Latest Writing News, Headlines and Blogs from Writers Write:

Reporters Without Borders Accuses Yahoo of Indirectly Helping to Jail Chinese Writers
From: www.writerswrite.com

" Yahoo has been accused by Reporters Without Borders of providing information which led to the arrest of Chinese dissident writer Li Zhi.

The online writer was jailed for eight years in 2003, after posting comments that criticised official corruption. Last year Yahoo was accused of giving information to Beijing which led to the imprisonment of reporter Shi Tao. Reporters Without Borders called on Yahoo to release the names of all internet writers whose identities it has revealed to the Chinese authorities.

Yahoo spokeswoman Mary Osako insisted that in its dealings with China, the company "only responded with what we were legally compelled to provide, and nothing more". "We were rigorous in our procedures and made sure that only the required material was provided," she told the AFP news agency. But she added that: "The government of China is not required to inform service providers why they are seeking certain information, and typically does not do so." Reporters Without Borders said it was not acceptable for the firm to say it simply responded to requests from the authorities without knowing what the data would be used for. "This argument no longer holds water," the group said in a statement. "Yahoo certainly knew it was helping to arrest political dissidents and journalists, not just ordinary criminals."

The Chinese government enforces strict laws on internet use, blocking content it considers a threat, including references to the Tiananmen Square massacre and notable dissidents. But major international firms wanting to do business in China, the world's number two internet market, are coming under increasing pressure from rights groups not to conform to Beijing's conditions. Four major US-based companies - Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and Cisco - have been accused of collaborating with China to censor the internet.

About 200 actors and writers carried picket signs and chanted outside the Beverly Hills Hotel where agents, producers and brand directors were meeting with ad executives at a conference sponsored by Advertising Age, The Hollywood Reporter said. "Where are the voices of the creative community in this debate? Out here on the street," Writers Guild of America West President Patric Verrone said. The unions want the entertainment industry to establish a code of conduct for product integration into shows, The Reporter said.

Screen Actors Guild President Alan Rosenberg said members deserve both consultation and compensation. "Whatever happened to artistic integrity?," he said. "When did we lose the right to say yes or no?"

And yet, if one idea continues to resonate, it's that the scandal could have happened to anyone in the book business. "I think the James Frey embarrassment could have occurred any time in the last 900 years of publishing, because the industry is built on trust for a writer's integrity," said Harold M. Evans, former publisher of Random House.

Publishers and editors can be deceived because they do not have the resources to verify every single fact in a book, he added. "But I only have 80% sympathy for them, because we should also be sensitive to things that ring false. If an author makes an outlandish claim, somebody has to take the time to find out if it's really true." The incentive to do that may be diminished with a writer like Frey, whose dramatic, redemption-themed memoir, suggests author David Halberstam, "is precisely the kind of book that many publishers are hungry for now."

"With the marketing pressures driving the book world today, it's much easier to get the author of a memoir on a television show than a serious novelist," Halberstam said.

*****

"He seemed like the nicest guy I ever met in my life," recalled David Glasser, the international distributor of "Crash," who said he distributed a small movie Frey co-produced 10 years ago, adding: "He's probably ruined in Hollywood. Everybody knows everybody."

The guild gave its award for best adaptation to Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, who wrote the script for "Brokeback Mountain" based on a short story by Annie Proulx. They won a Golden Globe for the work last month.

The gay western love story directed by Taiwan-born Ang Lee, which leads the Oscars race with eight nominations, beat out "Truman Capote," "The Constant Gardener," "A History of Violence" and "Syriana." Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco, the duo behind "Crash," took honors for best original screenplay. The Academy Awards will be handed out March 5 at Hollywood's Kodak Theatre.

A spokesman for the cartoonists said: "They are in hiding around Denmark. Some of them are really, really scared. They don't want to see the pictures reprinted all over the world. We couldn't stop it. We tried, but we couldn't." Mogens Blicher Bjerregaard, president of the Danish Union of Journalists, told The Times: "They are keeping a very low profile. They are very concerned about their safety. They feel a big responsibility on their shoulders. It's blown up so big. It is tough for them."

The cartoonists' names were originally printed in the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten. Flemming Rose, the paper's cultural editor, invited 25 newspaper cartoonists to draw a picture of Muhammad "how they saw him," after a children's author complained that cartoonists would only dare illustrate a book he was writing on the life of Muhammad if they could be anonymous. Twelve cartoonists responded, had their pictures printed in September, and were paid 800 Danish krone ( 73) each.

In an interview with a Swedish newspaper this week, some of the cartoonists expressed their doubts about the entire episode. "It felt a little like a lose-lose situation. If I said no, I was a coward who contributes to self-censorship. If I said yes, I became an irresponsible hate monger against Islam," one of the cartoonists said.

Another said: "I was actually angry when I first received the letter [from Jyllands-Posten]. I thought it was a really bad idea. At first I didn't want to participate, but then I talked it over with some friends from the Middle East, and they thought I should do it."

• Jyllands-Posten, a Danish newspaper, first published the cartoons in September, 2005.
• Germany's Die Welt
• Germany's Berliner Zeitung
• France Soir (details here)
• Al Fagr, an Egyptian newspaper (details here and here)
• Italy's La Stampa (details here)
• Italy's Corriere della Serra (details here)
• Spain: Barcelona's El Periodico and Madrid's El Mundo (details here)
• Courrier International in France
• New Zealand's Dominion Post (details here)
• The Courier-Mail in Brisbane, Australia (details here)
• Rockhampton's Morning Bulletin, Australia (details here)
• The Shihan in Jordan (details here)
• Philadelphia Inquirer (details here and here)
• New York Sun (details here)
• Daily Press in Victorville, California. (details here.)
• Wyoming Tribune-Eagle in Cheyenne (details here)
• French magazine Charlie Hebdo printed the cartoons along with a new original Mohammed cartoon. (details here)

So imagine the tempest ClickStar will brew. Its 10 Items or Less will be a major-league movie ? exactly the kind that would normally lure consumers to theaters its opening weekend. Except no one will have to go to a theater to see it or even drive to a Wal-Mart to buy the DVD. You could start watching it on your Internet-connected HDTV -- which, OK, you're not likely to own now but probably will in coming years -- within 30 seconds after clicking "buy" on the ClickStar site.

The movie industry makes almost all its money from theater tickets and DVD sales, and basically no money from Internet sales. So ClickStar scares Hollywood. That's why Freeman is doing it.

"This kid came up with Napster, and before that, none of us thought of content protection," Freeman says. Hollywood has a window of time to find a way to avoid getting Napstered. Pirates haven't yet succeeded in stealing movies on the scale they steal songs, because movies are such huge files. But that barrier will fall. Then the only way to get ahead of the Napstering, Morgan believes, is for the movie industry to create its own, superior marketplace first, before file-sharing of pirated movies takes hold.