MORE ON COPYRIGHTS.

Before it even started, I knew November was going to be a difficult month for me, and little occurred to change that. Toward the end of the month, I was really exhausted, and I wound up sleeping most of this past weekend away. I'm feeling better now, but like anyone with fibromyalgia, I just have to try and take each day as it comes.

This is one of the reasons why I primarily rely on colleagues when it comes to keeping up with what's happening in the publishing industry and marketplace. Recently, I learned that there are a number of movements afoot to attempt to deal with the way technological advances are changing the face of the publishing industry and marketplace.

One of the best of those can be found at COCOA (Copyright Owners' Control of Access).

COCOA makes clear the numerous problems associated with the scanning of text, which is being undertaken by Amazon, Google, and others online--- and offers some solutions.

Piracy has long troubled all creative venues, and unfortunately, the Internet has broadened the ways in which creative pirates can operate. As COCOA points out, it's now possible to extract the entire text of a novel from the Internet, and the whole process can be automated, as well.

Check it out. It's happening even as we speak.

Most creative artists I know want to retain control over their creative works. Those are, after all, the means by which they earn their livings. So a fair system to protect that ability needs to be in place, and COCOA is taking the bull by the horns in proposing a way to do that.