A Pirate Story

This ballad appears to refer to one of the exploits of the notorious Paul Jones, the American pirate. It is founded on fact.*

… At the close of a winter day,
Their anchors down, by London town, the Three Great Captains lay;
And one was Admiral of the North from Solway Firth to Skye,
And one was Lord of the Wessex coast and all the lands thereby,
And one was Master of the Thames from Limehouse to Blackwall,
And he was Captain of the Fleet – the bravest of them all.
Their good guns guarded their great gray sides that were thirty foot in the sheer,
When there came a certain trading brig with news of a privateer.
Her rigging was rough with the clotted drift that drives in a Northern breeze,
Her sides were clogged with the lazy weed that spawns in the Eastern seas.
Light she rode in the rude tide-rip, to left and right she rolled,
And the skipper sat on the scuttle-butt and stared at an empty hold.
'I ha' paid Port dues for your Law,' quoth he, 'and where is the Law ye boast
If I sail unscathed from a heathen port to be robbed on a Christian coast?
Ye have smoked the hives of the Laccadives as we burn the lice in a bunk,
We tack not now to a Gallang prow or a plunging Pei-ho junk;
I had no fear but the seas were clear as far as a sail might fare
Till I met with a lime-washed Yankee brig that rode off Finisterre.
There were canvas blinds to his bow-gun ports to screen the weight he bore,
And the signals ran for a merchantman from Sandy Hook to the Nore.
He would not fly the Rovers' flag – the bloody or the black,
But now he floated the Gridiron and now he flaunted the Jack.
He spoke of the Law as he crimped my crew – he swore it was only a loan;
But when I would ask for my own again, he swore it was none of my own.
He has taken my little parrakeets that nest beneath the Line,
He has stripped my rails of the shaddock-frails and the green unripened pine;
He has taken my bale of dammer and spice I won beyond the seas,
He has taken my grinning heathen gods – and what should he want o' these?
My foremast would not mend his boom, my deckhouse patch his boats;
He has whittled the two, this Yank Yahoo, to peddle for shoe-peg oats.
I could not fight for the failing light and a rough beam-sea beside,
But I hulled him once for a clumsy crimp and twice because he lied.
Had I had guns (as I had goods) to work my Christian harm,
I had run him up from his quarter-deck to trade with his own yard-arm;
I had nailed his ears to my capstan-head, and ripped them off with a saw,
And soused them in the bilgewater, and served them to him raw;
I had flung him blind in a rudderless boat to rot in the rocking dark,
I had towed him aft of his own craft, a bait for his brother shark;
I had lapped him round with cocoa husk, and drenched him with the oil,
And lashed him fast to his own mast to blaze above my spoil;
I had stripped his hide for my hammock-side, and tasselled his beard i' the mesh,
And spitted his crew on the live bamboo that grows through the gangrened flesh;
I had hove him down by the mangroves brown, where the mud-reef sucks and draws,
Moored by the heel to his own keel to wait for the land-crab's claws!
He is lazar within and lime without, ye can nose him far enow,
For he carries the taint of a musky ship – the reek of the slaver's dhow!'

*This is a joke. Kipling was experiencing problems with certain US publishers who were publishing editions of his books without permission and refusing to pay him.

from 'The Rhyme of the Three Captains' (1890)

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936)


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A Pirate Story

This ballad appears to refer to one of the exploits of the notorious Paul Jones, the American pirate. It is founded on fact.*

… At the close of a winter day,
Their anchors down, by London town, the Three Great Captains lay;
And one was Admiral of the North from Solway Firth to Skye,
And one was Lord of the Wessex coast and all the lands thereby,
And one was Master of the Thames from Limehouse to Blackwall,
And he was Captain of the Fleet – the bravest of them all.
Their good guns guarded their great gray sides that were thirty foot in the sheer,
When there came a certain trading brig with news of a privateer.
Her rigging was rough with the clotted drift that drives in a Northern breeze,
Her sides were clogged with the lazy weed that spawns in the Eastern seas.
Light she rode in the rude tide-rip, to left and right she rolled,
And the skipper sat on the scuttle-butt and stared at an empty hold.
'I ha' paid Port dues for your Law,' quoth he, 'and where is the Law ye boast
If I sail unscathed from a heathen port to be robbed on a Christian coast?
Ye have smoked the hives of the Laccadives as we burn the lice in a bunk,
We tack not now to a Gallang prow or a plunging Pei-ho junk;
I had no fear but the seas were clear as far as a sail might fare
Till I met with a lime-washed Yankee brig that rode off Finisterre.
There were canvas blinds to his bow-gun ports to screen the weight he bore,
And the signals ran for a merchantman from Sandy Hook to the Nore.
He would not fly the Rovers' flag – the bloody or the black,
But now he floated the Gridiron and now he flaunted the Jack.
He spoke of the Law as he crimped my crew – he swore it was only a loan;
But when I would ask for my own again, he swore it was none of my own.
He has taken my little parrakeets that nest beneath the Line,
He has stripped my rails of the shaddock-frails and the green unripened pine;
He has taken my bale of dammer and spice I won beyond the seas,
He has taken my grinning heathen gods – and what should he want o' these?
My foremast would not mend his boom, my deckhouse patch his boats;
He has whittled the two, this Yank Yahoo, to peddle for shoe-peg oats.
I could not fight for the failing light and a rough beam-sea beside,
But I hulled him once for a clumsy crimp and twice because he lied.
Had I had guns (as I had goods) to work my Christian harm,
I had run him up from his quarter-deck to trade with his own yard-arm;
I had nailed his ears to my capstan-head, and ripped them off with a saw,
And soused them in the bilgewater, and served them to him raw;
I had flung him blind in a rudderless boat to rot in the rocking dark,
I had towed him aft of his own craft, a bait for his brother shark;
I had lapped him round with cocoa husk, and drenched him with the oil,
And lashed him fast to his own mast to blaze above my spoil;
I had stripped his hide for my hammock-side, and tasselled his beard i' the mesh,
And spitted his crew on the live bamboo that grows through the gangrened flesh;
I had hove him down by the mangroves brown, where the mud-reef sucks and draws,
Moored by the heel to his own keel to wait for the land-crab's claws!
He is lazar within and lime without, ye can nose him far enow,
For he carries the taint of a musky ship – the reek of the slaver's dhow!'

*This is a joke. Kipling was experiencing problems with certain US publishers who were publishing editions of his books without permission and refusing to pay him.

from 'The Rhyme of the Three Captains' (1890)

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936)

More Reasons to Beware of the Google Book Settlement

We are into count-down time now.

Objectors to the Google Book Settlement, now filing their statements at quite a lick, are exposing yet more traps lurking in its convoluted text.

The Objections of Arlo Guthrie, Julia Wright, Catherine Ryan Hyde, and Eugene Linden, filed by their counsel, Andrew C. Devore, raises a number of disturbing points. One of these concerns the damage to authors' trademarks, where these exist:

Although this has always been exclusively a copyright case, the Agreement purports to release “each and every Claim of every Rightsholder that has been or could have been asserted in the Action against any Google Releasee (including all Claims of copyright infringement, trademark infringement, or moral rights violation)” that arise out of all future uses of authors’ works. (SA §§ 10.1 (b), (d), (f), (h), (j), 10.2(a).) As a result, the Agreement strips authors of any ability to protect against damaging future uses of their intellectual property through claims such as trademark, right of publicity, non-disparagement, and tortious interference. This broad release raises substantial concerns for all authors, and particularly for those who have a large and popular body of in-print works and may have trademark rights in their names and titles.

…

Because it is so broad and untethered from the underlying dispute, the release effectively bars authors from preventing objectionable uses of their works and names in connection with GBS. … For example, Google may allow advertisements to appear alongside works that are harmful to an author’s reputation or contrary to their core philosophical or political principles; bury an author’s own web site far down in search results in response to a search for that author’s works; allow third-party websites to run Snippets against objectionable content on those sites, (SA §3.9); or make other objectionable uses of authors’ works.

The Estate of Philip K. Dick has opted out of the Settlement, partly on these grounds. A statement by Dick's daughter is appended to the Objection of Arlo Guthrie et al. She also notes that she is finding Google's database impossible to use:

A recent search for works by my father on the Database resulted in over 3,000 entries … This problem is compounded by the fact that the Database is indecipherable. For example, I cannot assess whether a particular work is an Insert or Partial Insert. … Moreover, the Database is riddled with technical problems. Not only is it very hard to claim and unclaim works, but on several occasions I was essentially "stuck" in the Database and was unable to move to the next page and complete the claiming process.

The science fiction and fantasy author Elizabeth Moon has made several LiveJournal posts about the considerable difficulties she has had using the database to claim her works. She has also posted a good piece on copyright, from a US perspective. (UK rules are somewhat different. If anyone in the UK suggests you should register your work with a 'copyright office' to secure your rights, they are trying to scam you.)

One of the points that Laura Leslie, Philip K. Dick's daughter, is concerned about is the way the settlement agreement treats 'inserts': short stories, poems, essays, articles, and song lyrics. Dick, of course, was a noted short story writer, and his stories are valuable properties. Some of them were made into films: Minority Report, Total Recall.

While authors who opt in can claim their books and (in theory) remove them from the database, the settlement agreement does not permit the removal of 'inserts' published in multi-authored collections (Section 3.5(a)(i) refers only to books). Worse, though it is possible for an author to have 'inserts' removed from 'display uses', it is not possible to have them removed from what the agreement calls 'revenue models', defined as 'institutional subscriptions, consumer purchases, advertising uses, public access service and any other revenue models agreed between the Registry and Google'. (See Section 3.5(b)(i).) So if a story or poem has ever been published in an anthology, the settlement gives Google the right to sell or give away access to it, run ads alongside it, or exploit it in any other ways the Registry may be persuaded to agree to: and the author has no rights to stop this. Only the editor or publisher of the work is able to do that.

The settlement agreement is an almost endless maze of legal traps. I had missed that one myself, nor had I seen anyone else point it out, until I read the Objections of Arlo Guthrie et al, and the appended statements.

Travel writer Edward Hasbrouck, who has made a close study of the settlement agreement, is also opting out. Like the objectors advised by De Vore, he is very concerned about the broad releases contained in the settlement agreement, and he has sent a letter to the court, which he has placed online. He has attached his excellent paper Google Books and Writers' Rights as an appendix to it. He notes that the settlement agreement requires authors to release any legal claims not only against Google and the libraries who have been participating in its library project, but also 'against print publishers, class counsel, and the Authors Guild'. He is particularly concerned about the apparently very broad release of authors' claims against print publishers. He further notes that the settlement notice withholds this information, referring only to claims against Google and the libraries.

The New Zealand Society of Authors has also put in an objection, which they have published on their website. I am glad to see that they put the boot very thoroughly into the idea that the Berne Convention may be invoked to try and drag foreign authors into the settlement class, while its protections for authors rights are systematically denied.

The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works provides for reciprocity of protection. It does not provide for reciprocity of burden. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the settlement, clearly it does far more than afford protections to authors. It sets up what has been referred to as an international licensing regime requiring affirmative action and expense by authors to understand it first of all and then to take steps even if they wish to opt out. Those are not reciprocal protections as envisaged by Berne and therefore it is not appropriate to use that treaty as a means to extend the settlement to non US authors. Non US authors should be removed from the author sub-class.

Yay! Go Kiwis!

More Reasons to Beware of the Google Book Settlement

We are into count-down time now.

Objectors to the Google Book Settlement, now filing their statements at quite a lick, are exposing yet more traps lurking in its convoluted text.

The Objections of Arlo Guthrie, Julia Wright, Catherine Ryan Hyde, and Eugene Linden, filed by their counsel, Andrew C. Devore, raises a number of disturbing points. One of these concerns the damage to authors' trademarks, where these exist:

Although this has always been exclusively a copyright case, the Agreement purports to release “each and every Claim of every Rightsholder that has been or could have been asserted in the Action against any Google Releasee (including all Claims of copyright infringement, trademark infringement, or moral rights violation)” that arise out of all future uses of authors’ works. (SA §§ 10.1 (b), (d), (f), (h), (j), 10.2(a).) As a result, the Agreement strips authors of any ability to protect against damaging future uses of their intellectual property through claims such as trademark, right of publicity, non-disparagement, and tortious interference. This broad release raises substantial concerns for all authors, and particularly for those who have a large and popular body of in-print works and may have trademark rights in their names and titles.

…

Because it is so broad and untethered from the underlying dispute, the release effectively bars authors from preventing objectionable uses of their works and names in connection with GBS. … For example, Google may allow advertisements to appear alongside works that are harmful to an author’s reputation or contrary to their core philosophical or political principles; bury an author’s own web site far down in search results in response to a search for that author’s works; allow third-party websites to run Snippets against objectionable content on those sites, (SA §3.9); or make other objectionable uses of authors’ works.

The Estate of Philip K. Dick has opted out of the Settlement, partly on these grounds. A statement by Dick's daughter is appended to the Objection of Arlo Guthrie et al. She also notes that she is finding Google's database impossible to use:

A recent search for works by my father on the Database resulted in over 3,000 entries … This problem is compounded by the fact that the Database is indecipherable. For example, I cannot assess whether a particular work is an Insert or Partial Insert. … Moreover, the Database is riddled with technical problems. Not only is it very hard to claim and unclaim works, but on several occasions I was essentially "stuck" in the Database and was unable to move to the next page and complete the claiming process.

The science fiction and fantasy author Elizabeth Moon has made several LiveJournal posts about the considerable difficulties she has had using the database to claim her works. She has also posted a good piece on copyright, from a US perspective. (UK rules are somewhat different. If anyone in the UK suggests you should register your work with a 'copyright office' to secure your rights, they are trying to scam you.)

One of the points that Laura Leslie, Philip K. Dick's daughter, is concerned about is the way the settlement agreement treats 'inserts': short stories, poems, essays, articles, and song lyrics. Dick, of course, was a noted short story writer, and his stories are valuable properties. Some of them were made into films: Minority Report, Total Recall.

While authors who opt in can claim their books and (in theory) remove them from the database, the settlement agreement does not permit the removal of 'inserts' published in multi-authored collections (Section 3.5(a)(i) refers only to books). Worse, though it is possible for an author to have 'inserts' removed from 'display uses', it is not possible to have them removed from what the agreement calls 'revenue models', defined as 'institutional subscriptions, consumer purchases, advertising uses, public access service and any other revenue models agreed between the Registry and Google'. (See Section 3.5(b)(i).) So if a story or poem has ever been published in an anthology, the settlement gives Google the right to sell or give away access to it, run ads alongside it, or exploit it in any other ways the Registry may be persuaded to agree to: and the author has no rights to stop this. Only the editor or publisher of the work is able to do that.

The settlement agreement is an almost endless maze of legal traps. I had missed that one myself, nor had I seen anyone else point it out, until I read the Objections of Arlo Guthrie et al, and the appended statements.

Travel writer Edward Hasbrouck, who has made a close study of the settlement agreement, is also opting out. Like the objectors advised by De Vore, he is very concerned about the broad releases contained in the settlement agreement, and he has sent a letter to the court, which he has placed online. He has attached his excellent paper Google Books and Writers' Rights as an appendix to it. He notes that the settlement agreement requires authors to release any legal claims not only against Google and the libraries who have been participating in its library project, but also 'against print publishers, class counsel, and the Authors Guild'. He is particularly concerned about the apparently very broad release of authors' claims against print publishers. He further notes that the settlement notice withholds this information, referring only to claims against Google and the libraries.

The New Zealand Society of Authors has also put in an objection, which they have published on their website. I am glad to see that they put the boot very thoroughly into the idea that the Berne Convention may be invoked to try and drag foreign authors into the settlement class, while its protections for authors rights are systematically denied.

The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works provides for reciprocity of protection. It does not provide for reciprocity of burden. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the settlement, clearly it does far more than afford protections to authors. It sets up what has been referred to as an international licensing regime requiring affirmative action and expense by authors to understand it first of all and then to take steps even if they wish to opt out. Those are not reciprocal protections as envisaged by Berne and therefore it is not appropriate to use that treaty as a means to extend the settlement to non US authors. Non US authors should be removed from the author sub-class.

Yay! Go Kiwis!