SORT-OF SUMMARY (I didn't write this - it was posted on What.cd's forum by a user)

The story so far. Corrections welcome -- just add them.

Three short stories by J.D. Salinger (1919-2010) were to remain unpublished
until 2060, but were released onto the Internet late 27Nov2013 and removed
early the next day (Thanksgiving morning in the USA).

TWO LIVES

J.D. Salinger (1919-2010) enjoyed his personal creativity better if he
published less because he felt the presence of a public following -- not to
mention reviewers and critics -- was a constraint on his freedom. Salinger
stopped publishing and instructed his estate to release his works piecemeal
over many decades, as if his life as a famous author would only begin after
his life as a private person had ended.

Manuscripts to be kept unpublished could be viewed by scholars (any eager person)
in libraries. The libraries had typescripts of the three stories here,
annotated in margins by Salinger, but not in final form. Why that kind of release?
Because it was society's hubbub over artists that Salinger found constraining,
not the world of the mind.

STORIES IN LIBRARIES
The three short stories now released that were available in libraries:

--"Ocean Full of Bowling Balls" (typescript; important precursor to "Catcher in in the Rye")
--"Paula" (early draft typed by Salinger, his notations in margins)
--"Birthday Boy (1946; early draft typed by Salinger, his notations in margins)

The drafts could be read by scholars under supervision, the first at
Princeton, and the other two at the University of Texas at Austin's Ransom
Center. UT/Austin permitted scholars to make photocopies they were pledged
not to circulate, as did Princeton until the mid-1980s.

The Internet leak did not come from either library, but . . .

25 BOOKS IN LONDON

The three stories were published as a little paperback in London, 1999, in a
limited edition of 25 numbered copies, each of which declared that this
presumably unauthorized act did not constitute publication of the works. The
origin of this private publication is unknown. Old photocopies of the library
typescripts is a possible source, or perhaps Salinger himself had a publisher review
the manuscripts before ceasing all publication a few years later.

THREE BOOKS ON EBAY

A British bookseller specializing in Salinger sold three of the 25 London
books, the first on 17Nov2012. Prices ranged up to 65.50 pounds sterling plus
shipping (ca $110).
http://feedback.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&ft...

The sales attracted no apparent attention from either eBay or the estate of J.D. Salinger.

ON THE INTERNET

The third book sold on eBay was scanned and pdfs of the page images were
uploaded to what.cd. Site administrators removed the copy after being contacted by
lawyers for the estate of J.D. Salinger. However, other sites began to carry copies
(search Salinger Three Stories download).

Scholars say the book is faithful to the manuscripts they saw in libraries.

BOUNTY

The uploader dtauris will keep the bounty.

A what.cd member requested the community at large to provide a copy of some
Salinger short stories (not exactly these three, but these three became acceptable).
That was five years ago, about a year after what.cd was launched. The
autonomous request system permits other members to show their approval of any
request by donating part of their upload credits, creating a community-funded
bounty. The bounty for the 84.49MB Three Stories file grew to over 6
terabytes, the largest in site history.

In 2002, Robert Reid (listen.com, Rhapsody) claimed the "active catalog"
of all 5 major record company labels was 25,000 CDs (Gilder Technology Report 2/2002),
so a 6TB bounty can download every CD in print 2 1/2 times over with
V0/VBR encoding (100MB/CD; some are 60MB), and nearly the whole catalog in flac.

What now? "Download all of What.CD just in case [we go off the air]. We will
need you for a backup," user Alcahofa advised:
forums.php?action=viewthread&threadid=185074&postid=5029235#post5029235

What.cd has a collage of "1 TB Bounty Fills"; about 20 entries are listed.
Twenty-six requests for at least 1/2 TB are currently pending (user tpchuckles, 401-500 block).

CENSORSHIP AND COMMUNITY

Only two items have ever been removed from what.cd: Microsoft's COFEE forensic
software (see SoldierX) and Salinger's Three Stories.

Letting a member keep a bounty after the desired item has been removed from
the community seems unfair to the community. There is a local contradiction
between donating a bounty here, and not getting the item here ("the local
contradiction"). But in a larger sense, the global community now has "Three
Stories". So the uploader gifted our community, and our community -- your
bounty -- has gifted all of humanity.

Solving the "local contradiction" by removing a request before it is filled
has problems.

1. The removal staff is forced to practice self-censorship.

2. The self-censorship must proceed without any data about world reaction.
Here, there was no apparent reaction to three sales of the forbidden
material on eBay, but there has been world reaction (search Salinger
leaked) to the same material on Internet file-sharing sites.
To get "the perspective granted by fallout", one must post the material.

3. Removing requests forces staff to take responsibility for
an autonomous requests program available to users.

4. Staff complicity in an act of deception could hide a torrent's origins.
Let staff hold the high-bounty upload in escrow,
while the uploader makes it go public with an upload elsewhere first.
What.cd admins would then release their duplicate (escrowed) copy
to our community. If you don't appear to be first,
you don't appear to be guilty. Technology, score one;
legality and morality, zero. At trial and sentencing,
you have handed the moral high ground to opponents.

The two removal decisions (DECAFF, Salinger) have been based upon unwanted
general publicity (10 pages of hits 1 day later to "Salinger leaked online")
as well as upon legal pressure. Legal pressure depends on focus as well as
resources: compared to the RIAA, the Salinger estate could focus on a single
adversary.

The site was taken off line until early Thursday morning (5 to 8 AM EST) in
part to avoid the steadily building "curiosity" traffic.

Site administrators stated their first priority is preservation of the site,
and thus preservation of the community. what.cd was founded the day that an
earlier site was forcible shuttered (Wikipedia what.cd). The
beginning-of-the-end for the earlier site may have been an e-book posting
(user Binjo).

Members who asked for stronger resistance did not mention financial contributions to
legal costs. The existential seriousness of the moment is apparent in the comments of Administrator Irimias (201-300 block).

USER ANXIETY

Some users (cocabottle) want a commemorative T-shirt. Others are more anxious.
If an ebook incident brought anxiety, some some users suggest banning ebooks.
If a high-bounty request brought grief, some users suggest self-censorship of
requests with high bounties. User sav0y suggests Cafe Del Mar (ambient,
electronic, downtempo, future.jazz); others rushed to download anything.
Suspending interview-based invites might be prudent.

Big practical and political differences between us (quiet invites) and The
Pirate Bay (in-your-face politics) were summarized by mediaferret (401-500
block).

SOLID LEADERSHIP

Users praising Administrators conveniently forgot about the threatened return
of Drone.

The [Manchester] Guardian quoted Administrator DixieFlatline:
"Due to this case's rare and unlikely circumstances, due to the
unnecessary and unwanted attention the Salinger leak has brought, and due
to our desire to comply with the desires of the Salinger estate or other
involved parties in this matter, the content has been removed … It is not
to be re-uploaded under any circumstances, and anyone found doing so will
have their account disabled."
Concluded the Guardian, "Salinger could hardly have put it better."

User Snowflake (301-400 block) noted: The Guardian confirms what we already
knew, Dixie's announcement writing skills are on par with Salinger's work.

"Strong leaders" for the site and "weak--zero?-- democracy" were linked in
comments that did not also mention the vast amount of work done by members to
produce the text, files and metadata here, or the fact that most staff are
unpaid volunteers, or the many opportunities--this thread, for example--for users to
express themselves, make suggestions, and provide the effort to carry them out.

LITERARY AGENTS AND ESTATES

User AGuyCalledMike reminds us how bad it can get with a grandson of James
Joyce. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_James_Joyce

Then there is Andrew Wylie:

" If I have to read James Michener, Danielle Steel, Tom Clancy, I’m toast.
Fuck it. This is not about making money. I know where the money is. It’s on Wall
Street. I’m not going to sit around reading this drivel in order to get paid
less than a clerk at Barclays. That’s just stupid. ... I want to be
interested in what I read, ..."

His living clients
Martin Amis
Al Gore
Philip Roth
Salman Rushdie
Dixie Flatline?

The dead clients, he handles their estates
Saul Bellow
Jorge Luis Borges
Norman Mailer
Vladimir Nabokov
John Updike
Evelyn Waugh