Accountability

So the Supreme Court issued a pile of decisions this morning, including one in which the only good part was intellectual honesty about being disingenuous (of which more in the future). It is that time of year, after all; and there will be more tomorrow. I'll defer touch-typing anything for a few days, probably while the rest of the country is busy driving under the influence and blowing its fingers right off.

• So even the white flag raised by this Administration over the (latest) Iran conflict has failed to prevent further military action. I'm shocked — shocked, I say — to find disregard for post-absolute-monarch Euro-American concepts of "ending a conflict" in those parts of the world that are not post-absolute-monarch Euro-American… for the nineteenth time in my lifetime. (Just as the meaning of victory is context- and observer-dependent, so is the meaning of ceasefire.) At most, there's deescalation from using military ordnance — on one side, anyway, and definitely inconsistent with GOP norms. And, meanwhile, Big Oil continues to extort from consumers (and do not kid yourself — contrary to the implication in the article that because Big Oil only owns 5% of gas stations, its control over the supply chain virtually mandates quick-rise-slow-fall behavior).
• There are several updates from the Department of Self-Selected Unaccountability. Consider prospective war criminals calling themselves peaceniks. Consider immigrants (of dubious compliance with immigration laws) from shithole countries. Don't forget Big Tech (particularly obnoxious given its purported commitment to freedom of expression). Then there's the problem of official opposition to imaginary slights, and promised prosecution of those who vandalized a national monument while entirely ignoring the real vandal. I wish DOGE had abolished this department…
• The present leader of the royal family the US started to throw out a quarter of a millennium ago is publishing his tax return for the first time. Our dynastic leader… didn't.
• In entertainment-industry news that will largely escape notice, the most-recently-formed media oligopolist is consolidating its "labor relations" in a single office. What could possibly go wrong? Like, say, giving that office responsibility for dealing with freelancers?

Established Sausage Platter

Burn sinners at the stake! OK, maybe not such a good idea.

• Next time, read your own bloody book before "peace negotiations" start. Better yet, don't go to war — excuse me, "exert irresistible 'murikan military prowess in pursuit of critical national objectives (not a 'war,' never that)" — without defining the bloody "critical national objectives" and determining whether military force can or will achieve them. As a veteran, I'm carefully avoiding consideration of whether what we've got is irresistible.

  It would obviously be expecting far too much to contemplate preconflict ethical rationales (and post hoc rationalizations/evasions). Or cost/benefit considerations. Or that cartoon. Or any visit to Dover AFB.

• This sausage is made from special cuts from S. zuckerbeast. That a swine is at issue is well demonstrated by legal adventures in the UK and right down the road demonstrating that it's special. Which just anticipates cannibalism among teh piggies.
• At that, another dubious information leech has its own legal difficulties regarding criticism, and this in a nation with no First Amendment.
• Turning from BigTech to BigMedia provides little — if any — relief from the assholery. (Surprised much?) Whether we're talking mergers well within the preexisting scrutiny guidelines for any market definition that isn't artificially expanded or unshared windfalls (that were themselves ineptly handled) — and not at all limited to electronic media — the distributors (and their owners) are obviously entitled to all benefits of freelanders' creativity. And I mean all benefits (this shouldn't be an issue!). Some rights, associations, and rights to exclude interlopers are more equal than others.

  But at least BigMedia isn't FIFA.

• It doesn't have to be mass entertainment, either. As to one recent controversy that remains problematic even after a partial retreat, there's really only one, Taylor-Swiftian description for anyone who knows the conglomerate (and its past conduct) very well: Elsevier gonna Elsevier. This was predictable almost a decade back when Elsevier bought SSRN, and I strongly suspect that it would have happened five years ago but for COVID. Enhanced branding, coming up… notwithstanding one of the ingredients in the preceding sausage (or the intellectual dishonesty of exploiting distributor branding for in draft academic work).
• All of that, however, is the enemy without. The enemy within will remain more dangerous until we get our eighteenth-century concepts of how to elect in the first place into even the mid-twentieth century. Which will not be happening any time soon, if only because it would undermine the individual power-bases of the self-selected political gatekeepers — the unelected ones who determine what's on the ballot in the first place.

Meanwhile, I'm having to watch today's US-Australia match in Spanish, on Telemundo, thanks to the typical neglect of the local Fox station. About 20% of the city has difficulty just in time for major live events (including sport) with the broadcast signal; curiously, it's never a problem for ad-laden local news and/or infomercials, or for any other broadcast group. Hmm, when is their FCC license up for renewal…

Link Sausages Past the Blockade(s)

I'm afraid the ingredients have been piling up, but they've finally made it past the Strait of Hormuz for your reading pleasure. And their undoubted (and unpredictable) effects on the world economy.

• I'm not entirely sure which is less credible — Drumpf as Jesus or as a doctor.
  • Depending upon which version of the propaganda one credits, Jesus was one or more of a rabbi (certainly in its sense as "teacher"), a man of peace, an advocate of tolerance for others both different and (in particular) less financially fortunate, the son of Yhwh and/or a tripartite aspect of Yhwh and/or a deity in his own capacity, an ardently Semitic Jew, a nonviolent opponent of the Roman Empire (and, more generally, Western classicalism as projected by privileged-class scholars a millennium-and-a-half later), and an ethicist who did his best to conform to those ethics. Not all that credible in any respect.
  • Conversely, a doctor is learned in the sciences, constantly seeks to understand more about the sciences and circumstances of patients, cares for patients individually (and at least aspirationally whichever patient is at hand, regardless of circumstances or ability to pay or politicoreligious opposition), and pledges first of all to do no harm. A doctor definitely doesn't prescribe drinking bleach… and understands that labelling such advice as satire (or considering satire in the health advice one is giving) is inappropriate at best. Not all that credible in any respect.

  This comparison seems more apt. So does this one. So does remembering that (paraphrasing a quotation often attributed to Twain, inaccurately) the man who doesn't read (or write) more than 140 characters at a time has no advantage over the one who can't.

• Speaking of self-appointed stable geniuses, albeit in London this time, the compensation structure at Tottenham Hotspur explains a lot. I'm no Arsenal fan, but I do have antipathy to Spurs stretching back more than half a century, so I'm somewhat pleased that on current form they'll be swapping leagues with the Tractor Boys for next season. But this is just the current economic consensus in action, right? The righteous exploitation of an an advantaged-without-merit initial position, right?
• At that, the Spurs women's programs are (not surprisingly) better off than writers, than publishers, than the arts in general. Both the self-manufactured crises at Spurs and the general problems throughout the arts have a common nexus — not necessarily "the" cause, but a common point of failure — in inept, overcompensated gatekeepers who seldom have actual experience with the process, but only with the product (if that).
• Conversely, thieves would deny the property rights of authors and other creators however original. In part, this is a jurisprudential problem, because the last few centuries have steadily eroded "personal rights" to the point at which "an impaired property interest" is the only practicable entre to any dispute-resolution system. In even greater part, this results from too many people — not just techbros! — actually believing that information wants to be free (and it's all just information) while simultaneously ignoring that "originality" is itself informational. That a mutation of an existing gene is not an expected result does not change its nature as new information.
• And, from the distressingly-old part of the meat drawer that I just didn't manage to work into any prior sausages, consider conceptual problems with fuel efficiency of hybrid vehicles. What this really points out, however, is that the measures of "efficiency" are inappropriate; the figures stated correlate to real-world fuel economy. More distressingly, the article doesn't provide context, like comparison to "more-conventional" vehicles' fuel consumption — which demonstrates that even if not perfect, hybrids are better. Context matters.

Misanthropic (7)

In an order issued this morning that should surprise no one at all (see Dkt. 579 (26 Jan 2026), stating that it would be reset), Judge Martinez-Olguin has cancelled the previously-scheduled hearing for 23 April and reset it to 14 May (see Dkt 632 (08 Apr 2026)). The order setting the new hearing date:

1. Resolves some other pending procedural foofery regarding an objection filed by a non-class-member (which I have not reviewed, but — in the nature of these things — probably asserts, at least in part, that it was improper to exclude the objector from the class definition);
2. Sets both the approval hearing (also referred to as the "fairness hearing" — a term I prefer because it's quite rare for approval to be granted at the hearing, and under changes in law since 2003 may no longer be appropriate in any event) and the hearing on attorney's fees for 14 May 2026 at 1400PDT, with instructions for passive listening via Zoom (see Order at 2);
3. And, somewhat between the lines, indicates some judicial discomfort with some of the representations blithely being made by various counsel and parties, without specific criticisms. This is both entirely natural and previously signposted: Judge Martinez-Olguin appears to be taking seriously her duty as a gatekeeper for the public interest regarding a settlement pushed onto her docket three months ago in contexts generally foreign to judicial experience.

Aside: The reset hearing date makes certain that payments will not be in classmembers' hands in August 2026. So there.

You Keep Using That Word

…but I do not think it means what you think it does. This morning, the Supreme Court said as much regarding "contributory infringement" in Cox Comm. Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment, Inc., No. [20]24–171 (25 Mar 2026). The hard part of understanding this opinion — which is largely consistent with techbros' preferences — is determining which word is drawing Inigo's ire.

Justice Sotomayór's concurring-in-the-judgement opinion has the better of both the doctrinal analysis and focus: It's not the meaning of "contributory infringement" that is at issue, but of "intent." Both Justice Thomas's seven-justice controlling opinion and Justice Sotomayór's (for herself and Justice Jackson) focus on failure to prove intent as sufficient basis to, in this instance, absolve Cox Communications. Where the opinions differ is on a question not actually necessary to the result: Whether the misnamed "secondary liability"¹ is limited to common-law concepts of "contributory" and "vicarious" liability established under the 1909 Act (and, less clearly, its predecessors) and imported into interpretation of the 1976 Act.² Justice Thomas would limit all secondary liability to acts/omissions fitting comfortably within contributory and vicarious infringement as presently defined; Justice Sotomayór would be open to other varieties of secondary liability that do not, although such other varieties are (in her opinion) disclaimed as unnecessary to decide this case.

The main difficulty here is that, in the abstract, Cox Communications deserves to lose — but not on a traditional meaning-of-copyright-infringement-at-common-law (or under the 1909 Act) analysis. That Justice Sotomayór's opinion has the better of the argument is illustrated by a hypothetical welcome package for new subscribers that includes a link to the Tor browser and a tutorial on BitTorrent, and asking whether such a welcome package would constitute sufficient proof of intent to proceed on a contributory-infringement theory. More to the point, though, is whether assistance by technical support personnel in response to specific customer inquiries ("My connection isn't reaching The Pirate Bay, what am I doing wrong?") would also implicate corporate intent. Instead, though, failure to actually implement a statutory requirement intended to both protect copyright holder interests and provide a pre-liability-consideration safe harbor for service providers — the DMCA, and in particular § 512(i) — is treated as utterly irrelevant to the liability question, instead of intimately intertwined with it.

But everyone wanted easy answers. So that's what they got, even though they didn't actually answer the question lurking underneath. Everyone wanted a bright-line rule in a field of constantly evolving standards (the very definition of "the Progress of Science and useful Arts"). Cox gets this wrong by answering the wrong question. I can't offer "the right" answer, but I can say that this Court was too solicitous of non-copyright-related uses of internet connections in evaluating the meaning of "intent" as to copyright-related uses of internet connections.³ Indeed, the Betamax, Tasini, and Grokster opinions necessarily rest on the premise that considerations of what infringes copyright, and what regulates too much, must limit themselves to copyright contexts and defenses/privileges within copyright contexts.

---

1. The corrollary/opposite of "secondary" is or should be "primary," if one is being linguistically consistent. That, however, is not the term of art; instead, we speak of "direct" as the opposite of "secondary," when "secondary" itself would be better called "indirect." That this runs right back into Inigo's objection to "inconceivable" is both nerdy wordplay and a conceptual objection to the way the misnaming influences the way one thinks about the underlying concepts.
2. The opinions are silent on whether this limitation is consistent with US obligations under the Berne Convention, to which the US acceded in 1988. On the one hand, this is entirely understandable because "consideration of treaty obligations" was not in the record. On the other hand, Justice Thomas's opinion is overreaching by declaring a limitation on alternative theories not actually argued. Under ordinary circumstances, the best way to deal with this is via amending the statute — probably § 501 but possibly by tweaking § 106 (separately or together). My trust in Congress — and, in particular, Congress's ability and willingness to even listen to actual creators as distinct from transferee copyright holders — is less than 4'33".

   Interestingly and reflexively with the theme of this blawg piece, almost all common analyses fail to engage with the title itself:

   4'33" = (4x60)+33" = 273"

   that is absolute zero, –273[.15]C, which at the time of Cage's composition (1952) was just creeping into awareness outside of chemical physics. This leads to the deeper question of whether the piece is about "absolute silence at absolute zero" or "ambient/background noise heard at absolute zero". That, however, is a "two cultures" argument for another time, however much it also exposes the unconsidered-case problems with the Cox rationale itself.

3. Here, I don't think the Court needed to issue an "advisory opinion" — a doctrine that I think has long outlived its usefulness, because we're not operating in a vacuum any longer. It would have been sufficient to explicitly call for intentional consideration by Congress, instead of relying upon Congressional silence plus being "loath to expand such liability beyond those precedents" (slip op. at 7, emphasis added), which is rather self-contradictory and neglects that there were both a predecessor to this Act in the same space and externally-imposed treaty obligations. It most emphatically is the place of the Court to tell Congress to do the hard parts of the homework; an "advisory opinion" would be doing the homework for Congress. This is especially so when "loath to expand" is against not specific categorization in the statute, but complete Congressional silence as to what "infringement" means (see § 106): Congress didn't do its homework because it didn't recognize that this question was in it, or was delegating that question to the teacher. Which turns on what "silence" means…

Crosslinked Sausage Platter

Because where's the sense in oversimplifying complex interrelationships? (Apparently, somewhere on this screen.)

• Not everyone is on board with the "Board of Peace" (HT: unknown photographer). A peace initiative in which the Vatican doesn't join? Really? Even when it doesn't really mean it, the Vatican tends to sign on to these sorts of things. Maybe because this Pope can see that the "Board of Peace" is little more than faux-polite extortion with many built-in opportunities for diversion of funds. "Nice diplomatic relationship you've got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it."
• I don't use (anti)social media. But I am anti-ICE — as to objective, personnel, and sure as hell institutionally-mandated misconduct. Unlike most of ICE's known victims to date, however, I actually have a skillset to fight back. I know how to read a warrant — or demand that you have one in the first place, or demand that you provide credible evidence for probable cause. I know how to file motions and win them. I've actually got all of the relevant documentation demonstrating that I'm 'murikan… and I'm a veteran, unlike almost all of your leadership, which is also documented both on my driver's license and in the fingerprint files from my security clearances all those years ago. (I couldn't have had a career as a safecracker because my prints were already on file. Schade.)

  So, you moronic playground bullies: Come on. Just do a little bit of research from this page to find me; I'm not exactly hiding from anyone. Besides, my ancestry is European (for at least the last millennium) so it'll be an interesting challenge for you. <SARCASM> And please don't throw me in that courtroom! Even though you'd just ignore any adverse ruling from any judge. </SARCASM>

• So the Secretary of LOAC Violations has a blacklist of undesireable universities that looks darned familiar. It really does; my immediate family and I have a handful of degrees from institutions on that list (and even more admissions offers). Leave aside for the moment that if military officers are getting so inappropriately "globalist" and "woke" just by attending institutions where they're really not welcomed by fellow students, and have to work extra hard to develop relationships with faculty (even in purported apolitical fields like, say, "civil engineering"), there's either a serious problem with officer selection and preparation or a crying need for exactly that transformation among officers who originated at, umm, allegedly less wakeful institutions (like other degrees earned by my immediate family and me). Instead, take a look at what concentrating on the "right kind of schools" from which to recruit agents did for US intelligence effectiveness during the early and middle Cold War, and ask yourself if that Princeton grad is demonstrating — yet again — that he's incapable of learning from history. Maybe he's just jealous of his boss and vice-boss (because it was only Princeton), the cabinet members, and other senior Administration officials who have degrees from institutions on that list. More likely, he's just sore that despite his own Ivy League degree (interesting that most of the Ivies are on his list) he didn't succeed in doing so himself…
• Today is a really frustrating anniversary with more than faint echoes in the present: The pretty-damned-direct ancestor of the current Administration's immigration policies. When even a Court standing in the shadow of 9/11 and its aftermath (and with a plurality of members selected in that shadow) finally admits that judicial approval of that order was "gravely wrong the day it was decided, has been overruled by the court of history, and — to be clear — 'has no place in law under the Constitution.'"… while nonetheless deciding that the same nature of animus (this time related to the then-current fallacious ethnic induction) was not relevant to evaluation of a similar policy leading directly to today. All the while ignoring that the current resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue would be sansei, or even nisei, himself had the target been European… but that battle had (sort of) already been fought to a standstill,^† however temporary.

  So: Welcome to Manzanar, just a few miles from the first ICE raids. There's still a lot of basic learning to be done by those who manage to seize the reins of power (or retain them; this inquiry isn't about "latecomers," unlike theirs).

---

†  Any ironic contrast with another sausage on this platter is entirely intentional. Or, perhaps, just entirely inevitable, once one acknowledges that the sin humanity always visits upon the sons (and daughters) is the circumstance of the father's birth — presuming he can be unmistakeably determined.

The Usual Suspect

…who will not be charged with anything, however deserving.

• In a frustrating condescension that should surprise precisely no one, the IOC followed in the footsteps of Avery Brundage. Who was, after all, the IOC's dictator and president for life designated leader in 1972. It's not that the incidents are all that comparable, it's that an organization that establishes that competition will be by national teams had bloody well better expect that the real world of international conflict is going to find its way into the Games. And as usual, fear of upsetting sponsors is looming in the background — because even if the Duchy of Muscovy isn't at these games, (a) there's talk of reinstating it for the LA summer games in 2028, (b) the IOC really wants to reopen the sponsorship money, and (c) oligarchs gonna oligarch (and I don't just mean the Russian ones; the history of how one achieves a position of power in the Olympic movement isn't the epitome of advancement on merit).

  <SARCASM> Bravo! Nothing demonstrates the unifying power of athletic competition like refusing a tasteful, nonintrusive personal memorial to slain athletes, some of whom were acquaintances of the athlete you disqualified! </SARCASM>

• Well, it looks like one of the major communication channels for hackers, cyberterrorists, and sleazebuckets even more dubious than politicians is going to require age verification in March. What could possibly go wrong?

  I suppose it could be worse than imposing an "age-verification" requirement on precisely the audience most likely to find ways around it (and then use that very service to publicize the method). Like, say, a space-oriented firm purchasing an "AI" firm (well, not really, it's an illusory transaction all under the same financial umbrella). Just a moment. Just a moment. I've just picked up a fault in the AE-35 unit. It's going to go 100% failure within 72 hours. Even I will be concerned if the next major lift vehicle is the Discovery series, or if the next model from Tesla is the Daisy.

• Tasty Spanish ham has a disquieting history, similar to roasted chicken in Iberia (which was frequently stuffed with bacon, making it unacceptable to The Usual Undesireables). At least the Spanish prime minister is — somewhat quietly, but still pointedly — standing up against antiimmigrant fervor.

  At least Francisco Franco is still dead.

• It's not much of a surprise that young writers (as a group) lean slightly left; their own experiences, and those that they're seeing around them, are more likely to concern economic disadvantage. Like, say, working two jobs — the obvious downside of relying on "market forces" as the sole support for those in the arts (which almost by definition must include a lot of individual-instance failures).

Mis-Anthropic (6)

A few minor administrative updates on Bartz v. Anthropic, the class action pending for copyright violations in creating one particular large language model supporting one particular generative-AI engine, merit some comment — mainly as assurances, citizens, that there's really nothing to see here, move along (but get your documentation gathered and claims filed on or preferably well before 30 March 2026).

1. Unless there's a full seal on one (or, as tasteless and ominous foreshadowing, Item 2), no further objections to the settlement have been filed after the earlier ones. That doesn't necessarily mean smooth sailing, but it does mean that there's only one potential source of new arguments against the settlement unless the new judge reopens the objection period on motion — which is guaranteed to happen, down the road, if she rejects the settlement and sends everyone back to the bargaining table before they darken her chambers door again:

2. The United States government. Just as in the Google Book Search fiasco (filed about two decades ago now!), the US could move to intervene and object to either the settlement or the award of attorney's fees (see Item 3). The arguments and merits thereof, of course, are purely hypothetical at this stage. Given the massive conflicts of interest presented by "friends" of this Administration (specifically including the Doge of Venice Beach), the hostility of many of those "friends" to plaintiffs' attorneys (insurance defense counsel and mergers-and-acquisitions counsel, however, are encouraged to get rich with outrageous fees), and purported "policy imperatives," nothing would truly surprise me. Appall? — that's a different question entirely.

3. The next scheduled hearing is on 23 April 2026 — at which time only the pending motion for attorney's fees will be heard. The new judge specifically "administratively terminated" all other pending motions, and stated that the fairness hearing currently scheduled for that date "will be re-set by the Court at a later date" (Dkt. 579 (26 Jan 2026) (PDF, public access)). This is completely routine, and I expected it: This judge needs more time to familiarize herself with counsel, with the filings, with the facts, etc. The real point here is only that the settlement will not be either approved or disapproved on 23 April, or in a later ruling based on a hearing on 23 April.

4. The transcripts of the November 2025 hearings — when Judge Alsup is reported to have had some pointed remarks concerning tactics and notices suggesting that authors should opt out and proceed independently for Reasons (that make little practical sense, but that's for another forum) — will be made available to the public by 02 March 2026 absent any further motions relating to them.

5. Perhaps most important in the long run — but not creating any new deadlines (yet) — Judge Alsup appointed a Special Master (a non-judge who will make recommendations to the judge, now Judge Martinez-Olguin) to deal with "claimant disputes" (Dkt. 501 (25 Nov 2025) (PDF, public access)). The Special Master is a professional who will take in the facts and make recommendations. Examples might include an author asserting that the publisher is not due anything because the contract expired in 1996 (decades before either actual copyright infringement by LibGen et al., or Anthropic's copying of that infringement, and massively prior to any tenable extension of the three-year statute of limitations) but the publisher wants its purported 50% share; or ambiguity in the author-publisher contract on the publisher's share, which could be a serious issue for infringement of e-book versus print editions; or two coauthors failing to agree on a split of whatever money is due an author; or — and this is where the fun will be — claims by contributors regarding a collective work. There's no track record for either Judge Martinez-Olguin or Mr Cheng to provide any basis for prediction of how this might work out.

The Day After the Year After the Revolution

The most important question, five years after an attempted coup and a year and a day after the provacateur managed to regain office anyway: Who is absent from the reviewing stand this year, Comrade? And who might be next year?

• This son of a tyrant isn't uniquely positioned to make an ass of himself in public, but he does so pretty well even though he's got lots of company. But what a great opportunity for the West to fuck up yet again in that part of the world, where by a conservative estimate it has facilitated (intentionally or otherwise) at least thirty repressive governments in just the last century… specifically including that nation (more than once). Neither that family nor the West learned anything from 1953, or even from 1978: In an age of widespread (not even universal) literacy, you rule either with the consent of the governed… or an iron gauntlet, with spikes on the inside as you peacefully shake hands with your prior foes.
• Or you could just look at lower levels, and see what that kind of attitude can do when it entraps cities. Curiously, the article doesn't even mention the circumstances of the original sale (or, for that matter, who earned commissions or kickbacks campaign contributions), throwing it away as a "lopsided deal signed in 2008 by former Mayor Richard M. Daley." Apparently, the purpose of the Mayor of Chicago is not to create corruption/stupidity, it is to preserve corruption/stupidity.
• In a startling example of how even many of those of good intent regarding politics aren't doing very well at target selection, the Brennan Center for Justice offers nine solutions for political corruption that might be helpful — but are already being evaded. For one thing, many of the proposed constitutional amendments are both impossible (given what it takes to amend the Constitution) and unnecessary, being based not on the Constitution or its discernable core values but upon later judicial (mis)interpretations. Dead presidents have neither free-speech rights nor privacy/anonymity rights; remove the wrong-when-decided foundation of Buckley v. Valeo and about half of this list of reforms becomes unnecessary, at least at the constitutional-law level. Then it would at least be at the still-difficult statutory/judicial level, where there's at least some visibility — if not always accountability, the very point of the ire I share with the Brennan Center.

  Simultaneously, however, the list fails to engage with a different kind of corruption that controls the kind that it does. Corruption of the kingmaker(s) is much, much harder to mitigate or remove than even corruption of the king(s). Incompetence is even worse… although it can be really hard to tell the difference — if there is one.

• The world of publishing is a sad, sad mecca of self-sabotage. Whether we're talking about publishing executives trying to be like H'wood producers or authors who believe that no matter how small their output, how audience-negating their subjects, they're entitled to a comfortable middle-class existence just for being authors. In a socialist utopia, all authors and other creators — indeed, everyone — would have that same entitlement. All of those in power would respect both its limits and its minimum ethics, and just might have a sense of humor. And all of the children would be above average. (Sorry, but there is neither a Santa Claus nor a utopia.)

•  •  •

Under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you and you sold me
There lie they and here lie we
Under the spreading chestnut tree

More clove oil for your tea, sir? And please put that book away — there are far too many books distracting people from carefully curated sources of all the information they need.

87.1

This your host Max Greene. My producer Sara insists that I finish up tonight's requests before heading over to our weekly broadcast at 520 on your AM dial, because not everything is digital. We'll still restream everything starting at 1:00am tomorrow in all the usual places.

	We'll start out with the romance of competition, from Victoria to, it says here on the card, my lovely friend Joe. Do I hear wedding bells in the background? No? Well, we can always hope.
	Here's one from Mette to Stevie, Donnie, and the rest of the Amateur-Hour Boys' Club, with a note to "Seeya at Have af sten, boys!"
	From our affiliate in Minneapolis, this one's for Kristi from Rebecca, dedicated "May you rot in hell." Sounds like a pretty bad breakup to me — that relationship has gone to the dogs.
	I'm not sure I understand this one. James sends this classic to George, with a note "don't get caught next time."
	This one's just weird, the same song requested by Elon for Ashley and by Ashley for Elon! I can't read those dedications on the air, though, any more than George Carlin could, which is sort of weird for a song without words. Weird is more for our next few hours.

That's all we have time for tonight, folks. See you on the other side after Sara plays these important messages.

A Candle in the Window

Gotta crank out these sausages so there's room in the kitchen for Turkey Day preparations. Maybe if the shutdown ends soon, SNAP recipients won't have to be satisfied with a Cornish game hen split six ways. (There will still be plenty of other shenanigans.)

• I suppose I should start by noting The Further Adventures of Eliza — the true ancestor of so-called "generative AI" systems. (By now, she's probably just another old lady.) Some proponents of these systems really, honestly believe that "information wants to be free (and everything is just information)," so they disrespect "opt-outs" (leaving aside that under the basic premises of copyright — indeed, all intellectual property law, whether US-centric or otherwise — opting out is for waiving protection, not waiving rights).¹
• The obvious consequence is underinclusive class actions. Now I say that in the abstract; in the best of all possible worlds, all of the defendants engaging in similar schemes would be in a defendant class, all owners of copyright interests would be in the plaintiff class, and the judge would be authorized — indeed, enthusiastic about — using a chainsaw on prevaricating briefs. And lawyers. And outside commentators (especially those with conflicts of interest). This, however, is not that world, so we have to deal with… well, the realities of litigation. Such as the underinclusive list of eligible works — a list that, as usual for anything with which the Authors' Guild is involved, neglects "abnormal" publications by their concept of "normal," such as requiring an ISBN or ASIN, and dismissing self-help books that outsell all but a few of their actual members — in the context of the realities of the primarily-cost-effectiveness narrowing of the case.

  The perfect is the enemy of the good enough, and definitely the enemy of the achievable. Don't be fooled by carrion-eating "advocates" searching for scraps in pursuit not of an achievable better deal for the actual rightsholders, but for their own award of attorney's fees. If you, as an author, choose to opt out, do so only after having experienced IP litigation counsel review the details of your specific circumstances — not based on spam². (This is explicitly not an offer of representation or solicitation of business for me.)

• Which beats worrying about how unearned inherited wealth is warping social values. It's even worse Over There… until you look at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, in which each Heffalump resident in the last third-of-a-century-plus has been a scion of inherited wealth.
• In somewhat better news, wingnuts took Election Day results in very delicate portions of their anatomies indeed. Not just Over Here, either; even the "governing party" in the Netherlands (which doesn't mean quite the same thing as Americans think it does). The wingnuts really don't like hearing any of this from a mixed-race… individual (sarcasm tag superfluous, doncha think?).
• Wingnuts also need to rethink exactly how they approach institutions that seem not to welcome them as much as they think they deserve. Oh, wait, that would undermine their sense of entitlement, so maybe it's as unrealistic as the suggestions running around to opt out of the Anthropic settlement without a competent evaluation of particular circumstances…

---

1. Also leaving aside the deceptive naming habit of damned near everyone in this conversation — "Copyright Alliance" without conflicts of interest my avulsed toenails.
2. From what I've seen — and I suspect I haven't seen all of it — spam that arguably violates applicable legal ethics rules, neglects Fed. R. Civ. Proc. 23 and the parts of the Manual for Complex Litigation (sorry, the web reference isn't working during shutdown) relating to management of class-member options, misrepresents the most-relevant facts, and completely fails to acknowledge the uncertainties and costs of proceeding with individual suits, or even alternate class actions. The preceding has been edited for the benefit of your screen; my real opinion of the opt-out spam that I have seen drips acid. I've got more respect for your computer than that; the people who came up with these campaigns… didn't. At least they're not porno trolls — at least, not yet.

Oktoberfestwurst

Civilization ends at Quantico. Today.^†

• Speaking of obsessions with appearances (see also the note below), I suppose I should be happy that my appearance allows me to pass as an upstanding American of northwest-European ancestry. The contrast with some other people brings the world beyond Mayberry into a videographer's focus.
• One meme that continually annoys me is celebrities (of all kinds) misusing their platforms to spout bullshit, despite their best intentions (which are sometimes, but not always, good intentions). This all too often results from a passionate and personal interest not backed up by any study or exposure beyond their own personal experiences — an argument from authority, with the authority in question being celebrity and not expertise. Two current examples:
  • Jennifer Lawrence — a talented actor — went for the soundbite and missed when she proclaimed that Israel's atrocities in Gaza are "no less than genocide." They are certainly no less than atrocities; they are certainly no less indefensible. However, precisely because the stated target is a political opponent (however virulent and unjustified its positions are), the war crimes at issue are not technically genocide — which requires as its target an ethnoreligious identity.

    Ms Lawrence is right to be outraged. But words matter, especially when they're technical terms, especially near the eightieth anniversary of establishing their meaning — and consequences. That's not just for this instance, either: It's for the future.

  • Ms Lawrence's error is misuse of a technical term (encouraged, admittedly, by all-too-common misuse of that term in general discourse, often by those who should know better). This rather pales, however, next to a celebrity author accusing the actor who played the Mary Sue character in films of that author's most-famous work of "ignorance" for stating views closely aligned with that character — even if the subplot encompassing those views never made it on screen. Perhaps Ms Rowling's views have evolved since SPEW made its way onto the page a couple decades past. Perhaps there's a (private) incident or two in Ms Rowling's past that explain her feeling threatened by those whose gender identity does not match their at-birth genitalia (I feel no need to delve into it; many people have similar otherwise-unexplainable personal reactions, distinct from outright bigotry). But proclaiming that an actor with significant on-set and full-production exposure to the film industry — not to mention an education split between Oxford and the Ivy League — is "ignorant" about the full scope of, and personal rights concerning, those issues from the security of one's Scottish castle without disclosing any nonconclusory basis is more than a bit self-defeating. Or, at minimum, self-deceptive.

    If there's oblivious ignorance in this tiny teapot tempest, it's in the author's extension of unstated personal experiences or perceptions to universal declarations of (non)rights. Sadly, that's far too common a problem; the fundamental difficulty is that "civil rights" cannot be founded on whose turn it is to be the bully.

• On a slightly less obviously emotional controversy (but in the end equally so), consider the value of "a book," whether for outright piracy or to libraries. As to the latter, it appears that the publishers have learned at least a little bit since US v Apple, Inc. — they've done much better at hiding any price-fixing conspiracy from view, just as they have with "e-book royalties are 25% of net." Why yes, I am suggesting the (probable) existence of multiple loci of antitrust perfidy in commercial publishing.
• In a result remarkably similar to "dog bites mailcarrier," a study that appears to have adequate controls has concluded that anti-phishing training for employees doesn't work. What would work better is always reading e-mail as plain text, so that any mismatch between where a link says it's going and its actual address is immediately obvious; that, however, would conflict with sales-and-marketing memes and graphic design pushed elsewhere by many employers…
• I suppose we could just continue to obsess over the unfitness for purpose of tax systems and burdens. Yeah, that's absolutely going to involve fewer hidden agendas, conflicts of interest, ignorance, and bigotry in favor of inherited advantage of original position.

---

†  The contrast here with the CINC is beside the point — he's a civilian. The real problem is that the height-and-weight standards (not official) are largely established with a view toward "proper military appearance" (and fit into existing vehicles/aircraft/vessels) and not to capability as a warrior. A 177cm man weighing in at 95kg is more than 10kg over the standard but suitable as a starting running back. This is just slightly off… as was being a rail-thin football player (the other football) at the other end of the scale. "Warrior ethos" my avulsed toenails.

The contrast with the slack/missing mental fitness standards must be left for another time.

The Anthropic (Lack of) Principle

Some e-mails and others' blog entries lead me to believe that the class definition in the settlement regarding Anthropic's use of pirated material as training material for its "AI" is causing some needless confusion. Slightly rewording it, the class members who can recover are those who:

• Hold the copyright,
• in works leeched by Anthropic to "train"¹ its "AI" systems
• that were, for US works, registered with the Copyright Office
• with an effective date preceding the leeching
• and within five years after first publication.

It's those last two qualifications that are causing the confusion, because they're not about copyright law — they are, instead, about the technicalities of class certification, and specifically about the problem of class representives having circumstances typical of the class and that the common questions presented predominate. However, it does relate back to copyright law, in a way, too — because works falling outside of these parameters and leeched in this scheme still violates that work's copyright, but it would require further litigation. The incredibly ill-advised registration system — which is inconsistent with the Berne Convention's disdain for "formalities," but for both historical and hidden-agenda reasons beyond the scope here continues to be part of US copyright law — has two provisions that are prone to abusive litigation tactics. The class definition excludes those tactics by defining otherwise valid copyright claims out of the class.

The easiest to understand, and the one with the most validity, is that the effective date of registration² needs to precede the date on which the material was misappropriated by Anthropic. This isn't about copyright validity, but about the availability of certain remedies under § 412. Since those remedies are important parts of this class action, they've been forced in through the class definition.³

It's much more difficult to accept the "registered within five years" limitation. A registration can be made at any time that a work's copyright is in force. The "five years" comes from an evidentiary qualification in § 410 of the Copyright Act: A registration whose effective date is within five years of first publication is prima facie valid, but a later registration is subject to challenge more generally. Excluding the post-five-years-registered works is a litigation decision made in negotiating this settlement (and in the class allegations in the complaint), because it appears that none of the proposed class representatives falls into that group and the additional squirreliness involved in validating those registrations might theoretically impair the "common question" aspect of class certification.

Unfortunately, that last point in particular has been misinterpreted in a number of places as meaning that more than five years after first publication, it's too late to register at all (instead of just for this particular lawsuit). Frankly, that's what some parties here want you to think, because without registration there's no individual cause of action that can be heard by the courts (§ 411, although this is a claim-processing rule and not jurisdiction⁴).

The fundamental problem is that the publishing industries — some more than others — have been at best slovenly in registering copyrights, even when the publishing contract requires such registration.⁵ (It was worse under the 1909 Act, when that failure to register also forfeited the copyright itself.) It is still worth doing late registrations (so long as the term hasn't expired and the registrant is even more careful than usual to proofread the application and ensure it's fully truthful and accurate). This suit, after all, is not going to resolve all questions regarding leeching of material under copyright… and the next set of class counsel to come along, or even individual lawyers, might be more aggressive. However, they can't file if there's no registration.

---

1. I'm just not going to express my contempt for this sort of deceptive misuse of language here. Although that misuse is endemic to the general discussion of "AI" and "generative AI" and "chatbots," the point of this blawg entry is misunderstanding of copyright law by affected authors (and potentially many others).

   Don't worry, you sleazebuckets. I'll deal with your intellectual dishonesty and intentionally deceptive acts and practices more directly another time. Bwahahahahaha!

2. Although really not relevant here, the effective date of registration is ordinarily the earliest of the date of actual application (including payment of fees) or — if that application date is 90 days or less after first publication — the date of first publication. Naturally, the "date of first publication" is defined in the Copyright Act only for "phonorecordings."
3. We'll pretend, for the moment, that § 505 provides the only way to recover attorney's fees. It doesn't; the rule governing class actions provides for attorney's fees (regardless of whether the cause of action otherwise provides for them), and on a far more generous basis than does the Copyright Act. Needless to say, I'm displeased with the confusion here, too.
4. Reed Elsevier, Inc. v. Muchnick, 559 U.S. 154 (2010). This matters because federal class actions can include claims of dubious (or even no) subject-matter jurisdiction if pursued individually.
5. This failure constitutes a breach of contract by the publisher. On one hand, it's probably long past the statute of limitations, since the failure to register "should be" apparent to the author not long after publication. Creative lawyers might use such breaches — especially when part of a pattern or practice — to strike other defenses offered by publishers for other breach-of-contract claims like failure to pay royalties; this is called the doctrine of unclean hands. Of course, the hands were a lot less clean when smearing linseed-oil-based inks…

How [Not] to Share

So, one obvious conceptual flaw in SharePoint has been exploited? Color me surprised (a particularly repulsive variant of chartreuse)…

I have uninstalled and blocked SharePoint on every machine I've had since it was first distributed. At a fundamental level, the SharePoint concept is inconsistent with the concept of "confidential data," and its very existence — very much like the use of the body of e-mails for privileged information — makes a mockery by trusting others whom the person responsible for securing information doesn't know. Effective information security is not an automated afterthought to the convenience of providing "me, too!" comments on badly-conceived marketing documents passed across an organization and to outside "consultants." Even that, however, is better conceived than SharePoint and similar "collaborative editing" systems that also, simultaneously, undermine both declarations concerning the marketing emperor's new clothes and taking responsibility for changes — that is, they foster not collaboration but groupthink. (Lest you think this is an anti-M$ rant, I do the same with all other "collaborative commenting" and "silent document-sharing" systems, such as with PDFs.)

Any resemblance of the preceding to any of the following is somewhat less than coincidental:

• The traditional process of providing law-firm partners commenting ability (even with pen on paper!) on every associate's "preliminary" and "early-draft" work, without regard to either "actual knowledge of context" or "need to know"
• Blanket access to anything by administrative assistants
• The success rate of individuals in recognizing what elements of documents that they are asked to comment upon but are not directly concerned with their daily duties are confidential, even to the minimal extent of "proprietary business information"
• AI Chelsea Manning

Worse, all of that concerns "confidential information." It does not reach the concept of EEFIs (essential elements of friendly information), such as a sudden increase in communications between a corporation and a law firm (or even department thereof) specializing in mergers and acquisitions… or white-collar-crime defense… These are just the easy-to-see examples, too; and the less said about healthcare information, or enablement of ICE raids, the better. The irony that this particular system failure is (more) exploitable when an organization uses its own SharePoint server rather than a "cloud-based system" should cause everyone to question the very concept, but that isn't part of the conversation at all.

"Security, privacy, and respect for others' security and privacy" are inherently not efficient. Get over it — reject the purportedly neutral "efficiency is always good" meme — and pay the f*ck attention, instead of relying upon some programmer who knows nothing of your actual business (or personal concerns) to do it for you.

•  •  •

Meanwhile, Life continues to get in the way of everything. I'm afraid that Life doesn't make for "efficient sharing," either. So, no further comments about how having a "controlling shareholder individual or small group" for a company with First Amendment issues makes Mr Colbert's impending deplatforming inevitable, beyond my expression of just as much surprise as I did above concerning SharePoint. At least not today.

Not on Safari

I can neither confirm nor deny that there's an elephant in the room, nor whether I've noticed (or fed?) any crocodiles near the waterhole.

• I long wondered if Motel 6 left the light on for you to keep cockroaches out of sight, but it looks like the new ownership forgot to leave the light on in its own boardroom. Don't get me started on Kars for Kids (carefully choosing an unmistakeable homonymative after the hyperformalist trademark frenzy that was possible only due to the 19th-century economic concepts underlying trademark law) — or the utterly-misnamed "legitimate theater." Rather distressingly, the entertainment industry is structured on a by-design bait-and-switch, exacerbated when it's hired out for side gigs by the advertising industry — so all of this is entirely predictable.
• Speaking of cockroaches running from the lights, it's not a new problem in NoVa.
• Don't ignore this important message from our sponsors: Leaving aside that QR codes are themselves built on a bait-and-switch system designed to make users not pay attention to what they're doing, the actual use of "you don't really need to know who the sponsor actually is" just feeds the egos of exactly the wrong segment of undesireables (I say that as a not-recovering hacker from the solder-it-yourself era). Just ignore the secondaries…
• Speaking of undesireables, it's all about whose desire is being suppressed, and how, and why. We'll just ignore how actual undesireables speak out; pondering the irony of reducing a complex argument to a t-shirt slogan worn by a less-well-known part of a less-regarded sport is too much for Monday morning, though — even in the abstract or through disfavored language.
• No elephants are being shot here or otherwise harmed in the production of this blawg entry. Not even rabid bull elephants rampaging around the waterhole damaging the entire ecosystem and not incidentally making their own future prospects even more bleak. Just legislators not fully and enthusiastically participating in theocracy. But they matter no more than lawyers defrauding everyone for decades to popular acclaim. Neither does that kind of lawyer's real clientbase, not even Over There.

The City Is for Burning

Once every generation:

1933 — Griffith Park
1965 — Watts
1992 — Rodney King
2025 — January wildfires… and now this

What that says about the arsonist in chief and fomenting insurrection — again — is not supposed to be a necessary part of the conversation in a true democracy. Is it? Maybe a well-known former resident of an internment camp already understands the current situation all too well.

• How about something cheerier, like music? (That look on your face says "You've got to be kidding me.") How about some real patriotism from pop stars, who did not dodge the draft? Sometimes I do have upbeat stories on the music segment of the entertainment industry! But you don't actually come here for the cheeriness, so I'll return to normal grouchiness pondering Corruption at the Top: The Next Generation, all the while speculating about how bad things must really be if that source is criticizing management. Nor is it really any better across the Pond.
• Well, how about the rising gaming industry? Surely there's some extravagent claim to be made that will entertain us! Just consider that he probably never would have been able to work on games like Othello, Lear, Macbeth, The Tempest, or The Winter's Tale (that last with its definitely-made-for-gaming "Exit — pursued by a bear"), because he was 40 or older and — notwithstanding the Age Discrimination in Employment Act — old fogeys of 40 and up have real trouble getting interviews (let alone actual jobs) in gaming. Any grey hairs had better be from a bottle…
• At least the House of Lords is showing some understanding of the natural-person-creator's needs and perspective on "exceptions" for AI use of copyrighted material. Not at all by coincidence, the charge is being led in the House of Lords by an actual, active, natural-person creator — something we haven't had in Congress for quite some time. Now if we'll just get everyone, or even anyone who actually has a voice in the matter, to understand and accept that "machine learning" on a Von Neumann-architecture computer doesn't resemble "human learning" except by coincidence, we could have a real conversation. Which, in the current environment, would turn into a war on social media rather rapidly.

Don't Have to Live Like a Refugee

Warning: Some contents satirical. The humor- and/or intellectually-impaired are severely cautioned.

• Professor Tushnet describes a consumer-deception case involving claims that A and B were separate entities when they were in fact the same. This is disturbingly parallel to this morning's 9–0 Supreme Court decision (3 concurring opinions) regarding potential liability for wire fraud by deceptive identification of a "separate" minority-owned "subcontractor".
• I ran into some white refugees from South Africa this afternoon. They appeared fairly comfortable to me, although their name doesn't sound very "white." However, when I asked for any documentation concerning a risk of genocide, I got no response.
• At least they were refugees. This… individual from South Africa was not a refugee so much as a draft-dodger. That makes him a good fit for this Administration, with its occasional focus on the military accomplishments of others. At least it wasn't an attempt to rename Memorial Day, which would be a bit too much regarding a holiday originally about Union soldiers. (I tried to link to the VA's explanation, but as of this afternoon it's returning a 404 error…)
• When a newspaper long known for its hostility to "creatives" (notwithstanding the "new ownership") prints a page of "book recommendations" from one of its "content partners" filled with AI hallucinations, things are getting just a little bit too weird — and disturbing. It's not so much the "we were fooled by an AI hallucination" as "we did no review or factchecking whatsoever on something from a 'content partner' — nobody tears off and prints from a teletype any more, but we tried!" Then, of course, they blamed their own failure to follow journalistic standards on someone else. I guess I'll need to go elsewhere trying to find literary immortality, or even prestige — let alone a reading list likely to be available through the public library (which only actually acquires and circulates real books).
• Note to executives at Universal Music Group: It's not a good-faith effort to "resolve" a dispute or disagreement when you reject a claim that arose from your overt and intentional deception and violations of law. Those works couldn't have been "works made for hire"… unless they were by (a) employees within the scope of their duties, in which case I'd like to see the W2s you issued to them at the time, or (b) a freelancer's specifically commissioned work falling into one of nine categories, none of which can be mangled to include "phonorecordings" either at the time of the creation or now. Since it was after 01 Jan 1978, just declaring "work made for hire" in the contract was insufficient (and the transferee/recorded music industry's near half-century of refusing to acknowledge that 1909 Act precedents were statutorily overruled is not, I'm afraid, an AI hallucination).
• Sympathy to President Biden regarding his recent medical diagnosis… and a kick in the crotch for those attempting to turn it into continued criticism of Vice-President Harris and others for not "disclosing" this or any other "health challenge." WTAF? If they had, y'all would have screamed about violating Biden's medical privacy. We still wouldn't have had younger candidates in presumably better health… oh, wait, he's not exactly younger himself, is he?

  Everybody is entitled to a voice in democracy. Not everybody is entitled to be on the ballot. If your birth year appears in the "presently eligible to draw Social Security benefits" table (like mine does!), get off the ballot. Otherwise, events like this are inevitably accelerated, or at least more prevalent.

Their Lips Were Moving

Let's just skip the medical TMI and get right to the platter.

• If you can take your attention off of the multiline train wreck in DC, you might want to sympathize a bit (or perhaps enjoy some schadenfreude) with the poor, poor executives at Apple. Smacked around by the European Commission and by a respected US District Judge in the same month for antitrust… issues. It's not like they weren't warned about turning the Apple IIe (we'll just elide the Apple III as if it never happened) from an open system to a walled garden with the Mac, although that's nearly half a century ago. More to the point, it's not like they weren't warned about executives-as-witnesses whose greatest economy was with the truth about a decade ago — also regarding antitrust.
• Apple's colleague down the street isn't doing much better. Not only was it also fined by the European Commission (first link in the preceding sausage), but it disrespects all IP that it doesn't own. This is a far-from-unique issue among IP transferees, but it's particularly annoying coming from a company that traffics in personally identifiable data. It's also quite interesting that different divisions, and different product lines, of the same corporation have different, but overlapping, variants on IP rights that end up pointing at the same underlying foundation: Only our IP has value.
• Speaking of transferees taking all the seats at the table (and disrespect of a major actor for everyone else's IP), the ongoing lawsuit by Big Phonogram against the Internet Archive continues to stumble along, perhaps toward an endpoint. Or perhaps not; in any event, this is one bit of IP litigation that I wish both sides would lose — Silicon Valley learned everything it knows about "only my IP rights deserve respect" from Nashville.
• Returning to European concerns, there's an interesting case on the minutiae of trademark law brewing that has important implications for certain disreputable publishing practices. As this blawg's only feline friend the IPKat asks, "Is it deceptive to use a designer’s name in a trade mark if the designer is no longer with the company?" If the CJEU says "yes," or even "maybe," that would have profound implications for works written by other than the identified author. That's not to say the "ghostwriting is to be forbidden" — just that if it's a deceptive act to attribute a design via mark to someone no longer with the company, attributing a book to someone who didn't write it while hiding the identity of who did is also a deceptive act. Hmmmmm, can I think of a political figure implicated in this sort of thing?
• Then there's… this long-running fiasco. Bluntly, Ms Palin, you clearly have little idea of what "incitement" means — and implies.

That's enough for now. I'll try to emerge from the fallout shelter a little more often than I have this month.

After-Bedtime Sausage Platter

I've had several false starts on the blawg this month (not to mention shepherding tax returns through — Beware the Ides of April, even though that's technically the 14th). I've started on several pieces only to have somebody in DC up past his bedtime make things worse.

• Every generation has some variation on complaints that "young people don't read [the right kind of] books, leading to the collapse of civilization." Here's another example, that I'm afraid evades two aspects of "reading" by teens.

  First, and perhaps most obvious, the definition of "book" (and "[right kind of] book") is more than merely "problematic" — note that every single example cited concerns "dead-tree books." I'm old enough to remember Respectable Adults sneering at mass-market paperbacks, even when they were A Clockwork Orange and 1984 and The Dispossessed and, perhaps most to the point, Fahrenheit 451… mostly with covers conceived and executed by people who were not the target audience, let alone teens themselves. It wasn't just judging the books by their covers, but by their very format — and that continues with e-books, especially when those e-books are being read on something other than a dedicated e-book device. (If you spot me on the bus or the train staring at my phone, I'm not doomscrolling — I'm reading We or some other book that the self-appointed Guardians of Culture consider suspect at best.)

  Second, there's a glare of condescension in there — the unstated assumption that "what is worthwhile in Western Civilization exists at 'book length' (usually novels and textbooks) only." A voracious reader does need to read some at book length… but they could do that by reading the archives of this blawg from front to back. More, a voracious informed reader is going to read in the lengths established by the fields of interest/study. As an obvious example, law is far, far more oriented toward individual opinions (whether common law, civil law, sharia, whatever) and journal articles. Even moreso in the sciences, both as to "generalities" and "breaking topics." There's no need to point out the problem of long, descriptive passages revealing that the author was paid by the word and not the concept, especially with fiction: The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas has a great deal more to say about "virtue" than, say, The Faerie Queen. In short, the purpose of reading matters; and it especially matters to teens who have largely been stuck with badly-written, often ill-conceived textbooks as the exemplars of "book length."

• Young people would probably run for office more frequently if the gatekeepers would (a) do a better job of gatekeeping, (b) figure out that elected office has an expiration date, and (c) knock off the "pay your dues, and only in the way that past generations have" crap. Then we end up with wide-eyed credulous crap like this piece that almost entirely misses the point: Party gatekeepers gave us both candidates for President last year, giving us a choice between the lesser of "who cares?" Unfortunately, it's actually difficult to choose rationally between bad alternatives — and people do a remarkably poor job protecting their own interests when all choices offered are against those interests.

  In short, my generation (and the prior generation) needs to shut up and get off the ballot. That's different from not listening to the old farts at all (seeing as how my generation paid the price in Vietnam, we know a little bit — perhaps all too viscerally — about conflicts serving shadowy purposes either forgotten or never revealed). The only dominoes we should be actually making decisions about are the double-nine sets in the rec room, and definitely not for others.

• From the Department of Everything Old Is New Again, a new generation has created its own Gilded Age via multinational "tech companies" that cut corners on the tax bill (translation note: the UK phrase "tax avoidance" doesn't mean the same thing as the American phrase "tax avoidance" — it's much more condemnatory, often reaching what would be called "tax evasion" Over Here). Which, I suppose, beats outright theft, although anyone who actually knows enough sophomore-year computer programming, and how the von Neumann-compliant processors of today work, should have figured out long ago that "generative AI" necessarily gets its input by making copies — precisely what copyright law is concerned with. This is not to say that copyright law couldn't benefit from some considerable rethinking and revision; it is to say that imagining that copyright law has already changed to be exactly what generative-system proponents think it should be (just ignore the massive conflicts of interest) rather resembles a different kind of thinking one's way to success.