random quotes ... to amuse, inspire, enrage:
Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man -- living in the sky -- who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time! ...But He loves you.
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 [...]
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 the sky
Goin’ up [...]
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 links [...]
4/11: I had previously (3/27) drafted a brief commentary on Expelled’s use of copyrighted material. Then, I unposted it while I checked on something, to try to make it more complete. I hadn’t gotten back to it, when the other shoe dropped: One of the copyright holders’ whose material was used in Expelled wrote [...]
Josh Timonen wrote a detailed synopsis of the movie “Expelled”, the creationist film that tries to argue that creationist views are “unfairly” excluded from the academy.
What piqued my interest about this particular post (there have been hundreds by now about how bad the movie is, the deceptiveness of the filmmakers, P.Z. Myers’ being prevented from [...]
Machinist at Salon has the scoop. Yaay Nine Inch Nails! It’s been a while since I’ve broken out my NIN collection but this inspires me to dip back in.
It’s not just a web download, either; there’s a torrent at PirateBay.
Wow, this sort of means that NIN is to BitTorrent was Mr. Rogers was to [...]
* Judge White withdrew his order requiring the shutdown of wikileaks.org. See also 3/1 bits blog. (NYT 3/1)
* The music industry has yet to pay artists any of the money it has received in settlements and lawsuits; the artists are pissed. NY Post 2/27)
* The owners of the game scrabble are pissed off at Scrabulous. [...]
Last week a copyright imbroglio broke out at a science blog which had written a post critiquing mainstream coverage of a science article; the blog had posted a figure from the paper to demonstrate bad science writing in the mainstream media. Wiley sent a C&D; the blogger agreed to take the material down (actually took [...]
Copyright paranoia is, truly, everywhere. Reading a NYT article about websites that track the Iraq war dead, I noticed this:
The Iraq Page (iraq.pigstye.net) is the obsession of Tom Willett, a software developer from Bloomington, Ind. The site includes a single news account for each United States service member killed in combat, with a fluttering American [...]
The first stage of our new fair use project is online — the Fair Use Network website, at http://fairusenetwork.org/ .
At present, we’re focusing on consumer resources, and version 1.0 includes resources for recipients of copyright cease-and-desist letters or DMCA § 512 takedown notices. Similar resources for trademark will be coming online later. [...]
5/3 update: variant version of this post (an older version of the post but marked-up with hyperlinks) + other blog commentary from Joy Garnett @ newsgrist … liveblogging the meeting and this session
@ iptablog –
The Comedies of Fair Use meeting wrapped up a few hours ago. Among the best presentations were the art panel [...]
I just got around to reading the weekend’s Washington Post Google Print editorials, pro (Mary Sue Coleman, UMich Pres) & con (Nick Taylor, Authors’ Guild). Short editorials, and I suppose the format limits their ability to go beyond rhetoric (”access to vast libraries of content” … “this is a socialist plot!”) into any actual [...]
More on Google and Siva’s response (and my responses to Siva):
Recap: In response to publisher anxieties & thinly-veiled threats of litigation, Google is implementing an opt-out provision in its scan-copyrighted-library-books program, and delaying scans of copyrighted books until November. [google blog] This has been widely reported as Google backing down. See, e.g., [...]
privacy:
Florida 4th District Court of Appeal ruled that “Rush Limbaugh’s medical records were properly seized by” the investigators looking into Rush’s drug-buying habits. The ACLU had come in on the side of Limbaugh.
The First Cir. has granted en banc review [pdf] of the US v. Councilman decision. [Oct. 5] Oral argument scheduled for Dec. [...]
