Fans of Tao Lin probably know that his 2009 novella Shoplifting from American Apparel, while fiction, was inspired by the fact that he was indeed arrested for shoplifting from an American Apparel store — and also for shoplifting from the New York University bookstore. The latter, in fact, banned him from ever entering again — enacting a kind of double jeopardy, as Lin served his time on that conviction. And meanwhile, they continue to sell his books.

Two years further on, and the NYU bookstore has changed locations, expanded, and also attached itself to a cafe — the Think Coffee. Interestingly, Shoplifting is on prominent display in the front of the store. Last week, after going to the Think Coffee “10-20 times … to buy iced coffee,” Tao found himself in hot water there once again, although he had paid for what he had, this time.

As he details in a report for Gawker:

11:20 a.m. I was sitting alone at a table “idly ‘sipping’” Pellegrino while sometimes “napping” facedown on my arms, reading a novel manuscript, looking at my iPhone. I had a full iced coffee I was going to “chug” “soon.” After 70-90 minutes someone [touched me or said my name] and I removed my earphones. “Tao?” said a 55-year-old man. “Are you Tao?” ….

11:25 a.m. the 55-year-old man handcuffed my right wrist to something and I sat in a chair. I alternated between saying that I sort of forgot I was banned, that this was a new store, that their Think Coffee location was convenient. I focused on Think Coffee. I was honestly confused to what degree I “forgot” I was banned. Both the 55-year-old man and the Hispanic woman seemed familiar with my writing in a manner like they “agreed completely” with the “damning” review of Shoplifting from American Apparel on Bookslut….

11:50 a.m., after I hadn’t been spoken to for 2-4 minutes, the Hispanic woman said “are you still writing?” I was quiet then said “I’m always writing” in a depressed monotone, not looking in her direction, probably “accidentally” conveying something like “yes, I am stoically ‘enduring’ my life of ‘having no choice’ but to always be writing.”

Later the 55-year-old man said “what was your first book called?” while not looking at me, vaguely in the manner of a father-son “strained relationship” scene in a day-time drama.

I thought “first…um…” then, staring ahead, sort of unfocused my eyes and said “my first book is you are a little bit happier than i am” in an extreme monotone.

The 55-year-old man said “the one with ‘shoplifting’ in the title, what was that called?” while walking in a slow, goalless manner that seemed to be “leading him” out of the room.

I was quiet then said “Shoplifting from American Apparel” in a reluctant, vaguely embarrassed, somehow slightly accusatory manner. Immediately an NYU officer I hadn’t fully noticed said “oh, really” a bit loudly and walked quickly out of the room.

Lin was taken to jail. Once again, he found himself in the Tombs with a wild assortment of cell mates.

11:40 p.m. a 30-year-old African-American arrested for driving with a suspended license said his public attorney said the judge was offering him 7-days in jail or 3-years probation. The 30-year-old said “jail-time for a driving violation, I was like ‘no.’” People said things expressing injustice or disbelief. Someone said “who is this judge?”

After 2-4 minutes it was revealed that the 30-year-old had 16 license suspensions. People’s facial expressions seemed to change immediately. There was less “eye contact” in the cell. After a few seconds someone said “16 suspensions.” After 30-40 seconds someone asked what “probation” was exactly.

In the end, Lin received a sentence of one day of community service and a $125 fine. You’re safe to walk the streets again.

Franz Kafka

Following up on an earlier report: “A judge at Tel Aviv District Family Court on Tuesday rejected a request for a gag order on the contents of a box containing manuscripts written by Franz Kafka,” reports a Haaretz story by Ofer Aderet. “Eva Hoffe, the Israeli woman who inherited the documents, was asked to pay court costs to the National Library and attorney Ehud Sol, the manager of the estate of Kafka’s close friend Max Brod.”

Perhaps more importantly: “Judge Talia Pardo also instructed attorneys Tuesday to prepare a detailed list of the items in the safe deposit boxes to be published ….”

Then comes the shocker, apparently leaked to Aderet by a witness to the forced opening of the safe deposit where the box of documents was kept last week:

Haaretz has learned that a huge amount of documents found in the safe deposit boxes are letters and manuscripts belonging to Kafka and Brod. Also in the box is a handwritten short story by Kafka that has never before been seen.

From a research point of view, the handwritten manuscript is of great value since Kafka’s publications over the years had been edited by Brod.

As you probably guessed, the fight over ownership of the documents is only intensifying. Once again Haaretz does not clarify why Hoffe, who seems to clearly own the documents, is having them taken away from her. But it does report that both the Israeli National Library and Germany’s Archive of German Literature have staked claims to ownership of the documents.

Expect it to get even more intense soon: “Several more safe deposit boxes are due to be opened by court officials and lawyers in Tel Aviv, where more documents and manuscripts of the two authors are expected to be found.” There are also safe deposit boxes containing Kafka documents in Vienna.

Kafka famously ordered that all his documents be destroyed upon his death.

Max Brod with his secretary, Esther Hoffe, Eva Hoffe's mother

“After months of legal wrangling, one of the 10 safe deposit boxes in which documents belonging to the writer Franz Kafka (1883-1924 ) and his close friend Max Brod (1884-1968 ) were hidden for 40 years” was opened last Monday in Tel Aviv, according to a report by Ofer Aderet in Haaretz. It was, apparently, an emotional scene:

Witnesses who had been inside the bank at Kikar Hamedina when the team of lawyers arrived said Eva Hoffe burst into the building in an attempt to prevent the safe from being opened, shouting “It’s mine, it’s mine!”

Hoffe is the legal owner of the documents, according to the report, having inherited them from her mother, who had been Max Brod’s secretary and friend for decades and had inherited the Kafka documents from Brod, who had in turn inherited them from Kafka. She was reportedly in discussions with the German national archives about selling the collection to them.

The Haaretz story doesn’t reveal any more of what happened to Hoffe after she tried to disrupt the opening, and other key aspects of the report that are murky — it seems to establish that Hoffe legally owns the documents and question that simultaneously. Nor does it explain upon what grounds the state of Israel could thus declare a kind of cultural eminent domain to take away Hoffe’s private property. Yet Haaretz is no disinterested party: The boxes are being opened as the result of a lawsuit to make them public filed by Haaretz itself.

Now, it reports,

The team of lawyers will draw up an inventory of the documents they find in the boxes and present it to the Tel Aviv court. Judge Talia Pardo Kupelman will then determine the documents’ status - whether they are the private property of the Hoffe sisters, who can then do with them whatever they want, or whether they constitute a literary treasure that must be transferred to a public archive.

As to what might be in those security boxes: “Researchers and experts from Israel and Germany believe that some of the boxes may contain manuscripts by Kafka, widely considered one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, or documents that can shed additional light on the mysterious life of the artist ….”

Orlano Figes

Historian Orlando Figes has settled a libel suit brought against him by fellow historians Rachel Polonsky and Robert Service over his writing of pseudonymous negative reviews of their work on Amazon.com. (See the earlier MobyLives report.)

According to a Press Association report,

As part of the settlement agreed on Friday, Prof Figes has circulated an apology and retraction in which he accepts that his denial of responsibility for the reviews was false.

He also withdrew any adverse imputations that an email he sent had conveyed against Dr Polonsky and Prof Service, and apologised for instructing his previous solicitor to write to Prof Service threatening libel proceedings for suggesting that he had written the reviews. Prof Figes and his wife also agreed to pay Dr Polonsky and Prof Service damages, and their legal costs, partly on the indemnity basis - the highest rate.

He also gave an undertaking not to repeat the allegations, not to post pseudonymous reviews of their works, and not to use fraud, subterfuge or unlawful means to attack or damage them in their professional capacity.

“A coalition of booksellers and Internet content providers on Tuesday filed a federal lawsuit challenging an expansion of Massachusetts‘ obscenity law to include electronic communications that may be harmful to minors,” according to this report from the Associated Press.

The new law, which went into effect Monday, was an attempt to close a loophole in the existing law that did not cover electronic communications. It was passed in response to the Supreme Judicial Court’s overturning of the conviction of a man accused of sending obscene instant messages to someone he believed to be a 13 year-old girl.

“The new law, passed quickly by the state Legislature after the ruling, added instant messages, text messages, e-mail and other electronic communications to the old law,” reports the AP.

The lawsuit contends that this new law is too broad and, the changes create “‘a broad censorship law that imposes severe content-based restrictions’” on the dissemination of constitutionally protected speech,” according to the AP.

The report continues:

The plaintiffs include the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, the Association of American Publishers, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and other groups. They argue that the expanded law effectively bans from the Internet anything that may be considered “harmful to minors,” including material adults have a First Amendment right to view, including information about contraception, pregnancy, sexual health, literature and art.

“For most communications over the Internet, it is not possible for a person sending or posting the communication to ensure that the communication will not be read or seen by a minor,” the lawsuit states.

The law is written in such a way that it encompasses “all Internet communications — such as postings on websites and through listservs, which might be read or seen by a minor — and not merely those communications directed to a specific minor.”

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley’s spokesperson has said that the law is being reviewed.

The story of one the biggest selling books in decades was, as Sarah Weinman observes in a Los Angeles Times report, “an improbable Cinderella story”:

“The Shack,” William Paul Young’s novel about a man rediscovering lost faith after the murder of his 5-year-old daughter, started out as a manuscript no one would touch. Finally, pastors Wayne Jacobsen and Brad Cummings discovered the book and created a start-up, Windblown Media, to publish it. The novel sold a million copies for them in the first year, eventually ending up at No. 1 on the New York Times’ trade paperback bestseller list.

Then Hachette Book Group got involved. In May 2008, the publishing conglomerate — one of the largest in the country — cut a deal with Windblown Media to market and distribute the book. In the two years since, “The Shack” has become a 12-million-copy-selling phenomenon and the biggest Christian publishing sensation in decades.

You would think that would make for a trio of happy Christians, but you would think wrong: “For nearly eight months, the trio have been mired in a series of lawsuits, accusations flying over improper accounting practices, millions of dollars in missing royalties, contract breaches and copyright disputes. Hachette, meanwhile, just wants to know to whom it owes money — and how much.”

Young seems to be disputing many the standard aspects of a book contract, including suing his former partners over lower royalty rates for “high discount sales,” such as those earned from book or bulk clubs sales, a “return reserve” held against future returns, and a 10% distribution fee (which, to little indies like Melville House, is an extraordinarily low rate).

The disagreement have even grown to include an argument over authorship –

Not only did Jacobsen and Cummings feel they deserved their rightful share of the proceeds but also — because of the significant work they had done to transform an unpublishable manuscript into a bestseller — that they were co-authors of “The Shack.”

According to the filing, “Young announced [in February 2008] that he wanted to add Jacobsen and Cummings’ names to the cover of the Book as co-authors, as should have been done from the first place. However, when Young subsequently shared this announcement with his family, Young’s wife expressed extreme anguish over the change and pressured Young not to change the cover page.”

On March 11, Jacobsen and Cummings asserted their claim to co-authorship with an amended copyright filing to the Library of Congress.

Meanwhile, ” Hachette, meanwhile, just wants to know to whom it owes money — and how much.” The company is afraid that if it pays one party, the other will sue it, and so has “filed its own lawsuit in federal court, stating in its filing that ‘as a result of disputes that have arisen … [Hachette has] a real and reasonable fear that distributing the funds would expose Hachette to multiple claims and liabilities.’”

So the company has “deposited the first-quarter royalties into the court registry,” meaning “neither Young nor Windblown Media will be able to touch any money earned by ‘The Shack’ until there’s a clear ruling on who is entitled to the funds.”

Is no news good news? In a story at CNET today, reporter Tom Krazit reminds us that the Google Book settlement remains unsettled with no end in sight.

At the last hearing concerning the case in February, presiding Judge Denny Chin, then of the Southern District of New York, warned that he would not be making an instant judgment.

In April — as this report notes — the Hong Kong-born Chin was confirmed by the Senate as a federal judge of the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals; commentators (such as, well, MobyLIves, here) have speculated that Chin’s new responsibilities may further delay his decision.

Among the most important questions at issue, one that may have broad implications for copyright law, is whether Google has the right to scan out-of-print books that are still protected by copyright. Google has proposed that authors and their publisher representatives may “opt-out” of the scanning and inclusion in Google’s planned digital library by notifying Google. Opponents counter that existing copyright law already explicitly prohibits unauthorized copying and that “opting out” puts a burden on the copyright holder that properly belongs to Google. As this Chronicle of Higher Education report notes, in a filing with the court, the Justice Department concluded that the settlement “purports to grant legal rights that are difficult to square with the core principle of the Copyright Act that copyright owners generally control whether and how to exploit their works during the term of copyright.”

Also contested is the exclusive advantage Google gains from the unauthorized scanning and inclusion of copyrighted materials in its library. Competitors Microsoft, Amazon, and Yahoo are among those who have opposed the settlement. The Justice Department — as in this press release — contends that “the amended settlement agreement still confers significant and possibly anticompetitive advantages on Google as a single entity, thereby enabling the company to be the only competitor in the digital marketplace with the rights to distribute and otherwise exploit a vast array of works in multiple formats.”

Tarkan

The European Court of Human Rights has punished Turkey for its “seizure of a book about a pop star that discussed his sexual orientation,” according to an Agence France Presse wire story.

The back story, according to the AFP:

“Tarkan - Anatomy of a Star” was first published in 2001 in Istanbul by Ozcan Sapan, a 50-year-old editor. The first part of the book discussed the phenomenon of stardom, the second part focused on Tarkan, a hugely popular singer. It also contained photographs.

Unhappy with several passages which alluded to his sexual orientation and his effeminate style, Tarkan took the publisher to court and obtained a seizure of the book. The court gave no explanation for its verdict.

The publisher challenged the decision, and in 2004 obtained a lifting of the seizure on the grounds that the disputed passages, which were drawn from sociological research, were not aimed at undermining the singer.

But in 2005 Turkey’s Court of Cassation, its highest court, upheld the ban, saying the book addressed “matters related to the privacy of Tarkan rather than his artistic personality”.

But the European Court of Human Rights said the book used “scientific methods” to “address the social phenomenon of stardom and could not be compared to the tabloid press and gossip columns, whose role was to satisfy curiosity about the details of celebrities’ private lives. The court noted that all the pictures used in the book were ones which Tarkan had posed for, and which had been published elsewhere.”

In a unanimous decision, it ruled that Turkey had violated Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and ordered compensation of 2,000 euros ($2,388) to be paid to Sapan to be paid.

Orlando Figes

The seriousness of Orlando Figes‘ folly continues to settle in in the UK, and more people seem to be trying to use the incident to prompt a serious reconsideration of the country’s libel laws. The latest is an editorial in the New Statesman by one of its editors, Martin Bentham, who says Figes has joined the ranks of “the most notorious abusers of Britain’s libel laws” (according to Bentham, Jeffrey Archer, Jonathan Aitken, and Robert Maxwell). “His behaviour has highlighted, perhaps more vividly than ever, the need for libel reform in this country.”

Robert Service and others had reason to fear Figes’ “blizzard of menacing legal threats which he issued to his critics during his recent dispute,” says Bentham. “As a recent report by Lord Justice Jackson revealed, many people facing libel action choose to settle without fighting the case because of the way legal bills can spiral by up to four times the actual cost in the event of defeat.”

Bentham notes, “On the back of his latest book on life under Stalin, Figes describes “a world where everyone was afraid to talk” because of oppression. It’s a sad irony that his own actions were intended to achieve the same effect.”

A sad irony, perhaps, but maybe a useful one for reformers.

Orlando Figes

The excrement is really hitting the fan for Orlando Figes in the wake of his confession on Friday that it wasn’t his wife who’d been writing nasty Amazon reviews of books by other historians, as he’d first claimed — it was him. (See the earlier MobyLives report.) The British press this weekend was awash in reports that he could face multiple lawsuits and that his academic position may be in jeopardy, as well as with second looks into numerous past charges of plagiarism that journalists and historians now say Figes suppressed by constantly threatening expensive lawsuits.

“He now faces legal action from at least two of the authors he wrote about” in his Amazon reviews, according to a Saturday Daily Telegraph report. “There have been some large legal costs built up in the last week which I hope to retrieve from the Figes family,” Rachel Polonsky tells the paper. The Telegraph also notes that “Dr Polonsky said she would offer legal help to Prof [Robert] Service, the historian who initially sent an email to a dozen historians about the anonymous reviews. He was threatened with libel proceedings by Figes’s laywer.”

Robert Service

Service says, “I have a distaste for scholars who reach for the instrument of law but the damage done to me has been acute. I am just reserving my position and I am expecting there to be consequences.”

Another story in the Independent reports that Figes “has a history of litigious academic spats,” and details several charges of plagiarism brought against Figes over the years. The story also notes that Figes’ job as professor of Russian hisotry at Birkbeck College, University of London may be in jeopardy, and quotes one anonymous colleague calling the incident “career suicide” and saying Figes might “never recover.”

Meanwhile a story in Saturday’s Independent looks at an excuse — or possible legal defense? — planted by Figes (or his p.r. handler) in his Friday morning confession: his comment that “This crisis has exposed some health problems.” According to the Independent, “Reports circulated on his increasingly depressed state of health, believed to have been triggered by a trip to Russia to interview victims of the gulag for his 2007 book The Whisperers.”

But the rumors may be hurting more than helping Figes’ case. “Millions of innocent people had their mental health destroyed by Stalin. Take it from me. Whatever his PR man may say, Orlando Figes is not one of them,” Polonsky says in a remarkable and gripping account for the Daily Mail in which she details her involvement with the story:

Going online to check how my book Molotov’s Magic Lantern was faring, I noticed a new review.

The reviewer, Historian, had given my book just one star. On Amazon, one star means ‘I hate it’.

‘This is the sort of book that makes you wonder why it was ever written,’ Historian began. ‘Polonsky, it turns out, is not an academic, as claimed in the blurb, but the wife of a foreign lawyer.’

I called to my husband Marc, who is indeed a lawyer, and has joint British and American nationality, from the study. ‘Look, Figes has reviewed me anonymously on Amazon.’ I knew it was him immediately….

… I clicked on the ‘See all my reviews’ link beside Historian’s name, and read all ten. As well as trashing my book, Historian had trashed three books by Bob Service, and the book by Kate Summerscale that beat Figes and The Whisperers to the lucrative Samuel Johnson Prize in 2008.

‘It is better to go to Figes’s The Whisperers,’ Historian told Amazon readers in his hatchet-job on Service’s Stalin.

All it took was one click on Historian’s profile to link to the incriminating nickname ‘orlando-birkbeck’. How could he have been so careless, I marvelled. The nickname was generated when Figes set up his Amazon account to buy books.

When he created Historian’s profile on the same account in 2008 and began to publish online reviews, he doubtless did not inspect the details of this profile – never pressed the link on his own name that led straight to the incriminating nickname.

Rachel Polonsky

Her account also details how Figes had his lawyer issues repeated threats to Sevice, who feared legal expenses would bankrupt him. Service himself posts a similarly compelling account of the affair in the Guardian, in which he states his intention to work to change British libel laws that allowed for such intimidation:

The public interest in this squalid little story is that if someone is wealthy and malicious enough it is possible to tread on the throat of free and open discussion in this country almost with impunity. I was close to caving in at times simply because I lacked Figes’s financial resources. We have a set of libel laws seemingly designed to produce another Robert Maxwell. At the same time we have electronic media that enable the ink to flow from poison pens. In my case, these two features of our culture were wrapped around each other like a vicious weed. Legislative reform is urgently required.

But perhaps the most surprising revelation was Polonsky’s divulgence of the act that may have finally triggered Figes to come clean: a private note Polonsky sent to Figes wife, Stephanie Palmer, “telling her I meant her and her family no harm, urging her to come clean, and suggesting that Orlando Figes’s only real enemy was inside his own head.” Palmer replied, says Polonsky. “She sent me an email, thanking me for my message, and the next day came the PR-managed announcement that Figes had confessed.”