What’s to stop the Chinese courts – or any other nations’ – also deciding that one of their companies have rights to profit from your work without even consulting you?

The whole thing is madness. Real legislature should apply to all matters of intellectual property just as they do to physical property; and no single company should ever be permitted to control a world library.

So – I’m very confused!! confused about the date/time/US issue – why are all these university depts in Michigan and elsewhere scanning my work anyway? Why isn’t my publisher giving me info? Why isn’t ALCS or SAC coming out with a definitive answer/ Goddamit, must i employ my feeble brain cells in trying to comprehend this (bearing in mind that I can barely fill in a tax form the accountant has marked in pencil for me) – i dislike the feeling of intimidation this induced in me when looking at the official info on the Google pages – me, Samson aged 2, you Goliath and all your shark-friends, that kind of thing.

HAve I decided? NO.

Should I object out of instinct alone?

Probably.

Further, you don’t know how many people will also opt-out, or how much prominence the stand of those who do might eventually gain. I only have one published novel, and that’s a throw-away, franchise paperback thing, but it is out of print; I obviously hope to be published again in future. For the time being, my intention is to opt-out – this blog, and other information I’ve gleaned via the likes of yourself, have guided me towards that decision and I doubt I’d have come to it otherwise; I would, in all likelihood, have been almost entirely ignorant of the settlement. Having been alerted to it, I feel opting-out would be the right thing for me to do. You never know how man similar cases there may prove to be. Does your own opting out usefully protest the settlement? Possibly not. But does it hold out the possibility of everyone’s opt-outs reaching the tipping point at which they matter? Yes, and especially so when backed up by thoughtful blogs like this one, widely disseminated.

Last of all, unlike the perennial ‘everyone should vote or the BNP will get in’ argument, I don’t think opting-out of this settlement disenfranchises you – frankly, the deal as offered isn’t good enough for that to be the case.

Is opting out a useful way of objecting to the Settlement? Or does it simply disenfranchise you, short of the option to sue one of the most powerful companies on Earth?