Friday, March 8, 2013

Fine Print Part Two

In fifth grade, I remember playing slip 'n slide with my friend in her back yard. There wasn't much of a hill, so the slide part was rather a force of will, but still, slip 'n slides were cool. Her little brother thought so, too. Not only did he want to join in, but he whined and complained that he wanted to go first.

Okay, I said. Kim and I are going to just take one quick practice run, and then we'll start OFFICIALLY, and you can go first. Everyone was happy: kid brother because he got to go first, and me because we did, too. I remember being incredibly proud of tricking him with words.

Amazon seems to feel similarly. The more I hear back from lawyer friends in regards to the "license" agreement I printed here yesterday (which was just to sell a book on Amazon), the angrier I get at such a bully copyright approach. As far as I can tell, they're saying, "The copyright is yours, absolutely. You're just granting us permission to do whatever we want, whenever we want, forever, without asking you or compensating you, using your materials (which we're broadly defining--the definition of "your materials" includes the words "materials" in it.) But it's still your copyright, okay? You can go first.

No thanks. If you want to purchase my chapbook, you'll just have to get it here, on the right-hand side-bar. I charge 1/3 of the shipping cost, anyway.

No comments:

Post a Comment