The War of Words Continues

After the last round of exchanges between Teresa Nielsen Hayden (TNH) and the supporters of L. Jagi Lamplighter (see here and here for details), TNH has weighed in again on twitter:

@voxday Did JCW not warn you how many witnesses were within earshot of his event-that-didn't-happen? Now you both look like idiots. @pnh

— tnielsenhayden (@tnielsenhayden) September 15, 2015

@voxday Note for future: if you're going to make up any more stories like that, don't set them at the pre-Hugo reception. @pnh

— tnielsenhayden (@tnielsenhayden) September 15, 2015

Bear in mind, of course, that TNH admits she was not a witness to the confrontation herself.

Vox Day has weighed in with his interpretation:

Notice that Patrick Nielsen Hayden hasn't issued any public denials on Twitter. He doesn't want to risk getting caught out publicly lying about his own behavior. The Toad is obviously getting desperate. I wasn't there. I don't claim to have been there. I haven't made anything up and it wouldn't even make sense for me to make anything up.

The fact of the matter is that contra the Toad's lying, the Senior Editor at Tor Books, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, did raise his voice, he did shout at a woman, he did tell her to tell her husband, a Tor Books author, to "stick it up his ass", and he did shout about "blood libel" to a Jewish woman. He is an unprofessional and verbally abusive man.

Those are facts to which there were several witnesses.

I'll reiterate my earlier call for PNH to explain what happened.

The weird thing is that Lamplighter herself did not seem especially upset by the whole episode. This whole thing would have blown over had PNH simply apologized for losing his temper (assuming that things happened as Lamplighter says). Now, unless a recording appears or more witnesses want to come forward, we are left watching this exchange of words without any facts to back them up.

I doubt anything will happen to PNH at Tor Books. And in the absence of more facts we do not know if anything should happen. But I can't believe that this is good for Tor Books, let alone for fandom.

On Releasing the Hugo Nomination Ballots

Glenn Glazer, Vice-Chair of Business and Finance at Sasquan, released a statement regarding the motion to release the nomination ballots for the Hugo Awards this year:

Back at Sasquan, the BM passed a non-binding resolution to request that Sasquan provide anonymized nomination data from the 2015 Hugo Awards. I stood before the BM and said, as its official representative, that we would comply with such requests. However, new information has come in which has caused us to reverse that decision. Specifically, upon review, the administration team believes it may not be possible to anonymize the nominating data sufficiently to allow for a public release. We are investigating alternatives.

Thank you for your patience in this matter. While we truly wish to comply with the resolution and fundamentally believe in transparent processes, we must hold the privacy of our members paramount and I hope that you understand this set of priorities.

This is a little strange; one would think that it really should not be that hard to anonymize the ballots.

As a result, conspiracy theories abound. Vox Day has weighed in:

This is not acceptable. This is not even REMOTELY acceptable. If you voted in the 2015 Hugo Awards, I encourage you to contact Sasquan and demand that they released the anonymized nomination data.  

I find it very difficult to believe they are refusing to release it because it might make the Rabid Puppies look bad; we already know that the SJW message that the Puppies voted in lockstep is completely false. So, the question is: what voting patterns tend to embarrass whom?

Let's look at the usual suspects. Patrick Nielsen Hayden had 65 votes for Best Long Form Editor. John Scalzi had 168 votes for Best Novel and 78 votes for Best Novella. Not exactly suspicious, although I expect there is considerable overlap between Editor and Novella there.

as has John C. Wright:

If you voted, please write Sasquan, and demand, not ask, that they release the nomination data. The idea that the data must be kept private to avoid someone from deducing the voter’s identities is an absurd lie, not worth wasting ink to refute. They are trying to hide a bloc voting pattern, or a large number of votes that were entered after voting closed or something of the sort.

Turns out that anonymization is harder than I thought. Hugo Administrator John Lorentz, in an exchange on File 770, elaborated:

[Commenter] “With the Hugo data, the only identifying info is the membership number. Remove that, and the ballot has been anonymized.” 

[Brian C] No, it’s not nearly that simple. You also need to eliminate any nominations that are unique to one or a handful of people, as otherwise those nominations could be used to identify people. But then those ballots aren’t actually representative for the purpose of testing the algorithm. So you need to actually replace those with other nominations, that happen not to perturb the algorithm in any way. 

[John Lorentz] And that is the problem that our Hugo system admin folks have been running into. When one of them generated a draft of anonymized nominating data, it didn’t take the other very long to determine who some of the voters were, simply from the voting patterns.

The following article gives several examples of attempted anonymization of data that unraveled when the data were probed more deeply or combined with other data sources. Most of the examples would not apply here ... the ballots would not include zip codes or birth dates. But one can easily imagine identifying some voters with high probability. For example, suppose one piece of fiction recieved only one nomination?

I personally would not mind a system in which all nominations were public (or made public after the event); if I am going to champion a book, I am happy to do so publicly. But, then again, I am not an author who has to worry about offending friends who may retaliate professionally.

More Parody

After Amazon removed the Scalzi-rape-parody book yesterday, the authors revised the title and re-posted it as John Scalzi Banned This Book But He Can Never Ban My Burning Love: A Pretty, Pretty Girl Dreams of Her Beloved While Pondering Gender Identity, Social Justice, and Body Dysmorphia.

The blurb is as offensive as the title, which is to say "only a little" as it more juvenile than truly offensive:

A blazingly inventive parody that was banned by John Scalzi, despite Ms. Eren being a huge Scalzi fan and an unemployed transgendered up-and-coming romance author who needed the money so xe could one day buy xerself a big, beautiful lawn of xer own. Soon to be nominated for the Hugo, don't miss the story of a love so bold it broke the Internet!

Not to be outdone, some other wag has posted a similar parody entitled SJWs Never Lie: Censorship is Tolerance! Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! The authors are listed as Brianna Scalzi, George R.R. Moretons, and Sam Piddle, with a foreword by Toadessa Nielsen Haten and an afterword by Ritaskeeter Sarkeesian.

All pretty juvenile stuff, but to be expected after Scalzi had Amazon remove the first parody.

On Vox Day, John Scalzi, and the Definition of Parody

Last week, the controversial Vox Day released the book SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police. I haven't read it, and do not intend to. But my understanding is that it is intended to be an exposé of how Social Justice Warriors, or SJWs, deploy Alinsky-like tactics to denigrate and destroy people with opposing views.

Here is an excerpt from the blurb:

The book is named after the First Law of SJW: SJWs always lie. SJWS ALWAYS LIE is a useful guide to understanding, anticipating, and surviving SJW attacks from the perspective of a man who has not only survived, but thrived, after experiencing multiple attempts by Social Justice Warriors to disqualify, discredit, and disemploy him in the same manner they have successfully attacked Nobel Laureates, technology CEOs, broadcasters, sports commentators, school principals, and policemen. It analyzes well-known SJW attacks as well as the two most successful examples of resistance to the SJW Narrative, #GamerGate and Sad Puppies.

Then, Alexandra Erin, published the parody 'John Scalzi Is Not A Very Popular Author And I Myself Am Quite Popular: How SJWs Always Lie About Our Comparative Popularity Levels' under the pseudonym Theo Pratt.  John Scalzi himself then offered to read an audio version of the book if his fans would raise money for a charity he supports, which they did.

Now, one of Vox Day's fans has written another parody: 'John Scalzi Is A Rapist: Why SJWs Always Lie In Bed Waiting For His Gentle Touch; A Pretty, Pretty Girl Dreams of Her Beloved One While Pondering Gender Identity, Social Justice, and Body Dysmorphia' under the name Alexa Eren. This struck me as being in very poor taste.  I also thought it might be legally actionable.

Scalzi evidently entertained the possibility that it was libel, tweeting the following to his followers:

Question for the legal scholars among you: Is this title parody? Or libel? http://t.co/bV6FPE2VrB

— John Scalzi (@scalzi) September 2, 2015

The answer, according to the blogger popehat, is that it is almost certainly satire. In a thoughtful post entitled "Satire vs. Potentially Defamatory Factual Statements: An Illustration" addressed specifically to Scalzi's question, popehat writes:

So: here is the short answer. The book title is almost certainly parody protected by the First Amendment, because an audience familiar with the circumstances would recognize it as parody and not as an assertion of fact.

... 

The Law

Only a statement of fact can be defamatory. “Rhetorical hyperbole,” “vigorous epithet,” “lusty and imaginative expression of contempt,” and language used “in a loose, figurative sense” are all protected by the First Amendment. (Greenbelt Pub. Assn. v. Bresler (1970) 398 U.S. 6, 14.)

How do you tell the difference? A court will look at the "totality of the circumstances" — that is, not just the statement in isolation, but all the facts and circumstances surrounding and leading to it. The court will also look at the statement in the context in which it was made, not in the abstract. Finally, the court will look at the statement from the perspective of the audience to which it was directed, taking that audience's knowledge and understanding into account. (Seelig v. Infinity Broadcasting Corp. (2002) 97 Cal.App.4th 798, 809-10.)

That's why satire and parody are protected even when directed at a fairly narrow audience. For instance, when the proprietors of WorldNetDaily sued Esquire for a parody suggesting they were withdrawing one of their birther tomes, Esquire won because the piece was viewed from the perspective of someone familiar with Esquire's history of satire and WorldNetDaily's history of nuttery, not from the perspective of a person encountering all these figures for the first time. Similarly, my post about the case is protected satire even though I made up excerpts from the D.C. Circuit opinion suggesting that WorldNetDaily staff routinely molests walruses.

Many other factors also contribute to determining whether something should be treated as hyperbole, insult, and satire or as a statement of fact. Those include the tone (measured tones are more likely to be taken as fact, fiery and bombastic tones as opinion), anonymity (anonymous or pseudonymous statements are less likely to be treated as factual), the formality, the intelligibility, whether it is labeled as fact, whether the author suggests a basis for knowledge or evidence to support the statement, whether the statement is specific rather than general, and whether the statement is in the context of a dispute that one would expect to generate heated rhetoric. California courts have recognized that internet dwellers are less likely to view statements online as assertions of actual fact, especially when they are in a forum known for bloviating. That doesn't mean that everything on the internet is automatically opinion rather than fact: things on the internet can still be treated as fact when they contain factors like assertions of lack of bias, assertions of specialized knowledge, labeling as fact, specifics, signals of reliability and factual nature, etc. (Bentley Reserve L.P. v. Papaliolios (2013) 218 Cal.App.4th 418, 433.)

So. If someone wrote an article saying "Ken White's legal analysis should be disregarded because dresses up in a rubber suit on the weekend and hunts ponies with a handmade crossbow," and says it on their trash-talking blog, to an audience that knows them and knows about my blogging here, it's almost certainly parody, because the relevant audiences would be familiar with our in-joke about responding to spam emails with rants about ponies and would therefore not take it seriously.

The Facts Here

Here the factors point very strongly to the book being treated as parody, and protected by the First Amendment, rather than as a defamatory statement of fact. With all respect to Scalzi, his question is wrong: you can't analyze the book title in isolation. You have to look at it in the context of the whole. In that context, the intended audience (both fans of Beale and fans of Scalzi) would recognize it as a reference to Beale's tiresome meme. Plus, the Amazon description explicitly labels it as "a blazingly inventive parody," and the descriptive text is mostly nonsensical and evocative of ridicule of "SJW" concerns, and references some of the topics that anger Beale's coterie in connection with Scalzi like the Hugo Awards.

I think this one is protected parody, and I don't think it's a very close call.

You learn something new every day!

In any event, Scalzi reported the book to Amazon which took it down. Now he is getting called a "book banner" which sounds better to me than being called a rapist. Having said that, if the legal stance is that the book is clearly a parody then why wouldn't Amazon leave it up for sale? After all, as Vox Day points out, right now you can shop on Amazon for such gems as Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations by Al Franken.