As I recently said on one of the lists I am on, we know too well from direct personal experience how things can get twisted. When you put yourself out there and share details of your personal life, what you wrote on a blog can and will be twisted by others to serve their own agendas. That can cause huge problems--especially with bureaucracies.
Then there is the hate factor. Some folks will say just the most amazing things in private while saying something completely different and supportive in public. You do get to see the real side of some people offlist and it is not pretty.
Because of the above I have been cutting back on the personal here quite a bit and most likely will continue to do so. For every step forward we seem to get kicked back four and there is lots going on in a variety of fronts. Some positive, a lot negative, and all of it very stressful.
I was thinking about this the last few days when the controversy over LendInk erupted. Piracy is a hot button issue and one sure to get folks stirred up. When the messages started flowing on a couple of lists I am on how the site was pirating books---thus stealing intellectual property---it didn't take long for messages hysterically screaming about this book or that book being found on there. Something had to be done!
I went and looked and sure enough the anthology I am in----THE CARPATHIAN SHADOWS 2--was listed in their system. Having had my reviews lifted and used elsewhere without permission on many, many occasions, I don't take intellectual property theft lightly. At the same time, I wasn't really sure what they had going on was truly a case of piracy. Since some very passionate people, far smarter than me, were making the case that it was not a pirate site at all, I decided to sit back and wait while using my very limited time I have these days to do other things.
Within what seemed like a blink of an eye, the site was shut down. I still don't know if it was truly a pirate site or not. I do know battle lines have been drawn in the sand and the controversy isn't over.
On one side:
On the other:
http://www.publetariat.com/think/congratulations-you-killed-lendink-and-denied-your-fellow-authors-their-lend-royalties
Kevin
From what I've seen, the site was not a pirate site, and legit. The fellow's blog you provided a link for is now blocked to only invited folks. There are a lot of unhappy individuals out there on the internet about the false alarm that resulted in a site wrongly being attacked and taken down. Plus, there are still folks out there still working under the old assumption it was a file sharing site...
ReplyDeleteInteresting the link is now blocked. Especially since the person was crowing about what had happened and claiming responsibility.
ReplyDeleteIt looked to me that it was a legit site as well.