Splinter Universe News, the Impermanence of Memory, Describing Circles, & the Pirate Kings of France

[rolanni]

So, let’s see.

We’ve decided to try something new at Splinter Universe — guest stories! The first of these goes up tomorrow — “Somewhere, a Sea,” by Bud Sparhawk.

For those interested in memory, its function, and the permanence of our recollections, here’s an interesting — and frightening — article. Many thanks to Friend of Liad Mickie for bringing it to my attention.

I have completely shut down my “account” at Google Circles, or Plus, or whatevertheheck it’s called. It appears that whenever someone mentions me in a conversation, I’m immediately made aware of, and have access to, the entire conversation, which is an. . .intimacy that I do not desire. Since I never actually “got” Google Whateveritis anyhow, this is no hardship for me. For those who have encircled or plussed me — I apologize in advance for any difficulty this action of mine may have caused you.

The French Government has decided to digitize all works of the 20th century that are no longer in print. If you, the author (or illustrator, or publisher) object to this high-handed snatching of your property, you have six months to protest and show good cause why the Government shouldn’t just take what it wants, or your work is forever in the database and available for free. Read all about it here

Today here in East Winslow, it is sunny and bright. This is the lull before the snowstorm, due to strike somewhen on the overnight, and continue into tomorrow which is, coincidentally, Mozart’s birthday, who approves of the whole March Lion thing, as long as he, personally, doesn’t have to roar.

Originally published at Sharon Lee, Writer. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[jcbemis.livejournal.com]

hmmm - should the US retaliate by invalidating all French copyrights? Inquiring Minds...

[attilathepbnun.livejournal.com]

Y'know, that *might* even be a violation of international law ...

[angrill.livejournal.com]

I may be the only one, but it seems to me that there are parts of your stories that deal with mind control and wiping out memories. It is eerie that we seem to be on the brink of being able to actually accomplish some of the more disturbing parts of your fictional works.

A bit hasty reading of this law

[chaddaï fouché (from livejournal.com)]

You, and the article you cite seems to me to be a bit hasty in its reading of this law (which may or may not even be applied given the habit of the current french government to create laws and forget to make the "décrets d'application" essential to their effective start... or give the means to apply them in practice). For instance you say :

you have six months to protest and show good cause why the Government shouldn’t just take what it wants, or your work is forever in the database and available for free

Which is just untrue even from what your source article said : ten years after the numerisation have to pass without action by yourself or a publisher for your work to be made available for free, even then you still can withdraw it at any time provided you're the author of the work... A bit more reasonable, no ?

The six month limits only apply to you asking for your work to not be numerised (your complete withdrawal from the whole process), once it is numerised, they won't delete it but neither will they distribute it without your authorization or the authorization of the publisher if he has the digital rights. Note that the most controversial aspect of the project seems to be the probability that some publishers will exploit the situation by pretending to have the digital rights to some books (in which case they fix the price and are entitled to 50% of the remuneration, like the author) where it's not clear that they really have it (and they won't even have to make the work of numerising the books, the BNF will do it for them...).

Note that if your books are concerned (apparently only books that were published in France and are now commercially unavailable are, so you shouldn't be concerned since you weren't published in France), you will be remunerated : you have ten years to manifest yourself to collect the remuneration from the beginning of exploitation (50% if you ceded your digital right, 100% otherwise).

Also "snippets" of your books won't be shown, unlike Google Books, even if you're listed in their database.

On a second reading I think you'll see that your first knee-jerk reaction may not be justified in this particular case (though it's better to react first and read more carefully after in those kind of case anyway).

Note that that doesn't mean I support this law, in its current state its main benefits will goes to the publishers (despite inaction on their part to make those books available on their own) whereas the default should have been to rely on the authors. I still think it is not as bad as you may believe at first

Also...

[chaddaï fouché (from livejournal.com)]

This article on memory is the stuff of nightmare to me... The idea that we may be able to "rewrite" parts of our memory to erase painful past and eventually substitute happy make-believe (since after all, as the article point, it is easy to create make-up souvenirs and we may even be able to reinforce them by doping the production of kinase...) is just the beginning of a mechanization of the human brain that contains the potential for the most dystopian of society.

[groblek.livejournal.com]

On the memory drug, that is indeed both interesting and frightening. I'm a bit disappointed that the writer missed the implications of an interesting bit towards the end where they briefly mention that increased expression of the protein that seems to preserve memories increases recall in mice. While memory erasing drugs may well be a reality, it seems to me that memory-enhancing ones based on the same knowledge could be quite useful.

Google Plus

[catherine ives (from livejournal.com)]

One less thing to do: the Google plus. Don't understand the dratted thing anyway.