Copyright Law

Sour Home Redneckistan

Posted on June 06, 2010
Well, well, well. Maybe overt and covert racism isn't just for Arizona politicians. Maybe it's for radio stations here in East Central Redneckistan, too. While "shopping" at the Illini Union Bookstore this afternoon, I heard one of the local radio stations on in the background...

The Ghost of Show Formats Past

Posted on June 04, 2010
In some ways, the entire fanfic wank merely raises questions related to the "idea v. expression" problem. This is not necessarily limited to copyright law... but sometimes lawyers screw up and make it seem that way. Yesterday, the Ninth Circuit decided a matter that epitomizes this problem...

Link Sausage Platter Ouroboros

Posted on June 03, 2010
...because at the end, the head bites the tail. Urgggggggh. If you want to stay out of court, don't gripe online about crappy products or services. As the article notes, this is an increasing problem... and it's (at least potentially) a black cloud over honest reviews of books, films, restaurants, etc...

Hacking, Coughing Monday Link Sausages

Posted on June 01, 2010
It's Monday. Ignore the calendar; that's what it's like after a three-day weekend on the first "business day." As you can imagine, it's even worse after the US Thanksgiving holiday... but at least then I'm not suffering from my annual pollen/allergy attack...

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Short Memories

Posted on May 31, 2010
And, for you right-wing nutcases from south of the Manson-Nixon line who continue to have a grossly disproportionate representation among the US military leadership (and are the biggest single bloc resisting the elimination of DADT), remember that Memorial Day was established to honor soldiers who died in the Second War of American Secession (1861–65)...

Flaccidity

Posted on May 28, 2010
I've just run into another example of why the debate over fanfic can never advance, reach any kind of conclusion, or anything else. Both "sides" are too often intellectually dishonest. On the one hand, there are commercial exploiters (primarily; sometimes it's the authors, but usually it's an exploiter like D*sney) that tries to claim too much as the original work/derivative of the original work.

Still All-Meat Link Sausages

Posted on May 25, 2010
Still heavy on the real meat in this link sausages this morning... Sigh. Once again, Cory Doctorow makes the mistake of assuming that what works for him necessarily works for everyone. Mr Doctorow is famous for publishing free copies of his books online as part of his publicity/promotional strategy...

Unedited Monday Link Sausages... of the Insane Kind

Posted on May 24, 2010
Monday. Craziness. Here's a thought: If your conglomerate has been having trouble actually selling its product at local stores under central inventory management, why not try letting local management have more control over inventory? Waterstone's - the UK chain - intends to try that...

Second Helping

Posted on May 24, 2010
These very well might not qualify as "link sausages" under USDA standards... because they're all meat, no filler. It appears that Lord Lester - a well-known barrister who was partly responsible for fashioning the so-called "Reynolds defence" of fair comment by media - has been serious enough about reforming England's reprehensible libel law to introduce a private member's bill doing so

Friday Means Only Two More Workdays Until Monday

Posted on May 21, 2010
Education shock horror: the American education system doesn't teach even the "best and brightest" how to write. I look at this from the opposite point of view: The difficulty is not with grading and/or feedback; it's that the curriculum doesn't have students reading the good stuff, largely because the good stuff is politically controversial...

Your Late Morning Platter of Link Sausages

Posted on May 20, 2010
Such a sad, sad story: Megan Fox will not be appearing in Transformers 3 because she couldn't keep her mouth shut about how much it sucked, both as a film and as a working environment. Ms Finke continues on to excoriate Shia LaBouef for much the same thing (but regarding a different film) without ever noting the ultimate problem: Actors do bad jobs with bad scripts...

Gimme Coffee

Posted on May 19, 2010
There's an aphorism that the reason clichés exist is that they have a basis in truth. It would be interesting to run that aphorism through the same analysis as this consideration of misunderstood sayings... particularly as the principle example is based on a bad, out-of-context translation (the quoted discussion does not go nearly far enough)...

Wet May Monday Link Sausages

Posted on May 17, 2010
I spent most of the day running around today ? starting with slipping and ripping a hole in my jacket on the way out the door, and going downhill from there. Thus, some rather late link sausages... From the department of goofy search engine results: Google considers "cougar dating" inconsistent with "family safe search results"...

Sinkin' the Queen Anne's Revenge

Posted on May 14, 2010
Wednesday was a bad day for pirates: a pirate ship and its pirate captain are walking the plank in the Hon. Kimba Wood's courtroom.1 Earlier this week, Judge Wood granted summary judgment to the recording-industry plaintiffs in a lawsuit against filesharing service/software vendor L1m3w1r3...

Grouchy Link Sausages

Posted on May 12, 2010
As it's no longer 11 May, I'll emerge from my grouchiness... not that you'll be able to tell from this platter of link sausages. The lovely and talented Sarah Weinman implicates some of the problems with the "publishing press" in her usual polite style...

Apres moi

Posted on May 10, 2010
Remember the old aphorism "don't judge a book by its cover"? In a shocking, shocking bit of news, The Observer (London) has discovered that whatever one does discern from a book's cover doesn't even cross borders, let alone editions. I snorted some coffee as the various designers offered up their rationalizations...

Two More Workdays Until Monday

Posted on May 07, 2010
Professor Bainbridge proves that there's at least one true conservative out there who understands that torture isn't a good policy for dealing with terrorists. I am unaware of any experienced, highly competent frontline interrogator who thinks torture is a viable policy option - for any detainee, let alone American citizens arrested on US soil...

Time-Travelling Fanfic Wank

Posted on May 05, 2010
Time for more wanking on fan fiction, this time incited by Diana Gabaldon. Sort of. Maybe. This leads to two points: 1. Almost everything spewed forth in public about the legal status of fanfic ? on both sides ? is wrong. There is no one legal theory that covers this area1; there is no one set of national laws that covers this area; there is no perfect defense that covers this area; there is no

Allison, Jeffrey, Susan, and William

Posted on May 04, 2010
Not much more to say about this date... forty years ago.

CoverFail Revisited

Posted on May 03, 2010
I'm one of those silly buggers who does not like to assume conclusions without some supporting data. A little less than a year ago, Justine Larbalestier's frustration boiled over, resulting in her blog post entitled "Ain't That a Shame." In that post, she lamented her lack of control, as an author, over her own covers...

A Varied Selection of Internet Link Sausages

Posted on May 02, 2010
You don't need to go to the store for the variety pack: I've got it right here! Our imported link sausage department has a fine selection today. While continuing to deny Britain's own role (present and historical) in the Middle East problems through silence, The Economist notes that the US can't make peace in the Middle East all by itself, which is at least a start.

Waiting on May Flowers

Posted on April 30, 2010
Several items of late demonstrate that licensors don't necessarily win when they get judgments or settlements against infringers, or even contracts with licensees: There's still the problem of actually getting paid for patents and - especially - for copyrightable creative works like books, film, and music...

Burn the Cross

Posted on April 28, 2010
I'm still digesting this morning's opinion in Salazar v. Buono - the case testing whether the cross can/should be maintained on federal public land as a purported "war memorial" near San Diego - but I was struck by three issues that appear absent from the opinion...

Heavily Overinsured Link Sausages

Posted on April 27, 2010
It's still Monday, isn't it? You mean it's not, even though it's acting like Monday? The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the state of California's appeal in Governator v. Violent Video Games (ok, the actual case is Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association, No...

These Link Sausages Made by Long Pig

Posted on April 23, 2010
Stereotype begets stereotype... Like the stereotype that Certain Organized Religions are more likely than others to go bugfuck crazy when someone implicity (or explicitly) criticizes their dogma; there's always the cracker incident on the Western side of the divide to consider, too...

GBS Update: Judge Chin Confirmed to Second Circuit

Posted on April 22, 2010
Judge Chin was just confirmed to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals this morning, and would ordinarily be expected to make the move (in this instance, just to a different floor in the same building) on the next scheduled argument day for that court ? that is, next week...

A422y

Posted on April 22, 2010
Judge Chin was just confirmed to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals this morning, and would ordinarily be expected to make the move (in this instance, just to a different floor in the same building) on the next scheduled argument day for that court ? that is, next week...

Impatient Link Sausages

Posted on April 22, 2010
Just a couple of amusing items... which should tell you more than you really want to know about my sense of humor. I'm old enough to remember "conquering hearts and minds" as a principle of dealing with insurgency. We should just be glad that Guiding Light and General Hospital never became weapons of war in Saigon and the countryside...

Ye Olde Link Sausage Shoppe

Posted on April 20, 2010
I spent the weekend dealing with incompetence and conflicts of interest on several fronts, both on behalf of others and for myself. And it wasn't even about government services! The recovery period (and necessarily-away-from-teh-intertubes period) extended into yesterday...

Goods/Not Goods

Posted on April 16, 2010
There's a fascinating post (and series of comments) over at Charlie Stross's blog today that asserts that "content" is a public good... and thereby entirely misses the point in its unfortunate mischaracterization of content. The piece starts off well enough, discussing the accepted definitions of rivalrousness, exclusion, and how they relate to the different types of goods...

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