Clean app -- Handy tool or censorship?

Mr Flibble said:

From the looks of it (and by their emails) they had no idea they were -- they say they got the info/books from legit distributors (well Ingrams is, I've not heard of Overdrive?).

I'll let you know when I hear back from them

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Their story seems a bit dodgy to me. They may have gotten the information from legitimate sources, but from what I've seen so far they have gotten the actual files they sell from elsewhere. You'd have to be extremely ignorant to not react when you have to get information about books from someone else than the ones that are selling them.

From everything I've read, I'm okay with giving the benefit of the doubt to the Clean Reader people. As stupid and pitiful as I think the idea and craving behind the app is, everything I've read about the debacle points to less guile and greed, and more cluelessness about both the publishing industry and how writers feel about their work.

If the app stands alone and can be layered over legitimately purchased ebooks, I'm not going to waste any breath over telling people what they can do with their legally purchased property.

slhuang said:

Overdrive is legit -- they do a lot of library distribution, including to mine. (AFAIK, anyway, not an expert but I've seen them around.)

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I use Overdrive for audiobooks. My library has a certain number of ebooks/audiobook copies of each book. I download the book to my app and after a certain amount of days, the book is automatically deleted and the next user on the hold list can download the book. If I finish the book, then I can "return" the book. My copy is then instantly deleted from the app and the next user is able to download it.

I didn't think that Overdrive SOLD books (edit: they do). It's an online library with the same restrictions as a physical library (limited amount of items, 2 week due date) but no late fees. For example, I'm #37 on hold for a book with 4 copies available. I won't be able to "read" it until it's my turn to borrow it and when I'm done, it's no longer in my possession.

Mr Flibble said:

I agree that sending a message that body parts are "bad" is very unhealthy.

)

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I think teaching that body parts can be referred to using some of these words is extremely unhealthy. It teaches very bad things about the body.

Pirated books is a completely different issue.

There are only two ways such a thing would be legitimate. One is if the writer gives a publisher permission to release a clean copy of the book for readers who prefer it. Probably not a bad idea.

The other is if a reader buys a book, and does this to his particular copy before reading it, and undoes it before selling or giving the book away.

Jamesaritchie said:

Pirated books is a completely different issue.

There are only two ways such a thing would be legitimate. One is if the writer gives a publisher permission to release a clean copy of the book for readers who prefer it. Probably not a bad idea.

The other is if a reader buys a book, and does this to his particular copy before reading it, and undoes it before selling or giving the book away.

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Seconded, except for the changing it back before giving it away. People can do whatever they like to paperbacks they purchase. But an ebook is a loan, a service, according to the EU courts. I don't know how much I agree with that, but it is a law (regarding taxation) and I don't see how any app could or should get around that.

I'm thinking about writing a children's book, something really harmless, maybe set on a chicken farm (get it? Cock?), that only gets dirty when read through this app.

The only thing holding me back is that this would lend some legitimacy to the app.

I'm pretty sure (or at least hoping) the app will be a short-lived hype. Once people notice that a lot of good, albeit ambiguously-worded books become totally unreadable and it's just too much work to keep them straight, they'll stop using it.

I'm just sorry for those folks' daughter. If she gets all uncomfortable at the sight of language, the parents have clearly messed her up with their well-intended yet misguided parenting. After all, it's only the reactions of grown-ups that kids learn all about foul language from. If the grown-ups don't get all upset about certain words, the kids will most likely outgrow them soon enough. (I'd make an exception for hurtful language. But that's an attitude problem, not a vocabulary problem. I doubt there's an app for that.)

Jamesaritchie said:

There are only two ways such a thing would be legitimate. <snip>

The other is if a reader buys a book, and does this to his particular copy before reading it, and undoes it before selling or giving the book away.

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That's what the app was indeed intended to do, and to my understanding succeeding in doing, however clumsily. The trouble came in with the app's built-in ebookstore, which was in some part comprised of illegal downloaded copies. In those cases, the app would not only be distributing illegal copies, but actually collecting money on them.

Not that it's terribly relevant to the App thing since it's been suspended, but I'm wondering if somehow Overdrive's "library" library and "for sale" library are improperly overlapping. That might explain why they have out-of-print books listed. Libraries retain stock of out-of-print books for their borrowers, but for Overdrive to sell them...that's something else entirely. Where are the royalties going? Seems to me a question for Overdrive to answer.

Part of the problem, I think, was that they really botched the social media on this thing.

First of all, not checking in with a focus group of authors was...not a good idea. You could have polled a half dozen anywhere they gather and gotten at least one person shouting "FULL ORWELL!" and had some idea what you were in for. That it never occurred to them to ask was just disastrously short-sighted.

Once they were in the middle of the screaming, they really should have locked down their Facebook. They should NEVER have asked their fans to go out and "correct" people. All the polite letters to bloggers in the world won't help when you have well-meaning "allies" going on about how authors are selfish and why can't they just read the book without the filthy bits? (Sardonic replies to concerned authors that none of their books had sold are also not a good idea.)

And they needed a much better handle on their Twitter account--hours of radio silence when people are piling up vitriol doesn't help. Politely worded comments about accepting feedback and trying to find a solution wouldn't have stopped the matter, but it's like the most basic level of trying to address the concerns.

Having articles on their home-page about how some authors were good enough to write without all that profanity was, as a friend put it, "ill-advised."

Finally, the answer to "Is this legal?" should never be "Oh, we talked to a lawyer and he said it's fine." They might as well have lit a match in an oily rag factory on that one. On the internet, everyone's a lawyer. Their attempts to clarify were poorly worded and came to late.

There are like two or three points where they could have--if not stopped the outrage (because people are gonna be outraged about what the app does no matter what) at least cooled it off. But they handled it...well, like a couple of people who didn't think it through, not like a business who was putting its foot in very turbulent waters.

It's all easy for me to say, obviously, being on the outside, but still, I think they made the situation a lot worse for themselves by thinking so...small, I guess. They just kept coming off like baffled individuals (which they probably were) and acting like a couple of Facebook comments were going to counter bad write-ups in major newspapers. I suspect it was inevitable that the internet was going to land on their head and that the major distributors were going to pull out as soon as they saw which way the wind was blowing.

I'm not saying I want an app like this--I don't, particularly, although I also don't care as much as many people do--but I think it could have been handled a LOT better.

Namatu said:

The world is not exactly how you (generic) want it, including books. If you don't want to read certain words , then don't read the books that use them. This app seems to me to be for people who want the world to conform to them in every little way. Just... don't read the book. Especially the pirated book.

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But won't someone think of the children!

Some day, I guess we'll all walk around with V/R glasses on, and see the world slathered in whatever blows our skirts up? There are times, especially around national elections, when the idea sounds useful...

Apparently the store you could access through the app has pulled their service. Not sure where this leaves the app but there will be no buying books as an in-app purchase.

I guess you can still side load (not sure) and have it work its censormojo.

RedWombat said:

Part of the problem, I think, was that they really botched the social media on this thing.

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I'm beginning to think the whole thing with the store was an elaborate publicity stunt to get sales/downloads for the app. But then, I'm a "freaking" cynic.

WriterBN said:

I'm beginning to think the whole thing with the store was an elaborate publicity stunt to get sales/downloads for the app. But then, I'm a "freaking" cynic.

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Unless I have misunderstood, the app is free. So, what they make money from is book sales in their store.

-Following is a general reply, and just my thoughts:

When Smashwords pull their books, it suggests to me that something is wrong. It may be that they have far better/more expensive/actually cpoyright specialist lawyers, that do not want to test the "transformative works" fair use thing in court.

- To clarify. I was curious about the legality of Fan Fiction. I asked about it in a comment thread where there was at least two lawyers. The best they could link me to when it comes to legality was a low court (either county or district) US judge stating that Fan Fiction (i.e. transformative works) should be legal, but was definitely not legal if you earn money from it. That may not have any bearing on this situation, but if it does, it seems like CleanReader is in trouble if they have a deal where they get percentages of what the stores they link to, or as it seems hosted bookstore, get paid.

Unfortunately there does not seem to be any high court judgement on transformative works that can be used to actually give a definitive statement on legality. -Too bad Stephenie Meyer did not sue E.R. James and the publishers, and that (sadly imaginary) case went to supreme court,so we could have had an answer to where the line in the sand is.

But as I understand it, there has been a case on cencorship (, Blockbuster when it comes to movies), and they lost, so this app seems to be illegal until proven otherwise in a court of law.

They've now stated on Twitter at least that they will no longer be selling books. Sort of curious as to whether they are giving it up as a bad job, or whether it will ultimately be available as essentially an aftermarket app that one could load one's Kindle purchases into.

For the moment, though, dead in the water.

Weirdmage said:

Too bad Stephenie Meyer did not sue E.R. James and the publishers, and that (sadly imaginary) case went to supreme court,so we could have had an answer to where the line in the sand is.

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50 Shades of Grey was not really Twilight fanfiction after the names had been changed. (Personally, I'd argue it was never close enough to Twilight to count as fanfiction, and E L James was always exploiting Twilight fans in order to garner an audience for her original work.)

So I don't think that hypothetical case would have established much of a precedent with regard to fanfiction. 50 Shades of Grey was quite transformative. Meyer would have lost the suit (and looked like a bully in the process), and another case -- where the fanfiction had closer ties to its source material -- would potentially go a different way.

jjdebenedictis said:

50 Shades of Grey was not really Twilight fanfiction after the names had been changed. (Personally, I'd argue it was never close enough to Twilight to count as fanfiction, and E L James was always exploiting Twilight fans in order to garner an audience for her original work.)

So I don't think that hypothetical case would have established much of a precedent with regard to fanfiction. 50 Shades of Grey was quite transformative. Meyer would have lost the suit (and looked like a bully in the process), and another case -- where the fanfiction had closer ties to its source material -- would potentially go a different way.

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I disagree. I have actually read neither Twilight nor 50 Shades of Grey, so I base my opinion of what fans of those say. And it is pretty clear from everything I have seen that 50 Shades of Grey would not have existed, much less got published without it starting off as Twilight fan fiction. And to me that is clearly making money from fan fiction. But that is why I see the need for a high court decision to clarify what is actually allowed. (Or better yet a change in international conventions and national laws governing copyright to get them up to date when it comes to current methods of distribution - i.e. the internet.)

I am glad that I don't know people who would be interested in Bowdlerized versions of anything, but I'm not surprised that that market exists. I think that the lack of authorization for such versions will get them in hot water, but the app probably is an end run around the lcak of authorization.

Perks said:

No, it's a lot disconcerting. I don't get too bent out of shape about regular file-sharing. I mean, I don't like it and I don't do it, but in the end, I don't think it amounts to much in the way of lost sales and perhaps maybe even spreads positive word of mouth on occasion. In the end, if people like that only take what they can get for free, it wasn't like they were going to buy it anyway. They don't support writers, they merely consume. Some people are like that.

But--- but, but, but, if this site is selling pirated content, actually collecting money on illegal downloads, that's an entirely different kettle of fish. Now they are directly taking away sales from me and my publisher. And that's just not going to fly.

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I agree, but also, it just makes them seem very...unprepared, I suppose, for the industry. I understand the motivation behind casually sharing files in a non-professional capacity. People who do that aren't trying to be professional booksellers anyway. But if you actually create a business that involves selling or distributing ebooks that you don't own the copyright to, it is so, so important to make sure you know what you're doing.

I have some sympathy for these people if they meant well. I think the app is stupid, but I have sympathy for having what you think is a great idea but failing in the execution. And on a technical level, I think the idea of an app that can alter the appearance of text without permanently altering the base document is nifty. And in terms of censorship, I think that's preferable to actually changing books so that people have no idea what has been taken out or altered.

But if you're going to sell ebooks, the minimum you have to do is make sure you're getting them from a legitimate source.

Weirdmage said:

When Smashwords pull their books, it suggests to me that something is wrong. It may be that they have far better/more expensive/actually cpoyright specialist lawyers, that do not want to test the "transformative works" fair use thing in court.

- To clarify. I was curious about the legality of Fan Fiction. I asked about it in a comment thread where there was at least two lawyers. The best they could link me to when it comes to legality was a low court (either county or district) US judge stating that Fan Fiction (i.e. transformative works) should be legal, but was definitely not legal if you earn money from it. That may not have any bearing on this situation, but if it does, it seems like CleanReader is in trouble if they have a deal where they get percentages of what the stores they link to, or as it seems hosted bookstore, get paid.

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I think this is probably a little different since the app is probably not altering the text enough to make it drastically different than the original. Also, if I understand correctly, the books that were sold were not altered--the app altered them after the reader purchased them.

I don't think you could really claim that a copy of a novel with some words changed is a transformative work. It's still the same story, and it's the original author's words. Transformative works such as fanfic generally contain copyrighted elements from someone else's work, but the actual writing is original and unique to the person who wrote the transformative work. If I write a "story" that's just the transcribed dialogue from an episode of a TV show, nobody is going to consider that a piece of fan fiction. That's the actual source material.

Fair use also has limitations. It's designed to protect people who wish to write reviews, academic articles, or satire. I can't imagine that selling someone else's story, in whole, would be considered fair use, even if you altered the appearance of it so that a few words were different.

Weirdmage said:

I disagree. I have actually read neither Twilight nor 50 Shades of Grey, so I base my opinion of what fans of those say. And it is pretty clear from everything I have seen that 50 Shades of Grey would not have existed, much less got published without it starting off as Twilight fan fiction. And to me that is clearly making money from fan fiction. But that is why I see the need for a high court decision to clarify what is actually allowed. (Or better yet a change in international conventions and national laws governing copyright to get them up to date when it comes to current methods of distribution - i.e. the internet.)

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50 Shades of Grey was about two (fully human) people in Seattle, Washington, starting a sexual relationship that becomes extremely kinky.

Twilight was about a human girl meeting a vampire in Bend, Oregon, and the long, drawn-out process of them not having a sexual relationship (or even a romantic relationship) despite both of them wanting to.

The author of 50 Shades of Grey used the names Edward and Bella originally, and presented the story to fans of Twilight as "alternate universe" fanfiction, but other than the names, it had nothing in common with Twilight.

50 Shades of Grey appealed to fans of Twilight, but in every concrete way, it was not Twilight fanfiction. It wasn't set in the same universe, the tension came from sex happening rather than sex not happening, and it left out the central feature of Twilight -- that one member of the couple was a vampire.

So in every legal way, once E L James changed the names, it was an original work.

This is why I say she exploited the fans of Twilight by presenting 50 Shades of Grey as Twilight fanfiction, and why a lawsuit would have proved little regarding the legality of fanfiction. 50 Shades of Grey was fiction well-suited to appeal to fans of Twilight, but that's all. If a lawsuit had occurred, it would have easily been deemed an original work based on its content.

jjdebenedictis said:

So in every legal way, once E L James changed the names, it was an original work.

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I missed the supreme court case stating that. Could you please link me?

Sorry for the sarcasm, but fair use is determined on a case by case basis in court. (Thinking specifically as related to fan fiction here as I stated in a comment above.) In the case of 50 Shades of Grey, it would be up to a court to decide if it really was original fiction. Since Stephenie Meyer (, or her publisher,) did not sue James, we do not have the benefit of pointing to a decision on whether it was original or not. I think that would have been a very interesting case, and I wish it was brought to the courts so we could have a guideline for a discussion about what was fair use in connection to that type of fan fiction.
Copyright violations are , as people have said time and time again elsewhere, a civil matter. That someone has not been taken to court for a violation does not necessarily mean that they would not lose a court case if one did happen. There could be any number of reasons why a rights-holder decides not to file against someone.

When it comes to definitions of fan fiction: I have seen people who write fan fiction argue that it is still fan fiction even if it does not include characters or settings from the original work. -And while I have trouble understanding that definition of fan fiction, people who actually write it hold to it.

This is becoming quite a derail. My original intention by mentioning fan fiction in connection to CleanReader was looking for legal precedent.
In my personal opinion changing a character from saying fuck to saying fiddlesticks is transformative for that character. A person saying fuck is definitely a different person to one saying fiddlesticks, even if all else is the same.

Weirdmage said:

I think that would have been a very interesting case, and I wish it was brought to the courts so we could have a guideline for a discussion about what was fair use in connection to that type of fan fiction.

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Well, I think it would have been an open-and-shut case in favour of E L James, but I agree we're in danger of derailing this very fine thread!

I'm not sure changing "fuck" to "fiddlesticks" would be transformative. After all, if you copy a line of dialogue from another writer, without attribution, and change one word, it would still be considered plagiarism.

Weirdmage said:

Sorry for the sarcasm, but fair use is determined on a case by case basis in court. (Thinking specifically as related to fan fiction here as I stated in a comment above.) In the case of 50 Shades of Grey, it would be up to a court to decide if it really was original fiction.

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If being inspired by someone else's work was enough to make a story transformative or copyright infringement, then I think most of us could wind up in court.

The only connected 50 Shades of Grey has to fan fiction is that EL James originally posted it as such. The original story was fan fiction because it was established that the characters Bella and Edward were the same Bella and Edward from Twilight, even if there were some differences.

Once the story was edited, though, it was just an original story that was inspired, in a loose sense, by Twilight.

When it comes to definitions of fan fiction: I have seen people who write fan fiction argue that it is still fan fiction even if it does not include characters or settings from the original work. -And while I have trouble understanding that definition of fan fiction, people who actually write it hold to it.

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Alternate Universe fan fiction can still be clearly based on the original canon and characters even if there are significant differences, and if the characters have the same names and are clearly intended to be existing characters, that's enough to make a story not entirely original.

But there's also a difference between something being considered fanfic from a community perspective and being considered a transformative work from a legal perspective. Again, I think having characters who are clearly meant to be the same characters that someone else created is enough to establish a work as being transformative or copyright infringement, depending on the context. But other than that, it's entirely possible to post a story as fic because you see it as such, but technically be able to publish it as an original story if you wish (at least with a few small changes).

In my personal opinion changing a character from saying fuck to saying fiddlesticks is transformative for that character. A person saying fuck is definitely a different person to one saying fiddlesticks, even if all else is the same.

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I think you have a point, but legally, I doubt it's transformative enough, unless maybe it's done as satire.