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October 31, 2006
How close are we to Martial Law?
... What’s new is that so many more of us no longer have the gut-level feeling that we can rely on the people in charge not to abuse the system; this doubt has a large number of people starting at shadows. In one sense that doubt is a beautiful thing: it is part of a free people’s antibodies against tyrants. We need to respect that feeling, even while being annoyed about the extra work vigilance imposes on us.
Finding the precisely appropriate dose of concern is a difficult calibration exercise. In that context it is important to understand that the case of Michael Schiavo has two lessons: on the one hand, part of the current ruling cabal mistook our government for a revolutionary junta. On the other hand, the local police had the good sense not to listen.
Emergency federal powers of the type set out in § 333 are scary in part because they threaten to displace the good sense and discretion of a few local cops with the necessarily more order-following tradition of the military officer on the scene. But in the main that’s not a new problem, it’s a very old one — one today that it is exacerbated by the attack on habeas corpus, and the administration’s legal claims that it can jail any of us, any time, for as long as it wants — not to mention the administration’s claim that it has the legal right to kill us.
In good times we just don’t have to worry about that stuff. But these are crazy times, not good ones.
What's the real story of copyright liability in the GooTube Deal?
This might be way off. But it's worth a read.
The GOP and its Porn King Supporter
Talking Points Memo:
...
It turns out that the Republican National Committee is a regular recipient of political contributions from Nicholas T. Boyias, the owner and CEO of Marina Pacific Distributors, one of the largest producers and distributors of gay porn in the United States. This recent article on Marina Pacific's new marketing campaign form XBiz, a porn industry trade sheet, notes that, in addition to producing its own material, the "company acts as a distribution house to hundreds of lines, mostly gay, 40 of which can be purchased only through MPD."
The company actually seems to be a trendsetter in the industry. As Boyias recently noted, "We have always modeled ourselves after a Fortune-style company. They are the models of exceptional customer service. We have formed strategic alliances with our vendors and customers alike, offering them tools and marketing to assist them in succeeding with their business models. Our one-on-one interpersonal relationships have never been duplicated in the distribution industry."
Some recent releases include "Fire in the Hole", "Flesh and Boners", even a "Velvet Mafia" series.
FEC.gov lists Boyias as contributing to the RNC three times in 2004 and two times in 2005. The NRCC got a little too. But only $250. ...
Avi Rubin on e-Voting: 'Low-tech is the answer'
From Business Week:
Viewpoint
By Avi Rubin
Voting: Low-Tech Is the Answer
There are three reasons why all-electronic voting machines are a bad idea: Transparency, recovery, and audit
On Nov. 7, more Americans will vote on electronic voting machines than ever before. No fewer than 39% of voters will cast their ballots electronically. Many of these votes will be cast on machines without any paper record. The votes will be fully electronic. As a computer science professor, and as someone who has been studying electronic voting for years, I am nervous.
Don't get me wrong; I love computers and electronics. I am one of those early adopters who buys the latest gadget before all the kinks have been worked out. And that is one of the reasons why I think electronic voting is a bad idea. Any system adopted too quickly is going to have kinks. We should not use the public as the beta testers of new voting systems.
If wringing the bugs out of the systems were my main concern, I would be optimistic about the future of electronic voting. After all, eventually we could produce a stable system. Unfortunately, there are three problems with electronic voting that have nothing to do with whether or not the system works as intended. They are transparency, recovery, and audit.
Easily Understood A system is transparent if its users easily understand its operation. In the case of voting machines, the users are the voters, the election officials, the candidates, and the poll workers. Basically, everybody.
Producing anything that is easily understood by everybody is enough of a challenge. The last things we need are opaque boxes full of silicon and electrons mysteriously computing functions and outputting the election results. I have a Ph.D. in computer science, and I can't look at a computer and tell if it is counting votes correctly.
Electronic voting is not transparent—it is not even translucent. There is no way to observe the counting of the votes publicly, and you can't even tell if the votes are being recorded correctly. Anyone inclined toward suspicion or conspiracy theory will believe that this type of technology validates his/her fears.
Now, what do we do if something goes very wrong during the election? What happens if the equipment fails or there is a power outage?
...
Buying Barack Obama?
Jenn at Reappropriate asks, "Did someone revoke the 13th Amendment and I just didn’t get the memo?"
Happy Halloween!
From here.
October 30, 2006
Anti-War Posters You Are Unlikely To See Displayed in South Carolina
Here. Sort of safe for work, sort of not, depending on whether your boss has a sense of humor.
Tony Blair: 'Should I stay or should I go?'
fair use for collage artists
A great decision from the 2d Circuit in another case about Jeff Koons. Collage artists haven't had a lot of caselaw to work with before Blanch v. Koons (7.5MB PDF), and it's reassuring to get a positive spin on transformative artistic uses.
"If this is liberalism, then it deserves to die."
So says Brian Leiter, in reaction to this. He says this makes a more compelling case for liberalism. Read both, plus Leiter's post, and see what you think.
"The Conspiracy Industry"
Popular Mechanics Editor James B. Meig writes in "The Conspiracy Industry" that after his magazine published its March 2005 cover story debunking 9/11 conspiracy theories he was accused of being " a member of the Bush/Halliburton/Zionist/CIA/New World Order/ Illuminati conspiracy for global domination."
Weird Campaign Advertisement
Google "in bed with" U.S. intelligence? Or Another Search Engine Trying To Hurt Google With Bad PR?
According to this site:
Even while Google presents a public image of vigorously protecting its users’ privacy, it has quietly provided assistance to several U.S. intelligence agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency, as the U.S. prosecutes its war on terrorism. In addition, Google may be providing assistance to the National Security Agency.
The site provides only one supporting link that is behind a free registration firewall, leaving me with doubts about this information, but who knows?
October 29, 2006
Spam O'Lantern
Yeah, it kind of makes me queasy too. From here.
Amazon.com Thinks Al Gore's Book On Global Warming Is Science Fiction
See? Via Molly Saves The Day.
Free Culture Badge
Of course, it's not the first time that I've been troubled by the decisions of scouting policy makers. Certainly, I was hacked off by the fact that the leadership has stripped even the littlest scouts of their religion insignia if it was earned from activities involving my centuries old religion that included many of the founding fathers, just because my faith shows more respect for the individual lifestyle choices and committed unions of gays and lesbians than the BSA does. (The major religion in question even developed a separate scouting curriculum to try to solve the conflict.)
After reading a story about a somewhat similar scout-sponsored piracy prevention program in Hong Kong, readers may remember that Mel Horan and I jokingly crafted some nifty mock-ups of possible patches to be used, should the program come here to the States. This was a gag, however. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that it would actually happen. How could such a one-sided, moralistic, anti-consumer marketing effort be foisted on a bunch of earnest and community-minded kids?
So now we've made up a new patch, for a much more challenging "Free Culture" badge, to be earned by intrepid, hard working, patriotic scouts. Here are some of the requirements:
- Appear at the door of a major studio, dressed in your full scout uniform, and try to talk them into allowing educational use of historical films commonly shown in public schools (Amistad, Schindler's List, etc.)
- Raise money with a bakesale to go across the country to CMG Worldwide in Indianapolis or Intellectual Properties Management (IPM) in Atlanta to convince these organizations to free images associated with Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King and release them into the public domain for use in school projects, such as web pages
- Paint a colorful mural on a graffiti covered wall across the street from the headquarters of the RIAA with the 9 Reasons Digital Media Products Are a Bad Deal for Consumers.
- Using your knot-disentangling skills, visit a hospital or nursing home and help the aged with their DRM-hobbled digital products
- Go to an orphanage, battered children's home, or juvenile detention facility and show kids how to use Creative Commons resources
- Put in 100 hours of community service at your local library and see the toll that new legislation against patron privacy and public connectivity takes on your local civil servants. Then imagine what it will be like if they have to deal with RIAA and MPAA lawsuits for circulating audio and video content.
Cross-posted at Virtualpolitik
October 28, 2006
Diary of a Poll-Worker, Part One
As someone who has covered many of the controversies about current electronic voting technologies, I've decided to go behind the scenes this year and learn about the electoral process from the point of view of a typical front line poll worker.
For my trouble, I'll receive $105, a lunch and dinner break, and the opportunity to report back to others about the process. Maybe I've read too many Barbara Ehrenreich books, because I'm sure that I'll regret my decision when I'm staggering in the door of my local Red Cross building at 5:45 AM. Apparently, there is also a lot that can go wrong on your watch.
At my polling place, we won't have touch screen voting, but we will have the jazzy Inkavote Plus, which has a computerized reader to check for ballot errors (such as overvoting) and an audio booth feature with "Nintendo-style" arrows for use by the hearing impaired or for speakers of Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Tagalog, or Vietnamese.
Check back for updates as I do my training session with the other poll-workers or show up for duty on Tuesday next week.
Must Read
Anybody who is either a parent or educator should read the new White Paper from the MacArthur Foundation, "Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century," which was written by Henry Jenkins and a team of concerned educators.
According to a 2005 study conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life project (Lenhardt & Madden, 2005),more than one-half of all American teens—and 57 percent of teens who use the Internet—could be considered media creators. For the purpose of the study, a media creator is someone who created a blog or webpage, posted original artwork, photography, stories or videos online or remixed online content into their own new creations.Most have done two or more of these activities.One-third of teens share what they create online with others, 22 percent have their own websites, 19 percent blog, and 19 percent remix online content.
Contrary to popular stereotypes, these activities are not restricted to white suburban males. In fact, urban youth (40 percent) are somewhat more likely than their suburban (28 percent) or rural (38 percent) counterparts to be media creators. Girls aged 15-17 (27 percent) are more likely than boys their age (17 percent) to be involved with blogging or other social activities online.The Pew researchers found no significant differences in participation by race-ethnicity.
If anything, the Pew study undercounts the number of American young people who are embracing the new participatory culture.The Pew study did not consider newer forms of expression, such as podcasting, game modding or machinima. Nor did it count other forms of creative expression and appropriation, such as music sampling in the hip hop community. These forms are highly technological but use other tools and tap other networks for their production and distribution.The study does not include even more widespread practices, such as computer or video gaming, that can require an extensive focus on constructing and performing as fictional personas.Our focus here is not on individual accomplishment but rather the emergence of a cultural context that supports widespread participation in the production and distribution of media.
The document also presents a great advocacy argument for targeting resources toward those dependent on public networks and against moronic anti-connectivity legislation like the Deleting Online Predators Act.
If you want to learn more, the Center has a lot of terrific educator-oriented material about Building the Field of Digital Media and Learning, and I have some how-to tips for parents at "10 Principles for the Digital Family."
Interview with Rob Thomas, creator/producer/writer of 'Veronica Mars'
As regular Sivacracy readers know Veronica Mars (now on the oddly named 'Country and Western' network) is one of our favorite shows of all time. It's funny, clever, sometimes deep and complex, and has a really great father-daughter dynamic that really chokes me up as a father of a daughter.
It's no coincidence that creator/producer/writer of Veronica Mars, Rob Thomas, is an old college buddy of both Catherine and myself. He hit it big in Hollywood some years back when he wrote the first season of Dawson's Creek. He has done a few film scripts (Crazy), a bunch more pilots, and some short-lived series (Cupid, Snoops, etc.). But Veronica Mars is his most successful and probably best work.
Here is a really great interview with Rob. I hope you enjoy it. And please watch Veronica Mars! It has such cult status that it is constantly on the bubble.
October 27, 2006
Shut up and run the damn ad
Think Progress reveals 'The Dixie Chicks Ad NBC Doesn’t Want You To See':
NBC is refusing to air an ad for the new Dixie Chicks documentary, “Shut Up & Sing.” Variety reports, “NBC’s commercial clearance department said in writing that it ‘cannot accept these spots as they are disparaging to President Bush.’”
Harvey Weinstein, who is distributing the movie, issued the following statement:
It’s a sad commentary about the level of fear in our society that a movie about a group of courageous entertainers who were blacklisted for exercising their right of free speech is now itself being blacklisted by corporate America. The idea that anyone should be penalized for criticizing the president is profoundly un-American.
ThinkProgress has obtained the ad NBC doesn’t want you to see.
And here is the official trailer:
Lawrence Levine, RIP
One of our finest cultural historians has passed away.
Lawrence Levine, esteemed history scholar, dies at age 73
By Media Relations | 26 October 2006
BERKELEY – Lawrence W. Levine, a highly influential history professor for more than three decades at the University of California, Berkeley, died on Monday (Oct. 23) of cancer at his home in Berkeley. He was 73.
Through his writings and teaching, colleagues said, Levine helped transform cultural history in the United States into a vibrant and accessible field of study. A champion of multiculturalism, Levine won a MacArthur "genius" fellowship in 1983 for his intellectual curiosity and scholarship.
In "Black Culture and Black Consciousness" (1977), Levine's best known work, he made use of the oral expressive tradition of African Americans to examine how they perceived themselves, their position in American society, and their relations with whites.
According to UC Berkeley history professors Leon Litwack and Waldo Martin, the book was a pathbreaking study of folk thought and culture that exerted an extraordinary influence on several generations of scholars - not only historians, but anthropologists, folklorists, musicologists, sociologists, and students of American and African American culture.
Historian Shane White, a professor in Australia at the University of Sydney, where Levine once taught as a visiting professor, added that Levine was "one of the best historians writing in the second half of the 20th century. His pioneering explorations of the American past made possible the current explosion in the popularity of cultural history."
Levine's 1988 book "Highbrow/Lowbrow" and the 1993 book "The Unpredictable Past" demonstrated not only the varieties of historical consciousness and documentation, but the interplay of American thought and behavior in folk and popular culture. And "The Opening of the American Mind," a 1996 book, was a spirited defense of multiculturalism and a powerful critique of conservative critics of modern American culture. ...
In case you forgot how criminal Republicans can be ...
Sometimes I get nostalgic. Last night we were watching a great documentary on Dr. Suess. When it got to the Butter Batter Book it discussed how revolting Dr. Suess considered Ronald Reagan. I agreed at the time. But I would give almost anything to trade Reagan -- a really smart guy who deeply cared for this country -- for this current, craven president. That does not mean I have changed. Our country has. Mostly, the Republicans have changed. They used to be mostly honorable and honest. Now they are honorable only rarely and inconsistently (that means you, Sen. McCain).
Damn. I miss Reagan sometimes.
This administration's utter lack of concern for democracy and decency makes me fear for the future of the Republic.
Then the historian in me reminds me that things have been worse -- and not too long ago.
This correction from the Washington Post says it all:
Correction to This Article
An article about Garry Trudeau in the Oct. 22 Magazine said that John Mitchell, attorney general in the Nixon administration, had not yet been indicted when a character in Trudeau's Doonesbury comic strip declared him "Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!" He had been indicted, but not yet on charges related to the Watergate break-in.
It's a great article, BTW. Garry Trudeau is a better American than any hack in the White House right now.
As long as we have folks like Trudeau, things can get better. Whether they will, that's up to us.
October 26, 2006
My new MSNBC column: 'What we might lose from YouTube to GooTube'
Some big news: I will be posting opinion columns on the Science and Technology section of MSNBC.COM.
=======
What we might lose from YouTube to GooTube
The Web should always be the place for challenging, disturbing material
COMMENTARY
By Siva Vaidhyanathan
MSNBC contributor
Updated: 9:37 p.m. ET Oct 25, 2006
The YouTube party might just be over.
For about a year we have enjoyed the weird and terribly fun video culture if offers. The ease with which people could post, watch, embed and link to videos created a phenomenon that certainly ranks among the top Internet experiences of all time
YouTube was more fun than chat, more creative than Napster, and more energized than just about any Web-based application out there.
YouTube was a rare site that captures so much of what the Web promised to be: a seemingly ungoverned buzzing space that offered glimpses of the strange and familiar. You could catch the hilarious Daily Show segment that spoofed MySpace (and me) or French superstar Zinedine Zidane headbutting his opponent in the World Cup final.
It never came close to fulfilling the heavy promises of the Web: universal knowledge and democratic culture. But it sure was a blast.
I use the past tense because I suspect that we will look back on the heady days of anything-goes-user-generated content with much nostalgia.
That does not mean that YouTube will change radically over night. Nor does it mean that YouTube will cease to be the major site of user-posted-and-created video clips. It just is unlikely to be quite as noisy and silly.
Already, YouTube aficionados are posting tributes to the cultish video clips that the service seems to be removing at a record pace. Some reports indicate that YouTube removed more than 30,000 clips at the request of a Japanese media group.
It’s not that YouTube now must behave like a grownup company. It’s more that YouTube is becoming the central battlefield in the next great struggle to define the terms and norms of digital communication. So it’s retrenching in preparation for that battle. ...
And every week that “GooTube” grows in cultural and political importance, the more stories we hear of important video clips coming down.
It’s understandable when YouTube removes a clip after a music or film company sends a “notice-and-takedown letter” to YouTube complaining that a user-posted video contains its copyrighted material and thus possibly infringes. But when the company zap clips simply because of their political content, that’s a different problem.
Here is an example in which copyright acts as an instrument of political censorship: U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson (R-New Mexico) is running for re-election in a close race this fall. Back in the mid-1990s she chaired the New Mexico Department of Children, Youth, and Families.
Problem was, her husband was being investigated about accusations that he had been sexually involved with a minor. So, one of the first things she did as head of the department was remove his file. Now everyone in New Mexico is finding out about it. A blog called Democracy for New Mexico posted on YouTube a news clip of Wilson and others discussing the cover-up.
But New Mexico voters could not view the clip for long: The TV station invoked the "notice and takedown" provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to kill the video clip.
Of course, any one of my students would be able to tell you at length why posting a news clip of a public official who is under scrutiny and up for re-election would be fair use – an allowable use of copyrighted material for the purpose of news and commentary. But when it comes to the Web, the copyright act has no respect for fair use. Neither does YouTube, apparently. The clip came down.
Here is a more blatantly political example: The radical right-wing columnist Michelle Malkin posted a slideshow video she had spliced together from images of the consequences of violence by Muslim extremists.
For some reason, the editors at YouTube judged it to be “inappropriate.” When Malkin asked YouTube officials to explain the inappropriateness of the video – especially in light of the fact that YouTube is full of clips that seem to glorify violence against American troops, she got no response.
Malkin started a conservative YouTube group to protest the removal, and soon that group was tagged for having “inappropriate” content.
The Malkin saga is troubling and revealing on a number of levels. First, one of the best things about YouTube is that it does use its members to police its content. That means that a virtual community enforces community standards. However, YouTube has no mechanism to debate and work through what those standards should be.
Current YouTube policies make sure that sexually explicit content rarely comes up in a YouTube search. And that’s nice. YouTube is one of the few places on the Web that people don’t get naked on your computer screen.
But such broad policies pretty much invite flame and flag wars, through which competing political activists will flag the other sides’ videos as “inappropriate.” That seems to be happening in the wake of the Malkin controversy.
Now, I have watched Malkin’s video that was removed from YouTube on a competing site. It’s pretty dumb and simplistic. It’s just images of those who have been targeted by violent extremists spliced with some of the controversial Danish cartoons of Mohammed. If the dumb and simplistic were considered “inappropriate” for YouTube, there would be about a dozen videos up there.
In her writing Malkin recklessly associates the deeds of a handful of marginal murderous thugs with the sincere and humane faith of more than a billion followers. She has no problem spreading bigotry. She does that on her blog (to which Google’s Web search links) and her books (which Google offers on Google Book Search).
But that does not mean that this particular video is bigoted. It’s not. But it’s by Malkin. So it’s a target. That’s not a good policy. It’s author-based editing rather than content-based.
The Web should always be the sort of place where you can find troubling and challenging material. It should be the source of stuff too out-there for the mainstream media.
YouTube is not the World Wide Web. And it’s not the government. So it has no obligation to present everything or protect anything. But as it folds itself into the oligopoly known as Google – which increasingly filters the Web for us — we should pressure it to be more inclusive and less sensitive.
So here is my great hope for the Google-YouTube deal: I hope that Google’s boldness and tolerance immediately changes the culture of YouTube. I hope that the YouTube editors grow more confident and less fearful about what they can contribute to the culture of the Web. Meanwhile, it’s up to us to pressure YouTube and Google to keep the Web crazy, fun, and even a little scary.
Siva Vaidhyanathan is an associate professor of Culture and Communication at New York University. His latest book is The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System (Basic Books, 2004). Siva blogs at Sivacracy.net.
© 2006 MSNBC Interactive
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15405170/
October 25, 2006
shout out to NJ
... for recognizing that not granting the rights and privileges of marriage to same-sex couples violates equal protection. The NJ Supreme Court opinion is online (PDF).
In a politically savvy turn, the Court split the difference on the marriage / benefits argument, granting the rights and perquisites of marriage, but leaving the terminology issue up to the legislature. Three of the 7 justices dissented from that split, and would have given us the whole enchilada. Pragmatist me is pretty happy.
Trademarks and Censorship
From the Consumer Law & Policy blog:
Jay Youngdahl's law firm represents injured railroad workers in claims against railroad companies, including Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway (BNSF), one of the biggest railroad networks in North America. Part of the firm’s website includes a gallery of images created by New Mexico artist Douglas Johnson. Youngdahl commissioned the paintings from Johnson to show the challenges faced by railroad workers, a subject that he feels has historically been ignored in the art world.
BNSF, however, apparently did not appreciate one painting on the site that appears to include representations of BNSF trains. Upon discovering the image, BNSF's attorney sent several cease-and-desist letter to Youngdahl, claiming that his use of the paintings infringes BNSF’s trademarks, “dilutes the distinctive quality of BNSF’s famous trade dress and famous marks,” and “tarnishes BNSF’s reputation by suggesting that all FELA [Federal Employer's Liability Act] claims are claims made against BNSF.” BNSF’s position once again raises the question of how far companies can go to regulate consumers' use of their trademarks for the purpose of commentary and criticism.
Read the rest here.
Dis/enfranchisement Hijinks
From The Brad Blog, via The Dees Diversion, news that a Chicago voter database has been hacked. See also the Mojo Blog.
From Marc Faletti at Punkassblog, news that U.S. Senate candidate James Webb's name will be truncated on the ballot because it is...too long.... See also the WaPo.
I hope I won't have to update this with additions, but I will if I see them.
October 24, 2006
Jack Black vs. Piracy
Fair Use and Self Help
Interesting post about fair use at shlep: the Self-Help Law ExPress. Here is an excerpt:
The e-publication that caught my eye proclaims at the foot of each article (even when it copies someone else’s press release verbatim without attribution) that no reproduction of any sort is allowed because the “This article is copyright protected and Fair Use is not applicable.“ The site’s SideBar has a similar warning against any reproduction “in accordance with Fair Use of copyright.” This overreaching is especially perturbing to me, because the e-newspaper prides itself on fighting for “legal reform” and against government abuses using investigatory reports, and good information and clear analysis.
“The College Administrator’s Survival Guide”
The cover and the use of initials in place of a first name are a little off-putting, but I'm guessing that was the publisher's idea, so that prospective readers wouldn't be scared off by girl germs. The author is in fact a woman. Although it isn't directly pitched at law professors, this book, The College Administrator's Survival Guide, by C.K. Gunsalus (Harvard University Press, 2006), seems like it might have a lot to offer all academics, not just college administrators. Here is an overview of the kind of issues it addresses from the publisher's webpage:
Late one afternoon, as you are organizing your new office as department chair, one of the senior members of the department drops by. He affably informs you of his plans for the coming semester: that contrary to the published class schedule, he only teaches on Tuesday afternoon, Wednesday, and Thursday morning, so as to have the weekends free for travel; that he expects the office staff to start his coffeemaker by 10 a.m. sharp on his teaching days; and that since he hasn't been assigned a research assistant, his teaching assistant will do research tasks, including errands. What do you say? What do you do?
Dean Dad has two interesting observations about the book at Confessions of a Community College Dean:
"Everybody Knows," in which he writes:
Strictly speaking, something that 'everybody knows' needn't be said, since everybody already knows it. Realistically, it's hyperbole indicating that 'further inquiry is useless, since the conclusion should be obvious to any sentient being.' Everybody knows that Bob is a dick, so whatever he's complaining about can safely be ignored. Alternately: even if Bob is right, he's right for the wrong reasons, since everybody knows he's a dick.
I've been in several situations over the last few years in which what 'everybody knew' was wrong.
Usually, it's based on a feedback loop.
and "Victim Bullies," where he observes:
Gunsalus distinguishes between traditional, assertive bullies, who throw their weight around with bluster and force, and 'victim bullies,' who use claims of having been wronged to gain leverage over others.(pp. 123-4) Unlike simple passive-aggression, victim bullies use accusations as weapons, and ramp up the accusations over time. Unlike a normal person, who would slink away in shame as the initial accusations are discredited, a victim bully lacks either guilt or shame, honestly believing that s/he has been so egregiously wronged in some cosmic way that anything s/he does or says is justified in the larger scheme of things. So when the initial accusations are dismissed, the victim bully's first move is a sort of double-or-nothing, raising the absurdity and the stakes even more.
Halloween Costumes For Girls
Of course no one has to buy them if they don't want to, and the option of making a Halloween costume is always available, but for parents or kids who do want to purchase commercially manufactured costumes, the ones produced explicitly for girls are very feminine and overtly sexual. Here are a few offerings from "Party America":
And as if the costumes aren't sexualized enough, consider the amount of make-up worn by the children modeling them, and the incredibly adult and provocative poses they are striking. Socialization for "Slut-o-ween" begins at a very young age.
October 23, 2006
We Have/Have Not Always Been "Stay the Course"
October 22, 2006
Sometimes I Hate Yahoo News
Like when Yahoo News runs headlines like this: GOP losses could spark partisan warfare. Like, as opposed to what we have now?
Mixed Emotions About These Tees...
Available here. I know they are just supposed to be funny, but there is something weird about the messages too. Somehow they possibly embrace rather than subvert patriarchy? Or maybe I'm taking this too seriously.
October 20, 2006
Good Thing the Republicans are in Charge of Standards
And, speaking of Heather Wilson, check out her committee's hilariously misspelled report, "Hearing on the Terrorist/Jihadist Use of the Internet for Strategic Coomunications," which identifies a videogame fan film with a parody soundtrack as exhibit number one to show the jihadist technological menace that is the Internet.
Last time I checked, it was spelled "Communications." It's misspelled here too.
And to think this is the political party that is giving us so much grief about Standard Written English.
An Homage to Stuff Removed from YouTube
R.I.P. YouTube: A Video Eulogy is a clip of clips made by a guy who concludes that YouTube is cleansing its servers of any and all potentially infringing videos.
It's funny. Watch it while you can.
Republican Perverts, YouTube, Digital Copyright, and Political Speech
Sometimes, it all comes together.
First, the scandal:
U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson (R-New Mexico) used to chair the NM Department of Children, Youth, and Families.
Problem was, her husband was being invesigated about accusations that he had been sexually involved with a minor. Yep.
So, one of the first things she did as head of the department was remove his file. Now everyone in NM is finding out about it. A blog called Democracy for New Mexico posted on YouTube a news clip of Wilson discussing it.
Next problem: The TV station invoked the "notice and takedown" provisions of the DMCA to kill the video clip.
Of course, any one of my students would be able to tell you at length why posting a news clip of a public official who is under scrutiny and up for re-election would be fair use. Duh.
But the DMCA, of course, has no respect for fair use. Neither does YouTube, apparently. The clip came down.
Here is what Democracy for New Mexico said about the case:
UPDATE 10.20.06: In the past couple of days KOAT successfully convinced YouTube to remove the video linked above due to copyright issues. For those who didn't get a chance to view the video when it was available (for weeks if not months), read this unofficial transcript provided by someone who watched it carefully.
************
Reminiscent of the still-unfolding scandal involving Rep. Mark Foley -- and what many, even on the right, see as a Republican cover-up -- is an earlier scandal involving Republican Rep. Heather Wilson (NM-01) and her husband, Jay Hone. The video above shows a KOAT-TV7 (Albuquerque) news story prompted by one of Wilson's first actions when she was appointed to head the NM Department of Children, Youth and Families. Wilson served as Department Secretary from 1995-1998. On her third day in office, she removed a sensitive department case file, which had been opened on her husband, from the agency's central records repository in Albuquerque. Although Wilson initially denied doing so, she later changed her story and admitted removing the file. In other words, she lied. ...
'Put a Little Seratonin In me'
October 19, 2006
Riverbend Has A New Post Up
After a long lapse, Baghdad Burning has been updated. Read Riverbend's discussion of the Lancet Study concerning the number of Iraqi deaths since the war started, here. Among other observations, she writes:
We literally do not know a single Iraqi family that has not seen the violent death of a first or second-degree relative these last three years. Abductions, militias, sectarian violence, revenge killings, assassinations, car-bombs, suicide bombers, American military strikes, Iraqi military raids, death squads, extremists, armed robberies, executions, detentions, secret prisons, torture, mysterious weapons – with so many different ways to die, is the number so far fetched?
Many thanks to Sinister Girl for noticing and posting about this.
"His was at least the seventh suicide on death row in Texas."
I found this article really chilling.
Question for the New York Times
I know why you run photographs like this:
I know why you titled the associated article: "Good Girls Go Bad, for a Day." What I don't understand is why the caption beneath the picture is: POST-POST-POST-FEMINISM?
October 18, 2006
"Secret Asian Man"
Secret Asian Man is also the name of the cartoonist's blog. Blog found via Sour Duck, who got it from Y. Carrington.
Supposedly Liberal Satire
Law prof Jack Chin appears on the Daily Show in a clip law prof Eric Muller at Is That Legal? does not find particularly funny.
What editors don't do
Unsolicited: Mommy, What's An Editor?:
... So we've established that editors don't edit (except at night and on the weekends. Sigh). Editors also don't:
• know everything there is to know about spelling and grammar and punctuation. The people who get paid to know that shit are copyeditors. I know plenty of editors who can't spell. Spelling turns out not to be related to literary savvy at all. Take that, snobby commenters!
• sit on submissions because they're afraid of offending the author/agent with a rejection. More likely, we just haven't read the damn thing. And if you pressure us for an answer rightnow (without any offers in your hand), the answer is going to be 'no.' Happy?
• have some magical power that enables us to know whether or not something is crap or good (or, you know, good, marketable crap. Da Vinci crap.) We just use our common sense and our opinions. Oh, and also Bookscan.
• find things in the slush pile. If you can't ally yourself with one of the ten bazillion agents who currently exist, there is something really wrong with you. Also, most publishing houses have ironclad no-unsolicited-submissions policies. So get an agent. It's not that hard! (to get a crappy one). It is hard to get a good one, but that's another Unsolicited.
• lead glamorous lives. Maybe there is, like, one rockstareditor left in this city, swilling hard liquor long into the night with his rockstarauthors while discussing, you know, Sartre v. Camus. He is statistically insignificant compared to the thousands of us who steal milk and toilet paper from the office because we can't afford our own, and go to readings for the free canap�s.
• want to hear about your genius idea for a book. I'm talking to you, Uncle Morty. If it's Thanksgiving and I have a drink in one hand, I do not want to be holding your proposal for a children's book about The Tree Who Had No Friends in the other hand. I can't help you. Even if I wanted to, I still wouldn't be able to help you. Talk to God. Last time I checked, s/he was the one in charge of handing out talent.
Documentary: The 101st Fighting Keyboarders!
Finally, a War of the Words, a documentary that does justice to those brave souls who risked RSI in support of our glorious victory in the peaceful and democratic Republic of Iraq!
Check out the flash movie!
Great Moments in Communication Research
'Net at Risk' Tonight on PBS
My buddy Rick Karr did this great report for Moyers on America:
The Net at Risk
The future of the Internet is up for grabs. Last year, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) effectively eliminated net neutrality rules, which ensured that every content creator on the Internet-from big-time media concerns to backroom bloggers-had equal opportunity to make their voice heard. Now, large and powerful corporations are lobbying Washington to turn the World Wide Web into what critics call a "toll road," threatening the equitability that has come to define global democracy's newest forum. Yet the public knows little about what's happening behind closed doors on Capitol Hill.
Some activists describe the ongoing debate this way: A small number of mega-media giants owns much of the content and controls the delivery of content on radio and television and in the press; if we let them take control of the Internet as well, immune from government regulation, who will pay the price? Their opponents say that the best way to encourage Internet innovation and technological advances is to let the market-not the federal government-determine the shape of the system.
"The genius of the Internet was that it made the First Amendment a living document again for millions of Americans," says Robert McChesney, a media scholar and activist and co-author of OUR MEDIA, NOT THEIRS. "The decisions that we're going be making ... are probably going to set our entire communication system, and, really, our entire society, on a course that it won't be able to change for generations."
With the MOYERS ON AMERICA series, we inaugurate Citizens Class, an extensive, interactive curriculum designed to encourage and facilitate public discourse on the issues raised in the series. The workshop features multimedia discussions, reference materials on the key perspectives presented in the program, and questions for further reflection-all designed to stimulate deep and thoughtful community dialogue. Interested? Check it out. In search of specific information? Just browsing? Select topics below to explore a range of issues, from the new digital divide, voices from the debate over net neutrality, to ways to find out who owns your local media.
It's on PBS tonight. Don't miss it!
October 17, 2006
From the Department of The Rich Are Different
The Ethicist vs. The Unethicist
Two weeks back my pal Randy Cohen, the Ethicist of The New York Times Magazine, quoted me in one of his responses. Here is the text:
The Ethicist
Copyright Wrongs
By RANDY COHEN
Is it piracy if you take your laptop into a library and download CD’s or copy movies from its DVD collection? I travel the country continuously and frequent libraries. Never have I seen a sign that prohibits copying the material on their shelves. Adam Wasserman, Los Angeles
I, too, frequent libraries, and never have I seen a sign that prohibits shooting a patron who jabbers into his cellphone in the reference section, but I don’t take that lacuna as permission to open fire. While libraries exist to lend just the sort of material you describe, duplicating an entire copyrighted work is forbidden.
Siva Vaidhyanathan, an expert on intellectual-property issues who teaches at New York University, explains that copying an excerpt for educational, research, artistic or journalistic purposes is generally legal, “but copying an entire book or film would usually lie beyond any fair use of copyrighted material.” That is, downloading a few moments of “Tear the Roof off the Sucker (Give Up the Funk)” for nonprofit scholarly purposes is fine; duplicating all of “Mothership Connection,” the Parliament album on which that splendid song is found, to save yourself the cost of buying it, is not. In judging such conduct, both motive and size count.
This guideline strives to balance the right of a creator to be paid for his work (and thus encourage his creativity) and the interest of the larger society in the dissemination of ideas. The fundamental goal of copyright is not to secure profits but to inspire thought — “to promote the progress of science and useful arts,” as Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution puts it.
Although copying an entire work is seldom legal, it is sometimes ethical — for example, if the work is unavailable for purchase (most books ever published are now out of print); if it is available only in an archaic format (a 78-r.p.m. recording, a Betamax tape, a clay tablet); if you already own a copy and want another in a more usable format (less scratchy, fewer coffee stains). But such reasonable situations might not inoculate you against lawsuits. The law is an expression not just of ethics but of power.
Now come The Unethicist via Gawker. The Unethicist will give completely unethical advice to the exact same questions that Randy answers.
Is it piracy if you take your laptop into a library and download CD's or copy movies from its DVD collection? I travel the country continuously and frequent libraries. Never have I seen a sign that prohibits copying the material on their shelves. Adam Wasserman, Los Angeles
Adam, I've taken the liberty of correcting your letter. "I travel the country continuously and frequent libraries" now reads as "I am a virgin and dream of seeing a woman naked, but how, when I am such a nerd?"
I'm going to answer your question with a question: Do you know the word "duh"? Yes, Encyclopedia Brown, taking your laptop into a library and downloading CDs and copying movies from its DVD collection is piracy. What did you think piracy was? Taking your laptop onto a seafaring vessel and making the galley slaves download CDs and copy movies for you? Did you think that as long as you didn't run your cutlass through the tender entrails of the copyright holder that you were safe from such an accusation?
That being said, I'm not sure I see what the problem is. The internet was created for two things: jacking it, and downloading Beyonce mp3s for free, to play in the background while you're jacking it. Some people argue that free access to cultural product is actually helpful to artists by broadening their fan base and making their art accessible to future potential customers. I argue that paying for "Ring the Alarm" is fucking retarded. And not Foxy Cleopatra retarded, either, just straight up retarded retarded.
As for your confusion over the lack of any prohibitive signage on your "Libraries of the World" tour, here's a solution:
STOP BEING SUCH A PUSSY
Print that out, and you can hang it up your fucking self.
Guilty Old Party's paranoid rants
This is amazing!
Material Possessions: Absurd Restrictions on the Use of Fabric
Cory and Boing Boing linked to this:
Reprodepot is a vendor of fabric. On its site, it declares:
"*Please note: This fabric can be purchased for personal sewing projects only. This print cannot be used for items made for resale."
So I clicked on "Customer Service" and wrote the following:
To whom it may concern:
Your stated policy restricting the use of the fabric you sell is absurd and insulting. You are making a mockery of everyone who creates things and of the very laws that protect their interests.
Is this an End-User-License Agreement? Is it enforceable? Is it negotiable? What is the source of such a restriction? Does it derive from copyright? If so, how can you restrict what people do with the fabric short of copying it? What part of Sec. 106 of 17 U.S. Code are you using? Does such a restriction not violate Sec. 110, the "First Sale Doctrine?"
Please feel free to pass this message on to your attorneys or anyone else in the entire world. You may pass it on because I am a reasonable and responsible citizen.
I look forward to your response.
Sincerely,
Siva
Go ahead and send a note yourself!
I Wanted To Like It
The Alliance for Justice produced a film called "Quiet Revolution" that is, according to an accompanying booklet, pitched at informing viewers about the "transformative legal agenda that movement conservatives are pursuing" through the political process generally and the judiciary particularly.
While I applaud the motives and the effort that went into it, I'm not all that enthusiastic about the film itself. The beginning set my teeth on edge right away when narrator Bradley Whitford invoked revisionist tropes about the glorious freedoms bestowed upon us by the Founding Fathers that conservatives now are stripping away. As filitered through the judiciary established by those wonderful framers, men who were not white didn't have rights or freedoms; white women had very few rights or freedoms, and could benefit from things like property ownership only if they were able to attached to benevolent white men; and women who were not white were in completely desperate straights. There was no rosy, idyllic past of freedom or equality for the majority of the population, and I don't understand the point of engaging in this sort of intellectual dishonesty. The part where the viewer is warned that conservative judges “want to distort key sections of the Constitution, like the Commerce Clause” actually made me laugh out loud, though I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the intent. Return to the halcyon days of Lochner, shall we?
Though it does highlight issues like the racial segregation of the past, at certain points the film makes it sound like things were great until the conservatives started taking over about 25 years ago, and maybe they were in Supposedly Liberal White Dude World, but for the rest of us, progess was happening then, but it was slow and it wasn't only conservatives who were standing in our way. By way of illustrating this point, refer to the list of participants on page 15 of the Quiet Revolution booklet. In addition to the male narrator, it lists nine participants, six men and nine women. Watch the actual film, however, and you will see a number of additional men who are not listed as participants for some reason. Indiana law prof Dawn Johnsen gets a lot of air time and does a nice job with it. She is the only law professor from a "non elite" law school in evidence. The only other female law professor is Yale's Judith Resnik, who appears very briefly. Male law professors appearing include Cass Sunstein and David Strauss of the University of Chicago Law School and Harold Koh and Bruce Ackerman of Yale Law, all of whom are listed as participants, and Peter Edelman and David Cole, both law profs at Georgetown, who are not lised as participants in the booklet. Writer Dahlia Lithwick participates and is listed; writer James Bamford speaks and is identified in the film, but is not a listed participant. By my count, the true gender ratio of the participants is nine males to three women, and I'm curious about why the participant roster doesn't reflect this. Are we not supposed to notice the imbalance?
I'm also not really sure who the target audience of this production is. Nonlawyers will generally not understand the fairly extensive case law references, but lawyers may feel insulted by the scary music, polemical rhetoric and oversimplification of the issues. I know I did. I wanted to like "Quiet Revolution," I really did, but I think the Alliance for Justice needs to rethink its approach.
Via Orin Kerr, who reports that Nan Aron is his cousin, and is rather hard on Dahlia Lithwick. Warning: That's a Volokh Conspiracy link, because Orin is still playing hooky from his eponymous blog for some reason.
October 16, 2006
Blog Lightening!
Make your own here. Via Pen-Elayne.
"Consequences of erudite vernacular utilized irrespective of necessity: problems with using long words needlessly"
That's the title of an actual research paper, for which the abstract is as follows:
Most texts on writing style encourage authors to avoid overly-complex words. However, a majority of undergraduates admit to deliberately increasing the complexity of their vocabulary so as to give the impression of intelligence. This paper explores the extent to which this strategy is effective. Experiments 1-3 manipulate complexity of texts and find a negative relationship between complexity and judged intelligence. This relationship held regardless of the quality of the original essay, and irrespective of the participants' prior expectations of essay quality. The negative impact of complexity was mediated by processing fluency. Experiment 4 directly manipulated fluency and found that texts in hard to read fonts are judged to come from less intelligent authors. Experiment 5 investigated discounting of fluency. When obvious causes for low fluency exist that are not relevant to the judgement at hand, people reduce their reliance on fluency as a cue; in fact, in an effort not to be influenced by the irrelevant source of fluency, they over-compensate and are biased in the opposite direction. Implications and applications are discussed.
New Orleans
At Jurisdynamics, Jim Chen has a series of interesting posts up about New Orleans related to this conference.
Someone who gets the Library-Google relationship
Metalibrarian: Thoughts about Google:
... There is certainly a wide-spread interest in how Google and libraries are going to interact in the current and emerging information environments. During my (brief) career in field of librarianship the projects I've worked on have had very different interactions with Google.
2004: I was working at Harvard College Library when Harvard announced that Google would be scanning select materials from its libraries. As a member of the Imaging Services department, I was very interested in how this would influence future directions of the department. Imaging Services had already been scanning books for several years and was aware of many of the problems encountered during the digitization process. Would Google digitize to the same standards? And how would the department stay relevant if Google's output was so much greater?
* Regarding standards, it seems that libraries are still holding themselves to higher standards than Google. Reports of missing pages, thumbs in images, and lack of accompanying metadata for Google Books show that librarians' attention to detail still differentiates us from Google. However, it is possible that Google will find innovative solutions to these problems. When and if they do, I hope that we will be ready and able to learn from them.
* Regarding relevance in the age of Google Books, the librarians I worked with were confident that we would stay relevant. One of our most important roles as librarians is bringing collections together and providing quality information for our patrons. At Harvard this is realized through collections like Women Working and Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930. Pulling together related resources is a defining characteristic of librarianship, and one that Google will probably not be attempting.
2005: My next experience with Google was with a small digital library project. Most of our users found our website by querying Google. The benefits that Google and other search engines bring to these types of projects is tremendous. Most of the visitors to our website were not regular patrons of the library, were searching for specific items, and wouldn't have found the website without Google. This does, however, raise the significant point that Google is not yet comprehensively indexing the invisible web. When I submitted our OAI-PMH url to Google site maps, our site was crawled more thoroughly, but still not in full. I believe that as Google refines its indexing, this will become less of a problem.
2006: I currently work on a registry of digital projects that includes an item-level metadata repository of metadata from some of the projects. Included is the ability to search with more refinement than one can search with Google. Future directions the project hopes to take include offering added-value services. Another influence of Google is in the design of the website. Users arrive at a new site with habits learned from experience with other sites, and Google is a major presence on the web. Many of the conventions created by Google directly influence the website design and layout. ...
Some interesting thoughts on GooTube
... I know it looks like Google/YouTube/GooTube comes out a winner in this, but I'm scared of what still might happen. If any of you have taken a basic law class in school, there's a wonderful and terrible thing called precedent. Now that YouTube has some deep pockets behind it, record labels are going to be itching to get their hands on it. And in comes precedent. Universal, Warner and the rest are sure file lawsuits against the small, copycat YouTubes that don't have the financial backing to put up a fight. And thus, the demise of the only thing that keeps YouTube running: the DMCA's "Safe Harbour" Act. With that precedent against the smaller, mimicking GooTubes, the record labels will bring the fight to the big leagues. With the leverage they now have, they'll rope Google into higher than anticipated licensing agreements or try to shut the down all together.
Maybe it's not as simple as that, but with the Google Library project and the recent acquisition of YouTube, it looks like it's starting to become Google vs. The Entertainment Industry. Personally, I'm rooting for Google, but I'm still worried. If Google loses this epic battle, there's no telling how the inter-nets might change. Not only that, but all of this legal stuff is going down in the Southern District of New York which seems to be favorable to anyone but the progressive copyright lobbyist. ...
A strong critic of my Chronicle Google article
Richard Brandt on Google: Oh no!: Should we "allow" Google to index the world's information for us?
Do you want Google to be the librarian of the world? I certainly do. There has been no one more dedicated than Larry Page and Sergey Brin to indexing and preserving all the world's information since Ptolemy I created the Library of Alexandria, around 300 BC.
If you don't like the idea of this role for Google, you'll be much happier reading "A risky Gamble with Google," by New York University assistant professor of culture and communication Siva Vaidhyanathan. He worries about the dangers of Google Library
Vaidhyanathan's basic premise seems to be that Google is just too damn powerful. Yeah, so is George Bush. But we can vote against both of them, and against Google more easily by simply switching to something else.
The big flaw with Vaidhyanathan's argument is that he seems to feel that if we let Google become the world's librarian, it will somehow exclude anyone else from taking on the same role. ...
There is much more. It's worth reading.
October 15, 2006
The War of the Words
Trailer here. Part One here. Part Two here.
Paint On A Wall
"Teen pays siblings' college fees by selling virtual weapons"
According to this CNET News article:
Mike Everest, a home-schooled high school senior from Durango, Colo., has put two of his siblings through college by selling virtual goods for real dollars on Entropia. And he's not the only one involved. His mother also plays the game. Along with his mother, Everest, better-known within the virtual game as Ogulak Da Basher on the planet Calypso, has raked in more than $35,000. Of that profit, $12,000 will be used to help his two siblings attend college.
Via Anupam Chander.
“Feminist Cyborgs: Teaching like a Feminist in the Computer Classroom”
That's the name of this paper, which you might find interesting even if you don't get anywhere near the "Computer Classroom."
October 14, 2006
Wikipedia/Encyclopedia Britannica Dialectical Timeline
Crazy idea: If E-voting does not work, fix it
Slashdot: Dutch Securing E-voting After Being Pwned
"After the Dutch we-don't-trust-voting-computers foundation demonstrated glaring security holes in Dutch voting computers last week, the Dutch government has ordered (Dutch) all software to be replaced, all hardware to be checked, unflashable firmware to be installed, and an iron seal to be placed on voting machines. A certification institute will double-check all measures, and on election day will cull random machines to check them for accuracy. The Dutch intelligence service AIVD has been approached to consult on the radio emissions issue. Furthermore, foreign observers will monitor the upcoming elections on November 22nd. But the action group is still not confident (Dutch) that all problems are solved."
A reasonable response to Nigerian spam scams
Carnival of the Creators
I just discovered the Carnival of the Creators:
Carnival of the Creators is a weekly collection of links to blog posts about creative people and their work. They may be artists, craftspeople, novelists, musicians - in fact anyone who creates something original.
The October edition is here.
Look at the time.
Cartoon by Natalie Dee.
"Torture in the U.S.A."
Read this post at Happening Here. Note that the author credits Michael Froomkin with being one of the few liberal bloggers that really covers torture. The rumor that this torture interest is related to his being a law professor is completely false, of course.
October 13, 2006
Reminder: Download Free PDFs of Cultural Studies issue on 'The Politics of Intellectual Property'
"The Politics of Intellectual Properties"
A Special Issue of Cultural Studies
Edited by Ted Striphas & Kembrew McLeod
Download entire issue in one zipped file or download individual essays below:
(1) Ted Striphas & Kembrew McLeod, “Introduction—Strategic Improprieties: Cultural Studies, the Everyday, and the Politics of Intellectual Properties”
(2) Adrian Johns, “Intellectual Property and the Nature of Science”
(3) McKenzie Wark, “Information Wants to be Free (But is Everywhere in Chains)”
(4) Andrew Herman, Rosemary J. Coombe, & Lewis Kaye, “Your Second Life? Goodwill and the Performativity of Intellectual Properties in On-Line Games”
(5) Steve Jones, “Reality� and Virtual Reality�: When Virtual and Real Worlds Collide”
(6) Jane Gaines, “Early Cinema, Heyday of Copying: The Too Many Copies of L’arroseur arose”
(7) Gilbert B. Rodman & Cheyanne Vanderdonckt, “Music for Nothing or, I Want My MP3: The Regulation and Recirculation of Affect”
(8) David Sanjek, “Ridiculing the 'White Bread Original': The Politics of Parody and Preservation of Greatness in Luther Campbell a.k.a. Luke Skyywalker et al. v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc.”
(9) Eva Hemmungs Wirt�n, “Out of Sight and Out of Mind: On the Cultural Hegemony of Intellectual Property (Critique)”
(10) Siva Vaidhyanathan, “Afterword—Critical Information Studies: A Bibliographic Manifesto”
(11) Patricia R. Zimmermann, “Just Say No: Negativland's No Business”
These PDFs are reproduced with the permission of the Publisher. It has been published as a special thematic issue of Cultural Studies (Volume 20 Issues 2 and 3). Further details about Cultural Studies can be found at: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/09502386.asp.
Support Creative Commons!
Siva on WNYC Brian Lehrer's Show about Net Neutrality etc.
30 Issues in 30 Days: Does Congress Want to Ruin the Internet?
Siva Vaidhyanathan, cultural historian and media scholar at NYU. Author, Copyrights and Copywrongs: the Rise of Intellectual Property and how it threatens creativity
Time Warner vs. GooTube: It's On
Google faces copyright fight over YouTube
Jane Martinson
Friday October 13, 2006
The Guardian
Dick Parsons, the chairman and chief executive of Time Warner, fired a shot across the bows of Google, saying his group would pursue its copyright complaints against the video sharing site YouTube.com.
October 12, 2006
Star Wars Powerpoint
Here. Via Pen-Elayne.
A fully functional PC stuffed into an old newspaper vending machine.
From here.
Gender Politics
The makers of the fabulous street art and urban image compendium The Wooster Collective, known for their global reach and cross-generational appeal, have called Tokion Magazine on the carpet for holding a much vaunted "creativity conference" without any female speakers. You can read the conference organizers' excuses (um . . . I mean explanations) and the Wooster group's list of creative women who should have been invitees. (I liked seeing Ellen Lupton on their list.)
October 11, 2006
Chair Today, Gone Tomorrow
I have to say that I love YouTube's distributed approach to digital rhetoric and dread its impending Googlization. This YouTube video, now flagged as offensive to some, was widely broadcast on Spanish TV. It purports to show anti-poverty activists breaking into the presidential palace and swiping President Zapatero's designated chair.
Experts on presidential furnishings, architectural facades, and video editing now dispute its authenticity. But it has since nonetheless inspired several remixes, including this one. It turns out that an economics official and a UN group were also in on the prank, which you can read about on their blog.
Twist and Shout
The videos posted on YouTube and other online video venues by U.S. soldiers have caused copyright controversy and outrage about depictions of sometimes graphic violence or callousness toward Iraqi citizens. Here's a soldier's video that everyone can enjoy, although not all of them will believe that it's actually for real.
Cooking With Feminists
Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda went on the Colbert Report to publicize their Greenstone Media radio network. An unrelated two part interview with author Ariel Levy is available at the same URL. (NB: This is the show's "most recent video" page; eventually the search function might be necessary to locate these clips.)
Today is National Coming Out Day
More information here.
October 10, 2006
Split Personality
The Los Angeles Times can't figure out how it feels about file-sharing apparently. In an article today on piracy campaigns that target Christian teens on behalf of the Christian music industry, "Pirating Songs of Praise," the Times refers to both "stealing and swapping" music in one section, and how these young people "take and share songs" in another. Are they stealing or swapping? Are they taking or sharing? The Times doesn't seem to know for sure.
The article does give some credence to the argument that file-sharing builds the name recognition of artists and ultimately boosts sales, but it doesn't take seriously questions about how intellectual property itself can be reified in our current "Culture of the Copy," even though its own language shows considerable ambivalence about the the concept.
The LAT Times story also didn't get into some of the trickier issues that it could have pursued when it raised the contradiction of "Spread the Word" and "Thou Shalt Not Steal." By inserting discourses about theft, they've missed the real opposition at work. Religions must evangelize to survive and must disseminate their messages widely and freely, but many faiths also depend on hierachical systems based on secret knowledge. Thus the Scientologists don't want their holiest scriptures on the Internet, and the Vatican has begun copyrighting the official speeches and writings of the Pope.
Copyrighting Grandma's Recipes
There's an interesting article in Food and Wine about haute cuisine, patent law, and charges of plagiarism being hurled at rogue chefs that's definitely food for thought. "Recipe Burglar" describes how restaurant patrons may now be confronted with more intellectual property legal notices on the menu.
Shaw told me he hoped to convene a summit meeting with some of the smartest people in the food world to hammer out a workable model for copyrighting food. First, he’d propose changing the copyright code, possibly by making cuisine a subdivision of the existing category for sculpture or acknowledging recipes as a form of literary expression. For enforcement, Shaw leans toward creating a system like ASCAP, an association that collects composers’ royalties for public performances of songs—on the radio, in nightclubs and so on...
I wonder what people who study globalization and food history, like my Core Course colleague Yong Chen, will make of this new assault on free culture.
October 9, 2006
Dr. Bronner's Magic Soapbox
A documentary film by Sara Lamm:
Dr. Emanuel Bronner was a master soapmaker, self-proclaimed rabbi, and, allegedly, Albert Einstein's nephew.
In 1947, after escaping from a mental institution, he invented the formula for "Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap," a peppermint-infused, all-natural, multi-purpose liquid that can be found today in every American health food store. On each bottle of his soap, he printed an ever-evolving set of teachings he called "The Moral ABC," designed, in his words, "TO UNITE ALL MANKIND FREE!"
A human story about a socially responsible company, "Dr. Bronner's Magic Soapbox" documents the complicated family legacy behind the counterculture's favorite cleaning product -- Bronner's son, 68-year-old Ralph, endured over 15 orphanages and foster homes as a child, but despite difficult memories, is his father's most ardent fan...
Trailer here.
Uh Oh.
Google To Acquire YouTube for $1.65 Billion in Stock. What will this mean for Extreme Pogo Man? Or the Zidane Headbutt Remix?
Mapping the War on Terror
This is a map entitled "Selected CIA Aircraft Routes and Rendition Flights 2001-2006," which was created by supercool information designer and political activist John Emerson and posted on a Los Angeles billboard. You can read more about his project, "Mapping the War on Terror," on his blog Social Design Notes. (Via the social marketing blog Houtlust.)
Trademark Dilution Revision Act of 2006 Now Law
The official full text is available at GovTrack.us, which doesn't yet indicate that Bush has signed the bill into law, but this White House Press Release says he did so last Friday. The Act legislatively overrules a significant portion of the Supreme Court's 2003 opinion in Moseley v. V Secret Catalogue, which held that in order to be successful, a dilution plaintiff must prove actual dilution of its mark. Under the Act a mere likelihood of dilution will suffice. More information here.
October 8, 2006
The Marketing of Rosa Parks
This is sad. Here is one low point of the article:
“The great thing about dead celebrities is that they don’t show up and get in trouble any more,” said Jeff Lotman, the chief executive of Global Icons, a licensing agency in Los Angeles.
Here is another:
Woodlawn, owned by the national cemetery operator Mikocem, started charging a hefty premium for the crypts in the Parks chapel not long after the funeral. For the seven crypts nearest to Mrs. Parks, which fetched $45,000 to $50,000 last year, prices were raised to $60,000. More than three dozen other crypts in the outer hall of the chapel were repriced at $24,275 each as of last April; they had been $17,000 to $20,000 before Mrs. Parks’s interment.
The cemetery has said it raised the prices to help defray the cost of renovating the chapel and donating Mrs. Parks’s crypt. One of the hallway crypts now belongs to Proof, the rap artist who was killed in a gunfight last spring.
“You get to be buried with Auntie Rosa for a price,” said her nephew, Mr. McCauley, as his voice rose in disgust and frustration. “We feel like her name is cheapened.”
Read the whole thing.
Anna Politkovskaya Has Been Murdered
According to this NYT story:
Anna Politkovskaya, the veteran Russian journalist and author who made her name as a searing critic of the Kremlin and its policies in Chechnya, was found dead on Saturday in her apartment building, shot in the head with a pistol, the authorities and her colleagues said.
Ms. Politkovskaya, 48, was a journalist with few equals in Russia. She was a special correspondent for the Novaya Gazeta newspaper and had become one of the country’s most prominent human rights advocates.
In recent years, as the Russian news media faced intensifying pressure under the administration of President Vladimir V. Putin, she maintained her outspoken stance. And she became an international figure who often spoke abroad about a war she called “state versus group terrorism.”
She was a strident critic of Mr. Putin, whom she accused of stifling civil society and allowing a climate of official corruption and brutality.
She was found dead by a neighbor shortly after 5 p.m. A Makarov 9-millimeter pistol had been dropped at her side, the signature of a contract killing, Vitaly Yaroshevsky, the deputy editor of Novaya Gazeta, said in a telephone interview.
“We are certain that this is the horrible outcome of her journalistic activity,” he said. “No other versions are assumed.”
The entire article is here. Deepest sympathies to her family and friends. Read more about her life and career here and here and here.
"Because there was none left in the pantry"
Swiped from Dooce:
Funny Faux Movie Trailer
Pictures and Words
Above is a photo that accompanies a NYT story entitled: "Thailand Tourists: ‘Coup? What Coup?’" The thesis of the article is that tourism is still thriving in Thailand, but the unsurprising subtext is that Thai tourists are sort of clueless and self-centered. Here is an excerpt from the article:
Coup? What coup? That seems to be the attitude among travelers and travel professionals as the recent political turmoil in Thailand appears to have had little or no effect on tourism there. After all, the embattled prime minister, who had led a grudgingly accepted social order campaign in 2001 that mandated a 1 a.m. closing time for most of Bangkok’s bars and nightclubs, was not very popular among the city’s residents.
In fact, when tanks rolled into Bangkok, Thais presented soldiers with flowers and candy, and many troops gladly posed for photographs with foreigners. In Phuket, unperturbed beachgoers sipped “coup cocktails” at beachside bars. And if the opening of a new international airport outside Bangkok on Sept. 28 is any indication, the provisional rulers seem intent on making sure that the tourism industry — which Thai officials say draws more than 11 million tourists a year — continues apace. The Associated Press has reported that the $3.8 billion, six-million-square-foot airport — meant to be the centerpiece of Mr. Thaksin’s political legacy — can handle 76 flights an hour and 45 million passengers a year.
Of course, there are some very real concerns. Critics worry about the temporary suspension of certain civil liberties around the country, in particular, curbs placed on public gatherings, political activity and the local news media. The United States State Department and ministries in other countries in Australia and Britain have encouraged travelers to exercise extra caution.
Tour operators and hotels, however, report few cancellations. Luxury-tour operators like Abercrombie & Kent and Cox & Kings, for instance, said that none of their clients had chosen to change their plans.
Seven people were quoted in the article, four travelers to Thailand and three people who work in the travel industry. Judging by their first names, six were men, including all four of the travelers. Yet who is that in the photo, visually representing tourist obliviousness?
Job Description
Excellent explanation of the duties of the Executive in the President's own words.
October 7, 2006
Grrr.
The picture is from here, and while I wasn't personally inconvenienced by it, we have some drivers around here that do the same annoying thing.
What Does the "Best Boy" Do?
Find out by listening to Biff's Question Song
Elevator Illusion
This is freaky and may inspire bad dreams.
October 6, 2006
Show Us Your . . . Sexism
As Ann has pointed out, October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Of course, many feminists have been critical of the way that the issue has been delegated to cause marketing or social marketing, when it should be treated as the serious public health issue that it is. Here are two particularly odd social marketing campaigns that certainly reinforce norms about masculine voyeurism and the objectification of women's bodies.
The first is a campaign from the Netherlands created by LG&F, which used a Janet Jackson-styled staged "nip slip" by a Dutch celebrity for a viral video. You can see one of the later TV spots below, for which there is even a "making of" movie, which explains their boobie-baring technology. Not surprisingly, it seems to be all dudes behind the camera.
The second campaign about "What If Men Had Breasts?" has a "Rethink Breast Cancer" website associated with it, for which "shop" is the first category. You would think it was therapy for shopaholics rather than cancer victims.
For more on ideologies about gender and sexuality in social marketing, information on the HIV and social marketing panel held in New York is now online.
October 5, 2006
Font Firestorm
Since publishing her Free Font Manifesto, typography maven Ellen Lupton has received an impressive amount of grief from designers, some of which is captured on her new blog. "What if all farmers gave away their crop?" asked one reader. Another claimed that "the whole P2P community is breeding a generation of lazy idiots who think they can get anything for free." Lupton is no stranger to controversy, since she also stirred up passionate opposition during the D.I.Y. Debate in the professional design community. To defend Lupton from a Creative Commons perspective or to pile on, you can leave comments here.
Experts Say Copyright May Be Bad for You
The British Academy has released a report that contends "that the copyright system may in important respects be impeding, rather than stimulating, the production of new ideas and new scholarship in the humanities and social sciences." You can read the executive summary and the report itself. (Thanks to Steve Franklin and Maureen Burns for the heads up.)
Laughing about Flying
My high school friend Suzanne Taylor did this great standup about terror and air safety.
My Hometown
When I was a kid and the country was run by reasonable people (regardless of party), I used to wonder why my childhood Congressional district was the only one in Western New York to elect Republicans. Just before I was born, a man named William Miller represented Amherst, New York. He ended up being Barry Goldwater's running mate in 1964. Soon after I was born, my district elected a great quarterback who turned out to be a horrible representative, Jack Kemp.
Since Kemp left to be HUD secretary and pundit, the district belonged to Republican William Paxon, and lately Tom Reynolds. Reynolds runs the Republican Campaign Committee and was one of the people who did nothing to stop Foley when he could have done something.
That district was heavily Gerrymandered to pick up every Republican neighborhood in Western New York. Still, it was very pro-union and working-class. I just did not get it. But no Democrat has ever made it close.
Now we learn that Reynolds is in big trouble!
Can it be true?
On Fair Use as "small ball"
Michael Madison responds to my CJR article:
Siva Vaidhyanathan posted the text of his recent essay in the Columbia Journalism Review, Copyright Jungle. Amid what is an entirely helpful summary of copyright for journalists, the paragraph that caught my eye is this one:
"Fair use is designed for small ball. It’s supposed to create some breathing room for individual critics or creators to do what they do. Under current law it’s not appropriate for large-scale endeavors — like the Google library project. Fair use may be too rickety a structure to support both free speech and the vast dreams of Google."
If I had time to break down that paragraph sentence by sentence, phrase by phrase, I’d say something like:
Small ball? Not really. When “individual critics and creators [] do what they do,” they’re not playing small ball; they’re participating in criticism and other social forms of creation. (To pick a not entirely random metaphoric parallel, Derek Jeter sometimes plays small ball, sure, but he plays in the major leagues, and he plays for the Yankees, which are both pretty large scale things.) Whether or not fair use “scales,” as in Google’s case, isn’t really a question of whether or not Google plays small ball. The question is whether Google is doing the sort of thing that belongs in “the market,” subject to “market discipline.” If so, no fair use; Google needs to find some other argument, or it needs to pay the publishers and authors, or both. If not, then fair use; Google is on solid ground.
There’s a good case to be made that yes, indeed, Google is a market actor, and that Google can’t claim the legal or cultural privileges of being a “library,” and Siva has made that case eloquently and at length. But that case isn’t an indictment of fair use. It’s confirmation that fair use is a robust thing — when appropriately understood. Is “[f]air use []too rickety a structure to support both free speech and the vast dreams of Google”? Well, yes and no: Journalists ordinarily shouldn’t fear that fair use is such a rickety thing (though they often do, and I understand that, and that’s a topic for another day), because ordinarily, it’s not. Journalists play in their own metaphoric equivalent of the major leagues, and most of the time, when they do what they do, society doesn’t expect them to be market actors. Is fair use too thin to support everyone’s copyright utopia? On that point, certainly, Siva and I agree.
One of the problems with writing 3,500-word magazine articles (and 500-word blog posts) is that it's hard to do more than spark conversation. It's not easy to say what you really mean. This is a good example. So I hope another short blog post can extend and clarify what I mean by this. Michael did me a great favor by pushing my claims. What he wrote was right-on.
But I maintain that fair use is supposed to be "small ball." This refers to the "case-by-caseness" of the concept. Courts have traditionally leaned against broad proclamations about the role and scope of fair use. Even Congress, in Sec. 107, made it clear that the four factors are not an algorithm and that fair use should not yield general licenses to copy (or to prevent copying). I happen to think that fair use's "small ballness" is one of its best features. It means that we can rely on fair use to facilitate work that we and Congress and courts could not anticipate. It means that fair use may adopt itself to new forms of creativity and new creative and distributive technologies.
The problem with Google's effort is that it hopes to use fair use as a general license to create "snippets" that it claims would be defensible on fair use grounds IN ALL CASES. This is just not so.
Consider Haiku
Complete and distinctive work
Fair use? It depends.
What would a "snippet" of a Haiku look like? Would Google's computers -- without human oversight -- generate a snippet of just one line or three? Just four syllables of seven? Would either selection be fair use? The only responsible answer is "it depends." That's the only responsible answer to almost any fair use question.
My point is that the industrial-level claim of "snippets as fair use" ignores variable such as the fact that books are just as often collections of copyrighted works rather than (or, more properly, in addition to) complete copyrighted works. There is no "one-size-fits-all" behavior that we should declare is "fair" or noninfringing. It always depends.
The Google library project is a huge endeavor. It is not trivial in any way. It is not just another fair use case about a single work potentially infringing on another single work. It is not even about a device that changes consumer habits like the VCR did. It's of a scale beyond any other fair use case ever.
If we decide as a society that a huge full-text database of printed and bound material is essential to the future of research, education, creativity, democracy, etc., then by all means let's make it legal to build one. But let's not look for a loophole based on a flimsy precedent in one Federal Circuit as license to do all this scanning and posting. That's an absurd way to make policy.
The Google case should drive us to ask big questions about our libraries and the accessibility of knowledge generally. We should not rush to legal judgement any more than Google and these libraries should rush to publish a crappy database of page images (which is all they seem to be doing). Let's deliberate and create real laws and policies that make this happen in a reasonable and effective way. Is that so crazy?
I remain troubled by the "Google good/publishers bad" dichotomy that seemed to infect my copyright allies as soon as the Google project was announced two years ago (the judicious Michael Madison excepted, of course). In our rush to make something big happen, Google is relying on a part of the law that already carries too large a burden for its subtle and unpredictable nature.
There are other places in the Copyright Act that spell out specific rights and exemptions from liability for specific purposes and uses. Let's look toward enumeration through deliberation. If you believe in a republican form of government (while we still have one), you really should prefer that process to the lawsuit approach.
Hey!
Johnny Damon just his a huge three-run home run in the bottom of the fourth! Then Jeter followed with a double to the wall!
Now that's large ball!
Go Yankees!
“Stand Against Women Stoned to Death You Apathetic Monsters”
Did that post title get your attention? It got mine too. The original post it graces is here. Blogger Ali Eteraz writes: "This is a call for action to do our small part in coming to the assistance of the women in Iran who have been sentenced to death by stoning." He then lists a series of things that can be done to try to persuade the Iranian government not to carry out (or allow religious leaders to carry out) stoning sentences for "crimes against chastity."
I cannot vouch for the accuracy or authenticity of the information, but I urge you to go here and evaluate for yourself and consider taking the recommended actions. Action #3 is as follows: "Spread word about this rally in Rome protesting the decisions by the Iranian government." If you are lucky enough to be in Rome, the rally is tonight, please attend.
--Via Feministing, which also links to a report by Amnesty International that seven women are currently at risk of execution by stoning in Iran right now.
The Man Who Wanted to Fill Jack Valenti's Shoes
In this morning's story in The New York Times, "A Complex and Hidden Life Behind Foley's Public Persona," we learn the disgraced congressman's deepest, darkest secret, near the very end of the article.
When he realized that he would not become a Senator, friends of Mr. Foley said, he considered leaving the House. One of the jobs he coveted was head of the Motion Picture Association of America.
Good choice! Perhaps it can still work out. After all, the MPAA is an organization reputed to be even more hostile to gays and lesbians than the House of Representatives. Take that copy criminals.
October 4, 2006
Reminder: Guantanamo Teach-In at Seton Hall on October 5th
Details here! And, see also.
"Tequlia Mockingbird"
That's the title of Dahlia Lithwick's recent Slate coumn, in which she says:
The first case of the term is a pair of consolidated immigration cases—Lopez v. Gonzales, (out of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals) and Toledo-Flores v. United States (out of the 5th). Both cases turn on a question of statutory interpretation: Lopez and Toledo-Flores were noncitizens convicted for drug crimes that were felonies under their respective state laws, but misdemeanors under federal law. The Immigration and Nationality Act provides that noncitizens convicted of "aggravated felonies" can be deported. The question for the courts is whether "aggravated felonies" should include convictions that are felonies under state law, but only misdemeanors under federal law.
Lopez was arrested in South Dakota for cocaine possession. The INS, appeals court, and the 8th Circuit all agreed that his state drug felony supports deportation under the immigration laws. Toledo-Flores was convicted of the Texas state felony of possessing 0.16 grams of cocaine. The 5th Circuit affirmed his deportation.
Most of this morning's argument is a deathly parsing of the language in the Immigration and Nationality Act's definition of "aggravated felony," 8 U.S.C. § 1104 (43) (B), which sends us back to the definition of a "drug trafficking crime" under 18 U.S.C. § 924 (c). But in order to parse that, you need to close-read the Controlled Substances Act (that's 21 U.S.C. § 802, for those of you who didn't glaze over at the first sight of a §).
...
Timothy Crooks is the assistant federal public defender representing Reymundo Toledo-Flores and—as his client has already been deported to Mexico—he's in the unenviable position of having to persuade the justices that his case isn't moot. Crooks states that even though his client is no longer in the United States, "he is still subject to the supervised release portion of his sentence." An incredulous Chief Justice John Roberts wonders how a deportee can possibly be subject to his probation conditions if there is no one to supervise him. Crooks replies that his client is still not allowed to "use alcohol, or associate with persons … " (He is interrupted here.)Crooks adds that there are cases in which deportees have been extradited back to the United States based on violations of their supervised release, and that he may in the future want a visa to visit the United States, since his children live here. Justice Scalia says that "the doctrine of standing is more than an exercise in the conceivable. … Nobody thinks your client is really, you know, abstaining from tequila down in Mexico because he is on supervised release in the United States."
Nobody laughs. But then, nobody winces or flinches, either. Somehow, a remark that would have flattened us had a Souter spoken it is just a solid day at the office for Scalia. I have no idea where the tequila comment should register on the nation's macaca-meter. The more interesting question is about Scalia's deliberate carelessness with language, his sense that he is somehow above the sorts of linguistic delicacy the rest of us expect in our dealings with others. Indeed, he seems to think it's his obligation to be ever more reckless with his words, perhaps because he's about the only guy left who faces no consequences for his rhetorical body-slams.
Brought to You by the Department of Irony
From the Trademark Blog comes this news that, after a hard-fought legal battle over trademark infringement, a firm now owns the rights to that highly respected name "Foley," as of today. (Thanks to Ed Swaine for this fun fact.)
U.S. Police State gets stupider all the time
Bill O'Reilly's Fox "News" Show Repeatedly Claims Foley Was A Democrat?
I thought this had to be a joke, but maybe not. The Brad Blog has the story.
October 3, 2006
Check Out the Cocky Law Blawg!
The Cocky Law Blawg features "Legal Research Tips & Musings from the Coleman Karesh Law Library," and is based at the University of South Carolina School of Law, so you just know it's cool!
Will A Democrat Be Accused Soon?
Read these sentences: "A former senior Republican official in Congress says Foley was one of a handful of members and staff whose behavior with pages was being closely watched. But so far Foley is the only member whose overt sexual approaches have been documented." They close this article. The Republicans desperately want to make this "bipartisan" and I wouldn't put it past them to trump something up, either. How I hope it's just the paranoia speaking!
Free Font Manifesto
Ellen Lupton, a well-known graphic design professor and curator for the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, has just posted a Free Font Manifesto. The movement also has its own blog.
Here is a sample of Lupton's argument for what is almost a form of educational fair use:
Currently, most fonts created in the open source spirit are produced for small or underserved linguistic populations. Such fonts are “good” in the moral sense. In the future, designers may choose to make free fonts in the service of other social needs as well. For example, in developing countries graphic designers who seek to build a typographic culture in their home regions require more than a bare-minimum typographic vocabulary, and they often rely on pirated typefaces to do so. A richer selection of legitimate free fonts, clearly labelled and promoted as such in an educational way, might help to build respect for the larger commercial ecology of typeface design.
Eighties Nostalgia
Having just seen the movie American Hardcore, I have to share one of my favorite pieces of trademark-related ephemera. This is a shirt from the era of classic analog copy-machine punk rock graphic art, in which the logos of various bands have been scrambled into what the maker hopes will be a non-infringing product. Hah!
Alas, the movie itself was disappointing as a documentary and said little about any of the more interesting problems about gender, sexuality, race, class, and progressivism that characterized the SoCal scene as I remember it from my vantage point as a pre-teen and teen. Certainly, there was a lot of sexual harassment, homophobia, gay-bashing, political idiocy, and xenophobic hostility apparent to anyone who was ever in a mosh pit back then, a fact which the film-makers chose largely to leave out.
October 2, 2006
Sex Toys Under Texas Law
Is there a level playing field for Plagiarism?
... Two recent cases expose the increasingly elastic journalistic and publishing standards vis-�-vis plagiarism. In early July, The New York Post reported that John Barrie, whose company iParadigms provides a plagiarism tracking service, had found “textbook plagiarism” in Ann Coulter’s latest vehicle for personal enrichment and self-promotion, Godless. The passages in question, lifted from the San Francisco Chronicle, a Planned Parenthood publication, and a newspaper in Portland, Maine, ranged from 24 to 33 words each.
Coulter’s publisher Crown responded, “The number of words used by our author in these snippets is so minimal that there is no requirement for attribution.” Similarly, Universal Press Syndicate, which syndicates her column, dismissed the charges, “There are only so many ways you can rewrite a fact and minimal match text is not plagiarism.” As Tim Grieve asked in Salon, “How many words can an author steal before the theft counts as plagiarism?” The answer, it seems, rests on how much she’s raking in for her companies. ...
In another case, Valerie Lawson, author of Out of the Sky She Came, reportedly the definitive biography of Mary Poppins creator Pamela Travers, found much of her research presented as original reporting in a New Yorker article by Caitlin Flanagan. Flanagan interviewed Lawson for the piece, yet her book was never mentioned. The January/February 2006 Columbia Journalism Review reprinted the entire e-mail exchange between Lawson and New Yorker editors over the borrowing.
Lawson provided example after example of how previously unknown material about Travers magically appeared in the Flanagan article without attribution. “Much of her article could not be supported by her interviews,” noted Lawson dryly, because “the information came from papers and correspondence of people who are now dead.”
The New Yorker insisted that Flanagan had done all the supporting research herself, and replied that “credit given your book in our piece was adequate.” The magazine refused to publish Lawson’s initial letter of complaint, proposing, instead, that she write them a letter of gratitude for reminding people about the creator of Mary Poppins.
...
In our current hyper-commercial and anti-intellectual environment, it is the large corporations and publications that can afford to trademark, patent and copyright everything. Prominent and profitable journalists, unless their borrowing is exact and extensive, are protected. The Coulter case suggests that we may be on an even more slippery slope about how much word-for-word copying will be tolerated by bestselling writers in the future.
Meanwhile, for drones slogging away in archives, tracking down people to interview, checking their facts and struggling to develop fresh ideas about how to see the world and new arguments about history, culture and society, forget it. Your work is increasingly fair game.
"The Politics of Intellectual Property": Freedom ain't Free (except when it is)
Ted Striphas and Kembrew McLeod announce the release of the complete contents of Cultural Studies 20(2/3) (March/May 2006), a special issue on "The Politics of Intellectual Properties." By special agreement with the publisher, Taylor & Francis, the issue can be downloaded free of charge from http://www.indiana.edu/~bookworm and http://kembrew.com/academics/research.html.
About the issue: This special issue of Cultural Studies aims to create a genuinely interdisciplinary scholarly discussion of the politics of intellectual properties. While many areas of study pay lip service to the idea of interdisciplinary work, one remarkable thing about recent intellectual property research is the way it has produced an actual cross-pollination of scholarship. Drawing together prominent scholars from multiple disciplines, this issue of Cultural Studies speaks to many significant topical intersections--from library science, computer science, and the biological sciences to popular music, film studies, and media studies, to name a few. In addition to presenting compelling, cutting-edge research, this issue explores what cultural studies can contribute to public conversations about the politics of intellectual properties.
Issue Table of Contents:
(1) Ted Striphas & Kembrew McLeod, “Introduction—Strategic Improprieties: Cultural Studies, the Everyday, and the Politics of Intellectual Properties”
(2) Adrian Johns, “Intellectual Property and the Nature of Science”
(3) McKenzie Wark, “Information Wants to be Free (But is Everywhere in Chains)”
(4) Andrew Herman, Rosemary J. Coombe, & Lewis Kaye, “Your Second Life? Goodwill and the Performativity of Intellectual Properties in On-Line Games”
(5) Steve Jones, “Reality� and Virtual Reality�: When Virtual and Real Worlds Collide”
(6) Jane Gaines, “Early Cinema, Heyday of Copying: The Too Many Copies of L’arroseur arose”
(7) Gilbert B. Rodman & Cheyanne Vanderdonckt, “Music for Nothing or, I Want My MP3: The Regulation and Recirculation of Affect”
(8) David Sanjek, “Ridiculing the 'White Bread Original': The Politics of Parody and Preservation of Greatness in Luther Campbell a.k.a. Luke Skyywalker et al. v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc.”
(9) Eva Hemmungs Wirt�n, “Out of Sight and Out of Mind: On the Cultural Hegemony of Intellectual Property (Critique)”
(10) Siva Vaidhyanathan, “Afterword—Critical Information Studies: A Bibliographic Manifesto”
(11) Patricia R. Zimmermann, “Just Say No: Negativland's No Business”
“Aid: Can It Work?”
That is the title of this review essay by Nicholas Kristof, which primarily focuses on “The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good,” by William Easterly but mentions several other recent books analyzing foreign aid issues as well. Among some of Kristof’s observations are these:
In rural Indonesia, you see a cultural problem that aid can’t easily address: pregnant women and babies going hungry, even having to eat bark from trees, while their husbands are doing fine. It turns out that the custom is for the men and boys to eat their fill first. In Ethiopia, you greet parents cradling hungry babies and explaining that they have no food because their land is parched and their crops are dying. And two hundred feet away is a lake, but there is no tradition of irrigating land with the lake water, and no bucket; and anyway the men explain that carrying water is women’s work. In both cases you can see why many who know about aid say that changing the status and power of women is of prime importance if aid and development are to be effective. But it is far from clear how this can be done.
Discouraged, you move on to southern Africa. You see the very sensible efforts of aid groups to get people to grow sorghum rather than corn, because it is hardier and more nutritious. But local people aren’t used to eating sorghum. So aid workers introduce sorghum by giving it out as a relief food to the poor—and then sorghum becomes stigmatized as the poor man’s food, and no one wants to have anything to do with it.
You visit an AIDS clinic there, and see the efforts to save babies by using cheap medicines like Nevirapine to block mother-to-child transmission of HIV during pregnancy. Then the clinic gives the women infant formula to take home, so that they don’t infect the babies with HIV during breastfeeding. A hundred yards down the road, you see piles of abandoned formula, where the women have dumped it. Any woman feeding her baby formula, rather than nursing directly, is presumed to have tested positive for HIV, and no woman wants that stigma.
…
More broadly, however, aid can be effective even if it doesn’t boost economic growth. Last fall when I was traveling through the remote lands of eastern Niger, miles from nowhere, I dropped in on a clinic in the town of Zinder and found a heavily pregnant thirty-seven-year-old woman named Ramatou who was groaning and suffering convulsions; she was losing her eyesight. The doctors were more interested in me than in her, but they said she was about to fall into a coma from eclampsia, a common condition in Africa that kills pregnant women but is essentially unknown in America. (In developed countries it is detected early, as pre-eclampsia, and then treated so that it never develops into full-fledged eclampsia.)
Cockroaches skittered on the floor underneath Ramatou, as the doctors wheeled her into the small operating theater. The surgery was primitive but could not have been more effective: thirty minutes later, the doctor delivered a baby boy, and an hour later the mother was conscious and recovering. That clinic, financed by the UN Population Fund (whose funding the Bush administration has cut because of its support for China’s family planning program) and by Nigeria’s aid program (poor countries are donors, too), had just saved two lives before my eyes. I don’t know whether that aid will boost economic growth in Niger, but no one watching that drama could doubt that financing the clinic was money well spent.
….
In Ethiopia, I met Catherine Hamlin, an Australian obstetrician who is overdue for a Nobel Peace Prize. She runs a hospital that repairs obstetric fistulas, one of the most awful injuries humans can sustain. Typically, a fistula occurs when a physically immature teenage girl tries to give birth, and the baby gets stuck. After a few days without a doctor around to help, the baby is stillborn, and the girl is left with perforations between her vagina and bladder or rectum. She cannot hold her wastes, which trickle constantly down her legs. She smells. Her husband divorces her, she must build a hut on her own, and sometimes she is barred from using the village well. At the age of about fifteen, her life is ruined. Some two million girls and women suffer from this affliction around the world.
Dr. Hamlin repairs the fistulas, at the cost of about $450 per operation, supplied largely by individual donors and aid groups, and she brings these teenage girls back to life.[4] You visit her hospital, you see the girls with fistulas, and you just want to hand over your wallet to Dr. Hamlin. I don’t know what impact she has on Ethiopia’s economic development, but she seems to me a saint. Easterly is absolutely right that we need to figure out ways of delivering aid more efficiently, and he has written an immensely stimulating book. But no one who sees a girl with a fistula waiting patiently for an operation could doubt that foreign aid is often the very best investment in the world.
Via Frank Pasquale.
NB: A review of the Easterly book by Amartya Sen, which was published in Foreign Affairs, is accessible here.
October 1, 2006
The Anti-Boobie-Thon
If y'all go visit I Blame the Patriarchy between now and midnight Tuesday, Austin TX time, but somehow refrain from sending Twisty Faster a picture of your breasts, she will send money (a dollar per site visit!) to Breast Cancer Action. Details here.
The Public Expression of Religion Act
This bill would bar the recovery of attorneys' fees to those who win lawsuits asserting constitutional and civil rights in cases brought under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. It passed the House on 9/27, with 218 Republicans and 26 Democrats voting in favor, and 6 Republicans and 166 Democrats voting against.
The ACLU's view of this bill is as follows:
The ability to recover attorneys’ fees in civil rights and constitutional cases, including Establishment Clause cases, is necessary to help protect the religious freedom of all Americans and to keep religion government-free. The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment protects the religious liberty of all Americans.
People who successfully prove the government has violated their constitutional rights would, under the bill, be required to pay their own legal fees -- often totaling tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. Few citizens can afford to do so. But more importantly, citizens should not be required to do so where the court finds that the government has violated their rights and the Constitution.
The elimination of attorneys’ fees would also deter attorneys from taking cases in which the government has acted unconstitutionally. In many cases, individuals would be unable to obtain legal representation to defend themselves when the government violates their religious freedom. The bill would apply even to cases involving illegal religious coercion of public school children or blatant discrimination against particular religions.
Update: And on a related note, this NYT article on a recent "Red Mass" notes:
This year, the Mass was celebrated by the new leader of the Washington Archdiocese, Archbishop Wuerl, to bless a Supreme Court that has a Catholic majority for the first time. The five Catholics on the court are Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Samuel A. Alito Jr.
Daniel Crane
PSoTD observes:
I keep reading these conservative blogs that talk about the Mark Foley scandal, and they like to bring up the name of Gerry Studds, but they never bring up Daniel Crane, Republican of Illinois, who was censured at the same time as Studds for having sex with an underage Congressional page. Isn't that odd?