Good morning, Hank, it's Monday. I'm a man. I'm a zebra. I'm a ManBra. Oh wait, that's something else. So Hank I'm here in the great city of Chicago at a very crowded English teachers' conference, which is a lot of fun because (a) I get to talk to English teachers about books, one of my favorite endeavors, and (b) I was starting to miss signing my name. But before that and before the Manbra and before a bath so luxurious and wasteful that it made me wonder whether luxurious and wasteful are synonyms and before we were coming up the elevator with Henry battling the oppression of strollers and before I found myself at the Bean and before I ate a breakfast at a restaurant where the hostess was a nerdfighter and before I was reminded of the many and varied miseries of Chicago traffic and before all that I was at Brilliance Audio, my audiobook publisher, narrating The Fault in Out Stars. So there will be two audiobook versions; one real audiobook narrated by Kate Rudd, pictured here greeting her adoring fans in a Panera, and one narrated by me. Kate sounds exactly like Hazel and her recording is brilliant. I sound like a thirty four year old man, making for some awkward moments. Here's a sample: “Chapter Six.” Actually, no. We must avoid all spoilers. My recording will be available only in a physical limited edition box set available at dftba.com. Kate's recording will be the real audiobook and available everywhere. The reason it's possibly to have two audiobooks, one released by DFTBA Records and one released by Brilliance, is that they worked with me to share the audio publishing rights in a really cool and innovative way. And Hank, when copyright law works, that's how it works. Nice people, sometimes with lawyers, get together and figure out what's fair. So Hank, in your last video you talked about copyright and intellectual property and correctly pointed out that the measures currently before congress on this topic are a steaming hot slice of crazy, which is now apparently a vegetable. But that said, copyright is really complex. Like, obviously you're not violating my copyright if you post a quote from my book on your tumblr and obviously you are violating my copyright if you post my book on your tumblr. But the question of where you draw that line is really complicated and ill-defined. Side-note: a lot of people will say that creative commons can bypass all of these problems, but I don't think so. I'm a big fan of creative commons, and Hank, you and I have both released a lot of stuff from songs to zombie apocalypse novellas via creative commons licenses, but I just don't think it's practical for everything. Okay, so let me give you an example of the complexity of creative use and the kind of chilling effect it can have on discourse. In 2004, I was finishing a novel called Looking for Alaska. And the nice lawyers at Penguin decided that the character Alaska quotes too much of an Edna St Vincent Millay poem. The poem begins “Night falls fast./ Today is in the past./ Blown from the dark hill hither to my door/ Three flakes, then four/ Arrive, then many more.” They decided that under fair use I could only quote two lines of the poem, and then if I wanted to quote more, I would have to pay Edna St Vincent Millay's estate which I would have done, except I didn't have any money. So Hank, in the same situation today I would just pay and use the quote and it would be fine because now, thanks to copyright, I've sold some books and I have enough money to pay for that kind of thing. So one of my big issues with copyright law is that currently it privileges people like 2011 me who have five hundred bucks or whatever to pay Edna St Vincent Millay's estate, and it punishes people like 2004 me who don't have that money. And the really terrifying thing to me about the legislation currently before congress is that it would increase that inequality. Youtube and Google and tumblr can afford lawyers to fight lawsuits from Viacom but I can't. Meanwhile, this legislation will do nothing to stop wholesale piracy because it is already illegal. Hank, in the end it only made my book a little bit worse to lose those lines and I'm gonna disagree with the alarmists. I suspect that if SOPA were to pass, it would only make the internet a little bit worse. But the internet doesn't need to be worse! It needs to be better and I don't think SOPA is pushing us in the right direction at all. So Hank, that's my take and you can trust me. I'm a ManBra. Nerdfighters, let's continue the conversation in comments and Hank, I will see you on Wednesday.