Monday, May 19, 2008 by Julie Cancio Harper.

A colleague at the Editorial Freelancers Association asked for information on blogging and copyright in the U.S. after he read a U.K. blogger’s post at Real E Fun on “Copyrights and Copywrongs.” As a copyright and permissions editor who also blogs, I had a pretty strong reaction to the U.K. blogger’s report on copyright infringement by the Daily Mail.

It helps if you read “Copyrights and Copywrongs” before reading my slightly emotional assessment.

— Good. Now on to the copyright rant. —

The whole idea that only “professional writers” qualify for reprint fees is loony. And that bloggers are not professional writers, so their work can be used for free — bah!

Not only do many professional writers blog, but whether “you’ve been paid for it” (the only actual difference between “professional” and “amateur” writers) has NOTHING to do with copyright protection. If the newspaper liked the writing well enough to print it, then they better well pay a reprint fee. What stuffy nonsense!

(I must be miffed. Look at all those scare quotes!)

The same reasoning in the U.K. article applies in the U.S. That is, blog authors hold copyright to their work until they’ve signed a contract to transfer it to someone else. Posting content on the Internet does not place it in the public domain. If another publication (print or electronic) wants to reprint a blog entry, that publication must first obtain permission from the blogger.

I have a copyright statement on my blog that lists an email address where I can be reached to make it easy for people to write and request permission. If you like my writing, c’mon and shoot me an email if you’d like permission to run it somewhere else. I would love to hear from you. If I really, really like you I may even decide to grant you permission for FREE! Or we could barter. I like stuff. Do you have stuff? Or we can do it the old-fashioned way and you can give me money for a non-exclusive reprint license. I’d like that, too. It’s easy and fun! Let’s be friends.

You never know until you ask. But you do have to ask. Because reprinting someone else’s work without permission is copyright infringement. Which is breaking the law. Which is a crime. Why commit a crime when you can just send an email (or fax or letter by courier pigeon) and ask for permission?

My friend at the EFA writes his blog anonymously and he wondered if that had any effect on copyright issues. My answer: He still holds copyright to his blog. The downside of anonymity is that it makes it more difficult for other publishers to find him to request permission. But it does not mean that publishers have a legal right to skip obtaining permission just because he is difficult to find.

Of course, this doesn’t stop people from using the copyright-holder-is-too-hard-to-find argument and reprinting material without permission. People sometimes do and believe whatever they like until they’re caught and dragged into court. But this argument is still generally inexcusable.

(A total aside: U.S. lawmakers are still working out what we’re supposed to do about actual orphan works — and orphan works are a whole other kettle of fish that I’ll have to discuss some other time. Check out LibraryLaw Blog’s “Why We Need Help with Orphan Works” for a start.)

I find that most people who complain are not actually talking about legitimate orphan works anyway. Upon further inspection, they’re talking about regular permissions that they are too lazy to clear. I have heard many whines and grumbles — from publishing professionals and amateurs alike — about “Can’t we just say it’s fair use? Why doesn’t my single Google name search qualify as due diligence? It’s so HARD to research copyright holders and get permissions . . .”

Well, my answer is dry your tears. This is business so just do the math. You can either 1) do the work and get permission, 2) drop the material, or 3) hire a lawyer willing to fight for lame excuses in court once you’ve been sued. Your financial advisor can confirm that permissions editors are much cheaper than lawyers.

If you prefer to write anonymously as a blogger, perhaps you might consider getting a special email address you can list on your blog so that people seeking permission can contact you this way. And you can still put some sort of copyright notice on your blog, but you might shy away from the U.S. Copyright Office’s sanctioned format because it will include your name: Copyright YEAR NAME.

I don’t know how much protection you’d have by signing with your blogger identity, as in “Copyright 2008 The Anonymous Blogger.” Since I blog using my full name, it’s not been an issue I’ve had to research. But when in doubt you can always go back to the source. The U.S. Copyright Office provides many informative publications that should reveal what is at stake for an anonymous blogger. Circular 1: Copyright Office Basics is a good place to start.

Also, if you want a reprint fee for use of your work, at that point you’re going to have to lose some anonymity if you want someone to write you a check.

There is a lot of copyright education that still needs to be done — as you can tell from the U.K. author’s post, the misconception that “if it’s on the Internet, it’s free” directly affects all copyright holders. Also, as a permissions editor, I spend a fair amount of time reviewing these issues for clients and colleagues. If you have a particular question, please shout it out in the comments section or send me an email.

I’ve thought about copyright issues regarding my blog and I’ve decided that it’s still worth blogging even if being on the web makes it extremely easy for people to steal my writing. What I’ve decided to do is monitor my Internet presence through Google vanity searches. I periodically look up my name and key sentences from blog posts to see if I’ve been poached. So far so good.

But if (maybe when?) I do find someone who has made an unauthorized reprint online, I look forward to going after them (and my paycheck). As for unauthorized reprints in print publications, well, it is true that I can’t read everything ever published. But if I come across an infringement in print (or receive a heads-up from a friend), I’ll go after that paycheck as well. I’ll give no freebies after a copyright infringement.

Updated May 20, 2008: Colleagues have also pointed me to two other articles of interest on the pending Orphan Works legislation.

Today the New York Times ran an op-ed piece called “Little Orphan Artworks,” by  Lawrence Lessig.

And attorney and author Joy Butler covered the issue yesterday on her blog, Guide Through the Legal Jungle, with a post called “What Copyright Orphan Work Legislation Does and Does Not Do.”

Posted in copyright & permissions, blogs & blogging, publishing, attitudes, change your mind, books, freelance, editing, enthusiasms | 1 Comment »

Saturday, May 17, 2008 by Julie Cancio Harper.

It’s 82 degrees at 8:30 pm tonight. The sun is down and the sound of my neighbors’ numerous wall air conditioners taunts me through the open windows. Hummmmmmmmmmmm.

I don’t care. I’m not turning on the AC. This is my third summer in Los Angeles and I have so far refused to turn on the air conditioning in my apartment until August each year. I know it gets hot. It’s the desert. But as long as I keep the blinds drawn in the afternoon, the heat is bearable. In the evening, everything cools down and we make dinner and relax.

The weird thing is, I haven’t felt very hungry lately. When I ask myself, “What do I feel like for dinner?” I find I have no idea. I actually feel tired of foods. How about pizza? Nah. I don’t feel like pizza. Pasta? Soup? Sandwich? Mashed potatoes and gravy? Cheeseburger? Veggie wrap with garlic hummus? Tofu stir-fry? NOTHING?!?!

Nope. Nothing sounds that great. Not junk food, not healthy food, not comfort food.

This is weird. On both sides of my family, we are eaters of the first order. When they were growing up my dad and his siblings would trade you a toy for a pork chop. (They probably still would. Can anyone confirm this for me?)

In my mom’s family, we have a joke award called “The Hogmaster” for when people do stupid things for the love of food. Like when CK split open his chin crashing an ATV in the woods and refused to go to the hospital for stitches for more than 30 minutes because he was waiting for the BBQ ribs at the party to be served.

The story goes that he said, “But they make you wait so long in the emergency room, I’ll be STARVING by the time I get back here.” Well, we wouldn’t want that. Eating ribs was clearly the higher priority over receiving treatment for his gushing head wound. He went to the ER with BBQ sauce and his own blood all over his t-shirt. Congratulations, CK, you’ve won The Hogmaster!

I don’t think I can attribute loss of appetite to the weather alone, given my family history. The hot weather is part of it, but the other part is work.

Starting in December I began to network in earnest:

• I created a profile on LinkedIn and started getting in touch with all the publishing people I’ve worked with over the years, getting caught up with them and letting them know I’ve been freelancing.
• I became active on the message board of the Editorial Freelancers Association, answering questions related to my area of expertise, copyright and permissions editing.
• I created a basic website about my services and experience at http://www.permtrackers.com.
• I wrote about the role of the permissions editor in publishing for an industry blog and a professional newsletter.
• I submitted my resume whenever I found publishers seeking a freelance permissions editor on online job boards.

I wanted this spring and summer to be the best busy season ever. I wanted new clients in general and new projects from established clients. So far I seem to be getting what I wanted. This month I added three new clients to my roster. And this week an established client showed up with a new project.

As business heats up, I’m getting more joy and satisfaction out of my work. And continuing to network and market presents a suddenly appealing creative challenge, which is a relief after I feared and avoided it for so many years. These are all positive outcomes of increasing my professional profile, and I swear I do not mean to complain. But the down side is that stopping work to cook and eat has recently been an annoying interruption to the freelance reverie. And it’s a bit of a problem for me considering the high percentage of my happiness quotient I generally expect to get from food.

Choosing not to be daunted by a lack of appetite, I decided Thursday evening that I would open the fridge, grab a veggie, chop it, and sauté it in olive oil. Then, I would just stand back and listen.

I found a carton of white button mushrooms, chopped them and turned on the burner. After a few minutes stirring with a bamboo spatula, the mushrooms whispered up from my favorite stainless steel skillet, “Garlic. Rosemary. Fresh cracked pepper.”

OK, it was working. I started cooking without any idea of the end game, and the food led me on. On my way to the spice cabinet for dried rosemary, I found the sea salt and some thyme. So I threw those in, too.

What the heck should I do with these mushrooms? I only had two notions: omelet and pizza. I ran them by Eric. He said pizza.

Fine. I had our favorite middle eastern flatbreads in the freezer. And I had a few slices of provolone. But I had no sauce. Not my problem. Just keep going. Do not get in your own way. Keep cooking.

So, I placed two flatbreads on a baking sheet and thickly covered each with half the sautéed mushrooms. Yes, I used every last mushroom on two individual-sized pizzas. I know, I didn’t expect to do it either! But it nicely made up for there not being any sauce. Next I rummaged through the freezer and found some whole frozen spinach leaves. On they went, still frozen. Then I cut two slices of provolone into tiny triangles and arranged them evenly across the toppings.

I know that cranking the oven up to 375 degrees (Fahrenheit) is a wretched, wretched thing to do on a hot evening, but I’ve decided just to get over it or else we’ll end up eating instant noodles all the time. Good food (and good living, I think) is not always about being comfortable. Sometimes happiness comes from pushing yourself a little further as long as you’re able. And being neither elderly nor infirm, Eric and I lived through a hot night without air conditioning in Los Angeles and we even dared to heat up the oven.

And I’m likely to do it again. Appetite or no.

Posted in copyright & permissions, los angeles, balance, publishing, making do, cooking, attitudes, LinkedIn, freelance, editing, change your mind, enthusiasms | 2 Comments »

Friday, April 11, 2008 by Julie Cancio Harper.

The Los Angeles Times sponsors a food blog called Daily Dish, which I read and enjoy (and have now added to the blogroll).

There is an unfortunate error in their post dated April 9: “Chicken and waffle feud”

What they claim is a case of copyright infringement is actually a trademark dispute, as reported in an Associated Press article available from the LA Daily News. See “Roscoe’s sues Rosscoe’s over trademark rights” for accurate yet brief coverage.

I’ve been thinking about blogs lately, and the responsibility I have to readers as a blogger. Bloggers are publishers in the sense that we put print (and other content like audio and video) into the universe. We don’t need much more than access to the Internet and basic word processing skills to do it. We each decide on our own editorial standards. We look up to our mentors and try to outshine our competitors, in a sibling rivalry sort of way.

This is a pretty loose type of writing, so there is a wide range of content and quality out here in the blogosphere. I accept that errors happen. Sometimes readers give a shout when something’s amiss, and bless them for reminding us to get it right because we’re not singing to ourselves alone out here.

But having the Daily Dish, which is staffed by professionals at the LA Times, post such a serious error is a bummer. I take my responsibility for accuracy and fact-checking seriously, even as a beginner. If it was a misspelling or a punctuation error, I would think “must be a typo” and leave it without comment. But there is a pretty extreme difference between copyright and trademark. And anyone working in any kind of publishing should either know the difference or make sure to pass on the newswire transmission word-for-word.

The U.S. Copyright Office defines copyright as “a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U.S. Code) to the authors of ‘original works of authorship,’ including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works.” Many creative works qualify for copyright protection, but business names do not. They are protected by trademark.

According to attorney Lloyd J. Jassin who provides “Trademark Basics” at Copylaw.com, “trademark law protects names, titles, short phrases and other symbols that distinguish the source of one product (or service) from another” and affect business and marketing efforts. The “other symbols” mentioned by Jassin include business logos, such as the waffle background and chicken foreground made famous by the original Roscoe’s in Los Angeles.

See “Copyrights vs. Trademarks: Related but Different” at Copylaw.com and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for more information.

In the lawsuit involving two houses of chicken and waffles, the famous Roscoe’s in Los Angeles objects to another restaurant’s similar name and logo because those marks of trade make it difficult for the businesses to be distinguished from one another. The suggestion is that Rosscoe’s deliberately means to deprive Roscoe’s of sales. This is especially important now that the famous Roscoe’s is opening a restaurant in the Chicago area where Rosscoe’s currently does business.

So, for the record and as a public service dedicated to accuracy in the blogosphere, I present this information.

And now that I have, I’m pretty much starving for chicken and waffles. Where the heck did I put that waffle iron?

Posted in blogs & blogging, publishing, copyright & permissions, los angeles, attitudes, trademark, editing | 4 Comments »

Tuesday, April 8, 2008 by Julie Cancio Harper.

I’ve been a freelance permissions editor for eight years now, except for four months last year when I worked full-time as a permissions editor for SAGE Publications, Inc. When I decided to return to freelancing, one of several factors affecting that decision was food.

With the long commute and the rigid schedule required by office work, I could not seem to get any cooking done. It was a high-stress position, and I used each weekend to recuperate from the past week and get ready for the next.

Somehow I could not scrounge up any creative energy or joy to plan new meals, restock the pantry, and cook to fill the freezer. I hoped that over time it would get easier, but months passed and it didn’t. Eric and I ate through our stockpile of frozen, pre-made and portioned foods and then turned to take-out in desperation.

I live in Los Angeles, and everyone here seems to eat out as the solution to finding food on a busy schedule. But I have trouble feeling satisfied with take-out. When it becomes a habit, it tends to make me feel dull and listless. I can never answer the question, “What do you want to eat?” when handed a fistful of take-out menus.

I guess I get confounded by take-out because what I want is usually found in a home kitchen. I want variety and convenience. I want high-quality, inexpensive, home-cooked food. I want to eat an incredible soup and sandwich combo ten minutes from now for under $1. I want an organic omelet with eggs laid by happy, vegetarian chickens living la vida free-range.

Again: variety, convenience, high-quality, inexpensive. I want all of it together, and it’s not really out there. It’s in here, in my own kitchen.

Perhaps most people don’t find cooking at home to be convenient. You’ve got to have the right ingredients on hand and they need time and attention, and then don’t forget all those dirty dishes at the end.

Sure, that’s true. But I have a basic pantry of dry goods. I keep a small array of veggies on hand (onions, peppers, carrots, celery, potatoes, cabbage), and since I’m cooking every day it’s easy to eat things before they expire. I keep some meat in the freezer. And I strategically selected this apartment because it’s walking distance to three major grocery stores: Trader Joe’s, Ralphs, and Gelson’s. There is also a small produce market nearby. If I really want something else, I just need to put on my walking shoes.

The time and attention that go into cooking are an important draw to get me away from this computer screen, which I would otherwise gaze into all hours of the day. And the dish washing doesn’t bother me. I do most of it in the morning while I clear the sleep from my mind, plan my important to-dos for the day, and get that breakfast oatmeal on the burner.

I don’t have a rigid cooking plan because I don’t respond well to rigid anything. I would only cause a mess by planning a week full of square meals because I would start with good intentions Sunday and by Tuesday be angry that I was stuck with all these square meals. It doesn’t matter that I chose them myself before shopping carefully on Sunday — by Tuesday I would feel penned in, not liberated. Sometimes you have to anticipate your failings and plan to succeed around them.

My cooking plan instead involves loose cooking practices. I started with a small one, the oatmeal habit (see my first post, Donut Consequences, for the origin story). That is my breakfast default. If we have a box of celebratory donuts on the counter, then I can choose to go ahead and eat one. Or, if it’s the weekend, I may splurge and make a special cowboy breakfast of fried eggs, hash browns, beans, toast and coffee. But if I wake up and have no clue what I want for breakfast, I put on the oatmeal. It keeps my brain from starving on days where I need to stay focused on work (all of them, really).

Next, I rely heavily on soups. I make a giant vat of some new soup each week, store four or six portions (where a portion equals one meal for two adults in my household) in the freezer for later use, and then serve the remainder of the soup with different accompaniments for lunch all week. Some soups are vegan, some are vegetarian, some have meat or meat stock.

There are a few favorites that I keep on hand almost always. I have a standard all-vegetable soup based on cabbage, carrots, potatoes, and kale in a tomato broth. It’s vegan, incidentally, and homey and delicious. I’ve fiddled with the recipe, but it started as Southern Vegetable Soup from Victor-Antoine D’Avila-Latourrette’s Twelve Months of Monastery Soups.

I made it yesterday, in fact. It goes with toasted cheese one day, then fresh hot cornbread the next, then whole-wheat crackers, then a fried egg on toast. On day five, Eric and I discuss: “Should we go back to toasted cheese or make more cornbread? We haven’t made bean and cheese quesadillas yet . . . ooooh, that’s it!” It stays interesting this way. And honestly, I love that soup so much that I could eat it alone every day for a very long time without tiring of it. It is homemade and it is mine.

I love to keep a pureed pinto bean soup that also doubles as an excellent dip when boiled down with shredded cheddar melted into it. I made this one last week. It starts out vegan (before you add dairy to garnish it) and is fantastic paired 50/50 in a soup bowl with cooked brown rice. Garnish with salsa, scallions, cilantro, a squeeze of lime, sour cream, yogurt, cheddar, whatever you have.

Again, I was inspired by a cookbook and then altered the outcome according to what I had on hand. See page 53 of Vegetable Soups from Deborah Madison’s Kitchen for the original Pinto Bean Soup. I tend to add carrots, celery and green peppers where the recipe suggests only onions, garlic and chiles. I like adding more veggies to this one especially because they add complexity to the flavor when I use the soup as a dip, which I do often. It also converts quickly to refried beans (remember cowboy breakfast?) or a filling for quesadillas and tacos.

As I prepare for a busy spring and summer I will stay diligent, cooking and freezing portions of a new soup each week. I want to cook far enough ahead so that when I am hungry I can heat up something great without needing any more brain cells than boiling requires. As I mentioned before, by the time I’m hungry my IQ has dropped considerably. And I need to eat, get smart, and get back to work!

In a way, the freezer becomes a kind of freelancer security as the schedule fills up. It keeps me eating well when I’m under deadline pressure. And hitting those deadlines keeps the grocery money flowing in. When the system is working, it’s all one complete circle. And when it’s not — like last summer — I feel lost. I seem happiest when my life, work, and universe revolve around one small apartment kitchen and the tiny, cluttered desk parked near it.

Food and work are the center of my life. They feed each other. And they feed me.

Posted in cooking, editing, soup, los angeles, balance, copyright & permissions, freelance, energy, enthusiasms, brain food, beans, books, love, oatmeal habit | 4 Comments »