that TMPotY was “You”. But the “You” they were talking about is us. The creators and consumers of new media. I think they recognized this as the first time in history anyone could publish their own works to the world and gain an appreciable audience. I see the media’s reaction as one typical to the gate keepers of old media. They made their money by controlling access to the audience, and they see it slipping away.

If I were protecting my pools and yachts I would draw attention to the headline and deliberately misinterpret the whole point of TMPofY, just like most major media did.

As for TMPotY 2007 being THEM!, I don’t want to see not giant ants at Balticon. They are not on the guest list. They are not allowed in. If they show up we will throw berserkers and gophers at them until they leave.

Hope you’ll be there to spend time with Mike & Evo too. Make sure to bring Mellissa with you.

Paul

Other than that, great news on landing Michael & Evo.

i think you really need to register for these things.

Paul Slinger

Talking of gear, I’m looking at the brand new Zoom H4 to replace my minidisk for field recordings - I’m really bummed that I can’t transfer recordings from my 3 year old MD digitally. The H4 is not as stealth as your rig, but it can record 24-bit/96 kHz wavs - great for music production.