Interesting Links for 01-11-2017

[andrewducker]

We’re surprisingly unaware of when our own beliefs change

(tags: belief psychology memory )

Why isn’t the media publishing the full list of allegations against Tory MPs?

(tags: media libel Conservatives )

On compromise and the American Civil War

(tags: usa slavery history war civilwar )

Philip Pullman's swearwords are a useful lesson for children

(tags: swearing children language )

The effect of piracy on book sales

(tags: sales publishing books piracy )

Why putting the clocks back is bonkers

(tags: time sun UK )

Comments

[calimac]

US Civil War: Kelly is sadly ignorant of history when he claims that compromise could have prevented the war, but it's his critics who are historically ignorant when they chide him for calling Lee "honorable." Not that they're wrong on the terms that they give, but they're painfully unaware of what he meant by that or how properly to respond to it. Maybe I'll go into this in a post of my own.

Piracy: Cory Doctorow claimed years ago that legitimate free copies, at least, didn't hurt his sales. But he didn't offer a mechanism to explain this. (Loss leaders, perhaps?) It's always puzzled me because it seemed counter-intuitive. This story sounds more like what I'd expect, and the fake pirate edition is very clever, though not a trick you could pull off repeatedly (the pirates will be on to you). Of course the author points out that the e-book environment has changed over the years, but I can date reading Doctorow's claims to less than ten years ago.

GMT and BST: This amounts to claiming we should just move the time zones west. The USSR did that; has anybody researched how well it worked? The big problem is that, since our schedule has caused
"noon" to stop meaning noon, if we never turn the clocks back, then "1 pm" will gradually start meaning noon, and then gradually stop meaning noon, and the cycle will begin all over again. No, what it's really an argument for is that "summer time" should be in the winter and not in the summer.

[andrewducker]

Good point about the USSR. I'll have a look about, because I've never heard about the results of that.

I'm with you on Doctorow. I'm against DRM for things I "buy" because I don't like being locked to a publisher/platform which might vanish - and so far as I can tell it gets cracked near-instantly anyway. But having free copies about has _got_ to have an impact.

[movingfinger]

On DRM, I wouldn't mind if ebook prices were lower so that if I changed platforms or something and "lost" a book I could replace it. That assumes that everything I buy continues to be available and experience shows (Netflix streaming vs Netflix DVD rental vs older VHS) that this does not happen.

The key point in the remark about Doctorow is addressed in Stiefvater's essay (by the way, her own Tumblr is http://maggie-stiefvater.tumblr.com/ and she has a couple of posts about piracy up there). ...[T]his is no longer 2004. Piracy is having a real effect on sales of some books and --- the other side of the problem --- publishers are not adjusting their accounting and decision-making practices for this, preferring to blame the author. Piracy effects on sales could be an argument in favor of treating ebooks like the old paperback and delaying release.

Stiefvater has lost income and suffered career harm through piracy (that cancelled boxed set would have been a fine gift seller). It's particularly nasty because I would bet some of my own money that most of the pirates live in places where their public library lends ebooks (and, of course, paper books). They don't even have to steal to read the book for free.

[theandrewhickey]

"Piracy effects on sales could be an argument in favor of treating ebooks like the old paperback and delaying release."

I'd argue the reverse. If a book isn't made available legally in the format people want it, they will obtain it illegally in that format. What stops piracy is cheap, convenient, access to the material, so it actually becomes more faff to pirate something than to pay for it legitimately. Music piracy was contained -- not stopped, but reduced considerably -- by iTunes and later Spotify. Comics piracy has decreased dramatically since the introduction of Comixology. And video piracy still happens, but Netflix and so on mean it happens less (and I suspect that to the extent it does happen, it's because there's no handy place that has *everything* easily available to stream or download cheaply).

Leaving the ebook release until later would only encourage those who have to have it *now* to obtain it illegally (and would also put off another chunk of people who would have bought it on the day but forget about it). I don't know what the solution to the problem is, or even if such a solution exists, but delaying the release of the ebook isn't it...

[zotz]

You know, we could all just get up at an earlier hour during the summer without having an endless argument about how many epicycles to implement.

[andrewducker]

We could, but for people who have to juggle childcare and office, having them both be on the same timezone is useful.

[zotz]

There's no reason why they couldn't be, particularly if the government was involved as it already is.

The Civil War

[danieldwilliam]

I am far, far from an expert on the US Civil War but I have read a goodly number of books on the subject.

I'm not sure there was a compromise there to be had that would have satisfied sufficient people in either the South or the North or the fringes of the US.

I think there could have been a compromise in 1860 that avoid a war that year but it would have left in place the main economic causes of the conflict, which is that the economic model of the South was driven by the growth of slave holding.

By the 1850's the real money in slave holding not in forcing people to produce commodities but in selling slaves from established plantations to new or expanding plantations. In order to do that you needed an expansion of plantations. For that you needed steady growth in the demand for commodities such as sugar, tobacco and cotton and, crucially, the increased supply to meet that increased demand had to come from expanding slave labour production on the North American continent so you could easily sell slaves. The economic logic of the rich and powerful in the South relied upon an expansion of slavery in to new territories in North America (Kansas, Missouri, Oregon,) and preferably in to existing States of the USA.

The second factor is that it is very, very difficult for a slave labour commodity economy to exist in the same free trade area as a high tech, skilled labour capitalist economy.

One could have cut a compromise in 1860 that allowed the South to secceed on condition that slavery was confined to the existing South but I don't think the Southern slave holders would have kept to the deal (see Bloody Kansas) and eventually they would have come in to armed confrontation with the North.