derivative work

Surely some enterprising plaintiff-side attorney can generate a lawsuit from the reasonable expectations of consumers to continue to have access to the music they paid for: Customers who have purchased music from Microsoft’s now-defunct MSN Music store are now facing a decision they never anticipated making: commit to which computers (and OS) they want to [...]

Source: More Clarity About Abuse, Intermarriage, Child Breeders, andthe Fundamentalist Churchof Later Day Saints, Sara Robinson, Orcinus, 2008/4/25 [Warren] Jeffs was convicted last year in Utah of forcing a 14-year-old girl into marriage with an older cousin. I’m sick of these quotes that just talk about “marriage” and accept the use of that word. If [...]

The feminist blogosphere has been erupting lately, showing our strengths and our weaknesses and faultlines. One of those faultlines is race, and the discussions over Amanda Marcotte (of Pandagon)’s work, BrownFemiPower’s work, and cultural appropriation have brought this out. I’ve stayed quiet thus far on the issue, mostly because I have too many thoughts, and [...]

I just got a call from someone claiming to be a “domain notification server”. They had pulled our contact information off our domain record, and had a highly deceptive pitch, something like: We are calling you to alert you that you will be receiving a notification regarding your domain, blah blah blah information from our [...]

The cuss-o-meter says only 21.5%. That is not the high standard I set for myself in conversation as a youth. Also, the quiz says that “This is 139% MORE than other websites who took this test.” What does that mean? More than the average, I presume? Created by OnePlusYou (Yes, this is one of those [...]

There’s been a blog flurry about the use (dare I call it “appropriation”?) of the term “open source” for a project aimed at facilitating gropes of women’s breasts at SF cons. The project was called the “open source boob project” and proposed to pass out buttons so that people (“women”) could affirmatively opt-in to the [...]

Word on the street is starting to trickle in that the popular music was not licensed: * John Lennon’s “Imagine” was definitely used without permission. The Lennon estate + EMI are suing. (See Reuters, 4/23 (link from pharyngula); the NYT, 4/24; and Paste Magazine. (I can just picture the graphic on The Daily Show: “Ono [...]

Just a list of links for the flurry of postings on this topic: * Bug Girls’ Blog, Weekly WTF: More threats by Creationists, 2007/7/12; related Pharyngula, 2007/7/11; Bug Girl’s blog, 2007/7/20 * Bug Girl’s Blog, Creationist Death Threats, Part 2 (2007/8/24) * Pharyngula, Another example of amoral religiosity, 2007/8/24 * Sunclipse, Creation, Power and Violence [...]

New Jersey’s Supreme Court has recognized that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their email communications — thus, law enforcement has to get a search warrant or grand jury subpoena. This was under the New Jersey Constitution and applies only to New Jersey. It’s the first major case finding a state constitutional privacy [...]

Awesome librarian (and friend) Jenna Freedman has been on the LCSH (“Library of Congress Subject Headings”) for a while for its many failures to recognize current topics and language. She just posted about the new and revised headings, including a new heading for Fair use (copyright). 150 Fair use (Copyright) [May Subd Geog] [sp 85046891] [...]

So at the end of this long post about Expelled and copyright infringement, I appended some rewritten lyrics to the tune of “Spirit in the Sky” : When I copy and they tell me “desist”, Gonna go to the place that’s the best When I get caught in a lie, Goin’ up to Designers in [...]

Yesterday I excitedly pointed to this io9 blog entry about vat-grown meat: “You see!” I told my partner. “You see! I was right. We are going to have vat-grown meat, in our lifetime !!!” The “I was right” or “you were right” is the gold ring of our relationship. The ch-ching it makes when one [...]

How did I miss this Alabama story? Greg L. Gambril, a DA in south Alabama (Covington County), is prosecuting women for endangering their fetuses under a chemical endangerment law intended to protect children from meth labs — “chemical endangerment of child”. “When drugs are introduced in the womb, the child-to-be is endangered. It is what [...]

update 4/16: Both a commenter here and also P.Z. Myers have reported that Expelled filmmakers Premise filed on Monday a DJ (“declaratory judgment”) motion on XVIVO‘s copyright claims against them — i.e., asked a judge to look at the evidence & say that they are not infringing. Premise v. XVIVO, N.D. Tex., 4/14/2008. Here are [...]

Although it feels weird to talk about Colombia without addressing the political issues, I nevertheless present this io9 link + pictures of a beautiful and strange library in Casanera.

It’s a bit dicey to find anything funny in the sexual slavery / prostitution ring known as the FLDS (Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, aka, the Mormon child abuse cult). Bill Maher managed to do it by pointing out the discrepancy between society’s treatment of misbehavior by “cults” and misbehavior by “religions”. If you [...]

Obedience has never been my forte but every now and then I try it out just for fun. Or else, just because the radio waves directly into my brain will stimulate the pain center unless I do as told. So, direct from central squidelicious headquarters: This dumb movie named Expelled is being released the eighteenth [...]

Great article by Rebecca Traister at Salon.com about sexism lurking behind the shrill Obama support. Notes and thoughts: * It’s not Hillary’s “shrillness” that’s discomfiting; it’s the shrillness of boys’ support for Obama & hatred of Hillary. Dana Lossia quoted: “People can always come up with reasons they don’t like the candidate they’re not supporting. [...]

So, Wal-Mart is fighting with its former video contractor over ownership of a variety of recordings of internal Wal-Mart affairs. An aside: From the description, it seems like some of them might have been automatically captured footage. The question of copyright over surveillance camera footage and other automated recordings is an interesting one, I think, [...]