Licensing restrictions for ebooks

It's safe to say that I read a ridiculous amount of material every day. I'm a speed reader by nature, so the 300-500 items I get daily through my RSS feeds don't seem like much. I read so fast that I'd probably be bored otherwise.

It has its drawbacks, of course. It's very nearly pointless for me to buy books casually anymore; they'll last me a few hours, if that, and then I have to either keep them and reread them, or take them to a second hand store or a willing friend. I do enjoy them, but it gets to be a little bit wasteful.

Ebooks were the perfect answer. I could download books to my little iPod touch, and read them when I have an hour or two to spare. I have classics like Sherlock Holmes that I never get tired of, and a few other free titles from Harlequin and whatnot. I didn't feel the need to buy any ebooks, because I hadn't seen any that really caught my interest - or that would justify the cost.

They're very much something to fill the time when I'm bored and out somewhere that has no books or other diversions around. I have said that I'm not all that enthusiastic about ebooks, but again, that's mostly to do with the price vs. functionality; I always have my iPod with me, and although I prefer real books, it doesn't cost me anything to download an app and grab a few out of copyright titles to keep me amused.

All that might have changed today.

I was reading through my feeds, and I happened to come across a post by Natalie Whipple which mentions a book called Into the Wild Nerd Yonder by Julie Halpern. Well, suffice to say, she had me at the title - I wanted to read it, and I immediately dropped everything to look at it a little more. Then I decided I really, really wanted to read it - but it looked like the kind of book that would only last me a few hours. No problem, I thought, I can get it on the iPod if it's not too expensive. I won't have another book clogging up the house, and I'll have another happy little diversion for the next time I'm out and about.

After a further investigation, this is what I found:


In case you can't read it, that's Amazon telling me that I can't have the ebook. It's not available in Europe. I could buy the hardback version from Amazon.co.uk for a mere £9.61, but I don't want the hardback. I want the damn ebook, and I want it downloaded to my iPod so I can read it tonight, if I choose - not in two days time when it ships to me.

Hello, Julie Halpern? And her publisher? I want to give you money. I want to buy your ebook. More than that, I want your ebook to be the first one I actually spend money on. Right now, you're stopping me from giving you money, and I have to question what exactly is going on if you're happy with that.

I mean, I do understand that there are licensing restrictions for physical books. You want to be able to sell the rights to publishers in different countries and different languages, even if the distinction between the US and the English-speaking parts of Europe is largely irrelevant. But really, ebooks? From Amazon? The product is exactly the same. The company you're dealing with is exactly the same. The company sells your book outside the US. Why on earth would you only allow them the ebook rights for within the US?

If this were a movie that had just been released in the US and wasn't expected in other markets for a while, people would already be going to their preferred method of piracy to find it. This is because people will get what they want, when they want, in the form that they want, and trying to sell them what you want them to buy is a waste of time if it doesn't match up.

As for me, I'll have to settle for Sherlock Holmes, and accept that I will not be giving my money to Julie Halpern and her publisher for the time being.

[added by edit]

Alright, after reading Natalie's comment below, and commenting myself, I want to set the record straight here. My post above implies that I'm blaming Julie for the lack of her ebook over here.

That's not what I intended.

I apologise for being a bit of a jerk. No excuses; I take this stuff seriously, and getting frustrated is no reason to get pissy as well with someone for a situation out of their control. So - sorry, Julie. Really. I don't blame you at all.

When I asked, "why on earth would you only allow them the ebook rights for within the US?" I thought I was addressing the publisher. It doesn't look like that though, and for that I apologise. I'll be more clear in future.

As penance, I shall order the hardback from Amazon immediately.

A question of disbelief

So, I met with a few other writer friends today, and we got talking about characters in situations with which we, personally, might not be familiar. For example, I know nothing about New York. Hence, I know nothing about what life is like there, nor what trains run in the subway, what slang people use, what neighbourhoods are there. I might want to set a story in New York, but I doubt I could do so and make it believeable to New Yorkers.

Tiny, tiny things make up the cultural narrative in any distinct area, and what may sound fine to a outsider would be jarring to a native. One of my friends - let's call her Duri - is writing a story set in Ireland. She's English, however, and although we speak the same language, it's not quite equivalent. We use different phrases or wordings; she says, 'I feel ill', but I say, 'I feel sick'. I notice immediately when the things her characters say don't sound properly 'Irish'. If I ever set a story in England, I've no doubt she could point out exactly where my characters say things that are not properly 'English' - and that's before I delve into the regional dialects that are far more pronounced than the various Irish accents.

I've no doubt that people can indeed write stories that are set outside the settings familiar with them, but it certainly adds an extra level of difficulty to the job. The ideal situation is, of course, having a native of the culture present who can proof read and point out corrections; the next best thing is actual experience of the culture, then after that, extensive research and analysis.

I've noticed some writers have a real talent for it. Another friend - let's call him Shanks - wrote a suberb WWII-alternate-history short story a while back, and both Duri and I had a chance to read it. I'm reasonably sure Shanks has very little first-hand experience of modern England, but his particular forte is characterisation and dialogue, and the story (set in the wartime English countryside) felt very, very authentic to me. Duri agreed that it felt authentic to her as well.

Part of the reason I prefer fantasy or sci-fi settings is because there is generally no question of disbelief. I am in complete control of the cultural narrative, and the reader must accept what my characters say. The only question is maintaining consistency, so that characters from the same cultural background speak and act in similar ways.

Developing a new culture is probably one of the more enjoyable aspects of writing fantasy or sci-fi. While there is still a question of believeability, you are more free to chop and change elements from the modern world and other settings - for example, the Klingon culture from Star Trek uses elements from the Spartans of ancient Greece, but the writers were certainly not limited to that and made changes to adapt those elements to a sci-fi setting.

Anyway, where am I going with this... Cultural settings are very important to a story. Writing in a compelling setting is a huge part of fantasy and sci-fi. It's just a matter of being authentic; making the setting believeable, either in reference to the real world, or through internal consistency.

I've found that reading roleplaying books with information on world-building is very useful when I'm developing a setting. It gets you into the mindset of thinking about how and why the culture works like it does.

This cannot end well

In the aftermath of the High Court decision regarding the three strikes malarky with Eircom, it seems that the licensing authorities in Ireland have decided to start cracking down on all kinds of content both online and offline.

Two stories in particular have crossed my path. The Irish Music Rights Organisation (IMRO) have sent out notices to a number of large, non-profit Irish music blogs that they must buy a license in order to offer MP3s to their readers - files, by the way, that have been sent to them gratis by labels and bands for promotional purposes. The reasoning is thus - these bands and labels have signed up with the IMRO and granted them the exclusive rights to collect songwriting royalties on their behalf. If I understand this corrently, even if they want to give away their music, they can't. The agreement they signed does not allow it.

Dare I say that this is all kinds of stupid? The blogs are doing free promotion, and getting people talking about music. The vast majority do it for the love of music, not because they want to get paid. They make no money. If this does occur, it can only put a serious dent in the promotion and discussion of Irish artists online. Less promotion = less people hearing about music = less sales.

The second story is about the licensing of cinemas in Ireland. The IMRO is in talks to increase the rates that they charge cinemas across the country - 1% of their gross box-office takings, regardless of the size of the cinema. At the moment, the rates vary depending on the size. That's not a cut of the profits; it's a cut of all money they take in, and 1% is a lot when you're already on slim margins. This is apparently because “we have an obligation to treat all cinema operators in a fair and consistent manner.”

I'm not sure what to make of it. The whole Irish economy is being slammed right now, and all this seems to be doing is squeezing businesses even further. According to the article, they want to backdate payments for the last five years - that can easily put the cinemas who are just holding on right now out of business entirely.

This just cannot end well. I can't imagine many artists who are signed up to the IMRO would be all that happy about these greedy, strong-arm tactics. With the ability of the Internet to provide a promotional platform for bands, the question may indeed become whether an artist would want to be signed up to the IMRO anyway. Make no mistake about this; there's a market there for bands who choose to retain all rights and completely avoid the IMRO, IRMA, PPI and others. Take a song, for which you own the written copyright because you wrote it. Record it yourself, and you have the recording copyright. Sell the song to a business under your own commercial license, granting them the right to play it in their shop for however long you both agree on - forever, maybe? - for a small, set payment. You get a little bit of money, and free promotion of your song in that shop. They get a license to play music that doesn't bankrupt them.

Can you imagine if a label decided to do this? I could easily envision one going into a shop and setting up their sound system as a direct stream from the label's servers which contains all their bands' songs, and the music is delivered as a service which costs a small monthly fee. The shop would get affordable music, and the label would be able to control their marketing and promotion. And that's to say nothing of the feedback you could get; statistics on the most popular songs, sales figure comparisons, etc. What if there was a public computer in the store where customers could register their interest in the music being played, or show their interest in a particular song? The possibilities are endless!

This does assume, though, that the label hasn't already signed up with any of the licensing authorities.

I can't be the only person who can come up with a workable business plan that bypasses the IMRO. So... I wonder are they really working in the interests of the musicians, or are they only interested in their own revenue streams?

Oh Hollywood, why did you have to ruin Iron Man 2?

I saw Iron Man 2 last night, in case it wasn't already very obvious. I've taken a while to digest it, and now that I have properly marshalled my thoughts, I'm prepared to inflict them on you, the reader.

I loved the first Iron Man movie. It was a shining gem in the sea of rubbish that normally flows out of Hollywood; proof, right then and there, that you could have a comic book action movie that was also well-written and a joy to watch.

Robert Downey Jr. made the role of Tony Stark his own. He had the perfect balance of irreverence, decadence, egotism and wit. According to Jeff Bridges, they didn't have much of a script to work with, and much of the interaction between him and Robert was improvised. But the result was nothing short of perfect; the banter between Tony, Obediah Stane (Jeff) and Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) clicked together naturally. The set pieces didn't feel like set pieces at all - everything flowed, just as it should.

I will also give great credit to Iron Man for the character of Pepper Potts. Hollywood is undeniably sexist, and very often apparently allergic to the idea of strong female characters, so the appearance of such a powerful woman in an action film targeted at men was delightfully surprising. Pepper Potts is the one in control of Tony Stark's life; she is his balance, his help, and his shield, and throughout the movie there's never any question that he desperately needs her... but she doesn't necessarily need him. She's willing to walk away to protect herself, willing to call Tony out for his bullshit, and willing to tell him when he hurts her - and he responds to her, like a human being with actual emotions would.

Pepper walks into the dragon's den to get information for Tony and stares down Stane, the bad guy. She leads the SHIELD agents personally to the facility to arrest him. And then, wonder of happy wonders, Tony becomes the damsel in distress as she activates the arc reactor that destroys Stane. That, my friend, is a normal businesswoman taking out a supervillain. It's very satisfying to watch if you are a normal businesswoman.

I did so love the ending as well. We expect the hero and heroine to kiss, because that is the tired old Hollywood trope, but once again Iron Man throws a curveball; Tony brings up the night on the balcony, and Pepper just as quickly shuts him down in a not-so-subtle reminder that she can see right through him. But the brief exchange afterwards: "'Will that be all, Mr. Stark?' 'Yes, that will be all, Ms. Potts.'" They're back to being playful, even affectionate, because they know each other so well, and the moment is so wonderfully intimate that the audience never needs to see them kiss.

Oh, but Iron Man 2. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

The first movie started off with thumping rock music, witty banter from Tony that nailed the character perfectly, and pace-setting action. The sequel starts with... a montage.

And not just any montage, oh no. A montage of Tony Stark doing kick ass things that are only shown in newspapers, cut with the new villain slooooowwwwwwllly building his electric whips of doom. That leads into Tony landing on a stage in the Iron Man suit, opening the Stark Expo, getting a summons to appear in court over the suit being a weapon... No. My interest is lost. Robert Downey Jr. is just as good as I expect him to be, but his lines are not up to par, not as punchy, and everything is unfocused from the start. There's this villain, see? But also Tony is dying! And there's a senator who wants to take his suit! And his arms-selling rival is in his face! And the company is falling apart, and he makes Pepper the CEO!

The actors make the best of it, but good grief, what little they had to work with. Pepper changes from strong and powerful to stressed and weak. She's been running Stark Industries for months on Tony's behalf, but as soon as she's made CEO, we are shown her facing the strain of the position before finally resigning at the end of the movie. And the snide comments... Hammer, played by Sam Rockwell, tells her "Now you're thinking like a CEO," before he's taken away by the police. The news report questions her qualifications and abilities. And Tony himself goes from eccentric to borderline psychotic. We are meant to believe that this is the same man who said, "I shouldn't be alive... unless it was for a reason. I'm not crazy, Pepper. I just finally know what I have to do. And I know in my heart that it's right"? That conviction that rang so true in the first movie is gone from the second, and it's apparently because Tony knows he's dying - but he's already faced death several times! It's already changed him! And he's spent the last six months fighting around the globe in an armoured suit, for god's sake.

Alright, I get it. Tony Stark is a playboy. He does his own thing, always. But they're beating the audience over the head with that fact, and it all seems a bit fake when you've seen the first movie and you witnessed the man he became.

The shennanigans with him dying, and the stuff with SHIELD returning with Nick Fury to help him find the cure, were nothing but hackneyed plot devices in order to let Tony play around with his hologram build interface and make himself another, better suit. If you remove all that, you get to the guts of what the plot might have been; US government wants to take the suit and give it to Hammer to weaponise. Tony doesn't want to give it up. After embarrassing both the government and Hammer, Whiplash comes on the scene and embarrasses Tony in return - and Hammer grabs a hold of him, and convinces him to make something like the Iron Man suit. A double-cross ensues, and a cat and mouse fight develops between Tony Stark and Whiplash before the final battle.

I think I would have liked that movie. Mickey Rourke did a great job as Whiplash when he was actually on screen, and he deserved to have more time. He deserved to be a bigger, badder character.

Overall, I think when the executives realised they had a successful movie franchise on their hands they sat down with Jon Favreau and dictated to him what had to be in the movie, whether it was a sensible choice or not. Here's what I think they insisted on:

• A certain number of flashy fights, obviously
• Nick Fury - advertise the Avengers movie!
• Huge special effects like the hologram interface; "The fanboys loved it! Make it bigger!"
• Scarlett Johanssen as eye candy - and I feel so bad for her because she can act, but they didn't give her the chance to do much more than look pretty and beat up goons here (oh, and flash her boobs when she was changing in the car. Real classy, guys. Seriously.)
• A reduction in Pepper's role and alteration of her character - no strong women allowed, what if the target male audience feel intimidated? Oh, her part in the first movie, that the male audience totally accepted - just a fluke, can't risk it here
  
• Cranking up the crazy for Tony Stark, because LOOK AT HIM HE CAN DO WHATEVER HE WANTS AND HE'S RICH AND DYING
• Cranking up the stupid on Iron Man - "He fought one big mech in the last movie, let's make him fight LOTS of big mechs here!"
• The hero gets the kiss at the end - versus the scene at the end of Iron Man 1? Zero impact
  

The whole movie turned into a chaotic mess at the end. It became a series of set pieces loosely connected by random shreds of plot, all sound and fury, signifying nothing. The redeeming features were always the actors, and what they made of the roles; Robert Downey Jr. glowed again as Tony Stark, and although I thought the banter between him and Gwyneth Paltrow didn't shine like it did in the first movie, they still had their moments.

It's like Avatar all over again. It could have been great, and it wasn't. It could have been better than the first movie, and it wasn't. It was ruined by bad writing, like a lot of Hollywood films; they could have made a good movie, but they decided to make a movie that they think panders to the target male audience - who, if the movie is any indication, supposedly have the attention span of a goldfish, are easily distracted by shiny objects, and are scared of women with actual personalities.

I'm getting very, very tired of this. Really. It boggles my mind that a studio could see the success of a movie like Iron Man and somehow completely miss the fact that that a huge chunk of that phenomenal earning power comes from stellar writing. Iron Man 2 will probably still be a moderate success, but it will never bring in as much money as the first movie - and Marvel Studios have only themselves to blame.

I now have no reason to go see Iron Man 3, if there is indeed a third one. Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter said it best, I think; "Everything fun and terrific about Iron Man, a mere two years ago, has vanished with its sequel. In its place, Iron Man 2 has substituted noise, confusion, multiple villains, irrelevant stunts and misguided story lines." Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice...

Twittering away

The name 'Twitter' always brings to my mind the image of a pair of middle-aged Victorian ladies gossiping behind their pretty paper fans. I just imagine that that's exactly what they would sound like. It's onomatopoeia at its finest.

I joined Twitter, despite my usual adversion to anything to do with social networking. I had to ask myself, why would I avoid it? What am I so afraid of? It's a collective conversation; it's nothing to be worried about, when you already have a public blog and frequently wander off on non-writing related tangents.

So I joined, and I've started to follow a host of literary agents and authors whose blogs I read every day. And I quickly realised that I am terrified of them.

Isn't that bizarre? I'm actually frightened of these people taking notice of me. As a subscriber to their blogs, I'm only an email address at best. As a follower on Twitter... well, that's a little closer. A little more open.

I emailed one author in particular a few days ago. There wasn't anything strange or outlandish about it; I was commenting on their blog, and the comment form didn't work for me. But I haven't gotten a response yet, and it's filled me with this irrational dread that I've unknowingly made a social faux pas.

This is the kind of thing you ponder when you're a little bit socially inept by design. The stereotype of the genius-who-doesn't-really-understand-people has a lot of truth in it. I might be smarter than the average bear, but being smarter doesn't help much when everyone around you is speaking another language.

I'm certainly smart enough to know that my grasp of social communication isn't all that good, and I need to be careful that I don't say the wrong thing. It happened often enough when I was in school - oh, the boiling embarrassment of some of those moments still haunt me today. I'm not repeating that madness again, so I have to tread as lightly as I can.

I ponder, and after a while, I start to fall into the old habits of trying to analyse the tiny things that make up human interactions. I start looking for the patterns, the reasons, the map that will show me the appropriate way to behave. It's in the words, and how you say them; whether you move like this or like that; how far away or how close you stand; where you look when you talk, and when you are silent; your expression, your laugh, your stance.

I could walk up to any one of my friends, and tell them something about one of their mannerisms. I know that one has a habit of twirling a pen, or a mobile, or whatever he has to hand, and I can tell him exactly how he does it. Another has a way of clicking his tongue every time he's explaining something. Another has a gesture he always makes. Another uses her phone in a particular way, or laughs a certain way. I've learned enough to know how to act without needing to analyse the situation most of the time, but I still pick up on these things. It helps when I'm writing character interactions, of course; I have a stronger concept of how they should behave, and a clearer picture of what's going on.

It's not my native language, though. I'm still feeling my way along in the sphere of social networking, analysing what's being said and how people are saying it in order to understand what I should be saying and how I should say it. I'm still building the map.

Not going there

So, I realise I have some liberal opinions on the nature of the copyright debate. I realise my opinions regarding stuff like the three strikes law tend to be on the side of consumers, not copyright-holders, and that will probably not change until the copyright-holders start dealing with organisations who understand the nature of the Internet (i.e. not the IRMA, for one).

I'm perfectly willing to look at the other side and see what they have to say, in the interests of fair debate and whatnot. But there are some places I am not going, some discussions I am not getting involved in. This is one of them.

Johan Schlüter is a lawyer with the IFPI, a Danish anti-piracy group. He declared that "child pornography is great... It is great because politicians understand child pornography. By playing that card, we can get them to act, and start blocking sites. And once they have done that, we can get them to start blocking file sharing sites". This is according to Christian Engström, the MEP for the Pirate Party.

I've been trying to work out in what context Mr. Schlüter thought his remarks were justified and sane.

Let's take child pornography, a thing so vile that there are no words to really describe the hurt it causes to the innocent, the eradication of which is one of the foremost concerns of every developed nation. It evokes a strong emotional response, because this thing is so vile that we cannot bear to imagine it happening to any child.

Mr. Schlüter, however, doesn't seem to think like that. Child porn is great because we can use it to get the politicians to do what we want. All the pain and suffering that's a part of it, all the lives damaged by it... no. It's ok. We can use it as leverage.

I'm not going there. I'm not getting into that discussion. If someone can't grasp the concept of 'child porn = bad no matter what the situation is', then I'm honestly not sure I'd be comfortable being in the same room as them, never mind have a debate with them. His comments reveal a complete disregard for the very real pain that children are exposed to every day. I can't even begin to comprehend what would go through the mind of a survivor of abuse related to child pornography if they read them. 'Trigger warning' just isn't going to cut it.

This is who the copyright-holders choose to deal with? This is who they allow to speak for them? I am truly gobsmacked. There is more in the article from Engström, including talk about filtering, but it pales in significance really. Copyright infringement is irrelevant in comparison to real human suffering, and I hope someone can speak frankly to Johan Schlüter and explain this concept to him.

The stories we tell each other

Two posts in a single day. Who would have thought I'd ever have so much to talk about?

I read a lot of blogs, and inevitably I follow my nose through their links and find my way to other blogs and websites. Today, I've wandered into a blog by an author called Neesha Meminger, and I've read a post of hers that talks about bullying.

I was bullied as well, a long time ago. Shut up, sit down, get over it. It's not all that important. It's your fault. Stop making waves. Stop getting people into trouble. Maybe if you tried to make friends, they wouldn't be so mean.

It's so easy to tell that story, the one where it's not really bullying. The other one, where you have to face up to the needlessly cruel things people do, is a lot harder. Maybe it's because you did something, and you can't admit that it wasn't right. Maybe it's because you don't want to say it happened to you. Maybe it just makes you too uncomfortable.

It's so easy to tell children the stories that won't hurt them, or shake them, or make them feel uncomfortable. It's easy to tell them that nobody is racist or sexist anymore, and persecution doesn't exist. They hear that narrative and just brush it off when they are racist, sexist, or when they persecute someone. She started it. She's just making trouble. I was only joking.

Writers should tell the hard stories. We dream that the world can be different to what it actually is all the time; dreaming of a voice for the silenced is not beyond us. Those narratives are harder to tell, but they are very, very powerful, and they can change the world for the better.

I, like many others, still carry the scars of the easy stories. I have a duty not to let them stand.