Copyright Law

The Variety Link Sausage Platter

Posted on October 07, 2010
£7.99 at Sainsbury's. Congratulations to Mario Vargas Llosa for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Here's a list of winners since 1960 for your dubious amusement... and it's as interesting as much for who does not appear on it as for who does, and more particularly for the virulent anti-Americanism (and more subtle anti-English-language bias) apparent from the list...

Wednesday

Posted on October 06, 2010
Errands, meetings, life, etc. Sometimes blawgging has to come later or tomorrow... From the department of "It's Money That Matters," the Beeb ponders whether hard times make good art (publishers have always done their very best to ensure that writers are having hard times), while the so-called "enhanced e-book" may be publishers' wave of the future (is this, perhaps, behind Macmillan's

First Monday Internet Link Sausages

Posted on October 04, 2010
...flavored with Certain Substances. Mob rule is over for the year. Well, ok, at least it's no longer assured: It's First Monday today, with an orders list from the Supreme Court's "long conference" and everything. No grants of certiorari (after the "long conference," that's usually a separate set of orders) The first of this year's Nobel Prize winners has been announced...

Weekend Updatery

Posted on October 02, 2010
Germany celebrates twenty years since reunification on Sunday. Equally important ? if less celebrated ? the First World War will finally be over... as Germany makes the last of the reparations payments required by the Treaty of Versailles (the treaty that enabled the rise of the politician depicted ? sort of ? in the embedded video)...

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Nerdy Internet Link Sausages

Posted on September 30, 2010
Like you're surprised that I'm a nerd, especially concerning the 'net itself? Maybe bad scientific awareness is related to bad science reporting (and writing in general). It doesn't help that most "science reporters" are, themselves, barely science-literate (if at all); it doesn't help that their audience is barely science-literate (if at all); it doesn't help that most scientists are

Very, Very Smart Internet Link Sausages

Posted on September 28, 2010
Some today; some looking forward to next week; some not so much smart for themselves as demonstrating commitment to it. First, the "genius sausages." Congratulations to the 2010 MacArthur Foundation Fellows ? the "genius grants." A cool half million over a five year period, no strings attached, for those who've demonstrated "genius...

Unavoidably Delayed Sausages

Posted on September 27, 2010
Anybody want a couple of teenagers? Well, I guess technically I should say a teenager and a college student, since the elder remora is now twenty, and we really don't need to get into the parallel argument about whether the current millennium began in 2000 or 2001, and thus whether the "teenaged years" extend to nineteen or twenty...

Toad in the Hole

Posted on September 23, 2010
Some copyright trials resemble the trial of Josef K; some of them are (quite literally, or at least literarily) the trial of his creator's ghost. Which, I suppose, is a less disturbing possibility than a copyright suit arising from one of Spielberg's weakest efforts ? and that's up against some pretty stiff competition...

Disappointments

Posted on September 21, 2010
You know that creative contracts are getting out of hand when opera ? which, historically, has the least business sophistication of the collaborative-production arts ? starts demanding non-negotiable copyright transfers from everyone. Of course, it could be worse: It could be in the US, in which case it wouldn't even be a matter of contract; instead, it would fall inside the dubious

Dumb Sausages

Posted on September 20, 2010
Today's theme, such as it is, is the stupidity arising from advocating for only part of a solution... especially when it's no solution at all. Yet another set of law school deans wrings its collective hands over law schools' failure to teach writing skills sufficient for lawyers to survive in practice...

Breakfast Sausages

Posted on September 16, 2010
More later today ? running off to a post-op appointment ? As proof that nobody really reads the classics and thinks about them any more, consider a book review of Mark Taylor's screed against university tenure. On the one hand, Taylor does identify some real problems with the tenure system as it has been implemented...

Ms O'Donnell, Meet Mr McGovern's Ghost

Posted on September 16, 2010
It's sort of amusing right now watching the Heffalumps specifically, and American conservatism in general, mirroring what they most despise: The general history of liberal/progressive politics in America. Stage One: A general rising of discontent at the existing political leadership...

It Really Is Better With (In) Chunks

Posted on September 13, 2010
Three tremendously chunky sausages this morning, even after yesterday's essay... In breaking news, the U.S. Register of Copyrights is retiring at the end of the year, meaning that there's an upcoming vacancy. I greatly fear that this position will be filled by someone who has been "agency-captured": That is, whose allegiances and predispositions are entirely aligned with the most

Suspended License

Posted on September 12, 2010
A couple of fascinating decisions in the last week on the extent of copyright protections ? and purchaser/user privileges ? expose a couple of holes in current publishing practices. Well, not holes, exactly; more like gaping breaches. Over across the pond, a court in Switzerland ruled that, as interpreted by my only feline colleague the IPKat, an internet actor may not search peer-to-peer

Amputees

Posted on September 11, 2010
This is, I suppose, one of those "da[tes] that will forever live in infamy." I vaguely knew a couple of people at the WTC, and more than a couple of people at the Pentagon, who were involved in one way or another; no relatives, close personal friends, etc...

Politics Continued by Other Means

Posted on September 09, 2010
Happy New Year, and welcome to another year in which the lunatic fringe will put forth conspiracy theories against the Obama administration and other Semites... instead of the Jews. Of course, if you're truly an observant Orthodox Jew, you won't see this until after sunrise on Friday when you'll be able to use the 'net again...

Link Sausages of Unintended Consequences

Posted on September 07, 2010
Anyone who reads this blawg (or, indeed, pays attention to the history of publishing, or of intellectual property) knows the Law of Unintended Consequences: For every action or policy, there will be unintended consequences that undermine the purpose of the action or policy for a significant portion of persons affected by that action or policy...

2010 Hugo Winners

Posted on September 05, 2010
Congratulations to the recipients of the Hugo Awards. The literary award winners were: Novel (over 40k words): (tie) The City & The City, China Miéville; The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi Novella (17.5k-40k words): "Palimpsest", Charles Stross Novelette (7...

Last of the Summer Barbecue Link Sausages

Posted on September 04, 2010
A very strange and busy week kept me from updating things. And the hydrocodone. First, a bit of "local color" amusement from the Department of Cognitive Dissonance. One of the local supermarket chains ? a notoriously anti-union one ? is advertising a special deal this weekend for M*ller Lite beer, brewed by a conglomerate that has always been anti-union...

Solid Sausages

Posted on September 01, 2010
After the first solid food since Sunday... Academia, business, and the government share one viewpoint: unstated disdain for individual voices in the arts. Even when honoring artists, academica, business, and government almost always look to the past, and seldom to the recent past, for those to honor...

Paging Dr Szell...

Posted on August 30, 2010
[01 Sep 2010 ? technical problem preventing display corrected] DC performances of Hamlet should be interesting. Especially in the original Klingon. Here's yet another attempt to revisit the Whorf hypothesis that fails, utterly, on two counts...

Redefining the Sausage Ingredients

Posted on August 27, 2010
If there's a theme today, it's rather Orwellian: The redefinition of terms to mean something other than they mean, and thereby drag the rest of the conversation along with the redefinition ? and, more particularly, the indulgent self-interest behind that redefinition...

Calling Dr Scrivellum

Posted on August 25, 2010
First up, the "It's Money That Matters" aspect of copyright and intellectual property. Here, one finds yet another in the long list of laments on how are musicians going to get paid, anyway? It's got several graphics that violate just about every rule of good graphic design in general and are candidates for Edward Tufte's hall of shame: the false 3-D perspective, the excessive use of

Chunky First-Day-of-School Link Sausages

Posted on August 23, 2010
Today's sausages are exceptionally chunky on this first day of school for both remoras. Now I have the house back during the day! But these chunky sausages come with more than the usual disclaimers. Surprised? Several disparate stories on internet rights have some implications for 'netizens that may escape a quick glance...

The More Things Change

Posted on August 20, 2010
This is a surprise? Now here's a copyright/trademark lawsuit about Harry Potter that actually makes some sense: A Swiss company's "Harry Popper" condoms have drawn the ire of Warner Brothers. In an English-language piece bearing remarkably few translation artifacts, Der Spiegel discusses a book asserting that perhaps the nineteenth-century industrialization of Germany arose

Tuesday Link Sausages Are Not Monday's Leftovers

Posted on August 17, 2010
Really. They're not. Trust me, not that USDA inspector over there. It's not about art (most of the time). It's not about censorship (well, most of the time). It's about H'wood's antiquated business model, which has remarkable parallels with the problems facing print publishing (periodicals and otherwise) and music...

Internet Link Sausages of Dubious Origin

Posted on August 16, 2010
Internet link sausages... and edible link sausages. For some value of both "internet" and "edible." In the name of trying to reconcile incompatible viewpoints, op-ed columnist Ross Douthat only adds to the xenophobia surrounding the proposed mosque near Ground Zero...

Unavoidably Detained Link Sausages

Posted on August 13, 2010
Even cynical sausage-makers/collectors sometimes have other things to do... Ownership of art stolen during wartime ? whether via "expropriation" by governments or retail theft by soldiers ? is an emotional issue with immense implications for copyright law, cultural validity...

Isolated Link Sausages Still Touching in Places

Posted on August 11, 2010
One of the major debates on Government concerns the independence of subordinate units. In the US's federal system, states have considerable autonomy, but are not truly independent. Some advocates of "states' rights" mistakenly cling to 17th-century notions of "sovereignty" (from a time when the concept of nationalism and sovereignty was still being worked out, later imported into the

Post-Security-Update Sausages

Posted on August 10, 2010
We'll start off with a look at the bright side of my future: In yet further proof that he doesn't know anything of which he writes, Professor Fish op-eds at the NYT on plagiarism, claiming that "Plagiarism is not a philosophical issue." In this, he's flat wrong...

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