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The SFWA suicide note
Nov. 30th, 2007 02:21 pmI forgot to post this morning's other reason for being bad-tempered.
Usually when I rant about a professional writer's organisation being run by a clique for a clique, the subject is RWA and its attitude to erotic romance, romance that isn't one-man-one-woman, epublishing, and small press in general.
It's not that I think SFWA's actually any better. It's just that SFWA internal politics don't get up my nose to the same extent. At least, not usually.
One of the first things I saw on LJ this morning was James Nicoll pointing at Charlie Stross going thermonuclear about the latest SFWA nonsense. The background to this... well, suffice it to say that SFWA's anti-piracy committee, in the person of one Andrew Burt, did A Really Dumb Thing earlier this year in attempting to discourage electronic piracy of SFWA members' books. So dumb that he pissed off both the people who think that piracy isn't a problem, and those who think it is. The committee was shut down. A panel was formed to consider how to improve SFWA's handling of such matters in future. A new copyright committee has been formed, with a new remit and new guidelines on how it is to operate.
Guess who's the chair of this new committee...
Making Light has collected links to the blogstorm for your reading pleasure here:
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/009662.html
You could probably power a small country on the wank this is going to generate.
Usually when I rant about a professional writer's organisation being run by a clique for a clique, the subject is RWA and its attitude to erotic romance, romance that isn't one-man-one-woman, epublishing, and small press in general.
It's not that I think SFWA's actually any better. It's just that SFWA internal politics don't get up my nose to the same extent. At least, not usually.
One of the first things I saw on LJ this morning was James Nicoll pointing at Charlie Stross going thermonuclear about the latest SFWA nonsense. The background to this... well, suffice it to say that SFWA's anti-piracy committee, in the person of one Andrew Burt, did A Really Dumb Thing earlier this year in attempting to discourage electronic piracy of SFWA members' books. So dumb that he pissed off both the people who think that piracy isn't a problem, and those who think it is. The committee was shut down. A panel was formed to consider how to improve SFWA's handling of such matters in future. A new copyright committee has been formed, with a new remit and new guidelines on how it is to operate.
Guess who's the chair of this new committee...
Making Light has collected links to the blogstorm for your reading pleasure here:
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/009662.html
You could probably power a small country on the wank this is going to generate.
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