I never knew what hit me.

John, you're absolutely right re: post #51, as I realized after I posted it. I would like to publicly apologize to Mr. Capobianco for posting from the draft statement he posted on a private board. He posted it in good faith, to keep the membership apprised of the evolving situation, and for that I applaud him.

If there's a mechanism for deleting comments made in the heat of battle (as there is on LJ) I'd love to know about it. I'm new to the BoingBoing world.

From SFWA President Michael Capobianco's draft statement:

"Despite what may have been said or implied, SFWA did not send DMCA takedown notices for the works that were removed from scribd.com. There are certain procedures involved in filing a DMCA notice, and the communication between SFWA and scribd.com did not fulfill any of them. The owner of scribd.com took those works down on his own responsibility as owner of the website and his claim that he did so because of a DMCA notice from SFWA was in error."

Yep. Basically saying, "Aw, gee! If those boneheads at Scribd misread the line in VP Burt's email where he said that this wasn't idle musing, but a DCMA takedown notice, that's their problem."

Furious!!!

As a SFWA member, I'm outraged by this. I'm quite frustrated that Scribd apparently complied with SFWA's demands without insisting upon appropriate legal aegis -- it seems they just took Burt's word that he had the right to demand these removals.

This would seem to subvert the ability to hold SFWA accountable for this egregious abuse; they will just argue that "it wasn't a legal request, and it wasn't our fault that Scribd took it that way."

Or maybe I'm missing something. In any event, I remain furious.