[Plura-list] Cyberpunk and Post-Cyberpunk; Disney stiffs writer; Tyson execs bet on covid spread in unsafe plant

[Cory Doctorow]

Today's links

* Cyberpunk and Post-Cyberpunk: Bruce Sterling and Christopher Brown on
the Attack Surface Lectures.

* Disney stiffs writer: Sure, what's new, but this is next-level fuckery
#DisneyMustPay.

* Tyson execs bet on covid spread in unsafe plant: Upton Sinclair was an
optimist.

* This day in history: 2010, 2015, 2019

* Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing
projects, current reading

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🧛🏼‍♀️ Cyberpunk and Post-Cyberpunk

Today on the Attack Surface Lectures (a series of 8 panels exploring
themes from the third Little Brother book, hosted by Tor Books and 8
indie bookstores): Cyberpunk & Post-Cyberpunk with Christopher Brown and
Bruce Sterling, which Anderson's hosted on Oct 19.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLlfrayuKAw

You can watch it without Youtube's surveillance courtesy of the Internet
Archive:

https://archive.org/details/asl-cyberpunk

Or get the audio as an MP3:

https://archive.org/download/asl-cyberpunk/Cyberpunk%20with%20Bruce%20Sterling%20and%20Christopher%20Brown.mp3

Earlier instalments in the series:

I. Politics and Protest (with Eva Galperin and Ron Deibert, hosted by
The Strand):

https://craphound.com/attacksurface/2020/11/16/the-attack-surface-lectures-politics-and-protest-fixed/

II. Cross-Media Sci-Fi (with Amber Benson and John Rogers, hosted by the
Brookline Booksmith):

https://craphound.com/attacksurface/2020/11/17/the-attack-surface-lectures-cross-media-sci-fi/

III. Race, surveillance and tech (Meredith Whittaker and Malkia
Devich-Cyril, hosted by The Booksmith):

https://craphound.com/attacksurface/2020/11/18/the-attack-surface-lectures-intersectionality-race-surveillance-and-tech-and-its-history/

Here's a master post with all the media as it is goes live:

https://craphound.com/news/2020/11/16/attack-surface-lectures-master-post/

And you can also get this as it's posted on my podcast feed – search for
"Cory Doctorow podcast" in your podcatcher or use the RSS:

https://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast

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🧛🏼‍♀️ Disney stiffs writer

Alan Dean Foster is an sf legend - a writer who produced a shelf of
original novels but also made a reputation novelizing movies and TV from
Star Wars to Aliens, turning out books that transcended quickie
adaptations, becoming beloved bestsellers in their own right.

Disney now owns a bunch of these books, thanks to their acquisitions of
Lucas and Fox, and these books continue to sell briskly. Disney not only
isn't paying Foster any royalties for these books - they're refusing to
even issue him royalty statements.

https://www.sfwa.org/2020/11/18/disney-must-pay/

Disney has blackholed Foster's agents and lawyers, and also the Science
Fiction Writers of America (SFWA); to the extent that they have
communicated with him, they have espoused a radical (jaw dropping)
copyright theory.

This is Disney's theory: When they bought Lucas and Fox, they acquired
the copyright licenses that enabled them to sell the Foster's books -
but not the liability, the legal obligation to pay him for his books.

As SFWA president Mary Robinette Kowal says, this theory could
absolutely upend the nature of copyright itself. Any publisher that
wanted to go on making money from an author without paying them could
simply sell the rights to a sister company, which then denies any
obligations.

Foster brought his case to SFWA's grievance committee - a group that has
worked on my behalf in the past, extracting a fee from a multinational
publisher that commissioned and accepted a story from me but then
offered an odious and unacceptable contract they refused to amend.

Usually griefcom work happens in the background: a SFWA member goes to
griefcom, griefcom goes to the publisher, the publisher settles. This is
the first time in more than a decade that SFWA has gone public with a
complaint.

To be fair, Disney *did* offer to meet with Foster, but demanded that he
sign an NDA *prior* to any negotiation. This is Not Normal. Sometimes
the OUTCOME of a negotiation is confidential, but you don't go into a
negotiation under NDA.

Disney appears to be taking a page from the cartoonish villain Scooter
Braun, who refused to meet with Taylor Swift about buying back the
rights to her masters without an NDA.

https://twitter.com/taylorswift13/status/1328471874318311425

Foster's case is a gross injustice. He has cancer and his wife is ill.
He wrote these books, Disney bought them. They're making money from
them. They owe him money. Period.

But beyond the individual injustice being visited upon Foster, Kowal and
SFWA worry that this represents a suite of new, corporate anti-writer
tactics: flipping assets without liabilities, refusing to talk about it
without an NDA.

You can follow Foster's case with the #DisneyMustPay hashtag. If you're
a writer facing similar tactics (even if you're not a SFWA member),
they're seeking your story, via this form:

https://airtable.com/shrr2S8rs4pcokske

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🧛🏼‍♀️ Tyson execs bet on covid spread in unsafe plant

Remember last April, when US meatpacking giants like Tyson were the
epicenter of runaway superspreader events that slaughtered the poor,
precarious, racialized workers who toiled under brutal and unsafe
conditions?

One of the hardest-hit was Tyson's Waterloo, IA plant (the largest meat
packing plant in America), where workers were denied PPE, forced to work
without social distancing, and where more than 1,000 of them contracted
covid. Many died.

One of the dead is Isidro Fernandez. In a wrongful death suit, his
lawyers revealed details of Tyson's abuse of its workers that shock the
conscience, like the fact that manager Tom Hart ran a betting pool on
how many workers would contract covid.

https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2020/11/18/lawsuit-tyson-managers-bet-money-on-how-many-workers-would-contract-covid-19/

The suit also claims senior manager John Casey told supervisors that
they were required to report for work even if they had symptoms, calling
covid a "glorified flu." He forced a supervisor to cancel a testing
appointment, saying "We all have symptoms - you have a job to do."

A worker who was so sick he vomited on the line was ordered back to work
the next day.

As conditions in the plant deteriorated, Tyson managers stopped visiting
the floor altogether in a bid to protect themselves. Instead, they
delegated to inexperienced supervisors.

They also told workers they would only be eligible for a $500 "thank you
bonus" if they reported for every shift they were scheduled to work,
regardless of whether they were sick and contagious.

All of this was justified - by Tyson and its enablers in the GOP - as a
necessary, regrettable part of keeping America fed during the lockdown.
But Tyson's breakneck meat-packing wasn't primarily domestic: they were
serving the Chinese market.

Chinese meat-packers had largely been mothballed to spare workers from
the virus; as a result, the company was able to increase its exports to
China by 600% during Q1-2020.

But this isn't the story that Tyson's execs told Governor Kim Reynolds
when they lobbied for exemptions from liability for the employees they
maimed and murdered during the same period - they claimed it was all
patriotic zeal to feed America.

The case has moved to federal court, thanks to Trump's invocation of the
Defense Production Act, which ordered Tyson to stay open during the
lockdown.

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🧛🏼‍♀️ This day in history

#10yrsago TSA confiscates heavily-armed soldiers’ nail-clippers
https://redstate.com/erick/2010/11/18/another-tsa-outrage-n37064

#5yrsago Manhattan DA calls for backdoors in all mobile operating
systems
https://web.archive.org/web/20151120003032/https://www.manhattanda.org/sites/default/files/11.18.15%20Report%20on%20Smartphone%20Encryption%20and%20Public%20Safety.pdf

#1yrago Coop’s tribute to Randotti Skulls, from the golden age of
Haunted Mansion merchandise
https://memex.craphound.com/2019/11/18/coops-tribute-to-randotti-skulls-from-the-golden-age-of-haunted-mansion-merchandise/

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🧛🏼‍♀️ Colophon

Today's top sources: JWZ (https://www.jwz.org/blog/).

Currently writing: My next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel
about truth and reconciliation. Yesterday's progress: 513 words (85767
total).

Currently reading: The Ministry for the Future, Kim Stanley Robinson

Latest podcast: Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (part 23)
https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/11/16/someone-comes-to-town-someone-leaves-town-part-23/

Upcoming appearances:

* Keynote, Cybersummit 2020, Nov 26 https://www.cybera.ca/cyber-summit-2020/

* Keynote, Cologne Futures, Nov 27, details TBD

* Beaverbrook Lecture: How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism, Nov 30,
https://www.mcgill.ca/maxbellschool/channels/event/2020-beaverbrook-annual-lecture-part-ii-cory-doctorow-325538

* Teach-In Against Surveillance, Dec 1,
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/teach-in-against-surveillance-tickets-128926228821

* Keynote, NISO Plus, Feb 22-25,
https://niso.plus/cory-doctorow-to-keynote-at-niso-plus-2021/

Recent appearances:

* Fully Charged: The future of energy over the next 300 years
https://fullycharged.show/podcasts/podcast-84-the-future-of-energy-over-the-next-300-years-cory-doctorow/

* Allen School Distinguished Lecture "Early Onset Oppenheimers"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep78A-jtcrE

* Author Stories Podcast
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxSPZn8EGTE

Latest book:

* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone
technothriller for adults. The *Washington Post* called it "a political
cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution
and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies
* "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet
analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a
solution.
https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59

* "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new
introduction by Edward Snowden:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies
here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

* "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime,
gender, and kicking ass. Order here:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed
copy here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1562/_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer.html.

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When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla -Joey "Accordion Guy"
DeVilla

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