Sharper Than A Serpant's Tooth

[ranuel]

I love the world of Pern and it's characters. I have read almost all of the books and I also own the People of Pern art book. This is a truly amazing work with portraits of all the major and a lot of the minor characters from the series. The original of Master Harper Robinton was purchased by Anne McCaffrey and has a place of honor in her home. If you like Pern at all then you really should see if your local library has this and go drool.

I say local library and not a bookstore or Amazon because I don't think I'll be spending any money on anything Pern related anymore unless it's used and the money won't be going to the McCaffreys.

I say the McCaffreys and not Anne because, while I still like and admire the author, her son, who seems to be managing the business end of things now, is an ass and I really don't want to be contributing to his inheritance.

This link

http://www.studio360.org/yore/show080401.html

EDIT 9/7/16 Studio 360 reorganized their site so the above linnk is dead. Here is the new one:
http://www.wnyc.org/story/151040-fan-fiction/

Takes you to an episode of the radio program Studio 360 which you can listen to if you have a halfway decent connection. The Fan Fiction piece from this episode features his harassment of a fan artist for putting pictures of dragons up on the 'net.

Now, The People of Pern book that I love so much had it's start with an artist showing Anne her own fan work at a convention art show and Anne loving it so much that she not only bought one of the paintings but gave the artist a chance to be published professionally and yet, here we have her business manager son threatening legal action over work that isn't even directly derived from the series but was original work that the artist had done after being inspired to draw dragons by being active in the fandom.

He has a right to defend legitimate copyright infringement, and it's his duty as her manager, but as described this wasn't copyright infringement. He strikes me as a bully who is more interested in maximizing his own profit from something he didn't create than he is in his mother's own love of fostering creativity among her fans.

I figure Anne probably has enough to live on for the rest of her life at this point so not spending money on Pern won't hurt her, and if I'm wrong and I hear about her being in financial difficulty I'll change my mind and I'm sure anybody reading this would do the same. I might even, once my mad wears off, decide to continue to buy her stuff as long as she lives but not past that point.

It's a shame someone as nice as she is should have to deal with a son like that.


Edited to fix a typo and insert something I meant to and didn't.

Comments

[jenevastorme.livejournal.com]

What kind of player do you need to listen to that? I don't recognize the file extension.

[ranuel.livejournal.com]

Real Player. There is a link on the page over to the right under the orange box that will take you to download it if you don't have it already.

[jenevastorme.livejournal.com]

kthx

[christinam33.livejournal.com]

God, what a damn shame.

[jenevastorme.livejournal.com]

Copyright issues are going to jump-start the next big revolution, just you wait and see.

[ranuel.livejournal.com]

Social revolution or tech revolution?

[jenevastorme.livejournal.com]

Social. The frustrated masses will revolt.

[ranuel.livejournal.com]

Seems to me that they are already revolting. You can find just about anything you really want somewhere online if you look hard enough and download it if you have a good enough connection speed.

People who would rather save the hassle and just go buy whatever at the local Wal-Mart either can't afford it or refuse to pay the ridiculous prices for the authorized versions.

Don't want to pay $20 for a CD with 10 songs when only one of them is worth listening to? Download just the song for a $1 or so from Apple or MSN. Want to be able to actually PLAY the song on any and all media players you happen to own? Download it for free illegally.

Can't pay well over $100 per season for DVDs of your favorite show? Wait for it to rerun and grab it with your DVR. Don't live where there is cable? Check out the VHS from the library for free and copy it or download it illegally.

Anybody who took even Econ101 could have predicted this sort of thing and yet the guys making six figures and up at the big media conglomerates keep ignoring what the market wants and trying to convince us to do things their way as profits steadily fall.

[jenevastorme.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but the copyright lawyers or RIAA or whatever are becoming extremely fucked-in-the-head stupid about prosecuting such "thieves". Friend was telling me about a single mom who was charged and lost, and therefore owes over a hundred thousand dollars for downloading SIX SONGS. How fucked up is that? As Mr. Tode says, music recording will not go away -- but the recording industry will. They're cutting their own throats by being such bastards, both to the fans of the music and indeed the very musicians who create it.

I love the "don't pirate" ads they run during film previews, and the story of one such showing asking "you wouldn't steal a CAR, would you?" with an audience member responding "I would if I could download it." ;-D As if that weren't an apples and oranges question to begin with, heh.

Relevant -- Janis Ian's article on the whole downloading issue, and her followup after a lot of responses:

http://www.janisian.com/article-internet_debacle.html

[ranuel.livejournal.com]

I've read the original, and maybe even the responsees. I'll go check it out when I'm not half asleep to see if this is newer.

Now that you can have a professional grade recording studio in your home and market music direct to your fans on the 'net the only reason you need a record company is for really big promotional stuff that a lot of performers don't really care about so they don't have to jump at the crummy contracts that promise the world but then take it away with hidden fees.

[jenevastorme.livejournal.com]

True. And no, it's nothing new, just the stuff she wrote in 2002. But your readers might not have seen it yet. ;-)