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| 2021-06-07 09:39 |
| [Sticky 2] Fanstuff now locked |
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I've decided to f-lock all posts related to my own fic and art (for this reason, which is also locked for added transparency!). If you'd like to get updates on my fanstuff via here, please comment to be added.
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| 2020-01-01 23:53 |
| [Sticky 1] Public service announcement |
| Public |
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I still crosspost here and use IJ for commenting, but my Dreamwidth account is now my home base and contains all the research-related shiny and info. Please visit!
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Welcome to Life is "A science fiction story about what you see when you die. Or: the Singularity, ruined by lawyers."
Tom Scott: Welcome to Life (2.5 min)
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This entry was originally posted at http://fanficforensics.dreamwidth.org/51546.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
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From now on I'll be doing some occasional posting at Symposium, the blog associated with the OTW's journal Transformative Works and Cultures. Symposium is a great place for meta, and I'm thrilled at this chance to contribute. Here's my introduction post.
This entry was originally posted at http://fanficforensics.dreamwidth.org/51373.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
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| 2012-05-04 21:59 |
| E-books, DRM, and restricting access to digital products based on where buyers live |
| Public |
 determined |
| drm, e-books |
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It's International Day Against DRM. Lovely opportunity to re-read the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Digital Books and Your Rights: A Checklist for Readers.
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This entry was originally posted at http://fanficforensics.dreamwidth.org/50703.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
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| 2012-05-02 19:35 |
| Drive-by alert: OTW community survey closing today |
| Public |
 busy |
| otw |
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The OTW has been doing a survey on people's experiences with the org. It closes today, so best be quick if you were planning to take this excellent opportunity to gush, vent, and tell the org what you want from it.
By the way, the annual membership drive has been accompanied by a couple of really nice introduction posts about various OTW projects, what they're about, what their goals are, and so on. Brief but very informative:
This entry was originally posted at http://fanficforensics.dreamwidth.org/50369.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
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Found via Techdirt: a video from Microsoft that "informs" you about the dangers of counterfeit software. The dangers consist of strangely clad men who will invade your office to hide in your copy machines, steal your external hard drives, and abscond with your credit cards and desktops. Conventionally attractive women are particularly at risk of this.
Piracy Lurks Everywhere (2min)
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This entry was originally posted at http://fanficforensics.dreamwidth.org/48662.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
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The author of that funny video about how the copyright industries trumpet absurd numbers on piracy-related financial and job losses has written up an informative extended version of his talk in which he explains where he got the numbers for his calculations. It's worth checking out, mainly because it makes clear that there frequently are no reliable sources for the staggering, terrifying, and mostly imaginary numbers on piracy-related economic losses. And consequently, that there is no factual basis for many laws and proposals for laws that include restrictions on online freedoms in the name of enforcing copyright law - SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, the DMCA, and other acronyms.
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Apparently Summit Entertainment had a picture by artist Kelly Howlett yanked from Zazzle because they believed - wrongly - that she was selling Twilight fan art.
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| 2012-03-17 13:35 |
| Watch Amazon pivot: Digital Manga is no longer suspended from the Kindle Store |
| Public |
 thoughtful |
| amazon, censorship, e-books, manga |
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The suspension of Digital Manga from the Kindle Store over unspecified "content violations" has been reversed, which Digital Manga attributes to the outpouring of support from fans who took action. That was fast!
While I'm glad Digital Manga can continue to sell via Amazon, I'm profoundly unimpressed with the robustness of Amazon's judgment here. If they can be swayed by one group of people yelling loudly about their interpretation of the vague content guidelines, they can be swayed by other groups, including those whose interpretations are not so benign and who may want to stop others' voices from being heard on Amazon's massive platform.
This entry was originally posted at http://fanficforensics.dreamwidth.org/46868.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
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It's pretty sobering to read that the sky-high figures for financial damage and job losses caused by "piracy" that the media industry routinely presents as true, and on which so many draconian "anti-piracy" laws are based, are completely false. But you can also just watch this funny video, it's probably more memorable anyway ;)
Rob Reid: The $8 billion iPod (5 min)
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This entry was originally posted at http://fanficforensics.dreamwidth.org/46684.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
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| 2012-03-16 10:52 |
| Digital Manga suspended from Kindle Store entirely over yaoi titles; how to contact Amazon |
| Public |
 aggravated |
| amazon, apple, censorship, e-books, manga |
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It seems Amazon just suspended Digital Manga Inc. from publishing on Kindle entirely. Reportedly, this was done over an ill-defined "content violation" related to Digital Manga's yaoi titles. It's not the first time that yaoi titles are the subject of censorship kerfuffles, but apparently Amazon is still not planning to clarify its famously vague guidelines about "pornography" versus "erotica".
(Apple is engaging in disturbingly similar practices, apparently keeping out yaoi titles and other LGBTQ content from its iBooks store. Digital Manga was told to remove its yaoi titles from its iPad app on February 2. It's a bad, bad thing when distributors get to control what appears on people's reading devices and can use drm to lock people even further into their walled gardens.)
( Read more... )
ETA: The text above contained a reference to taking my business to the The Book Depository, but ![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) eggsbenedict points out that The Book Depository was bought by Amazon last year. I don't know exactly how this is impacting the running of the company, but removed the reference just to make sure. Apparently Amazon also owns Abebooks and a bunch of other book-related companies, including some I use and give money to, such as LibraryThing.
Again, I don't know what being owned by Amazon means for these companies and if it has any influence on, for instance, their content policies. Maybe there's no influence. However, it does seem clear that I'm absolutely unable to buy legal copies of some of the e-books I want or need for work without financially benefiting Amazon. It's not a sign of a healthy system if it's completely impossible anywhere in the world to buy a legal copy of a certain book without somehow going through this one single distributor.
This entry was originally posted at http://fanficforensics.dreamwidth.org/46364.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
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The protection and people's awareness of copyright are said to reflect the degree of cultural development of the country, and therefore, copyright systems should be understood by a wide range of people. That's how the Copyright Research Information Center, a Japanese government-authorized "public service corporation", starts out its introduction to copyright for beginners. The Japanese version of that sentence is: ( Read more... )This entry was originally posted at http://fanficforensics.dreamwidth.org/46264.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
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Social experiment: please watch the video before reading any of the text that follows it? There seems to be wide agreement that this is a moving and poignant short, but I'm curious to know exactly why different people find it poignant, so I don't want to impose my framing of what happens beforehand.
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This entry was originally posted at http://fanficforensics.dreamwidth.org/45847.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
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| 2012-03-07 12:22 |
| [research] Fellow academics, you can cite tweets now! Badly, but you can. |
| Public |
| annoyed |
| academia, twitter |
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The MLA (Modern Language Association), has updated its widely-used citation guidelines for academic papers with a citation style for tweets:
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This entry was originally posted at http://fanficforensics.dreamwidth.org/45582.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
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A testimony at a European Parliament workshop on ACTA on March 1. I think this one is a must-see, especially because Geist doesn't just touch upon the problems inherent in ACTA, but also clearly and concisely lists a lot of issues that keep on coming back in similar treaties: the use of unclear language, the exclusion of developing countries from negotiations, the lack of transparency that comes with negotiating treaties out of the public eye and behind the back of established international venues that are designed to host these kinds of negotiations, and so on. A full transcript of the talk is available here.
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This entry was originally posted at http://fanficforensics.dreamwidth.org/45566.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
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| 2012-03-06 08:57 |
| Outer limits of shipping imagination reached, everybody go home |
| Public |
| busy |
| dojinshi, manga, squee |
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Home from Tokyo, will get cracking on a bunch of replies now. In the meantime: I looked at the list of pairings on the cover of this dojinshi and felt like a really, really undeveloped fannish person because I only know how to ship mere humans. I should get more practice at looking at the world around me and finding the shipping angle in everything.
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This entry was originally posted at http://fanficforensics.dreamwidth.org/45105.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
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| 2012-03-01 12:56 |
| [research] Going to ICOMAG. Also, 'genre' is an interesting word |
| Public |
| contemplative |
| conference, dojinshi, research |
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The second International Convention on Manga, Animation, Game and Media Art (ICOMAG) will be held in Tokyo this weekend. This year's title is 'Commons of Imagination: What Today’s Society Can Share through Manga and Animation'. The conference aims are described as follows:
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This entry was originally posted at http://fanficforensics.dreamwidth.org/44834.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
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| 2012-02-29 14:10 |
| [random] Anti-science claptrap debunking for the non-scientist |
| Public |
| working |
| science |
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Nobody needs to be a card-carrying biologist or climate scientist to recognize that things like belief in intelligent design or climate change denial are based on some deeply flawed thinking. Not that science is all-knowing or always right per definition. But there's a big difference between, say, criticizing the flaws inherent in hallowed concepts like academic objectivity, and rejecting a widely-supported scientific fact because you don't believe in science.
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This entry was originally posted at http://fanficforensics.dreamwidth.org/44616.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
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satisfied
curious
awake