Gavin St. Ours

Today, loads of websites are blacked out in opposition of SOPA and PIPA. If you’ve been online at all for the past couple months, I’m sure you’ve heard about it. (If not, click that link.)

I agree that piracy is real, but what we have on our hands is a far more complex issue than, “Evil criminals are stealing movies and music and ruining the economy!” That’s a stupid over-simplification.

There are many issues at play here. Not all content is available in all regions. Why are people pirating in the first place? In many cases, it’s not an issue of avoiding paying for content, it’s an issue of accessibility, user experience, and convenience. Why isn’t any of that part of the discussion?

Oh, right. That would make the discussion too complex for the fat old white babies in Congress who have no idea how the Internet works.

Under the guise of “anti-piracy”, these two bills would grant sweeping power to companies and lawmakers to shut down “rogue” sites, without due process. Craigslist, Wikipedia, and thousands of other sites could vanish without warning or explanation. Shared a movie clip or photo or mashup on your blog? You’re running a rogue site and are a criminal.

That’s not over-stating it; that’s how these laws would work.

But the implications are even more far-reaching than that. The mechanisms for shutting down down and blocking sites could alter the technical underpinnings of what make the Internet work.

It’s like cracking down on speeding by tearing up all the roads.

Ben Cardin, a Maryland senator whom I’ve voted for in the past, is a co-sponsor of PIPA. (I voiced my disapproval to him in an email a few weeks back.) Everything about SOPA and PIPA is reckless, shortsighted, poorly researched, and reactionary, but media interests and other SOPA supporters gave him about $862,242 to think they’re good ideas.

A few days ago, Cardin issued a statement, sort-of-but-not-really distancing himself from the bill, conceding that he had some concerns about the technical complications. “I would not vote for final passage of PIPA, as currently written, on the Senate floor,” his statement says. It’s some great back-pedaling.

But the core of his argument, the argument parroted by other lawmakers and industry goons, continues to be this:

The reality is that Internet piracy costs America’s economy billions of dollars each year and hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Really? Billions of dollars? Hundreds of thousands of jobs? How did he get those figures? Where is the credible evidence to back this up? So far, I haven’t seen any, and I’m not the only one who’s been looking. It’s a phantom figure cooked up by the people who give Cardin money.

I’m very disappointed in Cardin, and I don’t see how I could vote for him again.

On the Internet, innovation is rewarded. Most recently, Louis CK embraced the Internet and made over a million dollars when he sold his new stand-up special on his website in a format his audience wanted.

That kind of thinking gives us a glimpse into the future. It opens up all sorts of possibilities for creators and consumers, and it also challenges the way business has been done for the past century. Groups like the MPAA are freaking out about it, losing their grip on both power and reality.

I think that might be the real issue. Why adapt and innovate when you have the money and power to force everyone to go back to the old rules? Why embrace the future when you can afford to fight it?

In a hundred years, people will look back at our politicians and companies and shake their heads at what stupid fat old white babies they are.

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My last semester of grad school starts three weeks from today, which means my manuscript should be pretty much done by then. (In theory.) To keep my revisions and edits on track, and to make sure I write new fiction every day, I decided to track my daily word count.

Inspired in part by NeuYear’s “Seize the Year” poster, Jerry Seinfeld’s chain method, and the lack of attractive printable year-on-a-page calendars online, I whipped up my own version of 2012 on one page, with room for my daily word count.

It’s my super-nerdy creativity ledger. Right now, my goal is to write at least 500 words every day. By keeping track, I feel accountable, and there’s something powerful about seeing the whole year at once. Graduation is a few inches down the page, which terrifies me, but I’m excited to see what my life will be like when I reach the bottom of the page.

Here’s a PDF of the calendar. If you have a daily goal for writing, blogging, working out, or anything else you want to track, maybe this will be helpful.

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Alright, 2012. Let’s dance.

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Wherever and whoever you are, whatever you celebrate, observe, or don’t, I hope you and the ones you love are happy and safe today!

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That’s my IBM Selectric II, which I bought a couple years ago from a retired gentleman who placed an ad on Criagslist. He bought it new in the early 1970s, when it was the top-of-the-line model. He bought it for his dissertation, and he and his wife had only used it a couple times since. They were moving to Florida, he explained, and the typewriter wasn’t coming along for the trip. He gave me a very, very good deal.

I love everything about writing on this beast of a machine. I love the way it hums to life when I switch it on. I love the very industrial (and loud) sound from each keystroke, the way the keys feel, and even the way it smells.

Writing on my Selectric is different than writing on my Mac. The keys require more force than the gentle pressing motion on the laptop. I can’t go back and second-guess or edit something I wrote two paragraphs earlier, which trains me to keep plowing through a first draft. “Mistakes are okay,” it says. “We can fix those later. Let’s just get the story down on paper right now.”

After a few hours of writing, once I’ve created a small stack of fresh pages on my desk, I’ll re-type them (with minimal edits) onto my computer. After all, I still do the bulk of my writing on my computer. But, every few days or so, when I feel like I’ve hit a wall, or the idea of staring at my screen makes me want to run screaming into the woods and never write another word for the rest of my life, it’s nice to know that my Selectric is there, ready to help me out.

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Upon returning home from Rob and Amber’s epic Christmas and Hanukkah party, the lack of holiday decorations in my apartment seemed pretty bleak. Still, I didn’t want to go out, buy a tree, set it up, and decorate it just to make myself feel better. That seemed more pathetic than having no decorations at all.

But then I ran across this bit of brilliance on GalleyCat via Reddit: A Christmas tree made out of books! It’s all the fun of a Christmas tree without the hassle of keeping it alive (or the other hassle of storing a fake tree).

I have to steal this idea.

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A month ago, I wrote an overview of the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. Back then, there were 5,159 titles available through the service. Now, there are over 34,000 books available.

At launch, of the missing pieces of the puzzle was how indie authors could participate in the lending library. This week, Amazon answered our questions with the introduction of KDP Select, an expansion of the Kindle Direct Publishing platform.

Here’s how it works: If you make your title exclusive to the Kindle store for at least 90 days (with U.S. rights), it will automatically be included in the Lending Library. Authors will get paid from a monthly fund. This month, the fund is $500,000.

Your share of the fund is based on the number of people who borrow your book, compared to the total number of books borrowed across the platform. Amazon explains:

For example, if total borrows of all participating KDP titles are 100,000 in December and your book was borrowed 1,500 times, you will earn $7,500 in additional royalties from KDP Select in December. Enrolled titles will remain available for sale to any customer in the Kindle Store and you will continue to earn your regular royalties on those sales.

That means you’ll be making money from books that Prime customers borrow for free. This is another fantastic opportunity for indie authors to promote their work and still get paid for it.

The 90-day Amazon exclusivity may turn off some authors, but there’s no other company making it this easy for writers to get their work into the hands of new readers.

Amazon says it will announce the amount of January’s KDP Select fund on December 25, and they expect “at least $6 million in total for 2012″.

Remember that ebook boom I talked about? It’s going to be bigger than I originally thought.

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Tonight’s is moody and beautiful. Even though the weather has warmer than is usual for late November in Baltimore, this sky is a reminder that winter is on its way.

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According to Publishers Weekly, Black Friday Kindle sales increased 400% this year. If most of these are gifts, what do you think people are going to do once they’ve powered up their devices and played around in the menus? They’re going to shop for books.

If you’re a writer, you should think very carefully about that.

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Guided by Voices – Doughnut for a Snowman

Guided By Voices – Doughnut For A Snowman by FIRE RECORDS

Guided by Voices is my favorite band in the history of recorded music. Some of the first songs I ever learned on guitar were GBV songs, and their live shows are some of my fondest live music memories. So, when the band called it quits and played a final show on New Year’s Eve 2004 (I have it on DVD), you can imagine the sadness that swept over the fans.

But no! In 2010, the band reunited, at first for one show, then for a tour, and now the original “classic” lineup recorded a new album, Let’s Go Eat the Factory, which will come out in January 2012.

Today, however, we get a new EP, Doughnut for a Snowman. It’s the first new GBV material I’ve heard in a long time. Yes, I know that Robert Pollard continued to release solo albums after GBV broke up, and yes I know that Boston Spaceships sounds a lot like GBV to the untrained ear, but this is the real stuff here.

Is it January yet? And can they please come to Baltimore or DC when they tour for this album?

Smashing Pumpkins – Gish and Siamese Dream

My favorite bands from the 90s have been busy. Gish and Siamese Dream are two albums that forever changed the course of my young life, and they were remastered and re-released with a bunch of demos and outtakes and all the miscellaneous stuff you would expect. Gish turned 20 years old this year, and I’m pretty sure these two albums will be on heavy rotation in my headphones this week.

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