Science Fiction writers respond to DMCA-takedown kerfuffle -- UPDATED
UPDATE: SFWA announces suspending e-Piracy committee, 9-3-07:
The SFWA Board has just passed the following motion:
Motion: That, effective immediately, all of the activities of the current ePiracy Committee be suspended and the Committee itself be disbanded until such time as the Board has had the opportunity to review the legal ramifications of sending out any additional DMCA notices, as well as to explore other methods by which SFWA may be able to assist authors in defending their individual rights, while ensuring that any such activity will not unduly expose SFWA to negative legal ramifications.
Further, that the Board shall issue a call for a temporary, exploratory committee of between five and nine individuals to investigate the views of the membership on issues of copyright, authors rights, what role the membership would like to see SFWA take on these matters and what level is risk (legal, public relations or otherwise) is acceptable to the membership in regards to that role, and what - if any - public policy statement SFWA might issue on these subjects on behalf of its membership.
Finally, that the Board, in conjunction with the findings of the above committee and its own deliberations, will work to develop a new, permanent committee with a clear matrix of operations and goals, whose purposes shall include, but not necessarily be limited to protecting the copyrights of our member authors who desire such protection in a way that complies with the applicable laws, and to help educate both our membership and the public at large in regards to copyright law.
Original post:
In an unfortunate series of events, the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA), of which I am a member, sent a DMCA takedown notice to a text file-sharing site, Scribd, which demanded the removal of copyright-infringing files. The list, however, was flawed, and pointed to some documents which had been legally uploaded. One of which, as bad luck would have it, was the first CC-licensed science fiction novel, Cory Doctorow's "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom."
Particularly unfortunate, since Cory is one of the bloggers at BoingBoing, which obviously featured the story. This was followed closely by coverage at top sf discussion site Making Light, and, as a final kick in the teeth, Slashdot. Then, Katy bar the door, it was off and running in the blogosphere. It made SFWA look pretty bad.
Here's what CNET had to say:
"Was SFWA wrong? There's no doubt in my mind that Burt [the chair of the e-piracy committee] mishandled the situation. He had a duty under the DMCA to have "a good faith belief" that each listed document was illegally posted, and the even stronger duty to claim authority to enforce the creator's copyright "under penalty of perjury." Listing documents that were legally posted and documents which SFWA had no authority to control, seriously undermined the rest of the claim.
Also, the claim simply didn't comply with the structural requirements of a takedown notice, and I think it's pretty clear that Burt either didn't know or didn't care what those requirements are. His email makes it sound like he was just trying to intimidate the operator of the pirate site, and intimidation is a terrible substitute for proper legal action."
The bright spot is that SFWA's president, Michael Capobianco, quickly released a statement:
"I want to respond to the flurry of activity that has resulted from Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) mistakenly identifying several works as infringing copyright. First, some background. There have been discussions within SFWA for several months regarding websites that allow users to upload documents of all sorts for other users to download and share. Many hundreds of copyrighted texts have been put online at these sites, and the number is growing quickly. Some SFWA members complained about the pirating of their works to SFWA's e-Piracy Committee and authorized the committee to do something about it. SFWA contacted scribd.com, one of these sites, about removing these authors' works and generated a list of infringing works to be removed.
Unfortunately, this list was flawed and the results were not checked. At least three works tagged as copyright infringements were nothing of the sort. I have personally apologized to the writers and editors of those works. If you are a creator who has had material removed and has not yet been contacted, please email me at president@sfwa.org.
SFWA's intention was to remove from scribd.com only works copyrighted by SFWA members who had authorized SFWA to act on their behalf. This kind of error will not happen again."
Just want folks to know that there are many members of SFWA who were outraged by this episode, and I was among those who called for the resignation of the chair of the e-piracy committee in a note to the board of directors. While I do not condone piracy, I respect due process and the rights of businesses — even file sharing sites which can potentially host infringing files.
As a gesture of support, I've CC-licensed my award-winning short story, "Jigoku no mokushiroku" and posted it on Scribd.
All SFWAns are not knuckle-dragging troglodytes. Some of us actually try to see the future. Honest.