InsaneJournal

Current mood:	irritated
Current music:	Nitty Gritty Dirt Band - An American dream

SFWA Strikes Out
The SFWA has just shot itself in the foot, again, by fraudulently using the DMCA to demand that Scribd remove all mentions of Asimov and Silverberg from its site. This includes bibliographies of influential science fiction writers, essays about various authors or novels, the back catalog of the magazine Ray Gun Revival, and works by authors who specifically instructed the SFWA that it was not authorized to speak on their behalf.

What gets me is, Andrew Burt is (or, at least, used to be) an active member of Baen's Bar, so you'd think he would know better than to pull a stunt like this, but apparently this is just par for the course for the SFWA over the last few years. More details of this stunt, as well as a discussion of the fallout from it and past SFWA blunders, can be found in an editorial by Cory Doctorow, here.

The more I learn about the SFWA, the less inclined I am to pay for a membership, in the unlikely event I ever make the membership requirements.