Summer’s Endby John Van Stry My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Review by Dann Todd: This is a 3.5-star review. Every time I talked myself into rounding it up to 4 stars, I found another reason to make it 3 stars.
I picked up Summer’s End because it is a finalist for this year’s Prometheus Award given to works of fiction that explore or incorporate libertarian themes. Prometheus Award winners are almost always pretty good. This is a worthy finalist.
Our protagonist is Dave “Mongoose” Walker. A former gang-banger who was literally scared straight and made it through enough college to get a certificate as a 5th-class engineer. In the opening pages, his brother tells him trouble is coming Dave’s way. His brother has acquired an engineering position for him on a tramp starship. Go now. Dave does.
The author does a great job of using Dave to bring us into a reality of interplanetary travel and settlement. Dave learns a bit about repairing/maintaining various parts of the ship. But we are spared the description of weeks of travel between destinations. This keeps the story/action moving and interesting.
Dave has all sorts of unusual challenges tossed his way. His biological mother’s new-ish husband wants him dead for political reasons. Dave ends up being taken by pirates/buccaneers (there apparently is a useful difference). He just happens to have a skill that he can use to negotiate for his release.
This leads to one major criticism of the book. Coincidence. While every book has to have a specific set of narrative circumstances occur for the book to make sense, it begins to strain credulity when, later in the book, so many of Dave’s issues are either caused by and/or resolved by people that were tangentially introduced earlier in the book. And in most cases, those people all know each other in some capacity or another independent of their relationship with Dave. The world is a small place, but it ain’t that small. Also, there are more than a few occasions where a character that is of interest to Dave for one reason just happens to have the skill set needed to solve an unrelated problem that Dave is dealing with.
A second criticism is basic spelling, grammar, and wordsmithery. A common complaint that I hear about books published by Baen is that there isn’t any clear indication of editorial input. The spelling and grammar errors were just enough to tip my inner editor. There were a few instances where I found the phrasing of a sentence or a paragraph needed to require required* re-reading a few times to determine what the author was intending to say.
A third criticism is how the author treats a sizeable number of female characters. They are “hot”. Hot as in “Hot babe sittin’ beside me in my ‘Cuda.” At least one other review notes that female characters are “frustratingly” undeveloped. With the exception of Dave and one or maybe two other main characters, all of the other characters are undeveloped.
Take away (or diminish) two of those criticisms and this becomes a solid 4-star review (maybe 4.5) as the author does a very good job of incorporating a lot of real-world social structures and issues. He dials them up a bit and projects current trends to create a believable future where people are leaving Earth to avoid overregulation. He also points out that leaving Earth is not a panacea; some new polities develop some pretty horrendous beliefs and corporations really aren’t to be trusted.
The slow burn in the book is about social structures and trust. Dave succeeds because he demonstrates himself to be worthy of trust primarily because his life has shown him that trust is the only real value a person has. Gangs, families, business partners, corporations, neighborhoods, cities, and societies all rely on high levels of trust if they are going to continue to exist.
The characters and plot were compelling enough to keep me reading all the way to the end. The conclusion was satisfying. I’d like to read more about all of these characters in the future and see if the author can develop them more fully.
*Read the text that was striked out. Read the replacement. Which one reads more clearly. This book contained too many similar passages.
The pair talked love, hate, fanfiction, feelings, quarantine tips, lemon cake, human flesh, dogs, robot babies, and, of course, Sanctuary Moon….
What really happened on episode 231 of Sanctuary Moon? MB: It was clearly a dream. ART: You’re wrong. MB: So when the Mech Pilot was attacked by his evil duplicate who tried to hit him with a giant hammer and then disappeared, you think that was supposed to be real? ART: It was an artistic choice.
No, the first rule of fanfiction is not “we don’t talk about fanfiction.” Many writers happily discuss reading and writing fic—as evidenced by N.K. Jemisin, the three-time Hugo Award-winning novelist, describing how she still writes and reads it herself. The first rule of fanfiction is “you do not try and get the original creator to read your fanfiction.” How quickly we forget our Internet history.
… In explaining how these things are, Jemisin is not discouraging fans from making their own fanworks centered around her creations. She just cannot be personally involved, and it’s a serious breach of fandom etiquette to ask.
(4) BRUCE PELZ WOULD HAVE LOVED THIS. Bob Byrne is passing the time with this inventive tribute to Rex Stout’s famous sleuth: “Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone: 2020 Stay at Home – Days 5, 6, and 7”. Which means seeing everything from Archie Goodwin’s viewpoint. For example —
DAY SIX – 2020 Stay at Home (SaH)
It was a pleasant spring morning, so I took my delayed walk today. It was good to stretch the legs and breathe the freshest air I’ve inhaled since moving here many years ago. I was out for two hours, enjoying open space – and the absence of Nero Wolfe. I saw other people walking and jogging, mostly keeping the required distance. It’s going to take some time for me to get used to the lack of noise. The buzz of conversation and the traffic ruckus just aren’t there. It’s not bad – just different.
I wasn’t in the office when Wolfe got down from the plant rooms at 11, but he didn’t seem to mind. He was at his desk, reading a thick book about Huey P. Long. He acknowledged my arrival and resumed reading. That was fine with me. I let him know I would be in the basement for a while and departed.
We keep a small file cabinet down there, which contains files related to unsolved cases. I’ve never written one up, but yes, there were occasions when the great Nero Wolfe didn’t get the bad guy. Or at least, couldn’t prove the issue. I’ll admit, his batting average was much better than Ty Cobb’s, but still, it did happen. And it rankled me at least as much as it did him. I’m the one who gathers the clues. I can’t help thinking, on some of them, that if I’d gotten one more piece of something, it might have made all the difference….
(Heading explained: It was from Bruce Pelz I first heard of Nero Wolfe.)
In the pandemic economy, face masks are like bars of gold. Hoarders are hoarding them. Governors are bartering for them. Hospital workers desperately need them. New Yorkers, ordered by Governor Cuomo last week to cover their faces in public, are repurposing bandannas and boxer shorts. In Rosie the Riveter fashion, Americans with crafting skills—among them quilters, Broadway seamstresses, sportswear manufacturers, origami artists, and grandmothers—have sprung into action. But one group has special mask-making powers: cosplayers, the superfans who specialize in making and wearing costumes. Never has the ability to whip up a Spider-Man mask or a Stormtrooper helmet been so useful.
“Cosplayers have big hearts,” Monica Paprocki, a thirty-five-year-old accountant in Chicago, said. Paprocki, who runs the fandom site Geeks A Gogo, started cosplaying in 2014 and taught herself how to sew by watching YouTube videos. She dressed as Princess Jasmine at Wizard World Chicago in 2019, the year after her Phoenix Monster costume, from the board game Rising Sun, won the Golden Needle Award at a gaming convention in Indianapolis. “It had articulated wings that I controlled with a remote control,” she said. This June, she was going to dress as Buzz Lightyear at the Origins Game Fair, in Ohio, but it had been postponed until October. When she saw a Facebook group requesting homemade medical supplies, she recruited fellow-cosplayers. “Before everything closed down, I had a stash of cotton fabric and materials here in my house,” she said. “I work my regular nine-to-five job in accounting. Right after that, I start sewing.”
(6) BESTSELLERS TALK AMONG THEMSELVES. Via Shelf Awareness comes word that Stephen King and John Grisham will hold a free online conversation discussing their new books on Wednesday, April 29 at 7:00 PM Eastern.
“In lieu of admission, the authors hope attendees will consider donating to the Bookseller Industry Charitable Foundation. You can register at grishamking.eventbrite.com or watch on Stephen King’s YouTube channel. Questions for the authors can go use #AskKingandGrisham
…A whimsical experiment in bartering kickstarted that evolution in 2010: A few years after the viral “one red paperclip” experiment—a Craigslister traded a single red paperclip for a series of increasingly valuable items until he managed to trade up for a house—a Magic player named Jonathan Medina embarked on a similar quest. Medina would trade from one random $4 pack of booster cards and keep trading up until he acquired one of the game’s legendary Power Nine cards— phenomenally rare cards widely considered very, very good. A pavement-pounding card trader, Medina blogged his experience in a widely read series of articles called “Pack to Power.” He would spend no money and, using just his wits, research, and networking skills, maneuver his $4 pack of cards into Magic wealth.
After opening his pack, Medina, in his words, began “hitting the streets to flip my cardboard.” By the time he’d traded with fellow players at gaming conventions and stores a total of 98 times, he had assembled an impressive binder stacked with valuable cards. It was at Gen Con, on a Saturday four months later, when Medina, groggy from playing Magic until five in the morning the previous night, handed over his binder in exchange for the $359.99 Mox Pearl card—a Power Nine.
“At the time, people were still trading based on nonmonetary metrics,” Medina says. “So when people read the small stories of the trades and looked at the math, they realized that they could be getting more out of their cards. This collective rise in awareness led to an interest in the financial side of the game.
(8) TODAY IN HISTORY.
April 24, 1955 — The X Minus One radio program aired on NBC for the first time. Written by Ray Bradbury, “And The Moon Be Still As Bright” is the tale of Mars expedition which finds the Martians extinct due to chickenpox brought to them by previous expeditions. The crew save one decide to destroy all Martian artefacts. Ernest Kinoy wrote the script from the story by Bradbury, and the cast included John Larkin and Nelson Olmstead. The show would run from now until January 8, 1958 with many of coming from well-known SF authors including Anderson, Pohl, Asimov, Blish, Leiber, Heinlein and Simak to name just a few. You can hear this episode here.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born April 24, 1930 — Richard Donner, 90. He’s credited in directing Superman which Is considered by many to be the first modern superhero film. H’h. Well I’m instead going to celebrate him for Scrooged, The Goonies and Ladyhawke. Not to mention the horror he did — Tales from the Crypt presents Demon Knight and Bordello of Blood. Oh, and the first X-Men film which was superb.
Born April 24, 1936 — Jill Ireland. For her short life, she chalked up in an amazing number of genre show roles. She was on Star Trek romancing Spock as Leila Kalomi In “This Side of Paradise” episode. She had five appearances on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. as well as being on Night Gallery, My Favorite Martian, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Voodoo Factor and the SF film The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything based on the 1962 novel of the same name by John D. MacDonald. (Died 1990.)
Born April 24, 1946 — Donald D’Ammassa, 74. Considered to be one of the best and fairest long-form reviewers ever. His Encyclopedia of Science Fiction covered some five hundred writers and as can two newer volumes, Encyclopedia of Fantasy and Horror Fiction and Encyclopedia of Adventure Fiction are equally exhaustive. I can’t comment on his fiction as I’ve only ever encountered him as a reviewer.
Born April 24, 1947 — Michael Butterworth, 73. Author of, with Michael Moorcock naturally, two Time of the Hawklords novels, Time of the Hawklords and Queens of Deliria. He also wrote a number of Space 1999 Year 2 novels, too numerous to list here. He also edited Corridor magazine from 1971 to 1974. He also wrote a number of short fiction pieces including one whose title amuses me for reasons I’m not sure, “Circularisation of Condensed Conventional Straight-Line Word-Image Structures“.
Born April 24, 1950 — Michael Patrick Hearn, 70. Academic who has some of the best annotated works I’ve had the pleasure to encounter. I wholeheartedly recommend both The Annotated Wizard of Oz and The Annotated Christmas Carol, not to overlook Victorian Fairy Tales which is simply the best collection of those tales.
Born April 24, 1953 — Gregory Luce, 67. Editor and publisher of both the Science Fiction Gems and the Horror Gems anthology series, plus such other anthologies as Citadel of the Star Lords / Voyage to Eternity and Old Spacemen Never Die! / Return to Earth. For a delightful look at him and these works, go here. Warning: really cute canine involved!
Born April 24, 1955 — Wendy S. Delmater, 65. She was nominated at Sasquan for a Best Semiprozine Hugo for editing the exemplary Abyss & Apex webzine. It’s particularly strong in the areas of speculative poetry and small press genre reviews. She herself has written a lot of genre centered essays, plus a handful of genre stories and poems.
Born April 24, 1983 — Madeline Ashby, 37. California-born Canadian resident writer whose Company Town novel created an entire city in an oil rig. Interestingly In 2013, she was a finalist for the Astounding Award for Best New Writer but recused herself on the grounds that her pro career started with her ‘09 publication of a short story in Nature, so her eligibility period had expired in ‘11. And her Machine Dynasties series is simply brilliant, and resonates with the later Murderbot series.
It’s 30 years ago to the day that the Hubble telescope was launched – and to celebrate its birthday, the veteran observatory has produced another astonishing image of the cosmos.
This one is of a star-forming region close to our Milky Way Galaxy, about 163,000 light-years from Earth.
The larger object is the nebula NGC 2014; its companion is called NGC 2020.
But astronomers have nicknamed the scene the “Cosmic Reef” because it resembles an undersea world.
Experts created this visualisation showing the Giant Red Nebula and its smaller blue neighbour, which lie in a satellite-galaxy of the Milky Way.
(12) IN ONE SITTING. “The chairs of Blake’s 7” is a vast collage of furniture and show highlights assembled by the author of the Watching Blake’s 7 blog:
…So, here is a compilation all the identifiable seating seen in Blake’s 7. In addition, I have thrown in a handful of tables, desks, lamps and other things that showcase how bloomin’ stylish Blake’s 7 was, and how the BBC props store contained a wealth of magnificent design artefacts.
First on the list —
Folding chair Fred Scott, for Hille International 1960’s Seen in ‘Animals’
Let’s start with one of the most beautiful moments in Blake’s 7, and a reminder of the sheer effort to get the series broadcast on time and on budget. Sure, Avon slips at the end of this shot, and there’s no time for a retake, but let’s not forget the attitude in which he knocks the chair over. I’m delighted to report that Fred Scott designed something robust enough to withstand the dirtiest ‘Dirty Harry’ kicking seen on screen up to that point. Chair vandalism, or quality control? You decide.
A well-meaning cleaner who took the opportunity to give a locked-down library a thorough clean re-shelved all of its books – in size order.
Staff at Newmarket Library, Suffolk, discovered the sloping tomes after the building underwent a deep clean.
James Powell, of Suffolk Libraries, said staff “saw the funny side” but it would take a “bit of time” to correct.
“It looks like libraries will be closed for a while so we’ll have plenty of time to sort the books out”, he said.
“The cleaner is lovely and does a great job in the library. It was an honest mistake and just one of those things so we would never want her to feel bad about it,” he added.
(14) RIGHTFUL PREY. Let Atlas Obscura show you the elusive “Fremont Troll”.
AN 18-FT. tall troll made of cement clutches an old VW car underneath an overpass in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood. The car is an actual Volkswagen Beetle encased in concrete, which used to be red and bear a California license plate.
The Troll was constructed in 1990 after winning a Fremont Arts Council competition for designs to improve the freeway underpass, which then was a dumping ground….
… On Saturday, the carcass of a 40-foot grey whale washed up on the shore of the Sand Lake Recreation Area north of Pacific City. For longtime Oregonians, news of a dead whale appearing on a local beach should ring a few alarm bells…
… In case you don’t know the story, in November 1970, a sperm whale of roughly the same size washed up on the beach in Florence, Ore. Local officials considered several methods of disposing the body, like dragging it out to sea. Ultimately, they went with the most exciting option available—blowin’ it up real good.
It was a bit of a disaster. The dynamite blew chunks of whale flesh 800 feet in the air, raining viscera down on bystanders and destroying a car in the adjacent parking lot.
Which gives everyone on the internet an excuse to repost one of the most viral videos of all time:
(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “No Maps For These Territories: A William Gibson Docufilm” on YouTube is a 2000 documentary, directed by Mark Neale, of conversations held with Gibson during his book tour for All Tomorrow’s Parties. It includes interviews with Bruce Sterling and Jack Womack and Gibson remembering that when he read “Burning Chrome,” one of the first cyberpunk stories, at Denvention II in 1981, he had an audience of four.
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, John King Tarpinian, N., Andrew Porter, Chip Hitchcock, Cat Eldridge, JJ, Mike Kennedy, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Xtifr.]
A screencap of the Ebook.Bike site on the Internet Archive
Indie author John Van Stry has won his copyright infringement lawsuit against former Pirate Party of Canada leader Travis McCrea, whose Ebook.Bike platform offered free downloads of many writers’ work including a dozen novels by Van Stry.
“The lawsuit is over, and we won” Van Stry announced April 20 on his Patreon page. Judge Bryson of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas ruled that Ebook.Bike’s McCrea willfully infringed 12 of Van Stry’s copyrighted works, and awarded Van Stry $9,000 in statutory damages. McCrea was permanently enjoined from “copying, reproducing, or distributing, either directly or vicariously, plaintiff’s copyrighted works” without authorization. McCrea also was ordered to pay Van Stry $3,605 as a sanction for failing to comply with his discovery obligations, and to pay Van Stry’s costs and attorney’s fees.
John Van Stry took up the basically thankless and highly expensive fight against this scofflaw when no law enforcement or author organization would put an end to McCrea’s activities — which had been going on for years.
A Vancouver man who led the now-defunct Pirate Party of Canada is being accused by authors around the world of giving their ebooks away for free on a website that boasts everything from Michelle Obama’s bestseller to hundreds of indie books from small publishers.
…McCrea was the leader of the Pirate Party of Canada, which supported net neutrality, open government and intellectual-property reform and participated in multiple federal elections between 2010 and 2015. McCrea himself ran for MP in the riding of Vancouver Centre in 2011.
He said he currently operates the Canadian website of the Idaho-based Kopimist Church and that according to his Kopimist beliefs, “all information should be shared.” The website calls copying information a holy act.
McCrea was on the Authors Guild’s radar, too, but their comparatively passive recommendation was for writers to try and weaponize the Google search engine against Ebook.Bike by making the site harder to find: “Call to Action: Get Google to Remove Ebook.bike Links from Search Results” (March 6, 2019):
As many of you are aware, the pirate website “Ebook.bike” is back online, hosting thousands of books for illegal download. A number of authors have sent takedown notices to the website using its DMCA form. But as far as we know, its DMCA compliance is deliberate subterfuge as its DMCA form often doesn’t work; and even when it does and the books are taken down, other users almost immediately re-upload infringing copies.
…Until Congress closes this loophole in the law that allows websites like Ebook.bike to thrive, we have to band together and take action. For a start, authors have to collectively send a message to Google to delist links to the site’s illegal downloads from search results. There’s no reason why a site that traffics in stolen books should be so easily accessible. If enough authors send Google a takedown notice, it will be compelled to take action against Ebook.bike.
The Authors Guild’s choice of tactics showed it was powerless to directly counter Travis McCrea’s activities despite his flagrant history of digital piracy.
McCrea gained notoriety as a leader of the Pirate Party of Canada which had, as a key tenet of its platform, to “decriminalize non-commercial file sharing.” TorrentFreak reported in 2011 “As part of the ‘war for digital sovereignty,’ as McCrea describes it, he has launched Tormovies, a site dedicated to providing movie torrents. A look at the site’s front page reveals that all the latest Hollywood blockbusters are showcased.” McCrea claimed that his media piracy “isn’t theft,” and stated that he would continue his piracy downloading until the media is offered to him at what he considers a fair and accessible price.
Another of McCrea’s piracy sites traded college textbooks. According to the complaint filed in Van Stry’s lawsuit:
In a May 3, 2013 interview, Mr. McCrea admitted that he ran http://librarypirate.me (“LibraryPirate”), a website that brazenly traded pirated textbooks. Mr. McCrea’s LibraryPirate instructed students on how to make digital scans of their textbooks and post the pirated scans to the site he ran for “free downloading,” boasting he made 1,700 pirated textbooks available by August 2011, and made money by advertising on his LibraryPirate website to the people drawn to his illegally available works.
Then,
January 2013, Mr. McCrea setup his tuebl.ca website. T.U.E.B.L. stands for “The Ultimate Electronic Book Library.” Mr. McCrea solicited individuals who had digital copies of books in the popular ePub format, typically used on e-readers, such as Kindles, to upload their books on tuble.ca and to tuebl.com, the latter of which would redirected to tuble.ca (collectively “tuebl”), after which he would then make copies of the books available to any and all.
Numbers posted on that site said it contained 32,000 books by 13,000 authors, and their books had been downloaded over 9.5 million times.
About December 2015, McCrea began redirecting users from his tuebl.ca website to the Ebook.Bike website.
McCrea also registered “The Kopimist Church of Idaho Inc.” as a Religious Non-Profit Corporation with the state of Idaho August 20, 2012, later adopting the title of “Chief Missionary and Outreach Officer and Director.” He referred to himself as “reverend” and was on record as having said that “giving away other people’s intellectual property” is his “religious vocation.”
LITIGATION BEGINS. McCrea dared anyone to sue him in a TorrentFreak interview in March 2019:
“While we stay committed to following all US copyright laws and ensuring we maintain our DMCA compliance, I would like to reiterate that I am a Canadian and my focus is on upholding the laws of my country. It just has always been that the DMCA provides the best framework for how to handle copyright complaints,” he said.
“I use the DMCA because it offers the best framework, not because I feel I’m obligated to. If they feel I’m liable, come sue me.”
A week later, Van Stry did.
John Van Stry had strong motives for taking up the fight: “[McCrea] was making money off of the stolen work of me and other authors, and bragging about it… He never complied with any take-down requests. Oh, I know he claimed he did, and I was told by one author that any books taken down (in the few instances he appeared to do that) were back up again in days. He was destroying the retirement of many authors, who rely on the royalties they get from their backlogs to pay their bills. This is a real thing! People were being financially hurt! This wasn’t some small pirate site that maybe a couple of dozen people go to. The site was getting over a million hits per month, by his own account. Millions of books were being downloaded. Books are not like songs where you listen to them again and again. You read a book once, that’s it. People who steal books don’t come back and buy them later. Claiming that they do is a myth.”
Van Stry also feared repercussions against his legitimate sales: “I was worried that Amazon might pull my books and punish me, for them being on his website. After all, [McCrea] was claiming he had permission for them to be there. Other authors were highly concerned with this as well.” And not only were Van Stry’s sales being hurt, “He was impacting my sales ranking and my marketing. The secondary impact of this theft is a lot harder to estimate, but it was there, and I felt it. Again, other authors felt it too.”
In anticipation of a lawsuit, McCrea started a GoFundMe appeal to finance his defense. The Digital Reader’s Nate Hoffelder fact-checked some of McCrea’s claims there in a March 28, 2019 article:
McCrea has launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise a defense fund. He lies multiple times in the brief description.
“Let me be clear: At no point have I uploaded content I didn’t own to Ebook Bike,” he writes “and I have always ensured that copyrighted material wouldn’t be uploaded (using the same methods and techniques used by YouTube, Facebook, and others).”
That is an utter falsehood; I just (in the past couple minutes) downloaded A Memory Called Empire and Mike Resnick’s Soothsayer. Both books were complete (and both are in copyright, obviously).
JURISIDICTION. Van Stry hired professional lawyers to litigate his case. McCrea defended himself, pro se. McCrea blew off discovery, making the minimum responses needed to keep the case going while Van Stry’s legal bills bled him financially.
Although the defendant was in Canada, the Federal District Court in Van Stry’s home state of Texas accepted the lawyers’ arguments that it had jurisdiction:
Court has subject matter jurisdiction at least under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331 and 1338(a), the first providing for federal questions and the latter providing that “[t]he district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action arising under any Act of Congress relating to . . . copyrights . . .”
Van Stry’s attorneys also argued the court had jurisdiction over McCrea and another co-defendant (the ISP) because through the internet they were offering the copyrighted works in Texas:
Mr. McCrea advertises, distributes, and imports via Mr. McCrea’s eBook.Bike website (see below for description) and allows for and does reproduce the copyrighted Works (also described below) in copies without permission or license into Texas and this district.
In addition, they pointed out an established principle about suits against non-U.S. residents:
For all venue purposes, a defendant who is not a resident of the United States may be sued in any district…
THE DECISION. Initially, Van Stry asked for statutory damages of $15,000 per book, and a permanent injunction to prevent further infringement of his copyrighted books. He also asked for an award of costs and attorney’s fees.
While McCrea sandbagged the discovery process, the judge prodded the parties to settle. But as Van Stry wrote when the decision came out this week —
…[For] all of those saying I should have settled out of court? We tried. Three times. The first time? Mr. McCrea sent US the settlement offer. One that was a hell of a lot better than what he was hit with today. He asked us to write it up for him (because of course he didn’t have a lawyer – right). So I paid my attorney’s to write it up exactly like he sent it to us.
And he never signed it.
Twice more we sent it to him, at the judge’s (subtle) urging. He didn’t respond to the first of those and was a bit rude on the last time.
As the prospect of a trial grew nearer, the judge also told the parties – who by then were willing to have him to render summary judgment on the record already before him – that the certain way to avoid the possibility of a jury trial was for Van Stry to ratchet down his request for damages.
“[I] note that the right to a jury trial on the issue of statutory damages does not apply when the plaintiff seeks an award limited to the statutorily guaranteed minimum amount…
“In light of Mr. Van Stry’s acknowledgement that damages in this case are likely to be illusory, he may wish to limit his request for statutory damages to the statutory minimum award of $750 per work —an amount that Mr. McCrea has already agreed would be appropriate. In that event, a jury trial on damages would not be necessary.
“Mr. Van Stry may, if he chooses, make the request to limit the award of statutory damages in the alternative. The request, that is, would only control in the event that Mr. McCrea does not waive his right to a jury trial.”
Van Stry took the hint and adjusted his damage claim downward. A dozen books at $750 apiece – thus in the final verdict, the court’s damage award of $9,000.
The court also sanctioned McCrea for his non-cooperation in the discovery phase, and granted Van Stry costs and attorney’s fees:
Mr. McCrea’s positions in this case have been distinctly lacking in both legal and factual support, and Mr. Van Stry has prevailed on all his claims. Moreover, Mr. McCrea’s lack of diligence in this case and his conduct during discovery have unnecessarily extended the proceedings and have driven up the costs of the litigation for Mr. Van Stry. And Mr. McCrea’s actions resulting in this lawsuit were willful, not innocent. Indeed, Mr. McCrea has said that he did “not care if the website was illegal and would do it either way.”
…Considerations of compensation and deterrence also favor an award of attorney’s fees. Mr. Van Stry has experienced significant and sometimes unnecessary litigation expenses in maintaining this lawsuit… Awarding fees in a clear-cut case such as this one does not give rise to any countervailing interests, such as the risk of discouraging others to build on an author’s work.
THE JUDGE’S REVIEW OF THE DEFENSE. The court opinion deconstructs McCrea’s defense, which rested on (1) denying anyone had downloaded copyrighted work from his site, (2) that he was entitled to the safe harbor protections of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and (3) he was exercising his religious freedom.
McCrea hamstrung his first two arguments by failing to answer allegations in discovery – as a result, things alleged by the plaintiff ended up being treated as admissions by the defendant — treated as fact for purposes of the case.
Mr. McCrea denied any wrongdoing because there was no evidence, according to Mr. McCrea, that there had been any downloads of copyrighted material. Id. at 3. At the same time, Mr. McCrea said that he was “practising [his] religion by helping authors connect with their readers.” Id. at 2. Mr. McCrea also claimed that his actions were protected by the safe harbor provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. And, in the event of liability, Mr. McCrea disputed Mr. Van Stry’s contention as to the appropriate amount to be awarded in damages. Id. at 1–2.
… Beyond the fact Mr. Van Stry’s prima facie case of willful copyright infringement is established as a result of the Court’s sanctions order, Mr. McCrea’s challenge to liability on the merits is not supported. He contends that summary judgment should not be granted because the plaintiff “has no evidence that any of their work was actually available on the website” and no evidence that the books were “downloaded from the site.” Dkt. No. 54, at 3. Mr. Van Stry replies that Mr. McCrea admitted (by failing to respond to requests for admission) that all twelve copyrighted books at issue in this litigation available for distribution on Mr. McCrea’s website and that they were distributed into the United States. Dkt. No. 59, at 3. Mr. Van Stry’s counsel also submitted an affidavit stating that as part of his pre-suit investigation, he downloaded all twelve books from Mr. McCrea’s website. Id.
DMCA. The DMCA grants internet service providers a safe harbor against liability for copyright infringement by works available on their websites if they adhere to several requirements. One of them is to have a designated agent to receive takedown notices, and the contact information must be on the ISP’s website, and provided to the Copyright Office.
Mr. McCrea does not dispute that he did not designate an agent with the Copyright Office. See generally Dkt. No. 54. To the contrary, Mr. McCrea previously admitted that he had no designated agent by failing to respond to a request for admission directed to that very issue.
Therefore, the court rejected McCrea’s safe harbor affirmative defense.
RELIGIOUS EXEMPTION. McCrea had told the court that his “religion should be protected by the 1993 Protecting Religious Freedom Act,” and that he is “practising my religion by helping authors connect with their readers.” Also, “[i]t is the position of the Kopimist Church that copying is a holy act, to share files is a holy act, to share knowledge is a supremely holy act.”
The court ruled that McCrea’s reliance on the RFRA was misplaced, because it does not apply when the “government,” as defined by RFRA, is not a party to the action.
Besides, said the court, copyright law was not really an obstacle to this claimed religious practice:
… Mr. McCrea certainly could have approached Mr. Van Stry to obtain a license to copy, make available, and distribute Mr. Van Stry’s copyrighted works, if that was how Mr. McCrea chose to help connect Mr. Van Stry with his readers. Mr. McCrea’s conclusory assertion that licensing would be “impractical” does not alter the analysis.
FURTHER THOUGHTS. Why did McCrea do it? What were McCrea’s motives for running Ebook.bike [Internet Archive link] and his other sites?
Van Stry told his Patreon readers, “He was stealing my work, and the work of other authors to make money, lots of money, with which he bought two airplanes and lived a pretty good life.”
Van Stry’s lawyers pointed to McCrea’s claims on his Kopimist Church site that he received enough donations to buy a private plane, and photos in which he “projects a life of luxury, including yacht trips in the English Bay of Vancouver and horse riding.” It suited their purpose to take these statements at face value.
On the other hand, there was no charge to download the books. Was there advertising on the Ebook.Bike site? — the Internet Archive snapshots I reviewed didn’t show any, although I just looked at the front page, which presumably would get the most hits. Did he get something in exchange for recommending the ebook-reading programs linked from his site? Was there user information collected at some step in this process which could be turned to commercial gain? Are there other ways to profit from a pirate site?
The inference that someone would only go to such effort for money is understandable, but users of social media have also witnessed people expend a great deal of energy in return for a sense of power, or to enjoy widespread public attention. Maybe McCrea made a lot of money. He definitely seemed to enjoy taunting the victims and critics of his filesharing sites.
LEGAL BILLS. Meanwhile, John Van Stry has shouldered heavy legal bills. Will he recover any of it through the court’s awards? That’s a good question.
At least he’s received some support from his “Bring ebook.bike to Justice” GoFundMe, where with the help of 397 donors he’s raised $31,547 of his $70,000 goal.
Mr. McCrea survived only because lawsuits are expensive. He knew this, hence his challenge ‘just sue me!’ He knew most authors can’t afford it. Well unfortunately for him, I could. I saw authors whom I’m a long time fan of complaining about the damage, I saw reflected in my own sales damage. I’ve been very successful as an author, I’m very thankful to all my fans, and all of the authors who have gone before me.
So I saw this as an opportunity to pay them back, to give something back to the writing community. To take down someone who was stealing, who was profiting from that theft. Someone who was so self-entitled that he was laughing at the rest of us and just challenging us to sue him while bragging about the money he was making.
Understand that I did NOT want to do this. But if not me, then who? If not now, then when? Sometimes, you just have to stand up for what is right. This lawsuit hurt me, considerably, and not just because of the money that came out of my pocket. Rarely did a day go by that I wasn’t thinking about it, and rarely did a week go by when I wasn’t having to deal with my attorneys. But it wasn’t just about me, it never was.
He has also made available for download three documents in which Judge Bryson explained his rulings:
These documents are all a matter of public record.
