The Writers’ Union of Canada, with fewer than 2,000 members as of four years ago, pulls a John Degen and launches its own bill of rights for writers (“for the digital age”).

• Copyright legislation shall ensure the protection of intellectual property and appropriate compensation for rightsholders.

  Copyright is not about protection and money. Copyright enshrines a balance of interests in law, an interpretation upheld by the Supreme Court. “Protection of intellectual property” can only mean “prevention of duplication,” a prohibition never enabled by copyright law and an impossibility “for the digital age.”

  Copyright law is not a mechanism to guarantee that people you like, such as dues-paying members, get paid.

• Exceptions to copyright shall be minimized.

  They already are minimal and every dues-paying member of the Writers’ Union relies on them just to function. Embedded in this claimed “right” is a Degen-like ideology that every copyright exception is infringement in another guise and costs “rightsholders” money.

• The author shall retain all electronic rights not specifically granted to the publisher or producer and shall have approval of any modifications made to the work.

  The first statement is a reiteration of fact: Authors already do retain rights not otherwise granted. (Hence the next statement in the bill of rights is also a reiteration of fact: “The publisher shall not exercise or sublicense E-book publishing rights without the express authorization of the author.” To do so would be copyright infringement. How is that not obvious?)

  The second statement is a weak encapsulation of the core of Canadian copyright, the moral right, which I see not even a soi-disant writers’ union can be bothered to defend.

• E-book retailers shall require the rightsholder’s permission for any free preview or download of an electronic work, and the rightsholder shall specify the maximum amount to be made available.

  No, copyright law makes previews (for “research”) legal as of right. It is true that a case that expanded such previews is up for consideration by the Supreme Court, but the fact remains that the fair-dealing provisions of the Copyright Act allow excerpting for research, criticism, and review. The excerpt doesn’t have to be created by the person doing any of those things.

  It is well established that not only is there no clear percentage limit to an excerpt in order to be considered fair (copying 100% of the work can sometimes be fair dealing), there is no legal mechanism for prior restraint of such excerpting.

• Agents, publishers, aggregators, retailers, and libraries shall ensure that works in digital form will be well protected and will not be shared, traded, or sold outside the boundaries authorized by the contract.

  People can “share” books if they want. It’s called lending, and it’s legal. You as a third party may have a contract with a publisher (a fourth party), but none of those things is the business of, say, a library or an “aggregator,” whatever that is.

I ran these remarks by Kelly Duffin, executive director of the Writers’ Union, and received, first, a vacation autoresponder and then nothing.

We, Like Sheep:

Asaf ordered all of us over to a flat area to take a photograph. After we all posed, he said my name, and then, “Will you come over here, please?”

Good grief, I thought. I knew what this was. I had said that this wasn’t necessary, based on my reading of an etiquette book by Judith Martin, but Asaf insisted on all of the conventional American practices of the time.

He kneeled or knelt on the ground. Sarah came over and produced a candy ring from a package. He then asked if I would marry him, based on the new laws of the State of New York, and then gave the exact date, time, and location that we had already agreed upon.

“Sure,” I said.

Drive by Nicolas Winding Refn (q.v.):

• (L) Feminine original typography (in the troublesome Mistral, which only Excoffon used well; designer uncredited). Matches all of: Refn’s insistence the picture is “feminine”; muscular, round-edged, delicately-named star Gosling; Driver’s kitteny-soft champagne satin windbreaker. Pink

• (R) Masculine revised typography by tight-bodied silver fox James White, here in a departure from his dated, mechanistic signature style. Fuchsia

2014 update

Also via James White:

Did you know that women, who are equal to men, get the short end of the stick when it comes to writing American television? Why, a mere one-quarter of U.S. TV series have a woman on staff. Clearly this amounts to systemic discrimination. And, equally clearly, we’re all worse off, because women, who, again, are equal to men, are actually better in “the room,” according to a writer who is so equal it would be superfluous to own her own byline.

“A balanced writers’ room is like a balanced world. Everyone thrives, good work gets done, people like each other and the show is better for it,” said an experienced female writer who did not want to be named (let’s call her Writer A). “Women keep the room moving. They’re great at multitasking and getting along with others. They don’t procrastinate and they open up with lots of personal anecdotes that make for great stories on the show and great character beats. They tend to smell good.”

The situation is so bad in the United States that obviously it has to be just as bad in Canada, a sovereign nation with its own distinct culture. We are assured of such equivalence in a feature article by a woman writer with a secure newspaper job and a history of snagging journalism fellowships.

Her colleague at the same paper – a male writer, obviously equal but, just as obviously, not as good in the room – pointed out the unique Canadian television series created by and written by a woman. (The head writer there is a gay male. He is obviously and incontrovertibly completely equal to any woman, women would admit. He may potentially turn out to be more or less equal to other men, those other men might, if pressed, reluctantly concede.)

But then a male curmudgeon – not a writer, but the equal of any female curmudgeon, the latter of which surely work better in the room – had the temerity to note that all the popular English-language Canadian TV shows were created by and/or are written or run by women.

It is, however, accepted by everyone that the plight of women, equal yet superior yet oppressed, urgently needs feature-length discussion and redress. Writing for TV is a desirable job held by men, so it just stands to reason that women deserve half those jobs – and that has to happen immediately if not sooner. Other groups whose members never get any chance whatsoever to write for TV, like persons with disabilities, will simply have to wait until women hold half the jobs. Then we’ll all be equal and then we can start talking about some other subject.

Scott Schuman writes the Sartorialist blog, which I gather some people find interesting. Schuman rather lost me when he described two Muslims in hijab as “typical teens, Stockholm.” Sure – 20 years from now when they take over Sweden.

Now we have a rigourless, overlong posting from Imran Ahmed, editor of the soi-disant Business of Fashion Weblog. If you were expecting “the business of blogging” at the Sartorialist to be explained, prepare for disappointment.

• “What I don’t like is advertorial posts that are under the table,” Schuman claims, then later admits he essentially ran under-the-table advertorials for Kiehl’s.

• Schuman wouldn’t state his advertising book rate. (There may not be one.)

• Schuman pulled in over a hundred grand in advance and royalties from his first book, and no less than $65,000 from a gallery show. Beyond that, Ahmed gives no dollar figures whatsoever, let alone any numbers that might justify the claim that Schuman “could theoretically [become] fashion’s first million-dollar-a-year blogger.”

In fact, based on the wording of the post, Ahmed didn’t ask nice, simple questions about dollars and cents, such as “What was your gross income last year?” or “How much money did you take in just from your blog last year?” When I asked Ahmed why he didn’t bother committing actual journalism, he refused to respond.

Fashion does not actually want to be taken seriously.

David Crystal is the English etymologist and linguist everybody likes. His upcoming book The Story of English in 100 Words was excerpted in the Independent, which nearly completely muffed the actual list of 100 words (including misreading backformation as “back-information,” a novice error).

Here, then, are David Crystal’s hundred words in a form you can actually understand. (Century of coinage in parentheses.) [continue with: David Crystal’s hundred words →]

The only truly detailed and challenging book on typographic history that is also enjoyable to read comes out in a new edition this year. I know for a fact that intelligent nonexperts can read and understand Counterpunch by Fred Smeijers, and learn a lot in the process. And all this from a writer who isn’t a native English-speaker.

There’s a reason why Counterpunch is a classic. Throw your Bringhursts on the bonfire.

Björn Borg Samberg:

Björn Borg Blanche (promos):