When Amazon booted Wikileaks, I decided to do tinker with this problem. Too many arguments about Wikileaks (and just about everything else) hinged too heavily on metaphors and analogies, which tend to obscure rather than articulate what's new about a situation -- kind of obvious, if you think about it. After all, Amazon began as a bookseller and remains an immense force in that field, which historically is deeply intertwingled with "free speech." So, regardless of your preferred metaphor for Wikileaks (journalism, publishing, treason, terrorism, etc), Amazon's action conflicted with that tradition. A typical conglomerate problem, right? A diversified 'portfolio' may be a smart strategy for making money, but it's a shit strategy when it comes to the particulars of any given activity -- boring stuff like craft, values, tradition. Naturally, Amazon runs a print-on-demand service, Createspace. So I knocked together a book called _Cablegate: The Complete Wikileaks Datadump_, Volume 1. Their "online tools" are what they are, and it went well enough -- and quickly enough that I received five proof copies notably ahead of schedule. I approved them and ordered ten copies, which also arrived ahead of schedule. The book consists of 200 pages of what might look like random noise to some people, or maybe like a 3D barcode to others. The cover text on the back (and therefore on Createspace's and Amazon's promo pages, where it received several reviews) said this: On Sunday 28th November 2010, Wikileaks began publishing 251,287 leaked United States embassy cables, the largest set of confidential documents ever to be released into the public domain. Volume 1 of Cablegate: The Complete Wikileaks Datadump offers an abstract, high-level view of these communications in 200 densely packed pages. Due to the immense volume of material, it was necessary to rely on extremely efficient encoding techniques, with a consequent loss of resolution; as a result, we cannot guarantee that all of the material is legible. Soon after I got the production copies, the URL for this book circulated on the "anonops" IRC channel. And very soon after that -- more than hours, less than days -- Createspace "reached out" (bleh) to say Our technical services department has recently confirmed that the interior content uploaded to your title contains blank black and white pages. They have set your title to incomplete so that you can upload a file with content. I went back and forth with them about this, of course. Their explanations are painfully boring, but do pay close attention: Version 2: Upon reviewing your account, it was confirmed that the content submitted for your title is entirely comprised of black and white static. This content has caused pauses in our production process as it's viewed as a printing error. As this is halting production we are unable to continue distributing this title at this time. Version 3: In the most recent print run of your title, production was stopped on your book after a routine quality check indicated that your interior files were printing incorrectly due to a production error. We had to remove the availability of your title as we are unable to continue fulfilling orders for your title since it will continue to halt production. Version 4: You are welcome to fade the static images on each page and indicate on each page that you are displaying encrypted text and that it is a gag book. You may also upload a file with text on most pages and the static image pages interspersed throughout. However, please note that we will not allow more than two consecutive pages of static images. Additionally, you may add a disclaimer page at the beginning of the book that this is a gag book. You may also consider adding information in the description that this is a gag book as to not foster customer confusion on Amazon.com. Version 5: There are two main concerns with the interior of Title ID 3522893. First and foremost, the interior file caused a production error; this occurred was a result of the black and white images, also defined as "static," on all the interior pages. Furthermore, as there is not text in the book file indicating the black and white images as intentional, it was seen as a mistake in production. As a result, all of production was stopped and in order to prevent the same occurrence, it was necessary to remove the availability of the title. Secondly, the current book description does not detail that the book is a gag or the reason for the illegible material on the interior. Therefore, customers could purchase the title without being made aware that it is a gag book. Overall, it must be understood from the interior files that the full interior of the black and white images is intentional. To do so, it is necessary to indicate in text that you are displaying encrypted text and to indicate in both the interior and book description that it is a gag book. (I'll leave the claims that it's "encrypted" *and* a "gag" for others to sort out...) Now, I'll be the first to admit that there's something very reasonable about all of this. Their production lines have QA people who see a snow crash and barf on it, which buggers things up, etc, etc. Except for one thing: I don't feel like being 'reasonable.' This is a book, they're a printer-publisher, and they've refused to print it based in large part on the argument -- after much tooth-pulling -- that it might offend someone. They can couch their argument in terms of production efficiencies and consumer confusion (standard weapons in commercial interests' war on culture), much as theocrats have suppressed books on grounds of heresy, and as bluenoses have suppressed books on grounds of obscenity, but the structural issue remains the same: one party wants to print a book, other parties might not want it printed, and the printer-publisher is the man in the middle. Though I doubt very much that if I'd printed a _History of Televised Static_, with details about where, when, and how each image was captured and a scholarly introduction afterword, they would have empowered their QA people to reject it. But no matter: Volumes 2, 3, 4, etc are forthcoming, and I'll factor in Createspace's issues into the encoding and design. This fight's been going on for centuries now, and leaks aren't going away. I'm in no rush. And, anyway, once I'd kicked the Amazon dinosaur its various extremities started waking up. Amazon very graciously invited me to publish a Kindle edition -- which of course would have the benefit that it doesn't need to be printed and therefore doesn't face quite the same production issues. So I used their online tools (same story) and was pleased to see this message: Converting book file to Kindle format... \ | / -- -- / | \ This may take a few moments. If you have completed all required fields above, click "Save and Continue" to move forward while conversion continues. I just logged in again to see their little wheel-of-industry widget still spinning. It's been "converting" since Christmas eve. URLs: bit.ly/bookoleaks > createspace.com "This title is currently on hold. This title is still being prepared for sale and should be ready soon." amzn.to/bookileaks > amazon.com "Out of Print--Limited Availability." Cheers, T # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE