Hmmmmm. Joshua Allen writes:

"The scientists then dug up this song by a group that pretty much defines one-hit wonder: the La’s. The song is 'There She Goes,' and is so flawless that it instantly made everything else the band did pointless. This ditty is two minutes and 42 seconds, and is all about songwriting economy."

I wrote, in an entry entitled "2:42" on December 10, 2004:

"I have a fine candidate for pop perfection: 'There She Goes' by The La's, which most people know better by its fairly recent remake by Sixpence None the Richer. For my money, 'There She Goes' is nearly impossible to beat in its pop perfection: from the tips of its chiming guitars to the bottom of its blissful lyrics, it simply doesn't get any better than this. If aliens came down and said that we had just shade under three minutes to justify our existence or we'd be evaporated -- well, I wouldn't necessarily suggest playing this song, but I might suggest someone put it on in the background while we boot up Stephen Hawking's voice synthesizer."

(http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/003073.html)

Also, to be contentious, anyone who thinks the rest of The La's output is superfluous after "There She Goes" hasn't heard their album. For one thing, there's only two tracks out of twelve on their 1990 studio album that clock in over three minutes (one of them at 3:01), and then entire album is an exercise in pop perfection -- "Timeless Melody" is almost as astonishingly perfect as "There She Goes," and "Feelin'" is only a small step below that -- and clocks in at an astoundingly economical 1:44. The La's managed only that one studio album -- but the one was *enough*.

Robotech_Master:

Indeed, it should be clear that specific concerns about Burt re: SFWA should not be read as a referendum on his life in general. People have spoken and do speak warmly of his work with nyx.net and with the online writing workshop Critters.

Irene Delse:

Indeed, Russell Davis has a good and cogent platform, and has done a bang-up job talking to the public about his plans for SFWA. He's got my vote.

Well, shucks, Midknyte. Thanks.

Joel Johnson: Yes, they'll send you an e-mail with a link to the downloadable file. If it's like last time it'll be at some point late in the week.

Laurie Mann@30:

"SFWA Copyright Exploratory Committee" is probably the best one.

MKultra@29:

Well, Bear plays guitar and I play drums, so you're halfway there.

Wil Wheaton@27:

Heh. No, probably not.

Laurie Mann@19:

Maybe this is a silly point, but I'd personally demur from calling it the "Scalzi Committee." The work was equally shared and the recommendations were unanimous; praise (or blame) should accrue to all members equally. They made it pretty easy to be the chair.

Cory@6:

I believe that in the wake of the blow-up, Mr. Burt was trying to assemble a committee, yes; I was on the invite list for that as well. I believe Mr. Burt was acting on his own remit with that. Like you, I would not have participated in that committee.

Independent of that, Mr. Capobianco, the SFWA president, was looking to assemble an exploratory committee, per board resolution, and I volunteered to be on that committee. Mr. Capobianco asked me to chair the committee, which I agreed to; at the same times I strongly stressed to him that in my opinion no current board member (a group which included Mr. Burt) should be on the committee, as it would not be useful for the board to be perceived as influencing the committee in any way.

The members of the exploratory board were: Me, Charles Stross, Cat Rambo, Jane Yolen, Greg Bear, Jim C. Hines and Elizabeth Moon, with Megan Lindholm as a non-voting advisor. Mr. Burt, as VP of SFWA, was ex officio as he is on all SFWA committees due to the nature of SFWA's by-laws, but did not participate in or have access to the discussions we were having. All contact with the board, including Mr. Burt, went through me as chairman.

I can assure you that had there been any successful attempt by Mr. Burt or any other board member to inject himself into our proceedings, I would have immediately resigned and gone public. Loudly.

Our committee's charge was to offer the board recommendations on moving forward on copyright after having consulted with the SFWA membership; we did so, after which the board discussed the recommendations and made their own determinations based on our work. It accepted some, made modifications to others, and apparently misinterpreted at least one (we did not suggest reconstituting the previous ePiracy committee as the new Copyright Committee).

One tragedy here is that the actual new process which SFWA will use to aid members who ask for its help appears robust and less liable to create the sort of screw-ups which precipitated the whole crisis to begin with; but this is obscured by the fact of whom it is SFWA's board chose to head up the committee responsible for carrying out the process.

"That committee was chaired by John Scalzi, whom I respect and like. I declined to work on the committee, however, as I was skeptical that it would make progress, given that Burt was to have a seat on it."

To be clear, the committee of which I was the chair did not have Andrew Burt on it; I would not have participated on it if it had, for the reason that having him being the committee would not have been useful.

I would like to say that the members of SFWA who were on the committee represented the best of SFWA -- we had a wide range of opinions about copyright, author's rights, and SFWA's role therein, and for all that we focused on our task, left personalities aside, we came together to unanimously present a set of recommendations to SFWA's board (however, as noted, reconstituting the previous committee was neither an implicit nor explicit recommendation).

Regardless of what the board chose to do in the wake of our work, I think our committee did an excellent job at its task, and I was proud to have worked with those SFWA members.

Vortex@29:

"Not sure Heinlein, Merril, Tiptree, Asimov, Bradbury and Pohl and Kornbluth et al. are as apolitical as you seem to suggest."

I rather suspect Cory was being sarcastic, there, Vortex.

Do furries take off their paws to bowl? Isn't that breaking character?

all 40 years of The Rolling Stone.

THE Rolling Stone? Rolling Stone don't need no stinkin' indefinite articles!

Yeah, actually, I think Capobianco has done pretty well. The man is having to deal with multiple constituencies inside and outside of SFWA, some of whom have greatly differing aims, and is doing what I think is his level best to make sure they all know he's hearing them and their concerns. There's not a statement he's going to be able to make that will make everyone happy, but he's splitting the baby as well as he can, and about as well as most could in these particular circumstances. He's rolled with it.

Anonymous@211:

There is a difference between having copyrighted works on one's site, and having them up without permission. I have my disagreements with Andrew Burt, but I would be careful about implying he's violating other people's copyrights on the Critters site without proof.

Carol Hennepin @ 188:

My comment was a follow-on to a principal of Scribd stating in this thread that they "bend over backward" to accommodate authors even without a formal DMCA note; my own personal experience with them did not bear that out.

Now, as I said, since I didn't send them a formal DMCA note, I didn't get my feathers all ruffled (i.e., I recognize perfectly well that from a legal point of view they could ignore me). At the same time I thought it worth noting that in my experience, Scribd didn't live up to its own stated position.

I will note that apparently after I posted my commentary on my site, my works were taken down off Scribd, when the account of the fellow who uploaded my work (and apparently the work of a few hundred others) had his account suspended. I don't know if one was the cause of the other, but I am naturally delighted to see Scribd take some action in this regard.

Theodore Tso:

I know (because I ran across it --- I think in the discussion resulting form your write-in candidate campaign) that I am not the first person to propose that the private nature of the forum might be responsible for the, ah, immature debating style.

I doubt it's responsible; it's possible it makes it easier to continue. That said, one can point to lots of perfectly public message boards that are equally filled with a likewise immature debating style.

Mind you, I have no opposition whatsoever to SFWA opening up the majority of its board to public view (if not public comment). It's just not going to happen.

Theodore Tso:

I suspect that if people saw the posts in SFWA's private forum, it would make it much easier for people to appreciate that the SFWA is not the Borg, and that there are a wide range of opinions and disagreements within the organization.

I suspect that if people saw the posts in SFWA's private forum, they would come to the conclusion that no science fiction writer sits down to comment there without first pouring a frosty 96-ounce Big Gulp cup full of equal measures of Jim Beam and Red Bull.

You wouldn't come away thinking we were the Borg, to be sure. But what you would come away thinking we were, wouldn't be any better.

Best left unseen.

MKHobson:

It's not fair to air a draft version of a statement posted in a private area to the public. There may be a revision before the official release. Give Capobianco some breathing room to get it right.

Wil Wheaton:

This never would have happened if John Scalzi were president.

Had I been President of SFWA:

1. Someone (hopefully not me) would have gone through Scribd, comparing the authors on the site with the authors in SFWA's membership rolls.

2. Those authors would have received notification via e-mail (or snail mail if e-mail were not available) that their work was available on Scribd, along with instructions on how to send a DMCA notice if they or their representatives wished to do so.

3. The general SFWA membership would have been made aware of Scribd, via e-mail and the FORUM publication, and given information on how to draft a DMCA notice if they found their work there.

4. From time to time, and hopefully with the cooperation of Scribd, step 1 would be repeated, with repeats of steps 2-3 handled privately within SFWA.

However, I am not President of SFWA.

Go Boing Boing!

And go, TNH. You're going to be awesome in this role.