TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Hooray! Blackmask may return with 20,000 titles: Several hundred classics already back online

By David Rothman

Google’s horrendous treatment of the classics makes me all the happier to learn that Blackmask’s David Moynihan has several hundred books back online, via boysbooks.org, a Wiki-based site.

He and an attorney representing Conde Nast are still at odds and are awaiting a ruling from a federal judge. But my hunch is that Blackmask will be back in full, except for the disputed Doc Savage and Shadow titles. Best of luck, David. I, too, would like to see a restored Blackmask available in time for the school year. May you and Conde Nast reach an agreement soon.

For now, Washington, D.C., lawyer David E. Mills says his client Conde Nast fears that David Moynihan “would be creating a ‘back door’ through which the public could, once again, gain access the infringing materials.”

David Moynihan’s side is that he’d like a six-hour period during which his server would be available. I say: Grant it! Hundreds and probabably thousands of CDs and DVDs with the disputed material are floating around anyway.

Meanwhile David Moynihan–hey, popular first name, eh?–writes that he is “still waiting for a judge to rule on their motion relating to their answered DMCA notice filed back around May 3rd.”

Lest it vanish from the Net, here’s a full repro of the Moynihan note posted at Blackmask.org, the source of all of the above information.

By Action of Attorneys for Conde Nast/Advance Magazine Publishers, most of Blackmask’s 20,000 books are inaccessible.

A few hundred titles are available starting here.

Numerous attempts to obtain this content have failed. Sorry, we’ve tried.

This is the latest email from them.

Dear Mr. Miles:

This responds on behalf of Advance to Mr. Moynihan’s August 17, 2006 e-mail request to you.

As we have said before, Advance has no objection to Peer1 hosting Mr. Moynihan’s websites, so long as they do not include any of Advance’s copyrighted materials. That is why Advance requested the removal only of specifically listed URLs from Mr. Moynihan.s sites. If, in fact, Mr. Moynihan re-launches his websites with all infringing material removed, we would have no objection. We are concerned, however, after reviewing the specific commands Mr. Moynihan has provided, that he would be creating a “back door” through which the public could, once again, gain access the infringing materials. This concern is based on the following:

1. It appears that the “chmod 755 output.txt” command would provide read-only access to the group and the public to view the materials in the “contraband” file that Mr. Moynihan proposes creating. Specifically, the numbers following a chmod command specify what access is given to three entities: the owner, the group and the public. With the 7, Mr. Moynihan is providing read and write access to himself as the owner. With the two 5s, Mr. Moynihan is providing read-only access to the group and the public. If this is accurate, it would continue to allow public and group access to items in this file from the websites.

2. It appears that Mr. Moynihan proposes to use a zip program to copy the files from the server and move them. We cannot identify where the files would be moved, but they would be available to Mr. Moynihan, and he would be able to provide public access to those materials. In combination with the “chmod 755 output.txt” command described above, we are concerned that this might create a back door to provide access to infringing material through the websites that you would be hosting.

3. It appears that Mr. Moynihan would continue to list the infringing materials for sale on his website, although they would appear as “out of stock.” This, too, concerns Advance, especially in light of the two items listed above. Content from Advance’s copyrighted materials would remain on the sites, including excerpts from each book Mr. Moynihan was not authorized to reprint and original artwork found within Advance’s materials. Listing the material for sale but out of stock would merely encourage customers to inquire, and Mr. Moynihan could easily provide access over the websites (as described above), without our knowledge.

4. Mr. Moynihan states that he would “perform actions, including, but not limited to” the commands specified. Because we do not know the extent of the commands Mr. Moynihan intends to execute, we cannot identify other problems his proposal might create.

We do not know whether Mr. Moynihan intends to provide access to infringing material. We are simply noting our concerns with his proposal and do not want to leave you with the false impression that Advance has approved it. You probably know much more about how his proposed commands would work, and if we have misunderstood any of them, we invite you or Mr. Moynihan to correct us. As noted before, if the result of Mr. Moynihan.s conduct is a website that contains no infringing material, Advance would not object to Peer1 hosting such a site. As Mr. Moynihan has noted, however, Advance has pending a motion for partial summary judgment and continues to seek a permanent injunction from the court restraining the defendant from posting the infringing materials, and we expect that Peer1 will continue to comply with the requirements of the DMCA until this matter is resolved.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

David E. Mills
Dow Lohnes PLLC
1200 New Hampshire Avenue, N.W.
Suite 800
Washington, D.C. 20036-6802

As a response to this:

Subject: Removal of Accused Infringing Content on Server #15265-1

Hey, as the attorneys CC’d on this email could tell you, we’ve still waiting for a judge to rule on their motion relating to their answered DMCA notice filed back around May 3rd.

It’s nearly four months now. From letters to a judge, it seems they’re also getting impatient, and the school year begins anon. So, to make the other 20k books available (and I’m quite sure the attorneys would agree, or else put their objections in writing,) I’d like to ask for the following:

A six-hour window during which my server will be accessible to me.

To remove all the content, so copiously identified, I need to be able to do the following:

One, log in to HTTP interface (this is pretty much the only way to impact templates that include a couple of images on every page of the site.

Two, log in, via SSH, to shell account.

While there, I will perform actions, including but not limited to the following:

# mysql -u root -p newlinks
select Links.URL from Links,Category,CatLinks where Category.ID=CatLinks.CategoryID and Links.ID=CatLinks.LinkID and Category.Full_Name like “%Doc Savage%” or “%The Shadow%” or “%The Whisperer%” or “%Grace Culver%” or “%The Avenger%” into output.txt

Then perform the following tasks on output.txt

Replace dex.htm\n with *\t/home/contraband/\nmv\t (replace all).
Replace http://www.blackmask.com/ with /usr/local/apache/sites/site1/htdocs/ (replace all).

Chmod 755 output.txt
./output.txt

Then

# mysql -u root -p newlinks
Select Links.ID from Links,Category,CatLinks where Category.ID=CatLinks.CategoryID and Links.ID=CatLinks.LinkID and Category.Full_Name like “%Doc Savage%” or “%The Shadow%” or “%The Whisperer%” or “%Grace Culver%” or “%The Avenger%” into outputs.txt

Then perform the following task on outputs.txt

Replace \n with \nupdate Links set IsValidated=0 where ID= (replace all).

mysql execute outputs.txt.

Via the http interface at http://www.blackmask.com/cgi-bin/newlinks/admin/admin.cgi
run scripts Links.Repair

(very important after above!)

Then shell –> mysql \u catalo.

Update catalo.products set in_stock=false where category like “%Doc Savage%” (essentially).
Update catalo.products set in_stock=false where category like “%The Shadow%” (essentially).

Via the http interface change an image for “Pulp Reprints” from “Doc Savage” to “Black Wings Has My Angel.”

Via the http interface change “Ultimate Upgrade DVD” to “out of stock.”

Via the http interface modify all other DVDs to state “20,000 Books DVD”–this product will be in stock on September 30.

Modify file http://www.blackmask.com/cdzips/cdzips.htm (or whatever it is.) to manually remove the list of files relating to Doc or the Shadow or the Avenger, or Grace, or the Whisperer.

Finally, rm -r -f (entire directory of pages).

via shell cd /usr/local/apache/sites/site1/cgi-bin/newlinks/admin/admin.cgi
perl nph-build.cgi –all.

then

tax -cvf /home/contraband contraband.tar
gzip contraband.tar
ftp
cd /home
binary
get contraband.tar.gz

(time passes).

rm /home/contraband.tar.gz
rm -r -f /home/contraband

Similar steps may need to be taken for smartset.net (that site is still in beta, and I’m not sure, four months on, whether it was using its own database or another.)

The entire process should be complete within six hours, and I’m not at all comfortable with anyone else executing any of the steps listed above. I’ll also make a backup or two of the databases before executing any scripts, as you’d expect.

Though I’m current on my bills, if you recall, the site’s been down for months. Traffic is not likely to be huge, and if need be, we can start this at midnight.

Thanks for your cooperation.

David Moynihan
Disruptive Publishing
http://www.olympiapress.com [site still active - DR]
http://www.silkpagoda.com [still active]
http://www.blackmask.com

Obvious question: Is David Moynihan compromising his case by having posted so much detail? Whatever the situation, he himself obviously wanted the information to be part of the public record. And so it is—here. Again, I wish him much luck. I don’t necessarily buy David’s legal arguments, nor apparently do leading public domain attorneys; but I miss Blackmask badly. The disputed titles were but a speck of the total Blackmask collection, which was almost entirely free. Conde Nast has made its point. Now, kindly, let Blackmask get back to business with the undisputed titles.

(Thanks, Glenn! The TeleBlog picks up more than a few useful news tips from readers, and I encourage others to follow your example. I’ll never beat up on someone for mentioning something that could be old news. I’m glad you took a chance! Readers can email me directly at drNOSPAMteleread.org.)