John Havel of The Hustle is a plagiarist.

Update: links at the end

Signal boosting from Kat Mayo’s eloquent rant over at Book Thingo.

The short version: asshole John Havel thought it would be funny to showcase his ignorance and arrogance all at once, by plagiarizing a romance novel and putting it up for sale on amazon.

Here is hoping Harlequin decides to take action, make an example out of this fucking asshole. We’ll see how funny and interesting he finds it to be in court.

In the meantime, here is the blurb of the actual, copyrighted work, by Australian author Anna Cleary:

Zounds! (or, a comic book on copyright)

Via Dear Author, and coming to any computer near you from Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, comes this amazing, wonderful resource to educate yourself on the wonders of copyright and fair use: Bound by Law? Tales from the Public Domain

As is fitting, this beauty has been released under a Creative Commons License–yay!

You can read more about this beauty over at Open Culture. And of course, you can get a copy of your very own from Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain.

Go, learn something!

Rambling rant and other stories.

(Please keep in mind that this was written on Sunday afternoon. After Monday’s news, all the shit below seems petty, small, unimportant–and yet, life must go on, so here it is.)

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I’m very tired–working seven days a week ain’t for sissies–and dealing with some family crap that has no easy solution has sapped the cheerfulness out of me. Feel free to skip to the more neutral bits at the end, or entirely ignore this one, and instead expect a review in the next couple of days.

More on copyright

Discussions, discussions, discussions…

One of my favorite blogs–even if plenty of the commentary and more than a little of the posts are beyond my pay rate–is Popehat. I found it not that long ago via Dear Author, and have since enjoyed reading and even (though very rarely) commenting there.

There are a variety of points of view and interests reflected in the blog, as befits any group blog, but there is quite a bit of emphasis on freedom of speech, its challenges and its defense. It’s the posts on this topic that I enjoy the most, particularly because I love being witness to people who do put their principles before their likes/dislikes. Ken White in particular is very good about defending the law rather than siding with entities or people he may or may not have a beef with–to wit: Eat Less Totalitarianism.

The reason I’m mentioning all this here is because a more recent post–or rather, where the comment thread has wandered off to. The post gives some background about Prenda Law, a thuggish law firm (or shop) which seems to act much as the proverbial ambulance chaser for copyright holders. And in the best tradition of such fine representatives of the legal profession, they have mucked things up in fairly entertaining ways.

What made the whole bit all the more interesting to me is the conversation veering towards copyright law, infringement, piracy and the like. (Something those who have read the blog may have noticed I’m interested in.)