Slog
News & ArtsThursday, December 22, 2011
Books / Teh Internets These Are the Publishers Who Support Neutering the Internet
Posted by Paul Constant on Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 4:32 PM
If you don't know what SOPA is, I encourage you to read this great piece by Nilay Patel*. The nut of it is here:
Because US copyright holders generally can't drag a foreign web site into US courts to get them to stop stealing and distributing their work, SOPA allows them to go after the ISPs, ad networks, and payment processors that are in the United States. It is a law borne of the blind logic of revenge: the movie studios can't punish the real pirates, so they are attacking the network instead.
Yesterday, Gizmodo ran a list of contact information for all the media companies that support SOPA. Like Slog tipper Vlad, I was surprised by how many publishers are on this list: I expect publishers to adhere to a higher standard when it comes to censorship, and it's disappointing to see all the big names represented here:
Hachette Book Group
HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide
Hyperion
Macmillan: (646) 307-5151
Marvel Entertainment: (212) 576-4000
McGraw-Hill Education
Penguin Group (USA), Inc.
Random House
Scholastic, Inc.
The Perseus Books Groups: (800) 343-4499
The good news is that the publishing industry is cowardly and fears losing customers above all else, so if they came back from their holiday breaks to mailboxes full of anti-SOPA sentiment, that could potentially make an impact.
* The Verge is my favorite new website of the year, hands down. Well, except for this one.
2
You're surprised?! I take it you've never spoken to anyone in the publishing industry then. There are some awesome exceptions (looking approvingly in your direction, Baen and O'Reilly), but on the whole they are backward and fearful in a way strongly reminiscent of the record industry circa 1999. Except worse: the record industry has never inveighed against lending libraries for god's sake.
3
So are you saying that if SOPA passes you will boycott these publishers? Will you no longer review their books? Will you no longer attend readings by authors who are published by these companies?
I've been pondering these questions the last couple of days when I saw the list of media companies supporting the legislation. Sure, switching your hosting company is pretty easy, but I have no other option for internet service than Comcast. I can send them an email expressing my outrage, but why would they give a fuck about an email. If all the big publishers support this, then does this mean that the right thing to do will mean not supporting my favorite authors? I'm at am impasse and I would just be interested in your perspective of what you would do.
I've been pondering these questions the last couple of days when I saw the list of media companies supporting the legislation. Sure, switching your hosting company is pretty easy, but I have no other option for internet service than Comcast. I can send them an email expressing my outrage, but why would they give a fuck about an email. If all the big publishers support this, then does this mean that the right thing to do will mean not supporting my favorite authors? I'm at am impasse and I would just be interested in your perspective of what you would do.
5
I expect publishers to adhere to a higher standard
LMAOROTFL!!! Ah... ah... pub... publishers.... LMAO! stop it, can't breathe... my sides... higher standards... LMAOCMSWDFLOA!!!
LMAOROTFL!!! Ah... ah... pub... publishers.... LMAO! stop it, can't breathe... my sides... higher standards... LMAOCMSWDFLOA!!!
6
I know, it's really counterintuitive and shocking that businesses would support laws that would strengthen their business model, in a society that prides itself on capitalism.
Shocking, seriously.
Shocking, seriously.
7
Paul, don't leave out Pearson Education, a massive multinational publishing firm that does textbooks, online learning, and a host of other stuff, and is the parent arm of Peachpit Press, my long-time publisher, which is only matched by independent O'Reilly for its excellence. (They tend, but do not exclusively, publish on different topics, and Peachpit lists some of its books in O'Reilly Safari Bookshelf reading subscription service.)
8
"I expect publishers to adhere to a higher standard..."
ROTFLMFAO
Libraries...yes.
Booksellers...yes.
Readers...yes.
PEN American Center...abso-fucking-lutely.
Big Publishing Houses...they defend their right to publish, not the rights of anyone else.
The publishers on this list dominate the market and are exactly why people don't rush to the publishing world's defense when they cry "foul" about Amazon.
How many great novels have never been published or been widely available to read because these self-important assholes wouldn't publish the work because it didn't fit their market objectives, didn't fit their incensed sensibility or was just too small or unknown a work or author to find a budgetary line in their earnings projections?
Who needs to burn a book - a simple rejection letter will do.
These self-serving behemoths have almost destroyed the little, niche publishing houses that have brought the unknown voices into our lives.
Fuck them, and their desperate attempt to hold onto their publishing hegemony.
ROTFLMFAO
Libraries...yes.
Booksellers...yes.
Readers...yes.
PEN American Center...abso-fucking-lutely.
Big Publishing Houses...they defend their right to publish, not the rights of anyone else.
The publishers on this list dominate the market and are exactly why people don't rush to the publishing world's defense when they cry "foul" about Amazon.
How many great novels have never been published or been widely available to read because these self-important assholes wouldn't publish the work because it didn't fit their market objectives, didn't fit their incensed sensibility or was just too small or unknown a work or author to find a budgetary line in their earnings projections?
Who needs to burn a book - a simple rejection letter will do.
These self-serving behemoths have almost destroyed the little, niche publishing houses that have brought the unknown voices into our lives.
Fuck them, and their desperate attempt to hold onto their publishing hegemony.
9
So if someone were to...just theoretically now...create an HTML parser, that would strip out just the content of SLOG's posts (and it's not like say, I myself would have experience building such things) and then taking it and adding a new masthead and advertising, and you couldn't get at the person (who shall go nameless) that might do this, but you could figure out what network and web servers it was running on you would not want to use SOPA to stop that person or persons.
Well?
10
Big Surprise, Rubert Murdoch's HarperCollins......NOT!
Big Surprise, Perseus Books, publisher of every BS artist around, not too mention owned by Perseus LLC (although there has been some official changing of ownership lately, it appears to be following same process). Perseus LLC is where you find that Johnson fellow, who was the subject of Gretchen Morgenstern's latest book against Wall Street (she at least got that right).
Perseus LLC is also the mailing address for American Friends of Bilderberg, Inc., directors listed as David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger and Richard Perle (any of those sleazoids friends of yours, Paulie?????).
Perseus is the only one who would publish, and utilize, that cretin Jaclyn Friedman, on even days she claims to be a super-slut heterosexual (her words, not mine), on odd days she claims to be a rampant, fem-only Lesbian, and quite recently, when claiming that Wikileaks' Julian Assange should be crucified, she claimed to be the "victim of an unspeakably brutal rape" (she experienced, in her own words, waking up to find a member of the college wrestling team running his hand down her leg!!!!!!!! Why she woke up with the college wrestling team? Friedman had gone out drinking all night with them and slept over.....).
Perseus Books, for some ungodly reason, was also the publisher of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission final report --- which is why you seldom see it anywhere (now why didn't the GPO print it, one seriously wonders????).
Trivia question: What does the movie, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, and African massacres, and a Swedish oil company, and Wikileaks, and Sweden's big obsession to extradite Julian Assange have to do with one another? (see link below for answer)
http://www.thelocal.se/38102/20111222/
"Was it the Lundin family that Stieg Larsson had in mind when he drew his portrait of capitalists?" [From article link above]
More...
Big Surprise, Perseus Books, publisher of every BS artist around, not too mention owned by Perseus LLC (although there has been some official changing of ownership lately, it appears to be following same process). Perseus LLC is where you find that Johnson fellow, who was the subject of Gretchen Morgenstern's latest book against Wall Street (she at least got that right).
Perseus LLC is also the mailing address for American Friends of Bilderberg, Inc., directors listed as David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger and Richard Perle (any of those sleazoids friends of yours, Paulie?????).
Perseus is the only one who would publish, and utilize, that cretin Jaclyn Friedman, on even days she claims to be a super-slut heterosexual (her words, not mine), on odd days she claims to be a rampant, fem-only Lesbian, and quite recently, when claiming that Wikileaks' Julian Assange should be crucified, she claimed to be the "victim of an unspeakably brutal rape" (she experienced, in her own words, waking up to find a member of the college wrestling team running his hand down her leg!!!!!!!! Why she woke up with the college wrestling team? Friedman had gone out drinking all night with them and slept over.....).
Perseus Books, for some ungodly reason, was also the publisher of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission final report --- which is why you seldom see it anywhere (now why didn't the GPO print it, one seriously wonders????).
Trivia question: What does the movie, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, and African massacres, and a Swedish oil company, and Wikileaks, and Sweden's big obsession to extradite Julian Assange have to do with one another? (see link below for answer)
http://www.thelocal.se/38102/20111222/
"Was it the Lundin family that Stieg Larsson had in mind when he drew his portrait of capitalists?" [From article link above]
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