I want to clarify something about the pledge drive, because I feel that it’s important. It hasn’t come up yet, but, if you are an author or a publisher who wishes to submit to the fund, please know that if I decide to interview you or review your book, I will pay you back your money if we end up setting up an interview. I’m doing this so that I can maintain the same journalistic integrity that I do for all of the interviews, and I do not wish for there to be a conflict of interest, or the perception of such.

If you are interested in reading an article that will have you clamoring for one cold shower, followed by three more, followed by a week-long regimen of healthy food and abstaining from alcohol, and followed then by some dim yet vociferous hope for a legion of Jimmy Breslins to infiltrate the New York media world, then this longass article is for you. It’s amazing that these folks are so miserable that they would offer such revealing quotes — oh, more revealing than they know! — to a journalist.

In July, I posted an excerpt from a small Ursula K. Le Guin piece. I never had any intention of reproducing Le Guin’s piece in full, because I recognized that it was a short piece. But I now realize that I was wrong to reproduce as much as I did, and I have since reduced my excerpt to one sentence, which I feel constitutes fair use. Cory Doctorow, on the other hand, seems to feel that reproducing an author’s piece in whole is “fair use.” And his disingenuous citation of 17 USC, which entailed reproducing a “single paragraph” of a single paragraph piece strikes me as a dubious interpretation to say the least. His apology is nothing more than self-serving adulation. Whatever one’s thoughts on “information wanting to be free,” when one reproduces the whole of a piece, one knowingly commits copyright infringement. Thus, Doctorow indisputably committed piracy here and should really be careful if he wishes to continue dunning his nose into his idols’ posteriors. Le Guin’s thoughts on the matter can be found here.

Her Hagness, apparently closing up shop on the blog front, makes her LATBR debut.