Larry Correia chronicles the sad decline of China Mike Glyver from science fiction historian to open piracy:
A while back Richard Fox got nominated for a prestigious award for a story he wrote. Problem was, Richard is a financially successful indy author, and the snoots have a hate boner for indy authors, (snoots are all about writers having to go through proper thinking “gate keepers” first). Since Glyer is addicted to stirring up controversy, the world’s fattest vulture swooped in and started posting about Richard Fox’s nomination.
Wait… You know what? Glyer is right about one thing. Accuracy is important. Vultures are actually noble, social creatures who play an important role in the ecosystem, which is basically the opposite of Mike Glyer, so I should not have compared him to a vulture. I apologize. To vultures… Not Mike Glyer. He can fuck right off.
Problem was, Richard was already wise to Glyer’s game, and told him to keep his name out of his whore mouth, up to and including sending an official take down notice.
Good. Because fuck Mike Glyer. Every author should tell him to keep their stuff off his awful website.
At the time I didn’t really know or care who posted the story on the internet. That’s obfuscation. If Richard did post it himself, that’s up to him. When I throw out the trash, that doesn’t mean I want racoons rummaging through my garbage can. Nobody wants racoons in their trash. Now imagine Mike Glyer rooting around in your dumpster. No. Shoo, bad Glyer! BAD!
Except after seeing the email exchange, it’s worse than that. Richard posted the link to a private closed forum only readable by SFWA members (the people who would be voting for the award). Somebody (Richard says he doesn’t know who) took that private link and stuck it on Google Drive and Glyer linked to that to get clicks for his shitty public website. When Richard contacted him, rather than be a decent human being and go “Oh, my bad. Sorry.” Glyer acted like an entitled shit and started lecturing the author he was trying to screw over about his tone and lack of civility.
It’s always amusing to see how SJWs are shocked to discover that the laws apply to them too. Ever since John “McRapey” Scalzi helpfully came up with the bright idea to make award-nominated fiction available to the voters, the SJW gatekeepers of science fiction have been distributing the award-nominated works to the public, mostly with the permission of the rights holders.
However, Richard Fox did not give his permission to have his work publicly released outside of the private SFWA forum to which I totally do not have access any longer. And while China Mike was not the only individual to provide a public link to Fox’s work, he was the only one who refused to take the link down and leave it down when requested to do so by the rights holder.
Needless to say, the usual suspects have been whining and crying about Fox’s “timing” and “motivations” despite the fact that none of that matters. The law is clear. If a rights holder tells you to take something down, it doesn’t matter why or when he tells you to do so, you either comply or you are in violation of U.S. copyright law. End of story.
On a side note, doesn’t “China Mike, space pirate” have a great ring to it?