Day: August 27, 2002

On Fandom and Copyrights

Fox News ran story a couple weeks ago about clubs and organizations dedicated to characters and stories ranging from Sherlock Holmes to Alice in Wonderland to The Wizard of Oz.

I know a little bit about such obsessive fandom since I’m almost finished posting electronic versions of all of the public domain Wizard of Oz books to my site, including a nice search form.

One of the interesting things about such fandom is it contradicts an argument made by copyright holders who want copyrights that do not have meaningful expiration dates (yes, they may expire eventually, but if it is not for another 150 years, then it is essentially meaningless IMO). An argument offered in favor of such long copyright terms is that without them there is no incentive to preserve copyrighted material. Once the copyright runs out on books like The Wizard of Oz or Alice In Wonderland or the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, then the books themselves run the risk of being lost forever because nobody has a financial interest in preserving them.

In reality, of course, the opposite is true. Obscure books that are in the public domain are, in fact, much easier to find than are obscure books that are still technically copyrighted.

For The Wizard of Oz or the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, there are hundreds and hundreds of sites online where the full text of these books can be found — and since the copyright has expired, freely copied (as I have done). Were The Wizard of Oz still copyrighted, it would probably not be online at all — in fact, many of the authorized Oz books written after L. Frank Baum’s death are not available online at all to my knowledge.

In fact there are thousands and thousands of books written in the early part of the 20th century that haven’t been published or sold in decades that are not available online precisely because they are technically still copyrighted even if it is by now all but impossible to determine who the rights holder is. The 1998 extension to the copyright act all but guaranteed that those books will likely not be available online until at least 2015 or so (and, by then, copyright holders will inevitably be asking for additional extensions).

The purpose of the copyright was to grant limited monopolies to authors in order to encourage the production of books and other works. Unfortunately, over the past couple centuries the idea that such monopolies should be limited has largely been thrown out the window.

Radio Controlled Flying Saucer With Programmable LED

Via Boing!Boing! comes this link to an awesome toy — a radio controlled flying saucer that features a user-programmable LED,

For an added dimension of intergalactic fun, you can program messages of up to 30 characters in red LED lights that continuously scroll around the perimeter of the saucer. As the “Communications Officer” of the VECTRON, you can set the lights to announce everything from “Take me to your leader” to “What’s for lunch, mom?”

And only $99.99. Awesome!

Elizabeth Morgan Back in the News

Elizabeth Morgan had her 15 minutes of fame in the 1980s when she fled to New Zealand with her daughter rather than allow her husband to have unsupervised visits with the child. Despite her odd behavior, Morgan had numerous supporters in the United States who saw her as a heroine. Morgan was back in the news recently as a witness in an attempted murder case that highlighted her twisted thinking.

The case involved Elsa D. Newman, who was charged with conspiracy to kill her estranged husband in January 2002. Newman attended a speech given by Morgan and struck up an e-mail correspondent with the activist.

Morgan testified that she believed Newman’s story that her husband was abusing her two boys despite having no more information about the situation than what Newman told her.

In fact, Newman’s husband was awarded full custody of both boys after a bizarre incident witnessed by Newman’s attorney, Stephen A. Friedman. Friedman asked a judge to recuse him from being her lawyer after Newman made a threat against the lives of the two boys. At the murder trial, Friedman testified that,

[Newman] gets real calm, tilts her head back and says in this sing-songy voice, ‘You know I don’t have to kill both kids.’

But after a few e-mails, Morgan was convinced that Newman was right and her husband was abusing the two boys. So what advice did Morgan give Newman? In an e-mail she told Newman that she had three choices — go along with the court’s order, defy the court, or “kill” the abuser.

On the stand, Morgan testified,

I told her what I tell everybody when they contact me. You don’t have any good choices. You can say, “I’ve been to court, and I will obey the court and send my child back.” The other thing you can do is defy the court order. That usually means running . . . The third option is to take the law into your own hands and attack the abuser.

Newman took Morgan’s advice. She paid a friend to kill her husband, but he managed to fend off the would-be killer after being shot in the leg. One would hope that at some point, the husband will include Morgan in a civil suit for such outrageous behavior.

Source:

Morgan describes advising Md. defendant. Annie Gowen, Washington Post, August 3, 2002.

Raising Questions about RAWA

Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, a group called the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) received a lot of media coverage. With its rhetoric about freeing Afghanistan’s women from oppression, its smuggled videotapes of atrocities against women, and the imprimatur of Western feminists, RAWA was the perfect group for the media to contrast with the misogynistic Taliban. But along the way there were some voices of caution about RAWA which culminated in an article earlier this month in The American Prospect which raised some disturbing questions about RAWA.

Wendy McElroy first raised concerns about RAWA back on October 23, 2001 when she questioned what was happening to money that the Feminist Majority Foundation and others were raising and giving to RAWA.

Noting that RAWA had clearly done some very good things, McElroy nonetheless questioned the wisdom of involvement with a group that had appeared to have close ties with Pakistan’s Communist Party. Moreover, the group had almost no accountability with only a P.O. box in Pakistan as an address and the routine use of false names in interviews. McElroy conceded that some secrecy was warranted due to fear of retaliation by the Taliban, but most groups like RAWA at least have some sort of open political structure (even terrorist groups generally have some sort of open, above ground representatives) and urged RAWA to pursue openness.

RAWA did not take that advice. And then on April 20, 2002 a very odd thing happened. As well-chronicled by The American Prospect’s Noy Thrupkaew, on that date Elizabeth Miller, a U.S.-based supporter of RAWA, posted a letter attacking Ms. magazine on a listserv run by RAWA. Ms. had run a special insert on the Feminist Majority Foundation’s Afghanistan campaign which profiled women working at the United Nations and a number of other similar “behind the scenes”-style looks, but failed to mention RAWA. For this, it was attacked as being a “mouthpiece of hegemonic, U.S.-centric, ego driven, corporate feminism.”

The letter also attacked Sima Sama, who was at the time Afghanistan’s interim minister of women’s affairs. Miller claimed that Samar “was a member of the leadership of one of the most notorious fundamentalist factions Hezb-e Wahdat.” As Thrupkaew puts it,

Some probing, however, finds little evidence that Samar has anything to do with Hezb-e Wahdat. Rather, what comes to light is a pattern of RAWA-led smear campaigns against other Afghan women who rise to prominence.

In The American Prospect article, Thrupkaew documents a persistent habit of RAWA attacking Afghan women with absurd charges. In each case the real crime committed by the women is that they have risen to a prominence that RAWA apparently feels threatened by.

The Feminist Majority Foundation comes across as genuinely shocked by RAWA’s reckless charges. FMF’s Jennifer Jackman lamely tells Thrupkaew that FMF did refute the attacks, but did not do so publicly. Which, of course, gives the impression to the casual observer that FMF does not disagree with RAWA’s absurd charge.

Which takes us back to McElroy’s earlier comments on the group’s links to Pakistan’s Communist movement. Because, of course, we have seen RAWA-style tactics before. In fact, reading through the back and forth petty feuds and accusations is like reading some old account of internal conflict at a gathering of Trotskyists.

Thrupkaew notes that RAWA’s behavior has fueled rumors that the group is really controlled by a group of men who are Maoists or Communists, and certainly their behavior is exactly the sort of rigid thinking characterized by such groups.

Either way, the Feminist Majority Foundation should be ashamed of itself for keeping its refutation of RAWA’s attacks “within the family.” It is interesting that the FMF emphasizes the fact that it does not gloss over the Northern Alliance’s failings, but it is apparently more than willing to do so when it comes to the highly questionable actions of an Afghan feminist group. When Eleanor Smeal finally wakes up and realizes there’s something wrong with that sort of double standard, we’ll actually be getting somewhere.

Sources:

What do Afghan women want? Noy Thrupkaew, The American Prospect, August 5, 2002.

Afghan Women’s Group Raises More Questions Than Answers. Wendy McElroy, IFeminists.Com, October 23, 2001.

The Silence Surrounding RAWA. Wendy McElroy, IFeminists.Com, August 20, 2002.