Мусомный амбар

"Труднее будет смириться с другим фактом: все эти победы на поле боя одерживал преступный режим. Решающую роль в разгроме Третьего рейха сыграли не силы либеральной демократии, а другая тирания, виновная в массовых убийствах. Люди, освободившие Освенцим, подчинялись режиму, создавшему собственную - и куда более масштабную - систему концлагерей".
"В список преступников наряду со странами 'Оси' необходимо занести и СССР, но он же сыграл и главную роль в победе над врагом. Что же касается западных союзников, то их вклад был скромнее, однако они делали все, что могли, и заслуженно оказались в рядах победителей. Американцы же вступили в войну слишком поздно и слишком малыми силами, чтобы сыграть в ней решающую роль.
Силы демократии внесли свою лепту в победу над фашизмом, но в конечном итоге под их контролем оказалось менее половины Европы. На оставшейся части континента один тиранический тоталитарный режим сменил другой. Таким образом, риторическая фраза о триумфе демократии и 'освобождении' соответствует действительности далеко не во всем.".

(с) Норман Дэвис (Norman Davies), "Война, которую выиграли не мы,. . . а русские" ("The Sunday Times", Великобритания)

В развитие темы.

"Bush Sets Defense As Space Priority" - та самая статья в "Вашингтон Пост" (от 18 октября).

Тему поднимали еще 10-го числа на сайте Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy - здесь.
Там же дана ссылка на вот такой документ - "NSPD on U.S. National Space Policy".

Цитата оттуда: "The President authorized a new national space policy on August 31, 2006 that establishes overarching national policy that governs the conduct of U.S. space activities. This policy supersedes Presidential Decision Directive/NSC-49/NSTC-8, National Space Policy, dated September 14, 1996.
...
The conduct of U.S. space programs and activities shall be a top priority, guided by the following principles:
...

The United States considers space capabilities - including the ground and space segments and supporting links -- vital to its national interests. Consistent with this policy, the United States will: preserve its rights, capabilities, and freedom of action in space; dissuade or deter others from either impeding those rights or developing capabilities intended to do so; take those actions necessary to protect its space capabilities; respond to interference; and deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to U.S. national interests;

The United States will oppose the development of new legal regimes or other restrictions that seek to prohibit or limit U.S. access to or use of space. Proposed arms control agreements or restrictions must not impair the rights of the United States to conduct research, development, testing, and operations or other activities in space for U.S. national interests;

"

"Эстонский ветеран СС обокрал бывших сослуживцев
Живущий в Германии ветеран СС Анатоль Шмидт, последний председатель общества Дом раненых эстонских солдат, присвоил 6 миллионов крон (около 500 тысяч долларов), полученных от продажи здания общества."
(цитирую отсюда)

МОСКВА, 20 сен - РИА Новости. Руководитель Федерального агентства по печати и массовым коммуникациям (Роспечать) Михаил Сеславинский заявляет о необходимости пропаганды чтения в России.
"Ситуация, которая складывается, продолжается оставаться неудовлетворительной. Несмотря на то что если мы зайдем в книжные магазины Москвы, то там увидим массы людей у переполненных полок, несмотря на то что на Московской международной книжной ярмарке побывало в начале сентября более 300 тысяч человек и несмотря на то что общее впечатление складывается, что все хорошо в нашей стране в вопросах чтения, за два года доля активных читателей снизилась с 26% до 23%. И фактически половина взрослого населения в нашей стране вообще не покупает книг", - сказал Сеславинский в среду журналистам.
По его словам, сейчас готовится государственная программа по поддержке чтения.
Сам Сеславинский считает, что, проводя пропаганду чтения, необходимо обращаться к семье.
"Когда мы говорим о том, что надо заниматься вопросами пропаганды чтения, то в первую очередь мы обращаемся к семье. Надо, чтобы взрослые понимали, что ребенок с детства должен иметь хотя бы свою полочку. И на этой полочке должны быть не только классические книги, не только Марк Твен и Конан Дойл, но и новые произведения", - сказал он.
Также глава Роспечати отметил, что литературная деятельность в России должна приносить литературные плоды, и только при этом условии ситуация может измениться в лучшую сторону.
"Книги должны издаваться и приносить средства для существования", - подчеркнул Сеславинский.

(цитирую отсюда)

На сайте "Локуса" выложили весьма интересную статью Кори Доктороу (Cory Doctorow) "How Copyright Broke". Цитата оттуда:

Regular customers didn't have lawyers or negotiating leverage. They were a natural for licensing regimes. Have a look at the next click-through "agreement" you're provided with on purchasing a piece of software or an electronic book or song. The terms set out in those agreements are positively Dickensian in their marvelous idiocy. Sony BMG recently shipped over eight million music CDs with an "agreement" that bound its purchasers to destroy their music if they left the country or had a house-fire, and to promise not to listen to their tunes while at work.

But customers understand property — you bought it, you own it — and they don't understand copyright. Practically no one understands copyright. I know editors at multibillion-dollar publishing houses who don't know the difference between copyright and trademark (if you've ever heard someone say, "You need to defend a copyright or you lose it," you've found one of these people who confuse copyright and trademark; what's more, this statement isn't particularly true of trademark, either). I once got into an argument with a senior Disney TV exec who truly believed that if you re-broadcasted an old program, it was automatically re-copyrighted and got another 95 years of exclusive use (that's wrong).

So this is where copyright breaks: When copyright lawyers try to treat readers and listeners and viewers as if they were (weak and unlucky) corporations who could be strong-armed into license agreements you wouldn't wish on a dog. There's no conceivable world in which people are going to tiptoe around the property they've bought and paid for, re-checking their licenses to make sure that they're abiding by the terms of an agreement they doubtless never read. Why read something if it's non-negotiable, anyway?

The answer is simple: treat your readers' property as property. What readers do with their own equipment, as private, noncommercial actors, is not a fit subject for copyright regulation or oversight. The Securities Exchange Commission doesn't impose rules on you when you loan a friend five bucks for lunch. Anti-gambling laws aren't triggered when you bet your kids an ice-cream cone that you'll bicycle home before them. Copyright shouldn't come between an end-user of a creative work and her property.

Цитата из статьи Кори Доктороу (Cory Doctorow) "Science Fiction is the Only Literature People Care Enough About to Steal on the Internet":

«That's the purpose of copyright, after all: to decentralize who gets to make art. Before copyright, we had patronage: you could make art if the Pope or the king liked the sound of it. That produced some damned pretty ceilings and frescos, but it wasn't until control of art was given over to the market — by giving publishers a monopoly over the works they printed, starting with the Statute of Anne in 1710 — that we saw the explosion of creativity that investment-based art could create. Industrialists weren't great arbiters of who could and couldn't make art, but they were better than the Pope.
The Internet is enabling a further decentralization in who gets to make art, and like each of the technological shifts in cultural production, it's good for some artists and bad for others. The important question is: will it let more people participate in cultural production? Will it further decentralize decision-making for artists?
And for SF writers and fans, the further question is, "Will it be any good to our chosen medium?" Like I said, science fiction is the only literature people care enough about to steal on the Internet. It's the only literature that regularly shows up, scanned and run through optical character recognition software and lovingly hand-edited on darknet newsgroups, Russian websites, IRC channels and elsewhere (yes, there's also a brisk trade in comics and technical books, but I'm talking about prose fiction here — though this is clearly a sign of hope for our friends in tech publishing and funnybooks).
Some writers are using the Internet's affinity for SF to great effect. I've released every one of my novels under Creative Commons licenses that encourage fans to share them freely and widely — even, in some cases, to remix them and to make new editions of them for use in the developing world. My first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, is in its sixth printing from Tor, and has been downloaded more than 650,000 times from my website, and an untold number of times from others' websites.
I've discovered what many authors have also discovered: releasing electronic texts of books drives sales of the print editions. An SF writer's biggest problem is obscurity, not piracy. Of all the people who chose not to spend their discretionary time and cash on our works today, the great bulk of them did so because they didn't know they existed, not because someone handed them a free e-book version...»

:Ь

Из интервью с американской фэнтезисткой Патрицией Бриггз (ее роман только что вышел в астовском "Веке Дракона"):

VH: The publication rights for Dragon Bones have been sold to a Russian publisher. Is this a large untapped market for the genre? They seem to have a good history of sci-fi and fantasy literature.
PB: Russia seems to be a good market, certainly. I've heard Russia called the land of the omnibus. Apparently selling a single title was unusual. Publishers buy trilogies and publish them in a single volume, giving their readers good value for their money. The Russian people have a rich literary history and there seem to be a growing number of Russian authors who write speculative fiction.