stop. start. stutter.

Watching the current SFWA debacle has been painful -- on every side. I've said for years that copyright is the most misunderstood concept on the internet; the sheer amount of misinformation is stunning.

I don't think that it's much of a surprise to anyone that I come down pretty firmly in the "pixel-stained technopeasant wretch" camp. (Since, you know, you're reading this right now, and if I were one bit less besieged by problems with the primary manuscript, you'd have more regular fiction to read here.) I know that there's a pretty sharp schism in the SFWA about electronic distribution channels -- even as an outsider, the fight's vicious enough to be visible from the ramparts, as it were, and I know enough people who are on the inside to know that it's even more vicious than it appears.

It's also, I know, not as simple as a case of "us" vs. "them", no matter what side you fall down on -- and I know enough to know that I do not want to get involved in the fight, no way no how. I have very, very firm opinions on copyright, digital rights management, and intellectual property laws -- in the way that only someone who's been enforcing those laws for the past five years, even (especially!) when I don't agree with them, can have. Whether we like it or not, though, the laws are the laws. And even the alternative-copyright "copyleft" movements, like the Creative Commons license and the GPL, take their legal protections and basis from existing copyright law; without the framework of existing IP law, you don't get copyleft any more than you can have copyright.

I'm making this post not to come down on any side or get my opinion out there, but to explain a little bit about the DMCA process that any online service provider will follow. (For those of us who are just tuning in, I spent five years on the abuse desk of a major blog service. I've seen a lot of DMCA notices.)

The thing that kicked off this whole brouhaha was a (badly-formatted) DMCA takedown notice. I've seen a lot of people in comments to Patrick Nielsen Hayden's post or Cory Doctorow's post, saying that it's ridiculous for Scribd to require takedowns to name each individual infringing work, and that a blanket notification should suffice. That is, unfortunately, not what 17 USC 512(c)(3)(A)(iii) says:

Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to locate the material.

As someone who's seen one (1) metric fuckton of DMCA takedown notices, trust me: a direct link to the URL of the allegedly-infringing material is pretty much the only way to be sure that you've gotten absolute identification. Every online service provider on the internet is going to require that. (The lawyers in my audience may be tempted at this point to point out ALS Scan, Inc. v. Remarq Communities, Inc. We argue about that one a lot. Nobody's got a clear consensus yet.)

I've seen a lot of DMCA takedown notices from everyone from the RIAA to major publishing houses to individuals. I've also seen people flip out when you tell them that their takedown notice doesn't conform to the standards set forth by law, and I've seen a lot of people say that they don't want to go through all the legal mess, so why can't you just take it down without having to do that? (I've seen a lot of people in the comments to various places championing this option; sort of a "gentleman's agreement" sort of thing, as it were.)

The law doesn't work like that, either. The DMCA requires that an online service provider must have "actual knowledge" of infringing activity before action must be taken (and the OSP's immunity from liability kicks in). And the filing of a properly-formatted (ie, conforming to all six points of the law) DMCA takedown notice is what constitutes "actual knowledge".

The good news is, it's really easy to write a DMCA takedown notice if your copyright is being infringed. (The other good news is that it's awfully easy to write a DMCA counter-notification if you're falsely accused of copyright infringement.) You don't need to pay a lawyer to draft it for you, although as always, I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice; if you have legal questions, contact a lawyer who's licensed to practice in your jurisdiction.

If your work is being infringed upon by someone on a commercial website, first go to the US Copyright Directory of Service Provider Agents. If you don't find the service listed there, check the site for a copyright statement. If that doesn't pan out, see if you can find out who hosts the site in question. (If I've lost you at this point, find a sympathetic geek and say the words "upstream provider". Your geek will nod knowingly and take care of it for you.)

Here's a sample DMCA takedown notice, which can be adapted by anyone who needs it:

========== BEGIN SAMPLE DMCA TAKEDOWN NOTICE ==========

Dear [name of copyright agent],

Pursuant to 17 USC 512(c)(3)(A), this communication serves as a statement that:

(1). I am [the exclusive rights holder | the duly authorized representative of the exclusive rights holder] for [title of copyrighted material being infringed upon, along with any identifying material such as ISBNs, publication dates, etc -- or, if the material is a web page, the URL];

(2). These exclusive rights are being violated by material available upon your site at the following URL(s): [URLs of infringing material];

(3) I have a good faith belief that the use of this material in such a fashion is not authorized by the copyright holder, the copyright holder's agent, or the law;

(4) Under penalty of perjury in a United States court of law, I state that the information contained in this notification is accurate, and that I am authorized to act on the behalf of the exclusive rights holder for the material in question;

(5) I may be contacted by the following methods: [physical address, telephone number, and email address];

I hereby request that you remove or disable access to this material as it appears on your service in as expedient a fashion as possible. Thank you for your kind cooperation.

Regards,
[your full legal name]
(Digitally signed)

========== END SAMPLE DMCA TAKEDOWN NOTICE ==========

It's not the best sample letter in the universe, and I'm sure your lawyer could draft a better one, but it's substantially compliant with 17 USC 512(c)(3)(A), and an online service provider can't ignore it.

Now, if you get a notice from your online service provider that you're violating someone's copyright, and you don't think you are (or if you are using someone else's material, but think that your use of the material is fair use), you might want to contact a lawyer, because by filing a counternotification, you're opening yourself up for civil and possibly criminal penalties if the person who filed the notification wants to sue you. (However, I can tell you that in five years of handling notification and counter-notification, we never once got notice that a use went to court.)

Filing counter-notification basically says "hey yo, I'm not infringing on this person's copyright; bring it on." The OSP is required by law to forward your counter-notification to the original notifier, and also required to remove the contested material for "not less than 10, nor more than 14, business days". (Most places, in my experience, just go with a straight 14 days.) Once counter-notification is filed, an OSP is out of the picture; it's between the notifier and the notifyee.

Chilling Effects has provided a Counter-Notification Generator, to save me the trouble of having to write one.

A lot of the shitstorm surrounding the current SFWA argument stems around the notion that filing a DMCA notification is a huge and arcane task. It's really not. Most OSPs will receive dozens, if not hundreds, of DMCA notifications in a week. It's all very simple and straightforward, and the reason for that is that most OSPs really don't give a shit who's "right" and who's "wrong" in any particular conflict. They just want to do what the law requires; most OSPs recognize and sympathize with the line between protecting rights-holders and encouraging free expression. And if you speak to them in the right language, they'll basically get the hell out of your way -- but if you speak to them in the wrong language, you waste everyone's time and frustration, including your own.

I hope the SFWA's lawyers are sitting down with Andrew Burt and explaining how the DMCA actually works, so that actual, legitimate violations of copyright (on Scribd and on other sites) can get dealt with swiftly and promptly and the people who have asked SFWA to be their copyright representative can get infringing uses of their material removed. I'm also glad to see that the SFWA ePiracy Committee has suspended operations until they can investigate further -- and, hopefully, come up with an effective process and procedure that benefits both fair and/or transformative use while also protecting the rights of copyright holders to have control over where and how their material is posted -- whether that control is a more traditional "nobody gets to use this, period" or a Creative Commons-style authorization of transformative work.

What saddens me are all the people who are speaking out against Scribd for not being more proactive in this case, including many of the commenters in Scribd's blog response. An online service provider can't be more proactive in matters regarding copyright violation; if they are, they lose some of the protections written into the DMCA for immunity from liability.

Yes, they're going to require that you file a DMCA notice of infringement for every instance of copyright violation on their service -- because by doing so, you initiate the process that's laid out in the law, and everyone involved, including you, have a number of protections as set forth in that law. (And everyone I know right now is terrified of the implications of Fair Housing Council v. Roommates.com, which sets a fucking awful precedent about CDA Section 230 immunity for OSPs -- and which came out of the 9th circuit court. When the 9th goddamn circuit court makes a decision like that, everyone gets nervous.)

I hate the DMCA. I hate it a lot. Most people I know who work for online service providers hate the DMCA too, with a passion that's usually reserved for Teletubbies and Fox News. However, despite how much I hate it, despite how fucking annoying it really is, there are certain narrow subsets of instances where even the second-worst copyright law ever passed can be useful -- and one of those useful cases is the immunity it affords OSPs, because without it, we probably wouldn't have an internet anymore.

So, basically, when you get a response from an online service provider that says, hey, we can't help you unless you jump through these hoops, please don't get upset or angry. The person on the other end of the screen probably agrees with you that the hoop-jumping sucks. But really, it's for everyone's benefit -- including the benefit of the rights-holder.

Yesterday, I wound up heading down to the rental office to be That Tenant -- you know, the one who's always shouting "get those damn kids off my lawn!" (In this instance, replace "those damn kids" with "those people who think that lifting and slam-dropping 200-pound weights for like two hours a day is okay" and replace "off my lawn" with "out of the exercise room that shares a wall with our apartment".) While I was down there, I got into a really interesting conversation with the lady who runs the office about science fiction and race/gender issues.

We both agreed that part of the fascinating thing about sf is that it allows us the opportunity to postulate a post-racist/post-sexist society and speculate about what it might look like. We also agreed that -- because we-the-audience are reading in the context of having been acculturated in a racist, sexist society -- we have to be really careful about how we present it and how we read it. In other words: writers have the chance to postulate what a post-racist society might look like, which is cool, but we have to be really (really) careful, thoughtful, and aware of all the connotations and baggage that arises from a really long history of racial and gender inequality.

(Have I mentioned I love the building I live in? How many of you can stumble upon conversations like that in your rental office?)

I'm always fascinated whenever International Blog Against Racism Week comes around again, because it's done more for me -- as a middle-class, suburban-raised white chick of a certain age bracket -- to increase my awareness of the very real issues and facts of our society than anything else I could think of. Reading those posts is often uncomfortable, and I wind up feeling guilty and upset and angry -- not at the posters, but at the world we inhabit, the people who perpetuate and encourage power imbalance, and at myself for wanting not to think about those issues most of the time.

But my commitment to myself -- made a long time ago -- is along the lines of Spider Robinson's asshole theory: in Lifehouse, one of the characters realizes that not only is everyone an asshole, the greatest acts of assholery result from the conviction that somewhere out there are people who aren't assholes, and the burning desire to be mistaken for one of them. The trick, the character and his wife realize, is to give up, accept that you're an asshole, and do your best to be an asshole possessed of a certain amount of tact, grace, and class -- an Ethical Asshole, as it were.

I've been trying to do that for a while. And part of being an Ethical Asshole is sitting down, shutting up, and listening when someone tells you that you, or a group to which you belong, is being an asshole -- and then nodding, saying that you're sorry, and doing your best to modify your behaviour accordingly.

(You can read the round-up of IBARW posts on del.icio.us. In fact, I really recommend it.)

At the end of last month, John Scalzi -- an author I respect considerably -- wrote an entry commenting on an article in the Boston Globe called Race: The Final Frontier. He made a bunch of statements that all added up to the fact that he -- as a writer -- was trying to make it clear that his universe was one of those post-racist, post-sexist societies. It prompted a pretty rollicking argument in the comments, plus a vehement response from Kameron Hurley: Why Writing Colorblind Is Writing White, which pointed out that Scalzi was failing to do the other half of that equation: being aware that a constructed society like that is still going to be read in this society, which is neither.

This is a topic that's been on my mind a lot lately, from discussion on LiveJournal to IBARW -- because of the three protagonists of Sixteen Tons, two of them are people of color. (Although one of them only informed me of this about ten thousand words into the book. I wish they'd clue me in on these things earlier.) Joey's half Chinese, half Puerto Rican; Kit is half African-American, half white. These are basic facts about the people I'm writing: they walked in pre-constructed, really, and I'm more or less just taking dictation. I couldn't change these facts about them if I wanted to.

But I'll confess: for a few minutes, I wanted to. I wanted to make these people into people whose experience of society more closely matched my experience of society, or the experience-of-society I was more familiar with. Why? Because I, like so many middle-class, liberal, suburban-raised white chicks, am desperately terrified of getting it wrong -- of doing or saying something, out of ignorance, that will hurt or anger or offend someone whose experience-of-society is drastically different than mine.

It's been proven that if you go through a piece of text and carefully strip out all markers or indicators of race or gender, and present that text to a group of people -- any people -- the reader will read the protagonist of that piece as a straight white male -- whether the reader is a straight white male or not. (It's also been proven that even when those markers still exist, readers will bull right over them to assume straight-white-maleness; it's embarrassing how many years it took me to realize that the protagonist of Heinlein's Tunnel In The Sky is black, despite near-annual re-readings.)

And you know, that infuriates me. We shouldn't oughta do that. I know why we do it, and I know why it's going to take a very long, very messy time until we can stop doing it at least a little. I very much, as a writer, want to combat those textual assumptions as much as I can, even if I have to step outside my comfort zone to do so. But oh, God, I know that I'm getting it wrong in places -- and that no matter how many person-of-color friends I consult to say "hey, take a look at this and tell me if my white privilege is hanging out here", I'll never catch all of it.

There's the description question: How much description do you give? Which sets of words are respectful, and which signifiers are semantically neutral or semantically positive as opposed to semantically charged or negative? Where's the line between making people aware of the description of these characters, and subconsciously promoting the fetishization of the Other?

There's the characterization question: To what extent does race and racial identity permeate a person's worldview? Does Kit think of himself as "black" -- and, no matter what his answer is to that, how has the inarguable physical fact of his skin color shaped and defined him? Does Joey, whose family has been in the US for three generations, consider himself "Asian"? "American"? "Asian-American"? How can I be respectful to the people who struggle with these issues daily, when I don't? (Not those issues, at least. Most of my Other-ness is far less visible than skin color, and I know that I can't parlay all of it, or even in a lot of cases most of it.)

There's the narrative question: what happens when my characters need to express opinions or make statements that are less than supportive of these issues? How can I balance the need to remain true to character with the need to avoid promoting privileged readings of the text?

And then, of course, there's the authorial responsibility question: shit, how much harm am I going to accidentally cause in my earnest desire to deal with complicated and messy issues in an Ethical-Asshole manner?

There's a lot of unconscious racism, sexism, and homophobia in classic sf canon, and most of it can be chalked up to the fact that much of classic sf canon was written by people who were raised in a racist, sexist, and homophobic society. When I go back and read some of it now, I wince -- the same way that I wince when I hear someone around me making racist, sexist, or homophobic statements, or statements that are informed by the racist, sexist, or homophobic programming that -- no matter how liberal you are -- we all carry around with us.

There's a lot of unconscious racism, sexism, and homophobia in current sf canon, too. Whether it's in the text itself, or in the packaging. (No, really, go to your local bookstore and pick up a sampling of a hundred different books from the sf shelves, and tell me how many people of color you see on front covers. Even of books written by people of color.)

I'm uncomfortable by that. I'm angry at that. I want to speak out against that, and I want to write things that will challenge those default assumptions -- not because I have any sort of silly notion that I can "fix" it, but because I think that science fiction as a genre has some of the most stunning potential for social commentary, and social commentary that doesn't deal with race issues (or gender issues, or class issues, or sexual orientation issues) is pretty piss-poor social commentary indeed.

It's just really hard to know where to start -- aside from listening, and thinking, and being willing to challenge your own default assumptions when they're pointed out to you. Which is something I'm working very hard to do. For that reason, I'm grateful to International Blog Against Racism week, and all of the people who have shared their own experiences and their own experience-of-society -- because those posts have gone a long way to educating me.

I'm still going to get it wrong. But I think that white authors have been worried, for too long, that our lack of direct personal experience means that there's no way we can ever write a protagonist of a different race, because we're going to get it wrong -- and that's dissuaded us from even trying. And I think that's silly, because a good writer can write protagonists who are different without making them cariactures and without stripping them of any individual traits that are different than the author's own. (I mean, fantasy authors aren't elves or hobbits, and historical romance authors don't live in the sixteenth century.)

The trick, I think, is the same trick any author should be using for any character: protagonist, antagonist, or just walk-on red-shirt. The trick is to find the commonalities and respect the differences, and to educate yourself as much as possible about the environment that would have shaped them.

And treat your characters like you should be treating everyone you meet face to face: with respect.

When I let it quietly be known around Six Apart that I was going to be trading in the exciting fast-paced life of a dotcom employee -- and no, that's not sarcasm; it's all that and more, and I really love so many things about the job and the community I'm leaving behind -- one of the first questions out of everyone's mouth was, "So, what are you going to be writing?"

"Science fiction," I would say. And -- since these conversations always take place over AIM or irc, never face to face; I see my coworkers three or four times a year, tops, being a telecommuter who's telecommuting three thousand miles or so -- I would have to interpret the several-minutes' silence as the equivalent of That Face. You know. The one where the person you're talking to gets really quiet, and you can see written across their face oh my God, what do I say now?

And then there'd be some kind of really diplomatic response, the kind that goes along the lines of, well, I don't usually read science fiction, but I can't wait to see your stuff! (To which I say, of course, "Thank you! Don't forget to tell your friends.") One question I got, though, a question that sort of stopped me in my tracks for a minute trying to think of a way I could answer it, was (on the surface) really simple, and (underneath) really, really complex. And that question was: "Why science fiction?"

Because, see, I know a hell of a lot of technology people. Geeky people. People on the bleeding edge of the technology curve; people who, daily, live the kind of things people were speculating about fifty years ago. People who understand this digital revolution we're riding inside and out. People who go to work so they can build things that let us all talk to each other in this strange and bizarre frontier of ones and zeroes that layer into people and conversations and ideas and communities. Surely if anyone would understand the appeal of science fiction, it would be the people who are doing things, living things, so full of wonder that someone from a hundred years ago would think them magic.

Why science fiction? Because we're swimming in it.

Elizabeth Bear posted a really thought-provoking entry today ("Angels in the Abbatoir"), which got me thinking again (and again and again and again) about the perpetual conversation: is science fiction still relevant? (I trust I need not repeat the argument here; old-time fen may feel free to chime in again the next time it comes 'round on the gee-tar.) I've seen hundreds of arguments for and against the relevance of the sf message, the question of whether or not we (writers) are flogging dead horses or we (readers) are turning away in droves or we (the sf community) are drawing inward and becoming parodies of ourselves, reinforcing the Old Way of thinking and becoming entrenched in What Has Always Been. I've heard a lot of smart people make a lot of really good points one way or the other.

I don't have the answers; on a good day, I have a chance in hell of fully grokking the question. I'm a fan, not a Fan; my sociologist's brain refuses to let me believe that I have enough data to even begin formulating theories.

But I've been reading sf since I was eleven, when my dad -- frustrated by the complaints that I'd exhausted everything in the children's section of the library and that they were all boring, Dad, BORING! -- threw up his hands, pushed a Star Trek tie-in novel at me, and said "Here." (I suspect, in retrospect, that he was simply tired of listening to me whine.) Over the next year and a half or so, I chewed through every single sf book I could beg, borrow, or interlibrary loan, everything from Golden Age to cyberpunk, and I'm still reading it today.

And some of it was good, and some of it was tolerable, and some of it was not my cuppa, and some of it -- I say this with all seriousness -- changed my life. It taught me how to think -- it taught me to think -- and how to feel, how to be capable of feeling. It taught me how look around me and isolate trends, how to view the world as a beautiful spiral of connection and consequence. It taught me that we are what we make of ourselves, and that we have within us -- us-the-species, us-the-culture, us-the-individual -- the seeds of both great benevolence and great atrocity.

Science fiction taught me about people. It taught me that technology is a lens through which human nature is enhanced and multiplied, for better or for worse. It taught me that understanding is systemic: every fact, every culture, every concept, every idea, is just a single touchpoint in the web of interconnections, and when you dip your hand into that sea and lift out a single shining jewel, it's trailing lines and links and cross-references and history along behind it. It taught me that we're all fumbling along our journey to define ourselves, trying to pin a tail on the rapidly-running donkey of What Is Right and What Is Good and What Is Necessary and What Is Ethical and What Is Human. It taught me that in the end, what we're all trying to do -- every day, in a thousand different fits and starts -- is hold a mirror up and stare at it and try to decide if we like what we see or not.

Science fiction taught me that the universe is made wider, not smaller, by seeking to understand it. It taught me that the universe is beautiful. It taught me that there are things we'll be able to understand, and things we'll never be able to do more than guess at. It taught me that physics and linguistics and cognitive science and sociology and math and philosophy and a whole lot of other things are really all the same subject viewed through different lenses, and they all have important things to say to us about What We Are and Where We're Going. (And then a bunch of really lousy science and math teachers tried to beat that lesson out of me, but dammit, I triumphed, and my dyscalculaic brain can still see the beauty in a bunch of equations even if I don't understand how you solve 'em. Take that, middle school math!)

Science fiction taught me how to formulate a personal code of ethics. Not what those ethics should be, mind you. But how to think about them, and how to think rationally-not-emotionally about them, and how to think about them in advance so I'd act, not react, when a situation came up. Science fiction taught me that it's our duty (as people, as human beings) to ask ourselves those questions, and challenge those pre-conceived notions we get programmed with by our societies from the minute we first start processing input.

Science fiction taught me that we're all on this crazy ride together.

These are the stories I have to tell. Not the ones about computers and spaceships and Bug-Eyed Monsters -- although the novel I'm working on does have both computers and spaceships, even if the Bug-Eyed Monster would like it to be known that he is neither monstrous nor particularly bug-eyed, and really he'd be very happy with just a cup of tea and a place to put his feet up, thank you very much -- but the ones about people. The ones about relationships. The ones about defining Self, and by that token defining Other, and what responsibilities and obligations you take on once you've drawn those lines. The ones about how everything, everywhere, is all part of everything else, and sometimes you know that and sometimes you don't but it's still and always true.

I'm writing science fiction because I want to tell you a story about who you are. About who you could be. About what the World-That-Is tells us about ourselves, and about what the World-That-Might-Be tells us about the World-That-Is.

And the question shouldn't be "why science fiction?" It should be "why not science fiction?" The next time one of my technology-loving, early-adopting, online-community-building friends or acquaintances asks me "so, why are you writing science fiction", I may just turn it around right back on them: What can I do to show you that it's just another facet of the conversations we're having every day? What can I do to show you that these are our stories, every last damn one of us?

I don't have an answer to those questions yet, but that's what I'm embarking on this journey to find. Come on. Let me tell you a story. We'll figure it out together.