Sigh...

[rolanni]

The Google Settlement* makes it necessary for writers to jump through a bunch of hoops on Google's deadlines, whether said writer decides to opt-in, opt-out or Object. It's not like I don't have enough stupid paperwork-like tasks to fill up my hours, or that I might have a book to write. No, of course not. Doesn't everybody have extra hours in their day that they're anxious to fill up?

And! The Google Settlement has also made it necessary for us to do a bunch more paperwork. Meisha Merlin never copyrighted our books, as we belatedly discover, so that task now falls to us -- before Google's damned deadline, which is convenient for no one but itself -- and is time-consuming and expensive, for values of expensive illuminated by the lamp of low cash-flow.

Sigh.

In other news, the trees are still trying to kill me. Since Claritin makes me...extremely hyper and depressed when I have too much of it, I've been trying to ration myself and only take the stuff on days with really high pollen-counts. I'm not sure this strategy is working out as well as it could. On the other hand, I can breathe. Mostly.

I have Failed at the day-job by not producing the result desired by a faculty member who has a...rather peculiar idea of what "austerity budget" means. The thing I resent most about this is that I feel like I failed, even though I have no choice and no wiggle-room in this matter at all. (Well, OK. I could lie on the paperwork, get caught and lose my job, but yanno?)

I've been working, too slowly, on the rewrite of the chapter I got wrong last Sunday. This iteration is right, but I wanted to be past this bit and running down the story-road, racking up lots and lots of new words!

Ahem.

Hexapuma is sleeping with the teddy bears. I'd try to get a picture, but he's going to wake up the minute I shift from this desk. Take my word that it's almost Unbearably Cute.

And now...dinner.

Progress on Mouse and Dragon

58951 / 120000

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*One explanation of the Google Settlement and what it means to authors from a genre agent. Thanks to difrancis for the link.

Comments

[keristor.livejournal.com]

By international agreement on copyright it exists (in signatory countries) as soon as the material has been put into physical form[1]. Registration, in those countries which do that, only helps in court cases to show when it was created. If the Google Settlement tries to infringe that on works from outside the USA I suspect that they will be sued by every other country whose material is being hijacked -- and the USA might find itself in bad odour for having unilaterally broken the agreement.

[1] There is still dispute about electronic form from a practical point of view, since it is easy to 'forge' dates on disks. However, once something has been put into public view (a Usenet post, website, etc.) there is little doubt that this at least provides a "latest date of creation" for it.

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

The Google Settlement ignores common law copyright altogether. From my reading of various discussions of the Settlement, it seems as if Google is saying if an edition of a particular work has a US publisher, that work is fair game for Google's Library.