Copyright Law

Early Star Trek Reviews Are Here

Posted on May 05, 2009
...and they're not entirely favorable.

Undercaffeinated Monday

Posted on May 04, 2009
Bad week end. Bad weekend. Monday. Urghh. An extremely important opinion implicating both In re Electronic Database Litigation (which I've referred to as Post-Tasini and is currently better known as Muchnick) and the Google Book Search settlement came out about an hour ago...

Swining Along

Posted on April 29, 2009
In no particular order, a few thoughts on events yesterday: The James Bond wing of the Republican Party has a new enemy: S.P.E.C.T.E.R.. No doubt we'll be encouraged to think he's just as evil as Blofeld or any other Bond villain. I just want the Bond girl, myself; I'm not all that picky about which one...

Google Book Search Breaking News

Posted on April 28, 2009
The determination dates in the Google Book Search settlement have been delayed by order of the court (Chin, J.) (Docket No. 89). The new critical dates are: Opt-out or file objection: 04 September 2009 Claim works: 10 January 2010 (no change) Fairness hearing: 07 October 2009, 1000

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Monday Pain (and I don't mean "bread")

Posted on April 27, 2009
So I got a late start today. I'm still recovering from all the muscles I sprained on last Friday's item. RIP J.G. Ballard, who never stopped writing speculative fiction even when commercial considerations demanded that he deny that he wrote speculative fiction...

Obvious to Whom?

Posted on April 24, 2009
Oh, dear. Oh, my. For the moment, we'll just start with a quotation from a new patent opinion. The plaintiffs brought suit for patent infringement against the defendant, and prevailed in the district court, precipitating an appeal that, among other things, challenges the patent's validity...

Cognitive Dissonance... Again

Posted on April 23, 2009
Just a short piece of miscellaneous drivel today, as I'm busy writing up papers on the Google Book Settlement (assisting counsel to several objectors) that are going to make me even more enemies in New York than I already have. The short version: Various silences in the proposed settlement demonstrate that both the proposed named plaintiffs and their counsel are inadequate representatives for the

What Ingredient List?

Posted on April 20, 2009
It's Monday. I haven't had enough caffeine (and this is a surprise?). Thus, no guarantees on what went into the sausage grinder, let alone what came out. Maybe some of it was spoo. RIP J.G. Ballard. The price of not having a First Amendment is that to a repressive government, reporters are intelligence operatives...

Tea-Smoked Sausages

Posted on April 16, 2009
Before getting into the miscellany, a note on the Google Book Search settlement: There's a decision deadline coming up on 05 May 2009. Don't wait until the last moment to opt out or file an objection. And, although this is not legal advice for any particular situation, I am unable to discern any set of circumstances in which participating in the proposed settlement by doing nothing makes economic

The Ides of April

Posted on April 15, 2009
Justice Holmes remarked that taxes are the price one pays for civilization. Given the last eight years in the White House,1 not to mention the 1980s, it's not ironic at all that the Heffalumps want to reduce taxes: They want (and achieved) less civilization...

#amazonfail Asks the Wrong Questions

Posted on April 13, 2009
As usual, my take on #amazonfail is orthogonal to normal considerations (in several senses of "normal"). In no particular order: I seriously doubt that there is one, unified, conspiracy-theorist-satisfying explanation. Even if there is one, I seriously doubt that it will ever be aired in public to the satisfaction of conspiracy theorists everywhere...

Scotch Easter Eggs

Posted on April 12, 2009
Hard-boiled Easter eggs, wrapped in sausage and then deep-fried. Not your average holiday special! First there was the Evil Overlord's list of mistakes to avoid. Now there are 48 Laws of Power. I'm not sure whether they're serious or parodic/satiric...

Saturday Snark Sausages

Posted on April 11, 2009
Guaranteed USDA Prime snark. Not guaranteed safe for consumption, particularly not near coffee cups and keyboards. Cephalopods take over linguistics. Enough said. Suckers! Martha Stewart has a new cookbook out, running half-a-kilopage. She - or, rather, her ghostwriter(s) - must be awfully verbose; her actual method is closer to "hire a bunch of recent graduates of hoity-toity 'culinary

Past the Sell-by Date

Posted on April 10, 2009
These sausage links aren't rotten; they're carefully aged. PEN notes that UK libel laws are "distorting publishing" (I'd argue that they distort reality, too). Meanwhile, though, a court has mistakenly held - here in the US - that true statements can nonetheless constitute libel, which is clearly wrong if the article accurately portrays the opinion (which I've not had a chance to read yet).

Baracknophobia

Posted on April 08, 2009
Why am I simultaneously depressed and exhilarated that this is from a f*cking comedy show? Which leads to an annoyance: The next time I walk into a bank and see the tellers and management all wearing little flag pins, while they allow the oversized US flag outside the building to look like a f*cking rag, I'm going to go home, pull on my BDUs, and return and rip a few new ventral orifices...

I Have the Greatest Enthusiasm for This Mission

Posted on April 01, 2009
It's a very important day today. Not just April Fool's; this is not an April Fool's entry. Instead, look at the date, numerically, in proper order: 01.04.09 One four nine. The squares of the first three integers. Perfect to fifteen decimal places. That's right: It's Monolith Day    It is now time for Dawn of Man-strength coffee, then some very, very rare meat, right off the bone...

Chunky Sausages of Dubious Origin

Posted on March 31, 2009
So, what's your major? Answer: It doesn't really matter; the real difference between a liberal-arts education and a trade-school education is that the liberal arts graduate knows something, in some depth, outside his/her major, by design... and the trade-school graduate does only by accident...

Random Bratwurst

Posted on March 30, 2009
This platter of sausages is particularly disorganized. It's Monday. Once in a while, the NYT does manage to get something right on publishing, recognizing that HP's MagCloud system for printing short-run magazines might - if everything goes well - turn into "vanity publishing?s equivalent of YouTube...

Adulterated Sausages

Posted on March 26, 2009
...with 72% more sawdust and other fillers than usual! I'm no fan of book blurbs, but my disdain for them is nothing next to Alastair Harper's disgust. The real problem with book blurbs is not that they're out of context, or indeed anything else about the blurbs per se; it is their very existence...

The Other White Meat

Posted on March 25, 2009
Contrast that with this self-aggrandizing whinge/protest from an AIG executive, which the NYT printed on its op-ed page. The real problem here is the underlying question, that Mr DeSantis never asks (and has probably never asked): What part of the "business of insurance" is it to be playing games with poorly understood derivative financial products? The "business of insurance" involves - at a

Not Really Slam Dunks

Posted on March 23, 2009
After a weekend of watching really poor coverage of basketball - including, but not limited to, CBS's arrogance in deciding which game gets piped to which affiliate - the sausage selection is really quite, well, linked. Of course, the muscle relaxants probably worked into the equation somewhere...

Extinction

Posted on March 20, 2009
Sometimes, a picture really is worth a thousand words. (Thus, I'll keep this screed short.) In any event, welcome to the modern version of baronial competition. But ask yourself a question, first: Which of our two political parties both is and has as its symbol a large, inflexible and slow-moving, land-dwelling animal with very thick skin?

Teh Internets Are For Ground-Up Links

Posted on March 19, 2009
Late sausages... For a change, instead of business rescuing the arts, artists could save business? Umm, right. As usual, the problem is def(success)... and that's where the law gets in the way. As long as the law requires - as part of a disturbing, despicable, inadequate, and yet utterly necessary prophylactic against certain varieties of securities fraud - quarterly reports and

Holy Press Release, Batman!

Posted on March 16, 2009
One of the other reasons I've been somewhat less voluble of late can be inferred from the video embedded on the left. I'm a "mere consultant" in this one... primarily because I know not only where the relevant bodies are buried in New York, but their names, what they were wearing when they were buried, and exactly which of their bones are already broken (so we don't waste time during depositions

"Look Behind You, Mr Caesar!"

Posted on March 15, 2009
Perhaps Mr Caesar should beware the Ides of March. Most Americans must beware the Ides of April (well, technically the day after the Ides of April)... Will new anti-Ponzi laws work, now that Cousin Bernie is in jail? Not as long as the authorities don't know how to use them and establish unrealistic guidelines for what they'll investigate, such as the $500k minimum attributable loss required

Dolley Madison Fail Cakes

Posted on March 12, 2009
The internet isn't just for porn; it's for meaningless arguments about "authenticity" in depicting race in fiction. Let's turn the argument sideways for a moment, shake it, and see what falls out of the pockets of the pants it hastily put on to avoid being compared to Scalzi (who admits that he showed up for the argument not wearing any pants)...

Google Library Project Settlement (tangent)

Posted on March 11, 2009
Suspended Animation? The Settlement (in essay form)The Lawsuit (in essay form) This is a tangent from the long essay in progress on the suitability of the Google Book Search settlement. Recent events have not changed my opinion of its substantive justification (which is to say almost none); instead, I am digressing back into procedureland...

Hope After Ignorance

Posted on March 09, 2009
There's a lot going on at the moment, including bronchitis (thus the recent silence here - frog has my throat, not cat had my tongue). Today's main story, though, is simple: We have a resident of the White House who can actually spell "scientific method...

Assorted Kielbasa

Posted on March 02, 2009

The More Sausages Change...

Posted on March 01, 2009

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