I'm the one who interviewed Alan for Ninth Art. However, I'm not the one
who put that ridiculous copyright notice on it.
First of all, I'd like to thank you for linking to my article. We've
already seen a dramatic rise in hits since you posted it, and it really
means a lot.
9A maintains a policy of "Ideolgical Freeware," which is sort of like the
Linux open-source model as applied to journalism. It's a concept I'm
totally on board with. By default, all Ninth Art pieces are "Freeware,"
unless the author of the piece wishes to retain the rights.
The notice was put there due to a miscommunication between Ninth Art's
editors and myself, but it's been fixed. I honestly don't know why the
notice appeared. I'm sorry that it made me come across like Captain
Copyright. That was never my intention.
Thank you again,
Frank Beaton
You're very welcome. I'm looking foward to the next installment of the interview -- let me know when it goes up and I'll post it here.
Several of you have written to point out that visors and palm pilots and I expect the next generation of phones will happily read etexts in all formats, and that I shouldn't faff around with getting the Gemstar eBook usable. I suppose really it's just because I have the eBook, it was a gift, and whether I keep it or pass it on, it would be better if it was working and useful.
I finished the afterword for Steve Brust today, and phoned him and read it to him and even though he was barely awake he laughed in all the right places.
And I went for a walk on a beach and saw several thousand dead jellyfish (actually, they may not have been dead. You can't really tell with a jellyfish. Sometimes waves would carry them back off the sand out to sea, and they'd bob off to keep jellyfish appointments) and played David Bowie records I'd loved when I was thirteen on my iPod, and, because the beach was perfectly deserted, I sang along very loudly, put scenes for the next issue of 1602 together in my head, and was perfectly, indescribably happy.