This is the second of a three part series, entitled “What every romance author should know about copyright law online.”

Yesterday I explained that, under traditional doctrines, an author whose book has been put on the internet, unauthorized, and then downloaded, may have suits against three distinct types of entities: the user who uploads it and the user who downloads it (end users); the server who hosts the material, and the intervening network hubs that pass traffic.

Traditional doctrines, however, have been supplanted by immunity provisions found in the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, codified at 17 USC § 512. (The DMCA also implemented several sections that criminalize, among other things, the removal of DRM; those portions of the DMCA have nothing to do with our discussion today.)

So let’s go through our three types of groups, one by one, and see what the DMCA says.

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One of the things I happen to know a decent amount about is the state of the law regarding copyright online (in the United States).

One of the things I’ve noticed when talking to authors about piracy is that a surprisingly small number of them understand how the law of copyright online pertains to them. They know what they think should be the law, but very rarely have much of an understanding as to how it actually works out in practice. This is an explanation I have given out individually to several people, but I’m getting tired of repeating myself, and thought that it might be useful to actually write something out so I can just give someone a link.

In order to understand how copyright liability functions on the internet, you need to understand the threat that copyright liability poses to the internet, and the solutions that Congress has come up with to make it possible for the internet to function. This is going to be a three-part blog post, spread out over three days, and it will cover:

• Why copyright law, without limitations, would destroy the internet (this is today’s post)
• How federal law immunizes various service providers from lawsuit, and who you can hold liable
• Why the law we ended up with is actually fairly good (and if anything, not protective enough of users)

The first two will be informational in nature only; the last one, opinion.

So, after the jump: Why copyright law pre-internet days would destroy the internet

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Hi everyone, and Happy New Year! It’s January 1st, 2010, and that means…. YES! Proof by Seduction is officially out! You can buy it anywhere fine books are sold.

One of the places where fine books are sold is over at eHarlequin.com, where they are running a special promotion, in which Madame Esmerelda is making predictions. These are the best kind of predictions for a false fortune-teller to make, of course: one where the person making the predictions controls the outcome.

But there are other places to buy Proof by Seduction: Indiebound | Amazon | B & N | Powell’s | Borders

And, as always, with any release, there will be more goodies here. For instance, later on this week, I’ll be hosting what is quickly becoming an important tradition: Mr. Milan (yes, my husband) will be posting his review of Proof by Seduction. For those of you who missed it, Mr. Milan reviewed my novella, “This Wicked Gift.” It was… interesting. (We were planning to have the post go live on January 1st, but an unfortunate incident in which his laptop was stolen seems to have prevented that).

There may be a couple of other surprises in store for today, too. You’ll just have to wait and see!

I’ve posted before about the PHP script I wrote to generate links to the major online retailers.

This was helpful to some people (who did not quail at the sight of a PHP script). It was not helpful to others, who did not have the ability to run PHP on their site, or didn’t want to mess around with PHP for whatever reason (lots of good reasons: not wanting to run strange code; not wanting to run PHP at all; running WordPress where the plugins allowing the execution of PHP interfere with the WYSIWYG editor).

I’ve now set up my PHP script to generate HTML code for everyone else. Insert an ISBN; press a button; it will generate code that you can copy and paste into your website or even your WordPress WYSIWYG editor.

I’ll be refining this script over the next month or two.  I do this in my copious spare time–I have a day job, and also, I am lucky enough to have writing contracts with deadlines, so my copious spare time is something like “half an hour occasionally on the weekends.”  When it’s sufficiently robust, I am going to write a simple plugin so that those of you running WordPress can link to multiple retailers with one button click, from within WordPress.

I am testing this website script.

The Heart of Christmas (buy from: Borders | Amazon | B & N | Powell’s | Indiebound).

Massively Random things:

• For those of you what need reminding, this month on my website contest, I am giving away (among other things) an audio book of Sylvester by Georgette Heyer, narrated by Richard Armitage.  Let me repeat that slowly: Richard Armitage is narrating.  If you do not know who Richard Armitage is, I command you to get thee to a copy of North & South (BBC version) immediately. Do not stop.  Do not pass go.
• Hey, it’s now officially official! Publisher’s Marketplace has posted that I’ve sold two more books to HQN.  That means that after the two books that most of you haven’t read, that will be coming out in 2010, there will be two more books, likely coming out in 2011.  Yay!
• Speaking of books, I read and loved the following books during the last few weeks: Liar, by Justine Larbalestier (twisty sneaky adventure where the truth is out there, Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld (steampunk Victorian with illustrations; also, girl dresses as boy, my favorite trope Ever), Love in a Bottle by Zoe Archer (early Georgian with a mountebank hero and a botanist heroine–it is almost a complete inversion of my debut novel, PROOF BY SEDUCTION). And I am still absolutely bereft that I’m busy enough that I haven’t gotten around to Indiscreet by Carolyn Jewel.
• My anthology is holding onto the USA Today list by the skin of its… pages, holding steady at #135.  I call it “my anthology” even though it is clearly Mary Balogh’s and Nicola Cornick’s anthology.  I’m just along for the ride.
• But what a fabulous ride it is! It’s with some shock that I’ve discovered that now I have readers, some of whom have never actually met me.  It’s one thing when a friend says she likes your book.  My friends are good at lying to me.  They are good at smiling and nodding when I ask questions like, “if you had to build a bookshelf out of either bamboo and staplers, or cinderblocks and mashed potatoes, which would you choose?”  So I never know if I can trust them to tell me the truth.  It’s another when someone you’ve never met says they like my story.  I really, really appreciate getting those e-mails.  They make me smile.
• And I’ve gotten my Very First review from someone who is not Mr. Milan.  Rakehell says:

Ms. Milan brings readers a story of faith, hope and redemption that embodies what the Christmas season is all about…. [T]his story[] is multi-layered and had a few surprises in it that really made me sit up and take notice of Ms. Milan’s writing. If this short novella is what we can expect of her writing I cannot wait for her full-length novel next year. Even if you already have the other two stories in this anthology and are thinking of passing on getting them again, do not miss Courtney Milan’s This Wicked Gift.

• All in all, it has been a good week.  I’ve been busy around the blogosphere. I’ve been busy writing, too, so that you all can actually have your four books in the next two years.
• Also, I taught my dog a new trick: “Go long!” for when we are preparing to lob the ball really hard.  He’s getting the hang of it! That, and we’re teaching him to jump through a hoop made of our arms.  No, really.  He loves it.