One response to this from fans of these affected writers is to boycott Amazon. But you know what, I think that’s putting the focus where it shouldn’t be. This crux of this matter is a negotiation between two corporate entities, and that’s something a boycott just isn’t going to matter to, or solve in any meaningful way. And in the case of the authors involved, it’s not going to help them make sales.

Turns out even the pre-1923 rule isn't actually. It's always more complicated than you think:

In short, just because a work was published in the US prior to 1923 does not mean it is in the public domain. The first authorized publication needs to have occurred before that date. This is just one more example of how hard it is to establish with certainty the copyright status of a work.

Sure enough, they did. Warner demanded YouTube take down one of Lessig's presentations.

As Mike Masnick of Techdirt put it, "If there were anyone out there to whom you would not want to send a random takedown notice for an online video, it would probably be Larry Lessig."

The mood on the net seems to be various flavors of gleeful, especially after Lessig said--not surprisingly--that this takedown order is most definitely going to get a fight.

Everyone's hoping for fireworks. Let's hope we all get some.

If Cory is right, we might all have cause to regret this, to say the least. I'm sure we'll have to wait and see how it all falls out, but this is ominous:

I can't believe it took this long for a protest to happen. This was the real issue regarding text-to-speech as I saw it. Yet the press notably failed even to mention it at the time:

You may remember a few months ago, when The Authors Guild claimed (falsely) that the text-to-speech feature violated copyright law, and forced Amazon to disable it.

Now, the people who would have benefited most from the new feature — the blind, and others with reading disabilities — have made it clear that they're not going to stand for it.