Linky.

Good idea, let's see if anything comes of it.

Here's the announcement. Go read it.

Okay…maybe I've lost my mind here, but help me. Here's a bit from it.

The filmmaker and I will make an agreement to release all ancillary rights to the film (and its source material, the novel), five years after the film's debut. In other words, after a waiting period during which those rights would still be restricted, anyone who cared to could make any number of other kinds of artwork based on the novel's story and characters, or the film's: a play, a television series, a comic book, a theme park ride, an opera – or even a sequel film or novel featuring the same characters. For that matter, they can remake the film with another script and new actors. In my agreement with the filmmaker, those ancillary rights will be launched into the public domain.

First up…I want to say up front that I respect Lethem's decision (not that he would give a shit one way or the other what I thought, naturally) and respect his right to do whatever the hell he wants with his book and the rights to it.

But here's what I don't understand. Back when I was offering up short stories for sale to magazines, you would sell a certain amount of rights to it. For example, First North American Serial Rights. That basically meant that you, North American magazine, would get the right to publish it first in North America before anybody else. You could sell any set of rights you wanted. World Serial Rights. European Serial Rights. Whatever.

Now, I've never had the burden of having to deal with film rights to one of my writings. So there could be a perfectly plausible explanation for these things. I'm sure that in a standard movie deal you're selling every right under the sun to your book apart from the right to keep on printing copies of the book. They get sequel rights (a standard bit of the contract that Stephen King finally killed after Children of the Corn XVI) and probably remake rights and hell, I don't know, breakfast cereal rights.

But if you wanted to offer somebody just the film rights, you could do that, right? Without having to send things into the public domain, I mean. Without having to put a five year cap on it. In theory, Lethem could sell the film rights to one group and the collectible card game rights to another group. Right?

Granted, if I'm Paramount, I'm going to want it all. But a smaller group of folks would probably realize that no, they never wanted the musical-on-ice rights to the thing and forego that.

Anyway, if this goes public domain I think I might just create a collectible card game out of it just for the sheer hell of it.

Found via Boing Boing.

Trying to get a book about burning books banned during Banned Books Week. Priceless.

"The book had a bunch of very bad language in it. It shouldn't be in there because it's offending people. … If they can't find a book that uses clean words, they shouldn't have a book at all."

But check it out: the father "looked through the book and found the following things wrong with the book: discussion of being drunk, smoking cigarettes, violence, "dirty talk," references to the Bible and using God's name in vain. He said the book's material goes against their religions [sic] beliefs."

So no real profanity for the most part, just stuff that they don't do. That's offensive. Things different than what they believe = offensive. Are you getting this? If you can't have a book without drinking, smoking, violence, and using the Lord's name in vain–then you shouldn't have a book. At all.

Can we just put all of these people in a walled community somewhere where they can be safe from…you know, real life?

Honestly, think about it: who's going to be the first people to retreat into cyberspace and establish their own version of Second Life where they can be free to interact with one another in a godly fashion? The religious whackjobs. There's a short story in there for somebody. I don't feel like writing it, but somebody run with it, would you?

Found via Boing Boing.

Let's think about this for a second here. You've got four kids. You want to ban Harry Potter from schools. Wait–why?

Because you think it's a secret way to get kids interested in Wicca? Lady, I hate to tell you this–but I know some Wiccans. They can't make brooms fly or turn lead into gold or anything cool like that. If they can and they haven't hooked me up with some magic by now then I'm going to be pissed. But be that as it may.

It's fairly obvious that you can handle keeping your four kids from reading Harry Potter. So if you've got your kids covered, just exactly who are you trying to protect?

Ah, everyone else. It's not enough that you can affect your own children. You want to control what everyone else reads too. So not only do you think that you and your family are too weak to handle reading Harry Potter and come out with your faith unscathed…you think no one else can handle it either.

God forbid (no pun intended) that later in life they should get ahold of some Richard Dawkins or some Robert Anton Wilson or anything that might make them think. They're in danger from J.K. Rowling for crying out loud! Man, that must be a really sad spiritual place to be, don't you think?

Oh, and thank you Victoria Sweeny for having common sense and using it to protect the students of Gwinnett County from people like this. It's bad enough they should be in public schools without having this to deal with on top of everything else.

Found via Drudge.

So I received this e-mail from the MySpace folks:

Hey everybody,

Musicians, comedians and filmmakers move over — MySpace now has a section for Books!

We also have lots of events going on this summer, so keep an eye out for MySpace in your town!

-Tom

Fascinating. Great. I have books. I would love to put them in the Books section.

Only trouble is…there's no place to do that, as I learned when I poked around. No idea. So…I e-mailed support. I asked them: how do I add my book to the Books section?

The response was:

Hello!

To change your email your e-mail address go to "Account Settings." Start by clicking on "Home" in the top navigation menu from any MySpace web page. Once on your personal home page, click on "Account Settings," appearing in the upper left portion of the page, next to your picture. You will be taken to your "Account Settings" page. Once there, type in the new email address you want to use and click on "Change". You will receive an email to your old address asking you to confirm the email change. Follow the link in the email and confirm the code and your email will be changed.

If you do not have access to your old email account, please reply to this email with the old email address, the password for the account and the email address you want to change it to.

So I e-mailed back: "Hi…is this in answer to my question about how to put a book into the MySpace books area?"

In response I received the same damn e-mail. So I just sent a third request saying not to send me the same damn e-mail again but to actually answer my question.

Or I tried, anyway. When trying to submit, I received a bigass error:

Server Error in '/' Application.
——————————————————————————–

Runtime Error
Description: An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine.

Talk about not ready for primetime. Jesus.

Somebody wake me when they get their shit together, would you?

Dear Google:

The idiots who are suing because they don't want you to help promote their books now think that the Perfect 10 case, in which you might be impacting mobile porn as a burgeoning revenue stream, gives some added ammunition to their lawsuits.

Here's an idea. I realize you're trying to make everything on the planet searchable, but for these idiots who don't want you to help them sell their books, I suggest you adopt this policy:

Fuck em. Just fuck em.

Why not help authors who like you make shitloads of money then we can laugh when the others come crawling back to you for aid and succor? I'll make the popcorn…

Found via Slashdot.

As the movie of the most overhyped book of our time approaches–a movie in which the trailer gives away at least one very important plot point, if not two–a new website, DaVinci Outreach, has launched, promoting "an easily accessible, question-and-answer book that thoroughly refutes the blasephmous [sic] claims that are harming the faith of millions in The Da Vinci Code."

Okay, I've got to say something about this.

First of all, when you're trying to counter something, at least be able to spell it, fellas. It's "blasphemous"…um, well, for Christ's sake. I mean, when I'm dashing out a website I make spelling mistakes too, but when it's a core idea of your website, run a spellcheck. You don't see me writing "fcition" or "fntasy" or some crap like that. If you do, feel free to smack me in a comment.

Second, on the surface, this just looks like a key problem with most religions: when you start to believe one book of fiction is true, then all other books of fiction can be true as well. These people actually think DaVinci Code is real. And granted, Dan Brown has, as I understand it, been stating that his book is based on a lot of facts. However, that is because Brown may be a hack, but he is also a marketing genius. Either that, or he's got people on staff that are marketing geniuses. Nothing sells like controversy, and so he's taking a book that is obviously fictional and painting it with a non-fiction brush in order to get people to buy it.

Which means that either the Catholic Church is in on the scam or they're just ridiculously dense. Again, it's a toss up, isn't it? Because hmm, let's see, the Catholic Church and conspiracy just go like hand and glove, don't they? And what do they get out of it? A crisis of faith where they can get on the news, easy sermon ideas, and folks like the people behind this website can sell some books.

Sidebar: what is this crisis of faith nonsense, anyway? Have you ever met somebody whose faith was shaken by a book of fiction? I mean, I've met plenty of folks who when doing research using non-fictional sources, they've come out of it with a new view on life, but fiction? Again, I wonder sometimes if these people can tell the difference.

Back to the dense part: they would have to be remarkably obtuse to keep making statements about this book three years after its release. That's right, according to Amazon, the hardcover hit in March of 2003. I know it's hard to imagine a time when this book was invading our lives. Has this thing been out of the news for a month at a time? No? Why is that? Because every time you turn around there's somebody from the Catholic Church denouncing the thing, when everyone in the world has moved onto other books. It's like they want to make sure every Catholic has bought their very own copy–or, since these people are notorious for protesting things they haven't actually read or seen–at least have it in their minds. Do these people not understand they are a marking dream come true? This is why I think: man, must be they're in league with Brown. Otherwise, why would you keep bringing it up long enough for the movie hype to take over where they book hype faded?

Okay, one last thought and this ramble will go away. I know you know people who have said that the book was the best thing they read all year. Here's a quiz: ask them just how many books they read that year. Because, let's face it: if you only read whatever Oprah says to read or "the next book everybody's reading," then yeah, Brown can be an okay page-turner–simply because you don't know any better.

What is the lesson? Take a page from Brown and Gibson: create something controversial, and fan the flames, while watching your book sales soar.

Will I learn from it? Sadly, probably not.