Copyright Law
Scrivener's Error 
Law and reality in publishing from the author's side of the slush pile.
Post Frequency: 9.8/day Last Entry: November 19, 2009 at 12:50:00 Recent Entries: 334
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Google Book Search Settlement
Posted on November 19, 2009Tangent: A Short Gloss on Antitrust (1) The Settlement (in essay form)The Lawsuit (in essay form) While I was in the midst of expounding upon the antitrust implications of the GBS settlement proposals - and, indeed, whether any settlement could pass antitrust scrutiny absent legislative approval - I realized that I was using a great many technical terms and concepts...
Google Book Search Settlement
Posted on November 16, 2009Settlement 2.0: The Discordant Melody Remains the Same The Settlement (in essay form)The Lawsuit (in essay form) Version 2.0 of the settlement has arrived. It's as much of a monster as was its predecessor, and really does very little to actually address the concerns that purportedly led to the changes...
GBS: Rearranging the Deck Chairs on the Titanic
Posted on November 14, 2009Just a quick status update: The parties-plaintiff did file their "revised" settlement documents this evening. I've got downloaded copies off of the filing system, and I'll point to them from a publicly accessible site when they're available and verified...
It's a Job, Not an Adventure
Posted on November 11, 2009In this time of job losses and economic hardship, it's especially frustrating to see people who have jobs not doing them. One of the biggest problems with so-called "tort reform" is that it's so one-sided: It focuses exclusively on "frivolous" claims without considering frivolous defenses and/or unfair defense tactics...
GBS: No Revised Settlement Today
Posted on November 09, 2009The Settlement (in essay form)The Lawsuit (in essay form) As Gomer Pyle might have said, "Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!" The "parties" in the GBS litigation won't have their "revised" settlement ready for filing today (09 November 2009), and have asked permission to actually file it on Friday, 13 November 2009...
Tearing Down Walls and Building New Ones
Posted on November 09, 2009Another twentieth anniversary... As anyone who knows me has heard me complain about at length, I despise Apple. It's not that the technology is inherently bad, but that arrogance of "Steve knows best" that comes through the closed architecture, the inability to adapt products easily to one's own needs (e...
Feuerwerken
Posted on November 05, 2009Next Monday, perhaps we'll be chanting Remember, remember, the ninth of November The Authors Guild/Google Books plot . . . as we try to slog through a 350-plus-page "amended settlement agreement." But, for today, I'll just turn toward the AG's offices in New York and implore them to go Fawkes themselves...
Bumper Bambi
Posted on November 02, 2009Still on the road, so these are probably roadkill sausage links. Language learning, language diversity, and the difficult determination of whether the Tower of Babel is a good thing. Walter Laqueur argues that Russia's fate is struggle with imaginary demons, like Islam...
Ever Heard of "Grey"?
Posted on October 28, 2009The theme today appears to be overgeneralization... At GalleyCat, there's yet another whinge about problems with the short story market. The major difficulty with this particular whinge is that it has an exceedingly narrow view of what constitutes a "short story": If it's material that might conceivably have a dragon, or a spaceship, or a detective, on the cover, it doesn't count...
Caffeine Deficiency
Posted on October 26, 2009Is it just me, or are zombies more in need of caffeine than brains? Orwell was right about pervasive surveillance on Airstrip One - just about fifteen years off in his estimate of when it would happen. Sometimes even the Daily Telegraph has something perceptive to say about publishing...
High-Nitrite Lunch
Posted on October 23, 2009Just a few quick bites of link sausage today: While out and about yesterday dealing with medical paperwork, I stopped by the local outlet of [famous menswear store's name deleted to save embarassment - on their part] and began browsing. I noted a new display for different monogramming options for dress shirts, and busted out laughing at part of it: RNWII monogram may include up to 4
Hold the Mustard
Posted on October 22, 2009Just a little afternoon link sausage snack: Bigger isn't always better, as Professor Johnson notes. Now apply this lesson to "big media" - not just NewsCorp, but Pearson, and Bertelsmann, and Hachette, and Viacom, and... while remembering that it's not just the economy that's at issue when Big Media gets too big: It's the First Amendment (historians may recall the Hearst situation of a
Your Tuesday Sausage Platter
Posted on October 20, 2009A particularly diverse set of link sausages. No guarantees on species... or planet of origin. Dance has nothing to fear but dance itself. And critics. And the public. And the financial downturn. And the music available for dance. And... If you really, really need any proof that the S&M dorks are in charge in publishing, ponder S&S's decision to sign up a YAish trilogy based on an iPhone
GBS Tangent: Sergey Brin's Ignorant Defense
Posted on October 17, 2009Irony. It's like goldy and bronzy, but it's made out of iron. It is also well beyond the capabilities of any of the participants in the Google Book Search litigation to recognize... especially when it's coming out of their own mouths. As I noted a couple of days ago, Sergey Brin (one of the founders of Google) had his seemingly empty head handed to him in a very short, sharp response at the NYT
Under the Influence?
Posted on October 15, 2009Another disjointed, only marginally sausage-like set of links. It's a good think that my literary license can't be revoked for drivelling under the influence of children... GBS Status Update Two appeals by disgruntled, rejected intervenors have been filed (docket numbers 752 and 756)...
Not Sausages Yet
Posted on October 12, 2009IP nerd second. Civil procedure geek third. Parent first. Thus, the unplanned silence for the last few days, as I've been through the sausage grinder myself and - as ugly as internet link sausages usually are - nobody wants to see that. In any event, there are two obvious items that I should comment upon quickly, and a whole bunch of others that will just have to wait...
GBS: Status Update
Posted on October 07, 2009The Settlement (in essay form)The Lawsuit (in essay form) This is a status update only; I am working on some more-substantive responses to Professor Tim Wu's recent piece, which fit in nicely with where the long-form-version of the comments on the settlement was going anyway...
Exactly Half
Posted on October 06, 2009Extra chunky abstract internet link sausages today! That's largely because the easily digestible ones are getting a bit rancid, due to Life intervening between the sausages and your delicious platter. It's also because, as your dog would tell you when chewing on used facial tissue, it's better with chunks...
First Monday in October
Posted on October 05, 2009Still here... just dealing with two sick remoras and the cold from hell. I offer only one bite of internet sausage links this morning (I sneezed on the rest of the sausage, so - like a typical cheap breakfast place - I just cut that part off and kept it for a casserole), and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the sexual proclivities of New York-based talkshow hosts: One American export that
Sausages for Breaking Fast
Posted on September 29, 2009No sausages yesterday. At least not during daylight hours (as if I were observant - or had even been raised in that tradition - anyway, or even, as an atheist, cared). Doonesberry's focus a while back on soldiers' playlists on iPods now has some academic respectability (or at least enough for a Monday morning)...
No Surprises
Posted on September 28, 2009Financial fraud shock horror: Financial regulatory authorities have been captured. First, a little vocabulary: In administrative law, "agency capture" refers to agencies that are essentially captives of the industries/businesses that they are supposed to regulate...
GBS: Status Hearing Instead of Fairness Hearing
Posted on September 24, 2009Judge Chin has granted the motion I described yesterday (PDF, signed but not docketed), deferring the fairness hearing that was scheduled for 07 October 2009. Unfortunately, the way his order is written makes sense to lawyers... but will scare nonlawyers into thinking that they're never going to be heard...
GBS: Named Plaintiffs Go Streaking
Posted on September 23, 2009GBS item: The alleged plaintiffs have filed a motion proposing a delay in the scheduled fairness hearing date (07 October 2009) (PDF) so they can modify the settlement's terms after having a new orifice ripped in it by the United States last Friday. At least they're learning a little bit: Plaintiffs also are uncertain, at this stage, whether any additional form of notice, however limited,
Link Sausages Wrapped in Falling Leaves
Posted on September 22, 2009Gee, I haven't been raptured away. I must not be one of the righteous elect. Darn. Congratulations to the 2009 MacArthur Foundation Fellows - the recipients of the "genius grants." If there's a theme this year, it seems to be "what the eyes reveal": six of the grantees work in the visual arts...
All You Shouldn't Eat
Posted on September 21, 2009A bonus-sized, intellectual-heartburn-inducing, conscience-weight-gain-encouraging platter of internet link sausages this Monday morning that has been poaching since late last week! Just what you need before coffee (although a couple of these may induce keyboard spew, so beware; and no, I'm not going to warn you which ones)...
GBS: US Objects to Settlement
Posted on September 19, 2009The Settlement (in essay form)The Lawsuit (in essay form)The United States has filed a brief opposing the GBS settlement (PDF) that doesn't go nearly far enough... but it is probably sufficient to cause Judge Chin to reject the settlement as it is written...
GBS: Fairness Hearing Procedures
Posted on September 17, 2009In an order issued yesterday, Judge Chin has established some parameters for the fairness hearing in the Google Book Search settlement brouhaha. In the order that y'all should care about: The hearing will go forward on 07 October 2009 at 10am, as previously scheduled...
One, Two, Three, Many
Posted on September 16, 2009Next year, all of us here in the U S of A will be doing something we do once a decade - participating in the Census. And then, the real fun will start, in smoke-filled rooms across the nation: the amazing spectacle known as "redistricting." It seems to me that most redistricting arguments - if, that is, one is not a cynic who views "redistricting" as "partisan incumbent protection" - are about
Plop Plop Fizz Fizz
Posted on September 16, 2009These sausages are virtually guaranteed to cause severe intellectual indigestion. As if anyone needed further proof that mechanisms used to perpetuate upper-class privilege are even more dangerous in the hands of the nouveau bourgeosie, British libel law is being asserted against a rhetorical flight of fancy criticising extreme claims for chiropractic care - and it's harming science
Chunky Monday Sausage Links
Posted on September 14, 2009It's better with chunks... or so instructor pilots claim when taking cadets up on "orientation rides"... (I may be joking, but they really do.) Sarah Weinstein muses on the 17-book deal just signed by James Patterson with Hachette... all for publication in the next two years' worth of production...
GBS Settlement: No Professional Courtesy Here
Posted on September 11, 2009The Settlement (in essay form)The Lawsuit (in essay form) Before getting into the substantive problems with the Google Books Search settlement, here are a few context updates: In an admirable attempt to make public documents truly public - that is, not behind the required-by-Congress ID-wall/paywall of the PACER system10 - one can find almost all of the filed documents in the lead case at The
Link Sausage Number Nine
Posted on September 09, 2009Reality intruded on my plans to start dumping immediately on the GBS settlement again (besides, I'm digesting the last-minute objections), so here are some tasty link sausages to keep you, umm, entertained in the meantime... Fanboys everywhere had mixed news yesterday...
Unofficial End-of-Summer Barbecued Link Sausages
Posted on September 07, 2009Labor Day, eh? Time to throw a vegetarian on the barbecue; remember, The Complete Vegetarian is a cookbook! Giving the excuse (if given at all, that is) of tough economic times, publishers are cancelling books... again. This should remind those who were paying attention a few years back - both of you - of the excuses offered by publishers in the face of the purported "crisis" allegedly
Friday Link Sausage Fry-Up
Posted on September 04, 2009Rather chunky sausages this morning: As the culmination of an investigation started nearly a decade ago by Writer Beware (the anti-literary-scam watchdog of SFWA, which was recently joined as sponsor by MWA), the Florida Attorney General has sued a scam literary agency/vanity press based in Boca Raton for fraud (for more details, see Jim Macdonald's restrained screed in five parts - the link
Where's a Mohel When You Need One?
Posted on September 03, 2009There's a mini-controversy brewing/steeping about Lev Grossman and some comments he made in a WSJ essay about novels, modernism, and so on. I was tremendously amused when I saw that essay; without even checking anything, my immediate reaction was "Must be a Yalie...
It Was an Overcast in September
Posted on September 01, 2009and, for Europe, the clocks were striking thirteen. George Orwell's diary for seventy years ago today rather starkly says it: Invasion of Poland began this morning. Warsaw bombed. General mobilization proclaimed in England, ditto in France plus martial law...
Uncaffeinated Monday Internet Link Sausages
Posted on August 31, 2009Just a couple of items today, then back to the paper mines. One note about the Google Book Search settlement, beyond my imprecation yesterday to actually make a decision, guys: Nobody is really talking about the elephant in the room. I won't analyze it in public before the opt-out deadline Friday...
Google Book Search Opt-Out Deadline
Posted on August 30, 2009... is this Friday, 04 September 2009, unless again extended by the Court (a distinct possibility, but will depend upon the results of the fairness hearing in October, so don't count on it). If you want to opt out, you need to do so one of two ways: You may use the electronic form on the settlement website...
Imaginary Time
Posted on August 27, 2009PW shock horror: an editorial criticizing the publishing industry that almost makes sense. With all due respect to Mr Rushkoff - and he's is due some respect for having the balls to say what he said in the first place - he has missed a more fundamental problem: Counterfactual management theory driven by the relentless quarterly report...
On the Passing of a Lord
Posted on August 26, 2009Nay weep not [...] for thy Brother's crimes; O gen'rous Boy, thou shar'st but half his blood, Yet lov'st beyond the kindness of a Brother. But I'll reward thy Vertue. Follow me. My Lord, you wait the King who comes resolv'd To quit the Toils of Empire, and divide His Realms amongst his Daughters, Heaven succeed it, But much I fear the Change...
Squirrel Sausages
Posted on August 25, 2009Substitute "Springfield" for "Washington" and that's about right. What screen resolution makes sense for your webpage or blawg/blog? A Seattle company provides some data of dubious applicability (snurched from RightReading) that can be reanalyzed...
Link Sausage Avatars
Posted on August 21, 2009Even more miscellaneous than usual. As this video excerpt demonstrates, it's important to know your audience. In this instance, the dining-room table accused a speaker of supporting a "Nazi policy" while forgetting that the speaker in question is both Jewish and an acknowledged - hell, avowed and proud of it - homosexual...
I Don't Vouch for the Chunks in These Sausages
Posted on August 17, 2009Monday. Again. An academic study on the whys, wherefores, hows - and flaws - of alternate and secret histories is just mindbogglingly reflexive in its own implications for a secret history of books reviews. And that's only part of the fun! What's next in the continuation-of-the-"classics" meme (and I don't just mean alternate histories)? Now we're seeing complaints that style matters, and
Costs and Benefits
Posted on August 13, 2009Thought for the day: The video on the right is also - unintentionally - a window into the fair use problem. Does Spinal Tap itself count as a parody, or is it a satire? If it is, in fact (or at least in law, since in fact it clearly is), a parody, how many levels of parody count as fair use? How about the dubious idea of "transformativeness"? Where does self-parody enter into this? Most
I'll Remove the Cause
Posted on August 09, 2009... but not the symptom, this weekend of Anticipation (2009's World Science Fiction Convention) in Montreal. Fallout from the ghostwritten science articles I noted: A medical professor demonstrates - using social networking theory - that the review article requires further review for its scientific value...
Congratulations
Posted on August 06, 2009Congratulations to Justice-designate Sonia Sotomayór, who in the past few minutes was confirmed 68–31 by the Senate (Senator Kennedy didn't vote "on account of illness"). On one tentacle, this is good news because the Court is back to full strength in time for the new Justice to fully participate in the rehearing of Citizens United before the new Term starts in October...
Grinding Away
Posted on August 05, 2009Before jumping into the sausage grinder, a little historical note: Remember the so-called plot patent (what the applicant called a "storyline patent")? The examiner rejected the application1 on August 28, 2008 because it did not consist of patentable subject matter - one of the two objections I noted...
I Think We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat
Posted on August 03, 2009Cue the cellos! It's Lawyer Shark Week on Discovery Channel! PW is on the block - again. This can't help being a good thing; it will keep the staff nervous, and perhaps looking a little bit harder at those press releases they so blithely reprint, even if the sale doesn't go through...
Die Grippe
Posted on July 29, 2009Travel grippe finally caught up with me. Urggh. Thus, these sausages got some extra aging and "seasoning." Even more so than usual, you really don't want to know how these link sausages were made. William Shatner (and his hairpiece) have been up to interesting things lately...
Hollywood Sausages
Posted on July 25, 2009Just like any other sausages, you really can't examine the ingredients of movies too carefully, or you'll be completely turned off. Like the trailers, which indicate pretty unmistakeably that the War on Drugs has not interdicted any of the hallucingens commonly consumed by the idiots who green-light this stuff...
Link Sausages of Unusual Size
Posted on July 24, 2009Today's publishing/IP sausages probably don't belong on the same plate... if only because there's not much room left after the first one. And I apologize for the lateness of that particular sausage - I spent a lot of time toning down my own ire. Some YA critics feel cheated by the new Justine Larbalestier cover...
All-Natural Lean Meat Fillings
Posted on July 21, 2009These sausages are a bit meatier than many of those of late - I've been saving up some musings while away, and several stories finally broke that were awaiting meaty treatment. (But not as meaty as the sausages at Brats Brothers Gourmet Sausage Grill in Sherman Oaks...
Goodbye, Uncle Walter
Posted on July 20, 2009Back from Planet California. Opposing counsel in that appeal I was out there to help handle (I did the prep work; my colleague actually argued) blew it. There's an old aphorism that one cannot win an appeal at oral argument, but one can lose it. Although the court's remarks prior to beginning the argument indicated that we had won on the briefs, opposing counsel did not help her client, and her
Road Sausages
Posted on July 15, 2009I'm out on Planet California for a couple more days here, helping a colleague out on an appellate matter later in the week. Thus, this sausage collection is somewhat more organic1 than usual. It is definitely another planet out here: Breakfast places don't open until 7am, and the major-chain pharmacy nearest to the hotel in LA didn't have the local paper (the much-maligned LAT) yet, because
Uninspected Sausages
Posted on July 09, 2009No USDA inspections... not that the government could competently inspect much of anything on the 'net anyway. Copyright Office fees are changing on 01 Aug 2009 - mostly up. Copyright registration is one of those self-perpetuating little annoyances: Once the system is in place, it's awfully hard to keep it from becoming more expensive over time, and there's really no longer a justification
Gambling in Chief Illiniwek's Admissions Offices
Posted on July 06, 2009I think I've finally figured out why the Chicago Tribune is so bent on excoriating the "clout list" at the University of Illinois: U of I undergraduate admissions standards - and, in particular, to (in order) the College of Engineering, the College of Business, and the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences - are now too high for any of the so-called "journalists" at the Tribune to meet...
It Was a Dark and Stormy Link Sausage
Posted on July 02, 2009... and the ingredients were blending their flavours as teh internets churned themselves from chopped striated muscle of castrated young steer, and of pig that had never seen daylight, and of turkey that was so stupid it wouldn't recognize daylight - and, not incidentally but not officially, the stray fingertips of illegal immigrants staffing the processing plant somewhere in Iowa - and stuffed
Last, not First, Monday
Posted on June 29, 2009Caffeine- and sleep-deprived. I think I'll poach the next batch of sausages in Turkish coffee. In the "free speech for me, but not for thee" department, consider the forthcoming documentary film Some Speech Is More Free Than Others... which, if done correctly, couldn't be shown on broadcast television because it would necessarily include the routine in the clip on the right...
Brutus
Posted on June 26, 2009The putative "king of pop" is dead. Long live the king, whoever he may be. I come here not to praise Jackson, but to bury him. Friends, literati, countrymen - lend me your pixels. Being a grouchy SOB myself, I'm not going to spread praise where little or none is deserved...
Sausage Links Ouroboros
Posted on June 25, 2009... because they just go around in a circle until they end up where they started, biting their own tails. And if that's not a mixed-enough metaphor, just consider that they're sausages... In a particularly delicious bit of reflexive irony, Chris Anderson - one of the advocates of long-tail economics, and especially for creative works - has been accused of plagiarism by the Virginia Quarterly
Bleary-Eyed Monday Morning Link Sausages
Posted on June 22, 2009I'm bleary eyed, not the link sausages - the grinder did a pretty good job with their eyes. Here's an amusing thought: ROTC for spies proposed. I wonder if they'll be required to wear trenchcoats on campus uniform day? With the number of work-study and grad-school students who end up working in places at any decent college/university who will have access to the data necessary to figure out
At Any t > 0...
Posted on June 21, 2009Jay Lake points to some interesting, if ultimately incomplete (and therefore unlikely - but not impossible! - to be correct) comments on the dubious future of the publishing "industry". For one thing, Mr Stevens' article fails to acknowledge that there is no publishing industry; there are, instead, thirteen (or perhaps eleven) distinct publishing niches with various degrees of cross-niche
These Internet Sausages Neither Kashrut Nor Halal
Posted on June 19, 2009It may be Friday, but (as indicated by the last three items below) I have no objection to pork products. It's one thing to honor one's ancestry; it's another thing entirely to be bound by it (and what is the binder in these dubious internet sausage links, anyway...
Buggy Sausage Links
Posted on June 17, 2009No chocolate-covered ants here - just ant-covered sausages. Dodgy accounting extends to "self-sufficient" athletic departments, which leads to yet another question regarding college athletics: Particularly for public universities, are they paying a minimum wage? Contrast this objectively verifiable problem with Illinois's right wing papers' continuing bleating concerning the U of I's
Sausage Pot Pourri
Posted on June 12, 2009This one's for you, Dittoheads: Did altruism arise from the pointy end of a spear? I suspect this says much more about dubious assumptions in the model than it does about anything else... because "altruism" appears in species (such as T. truncatus) with no comparable analog to intra-species warfare...
Kangaroo Sausages
Posted on June 10, 2009...because they're just hoppin' off the grill, and they're not made from the usual mix of ingredients. Here's an interesting piece in the NYT on bullying and how it (might) be prevented. The real problem with the article is that it doesn't go nearly far enough, as it's limited to children...
How Much Is That Jurist In the Window?
Posted on June 08, 2009Just some side thoughts - the paperwork snowstorm has not abated (if anything, it's worse). Today, the Supreme Court decided that the title question of this post does, in fact, have an answer... and if it is "too much," then the judge may not hear certain cases...
Spring Snowstorm
Posted on June 05, 2009A bit snowed under in paperwork for a few days here... at the moment, I'm just sticking my head out of the drifts for a moment to catch some air. Some humid, pollen-and-cropdust-filled Midwest farmbelt air, but it'll have to do. Some PIs do shoot first...
No Caffeine
Posted on June 01, 2009These aren't diet, but they are uncaffeinated. Appellants' briefs will be filed today in Post-Tasini (aka Muchnick). Amicus briefs supporting reversal are due in a week; the opposing brief is due on 07 August. Why should y'all care? This case will try to answer this question definitively: Does 17 U...
nRT/V
Posted on May 30, 2009I'm pissed at the Illinois papers - including (but not limited to) the Nazi-Zeitung - for their current flagwaving over the admissions process at the University of Illinois.1 Most "premier" universities - and, sadly, for many of its undergraduate programs the University of Illinois probably does not qualify as such - have this little thing called a "letter of recommendation" in each candidate's
Grouchy, Chunky Sausages
Posted on May 29, 2009Oscar the Grouch ain't got nothin' on me. Professor Tushnet points out something important about the new Star Trek movie: it ignores the difference between individuals and institutions. And, not incidentally, ignores science... but that's another story entirely; or, perhaps, just a story - or at least back story - that should have been in the movie...
Geeky Leftover Sausage Links
Posted on May 27, 2009OK, so I didn't get around to posting again yesterday. Consider these the leftovers. At least for IP nerds like me (that's right: I'm a civil procedure geek, but an IP nerd), there's a fascinating piece at the IP Financing blawg that asks how much should be spent on anticounterfeiting measures...
Coloring Not FDA Approved
Posted on May 26, 2009I got them post-holiday back-to-the-daily-grind blues - which does not reflect any ingredient of the following sausages. RIP Professor/Dean/Chancellor Cribbet. Although the Cribbet & Johnson property casebook is not considered the most "rigorous," in many senses it is: It pays attention to language, time, and context in a way that its competitors don't, and it provides a solid foundation for
Holiday Weekend Annoyances
Posted on May 24, 2009I'm easily annoyed. The vegetarian intended for our holiday-weekend vegetarian barbecue crawled out of the marinade. We'll just have to substitute lamb for beef (both are vegetarians... usually, anyway; ok, it was a really bad movie, but you get the point)...
Weekend Update
Posted on May 23, 2009As we head into the Memorial Day weekend, my preparations for a vegetarian barbecue proceed forthwith. Hopefully, the vegetarian won't crawl out of the marinade this year... An interesting article discloses some practical flaws in long-tail theory...
This Augers Poorly
Posted on May 21, 2009Mostly ridicule today. Surprised? Don't try this one at home: ER doctor saves patient with standard household drill... under telephone guidance from a neurosurgeon. GBS "news": Google agrees to give some libraries that provide books for scanning a say on price...
Leftover Barbecued Internet Sausage Links
Posted on May 19, 2009Slightly more finely and evenly ground than the last couple of batches: Sublieutenant Ogilvy is as alive as ever and living near Kaluga. Ironic that post-Stalinist Russia is adopting Stalinist Soviet tactics satirized by Orwell... I'm not sure which is more disturbing: The Poz's new book on the financial crisis that rejects a pure-market, laissez-faire solution for everything...
Blind Justice
Posted on May 15, 2009As Arlo Guthrie said, here's another case of typical American blind justice, and there's nothin' [anyone] can do about it. Or should. There's a longrunning dispute over the name and logo of the Washington Redskins, including several back-and-forth trips between the US District Court for the District of Columbia and the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia...
Slightly Smaller Chunks
Posted on May 14, 2009These sausages remain chunkier than normal. "News" that Amazon wants to be a publisher, starting with "reprinting" self-published books... that is, the most-desperate market of authors least likely (and able) to negotiate terms. Combine this with some disturbing news out of Penguin USA about quasi-in-house authors (unfortunately, the sausages available for linking on this one appear to be
Rather Chunky Internet Sausages
Posted on May 11, 2009Diving right into the sausage grinder, set for unusually large chunks... In the "when not to call a joker the ace of spades" department, Writer Beware and Lee Goldberg have an unplanned dialogue on efforts to make vanity publishing, and to a lesser extent self-publishing, sound more respectable...
Google Library Project Settlement (tangent)
Posted on May 10, 2009How You Lose Matters The Settlement (in essay form)The Lawsuit (in essay form) One of the major problems with the Google Book Search settlement is buried in the field definition: It is limited to books for which there is a valid, and renewed, copyright registration...
Where What Is?
Posted on May 08, 2009Just a couple of quick thoughts today, then (hopefully later today, if no more emergencies arise) that analysis of the civil procedure opinion I promised earlier this week and how it implies that the Google Book Search settlement is dead in the water...
Undercaffeinated Monday
Posted on May 04, 2009Bad week end. Bad weekend. Monday. Urghh. An extremely important opinion implicating both In re Electronic Database Litigation (which I've referred to as Post-Tasini and is currently better known as Muchnick) and the Google Book Search settlement came out about an hour ago...
Swining Along
Posted on April 29, 2009In no particular order, a few thoughts on events yesterday: The James Bond wing of the Republican Party has a new enemy: S.P.E.C.T.E.R.. No doubt we'll be encouraged to think he's just as evil as Blofeld or any other Bond villain. I just want the Bond girl, myself; I'm not all that picky about which one...
Google Book Search Breaking News
Posted on April 28, 2009The determination dates in the Google Book Search settlement have been delayed by order of the court (Chin, J.) (Docket No. 89). The new critical dates are: Opt-out or file objection: 04 September 2009 Claim works: 10 January 2010 (no change) Fairness hearing: 07 October 2009, 1000
Monday Pain (and I don't mean "bread")
Posted on April 27, 2009So I got a late start today. I'm still recovering from all the muscles I sprained on last Friday's item. RIP J.G. Ballard, who never stopped writing speculative fiction even when commercial considerations demanded that he deny that he wrote speculative fiction...
Obvious to Whom?
Posted on April 24, 2009Oh, dear. Oh, my. For the moment, we'll just start with a quotation from a new patent opinion. The plaintiffs brought suit for patent infringement against the defendant, and prevailed in the district court, precipitating an appeal that, among other things, challenges the patent's validity...
Cognitive Dissonance... Again
Posted on April 23, 2009Just a short piece of miscellaneous drivel today, as I'm busy writing up papers on the Google Book Settlement (assisting counsel to several objectors) that are going to make me even more enemies in New York than I already have. The short version: Various silences in the proposed settlement demonstrate that both the proposed named plaintiffs and their counsel are inadequate representatives for the
What Ingredient List?
Posted on April 20, 2009It's Monday. I haven't had enough caffeine (and this is a surprise?). Thus, no guarantees on what went into the sausage grinder, let alone what came out. Maybe some of it was spoo. RIP J.G. Ballard. The price of not having a First Amendment is that to a repressive government, reporters are intelligence operatives...
Tea-Smoked Sausages
Posted on April 16, 2009Before getting into the miscellany, a note on the Google Book Search settlement: There's a decision deadline coming up on 05 May 2009. Don't wait until the last moment to opt out or file an objection. And, although this is not legal advice for any particular situation, I am unable to discern any set of circumstances in which participating in the proposed settlement by doing nothing makes economic
The Ides of April
Posted on April 15, 2009Justice Holmes remarked that taxes are the price one pays for civilization. Given the last eight years in the White House,1 not to mention the 1980s, it's not ironic at all that the Heffalumps want to reduce taxes: They want (and achieved) less civilization...
#amazonfail Asks the Wrong Questions
Posted on April 13, 2009As usual, my take on #amazonfail is orthogonal to normal considerations (in several senses of "normal"). In no particular order: I seriously doubt that there is one, unified, conspiracy-theorist-satisfying explanation. Even if there is one, I seriously doubt that it will ever be aired in public to the satisfaction of conspiracy theorists everywhere...
Scotch Easter Eggs
Posted on April 12, 2009Hard-boiled Easter eggs, wrapped in sausage and then deep-fried. Not your average holiday special! First there was the Evil Overlord's list of mistakes to avoid. Now there are 48 Laws of Power. I'm not sure whether they're serious or parodic/satiric...
Saturday Snark Sausages
Posted on April 11, 2009Guaranteed USDA Prime snark. Not guaranteed safe for consumption, particularly not near coffee cups and keyboards. Cephalopods take over linguistics. Enough said. Suckers! Martha Stewart has a new cookbook out, running half-a-kilopage. She - or, rather, her ghostwriter(s) - must be awfully verbose; her actual method is closer to "hire a bunch of recent graduates of hoity-toity 'culinary
Past the Sell-by Date
Posted on April 10, 2009These sausage links aren't rotten; they're carefully aged. PEN notes that UK libel laws are "distorting publishing" (I'd argue that they distort reality, too). Meanwhile, though, a court has mistakenly held - here in the US - that true statements can nonetheless constitute libel, which is clearly wrong if the article accurately portrays the opinion (which I've not had a chance to read yet).
Baracknophobia
Posted on April 08, 2009Why am I simultaneously depressed and exhilarated that this is from a f*cking comedy show? Which leads to an annoyance: The next time I walk into a bank and see the tellers and management all wearing little flag pins, while they allow the oversized US flag outside the building to look like a f*cking rag, I'm going to go home, pull on my BDUs, and return and rip a few new ventral orifices...
I Have the Greatest Enthusiasm for This Mission
Posted on April 01, 2009It's a very important day today. Not just April Fool's; this is not an April Fool's entry. Instead, look at the date, numerically, in proper order: 01.04.09 One four nine. The squares of the first three integers. Perfect to fifteen decimal places. That's right: It's Monolith Day It is now time for Dawn of Man-strength coffee, then some very, very rare meat, right off the bone...
Chunky Sausages of Dubious Origin
Posted on March 31, 2009So, what's your major? Answer: It doesn't really matter; the real difference between a liberal-arts education and a trade-school education is that the liberal arts graduate knows something, in some depth, outside his/her major, by design... and the trade-school graduate does only by accident...
Random Bratwurst
Posted on March 30, 2009This platter of sausages is particularly disorganized. It's Monday. Once in a while, the NYT does manage to get something right on publishing, recognizing that HP's MagCloud system for printing short-run magazines might - if everything goes well - turn into "vanity publishing?s equivalent of YouTube...
Adulterated Sausages
Posted on March 26, 2009...with 72% more sawdust and other fillers than usual! I'm no fan of book blurbs, but my disdain for them is nothing next to Alastair Harper's disgust. The real problem with book blurbs is not that they're out of context, or indeed anything else about the blurbs per se; it is their very existence...
The Other White Meat
Posted on March 25, 2009Contrast that with this self-aggrandizing whinge/protest from an AIG executive, which the NYT printed on its op-ed page. The real problem here is the underlying question, that Mr DeSantis never asks (and has probably never asked): What part of the "business of insurance" is it to be playing games with poorly understood derivative financial products? The "business of insurance" involves - at a
Not Really Slam Dunks
Posted on March 23, 2009After a weekend of watching really poor coverage of basketball - including, but not limited to, CBS's arrogance in deciding which game gets piped to which affiliate - the sausage selection is really quite, well, linked. Of course, the muscle relaxants probably worked into the equation somewhere...
Extinction
Posted on March 20, 2009Sometimes, a picture really is worth a thousand words. (Thus, I'll keep this screed short.) In any event, welcome to the modern version of baronial competition. But ask yourself a question, first: Which of our two political parties both is and has as its symbol a large, inflexible and slow-moving, land-dwelling animal with very thick skin?
Teh Internets Are For Ground-Up Links
Posted on March 19, 2009Late sausages... For a change, instead of business rescuing the arts, artists could save business? Umm, right. As usual, the problem is def(success)... and that's where the law gets in the way. As long as the law requires - as part of a disturbing, despicable, inadequate, and yet utterly necessary prophylactic against certain varieties of securities fraud - quarterly reports and
Holy Press Release, Batman!
Posted on March 16, 2009One of the other reasons I've been somewhat less voluble of late can be inferred from the video embedded on the left. I'm a "mere consultant" in this one... primarily because I know not only where the relevant bodies are buried in New York, but their names, what they were wearing when they were buried, and exactly which of their bones are already broken (so we don't waste time during depositions
"Look Behind You, Mr Caesar!"
Posted on March 15, 2009Perhaps Mr Caesar should beware the Ides of March. Most Americans must beware the Ides of April (well, technically the day after the Ides of April)... Will new anti-Ponzi laws work, now that Cousin Bernie is in jail? Not as long as the authorities don't know how to use them and establish unrealistic guidelines for what they'll investigate, such as the $500k minimum attributable loss required
Dolley Madison Fail Cakes
Posted on March 12, 2009The internet isn't just for porn; it's for meaningless arguments about "authenticity" in depicting race in fiction. Let's turn the argument sideways for a moment, shake it, and see what falls out of the pockets of the pants it hastily put on to avoid being compared to Scalzi (who admits that he showed up for the argument not wearing any pants)...
Google Library Project Settlement (tangent)
Posted on March 11, 2009Suspended Animation? The Settlement (in essay form)The Lawsuit (in essay form) This is a tangent from the long essay in progress on the suitability of the Google Book Search settlement. Recent events have not changed my opinion of its substantive justification (which is to say almost none); instead, I am digressing back into procedureland...
Hope After Ignorance
Posted on March 09, 2009There's a lot going on at the moment, including bronchitis (thus the recent silence here - frog has my throat, not cat had my tongue). Today's main story, though, is simple: We have a resident of the White House who can actually spell "scientific method...
Squirrel Sausages
Posted on February 25, 2009In the NYT, a lukewarm article (probably written by a journalism major) asks how we justify the humanities during a recession. Which begs two much larger questions: How do we justify MBA programs when MBA-think is what got us into this recession in the first place? Frankly, we can't — especially when what passes for quantitative reasoning in MBA programs is so divorced from the real
Tearing Apart the Sausage Grinder
Posted on February 24, 2009I'm mostly working under the hood on the blawg today, doing some long-overdue maintenance on the static panel and simplifying some style designations. Nothing to see here, citizens — move along. Well, maybe there is something to see: First up, a little amusement from the land of right-wing ideology...
The World's a Mess
Posted on February 21, 2009...and I just need to rule it. Saturday sausages: Of late, there have been more rumblings from the antivaccination crowd. The best response to those numbskulls is a description of the diseases in question. Better yet, a trip to a village stricken with pertussis...
President's Day Sausages
Posted on February 16, 2009I've spent most of the weekend doing recovery from the fried computer (sauced with a bit of ketsap manis), so things are a bit behind. Thus, a particularly miscellaneous set of link sausages... We'll start off with a song that sounds very much as if it was written for the immediate past resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, DC...
Fish and Chimps
Posted on February 12, 2009These sausages have evolved — and will continue evolving in your intellectual digestive tract. In dubious honor of Charles Darwin, we have an all-Darwin sausage link platter (some of them uncooked)! Customize your vehicle with a Darwinfish (or, perhaps, a missing link)...
Murphy's Sausages
Posted on February 09, 2009Still in the land of "technical difficulties": The dryer must have heard about all of the attention other things in the house were getting, because it decided to die. Here's a vastly amusing set of Hermione Granger music mashups (including a really disturbing Hermione/Snape implied-'ship bit, just in time for Valentine's Day)...
Handmade Sausages
Posted on February 05, 2009Technical difficulties abound here: The cordless phone's battery is almost dead, and the motherboard on the main machine (the file server) is just about dead... to the point that it won't recognize either the mouse or the keyboard. Thus, this set of sausage links is virtually handmade, using a laptop that was initially certified for Windows98SE (and is still more powerful than the entire Apollo
Sausages Made Out of What???
Posted on February 02, 2009Today's link platter is preceded by an antepasto recognition of Groundhog Day, in my usual sick, twisted manner. And now, the main course. I was appalled — offended, even — by the halftime "show" at the Super Bowl. The only thing in that stadium bigger than Springsteen's paycheck was his ego, which must approach Shatneresque proportions if he thought collection of off-key, off-rhythm,
All-Natural Sausages
Posted on January 30, 2009There are parts of the internet that do not get used to make internet link sausages. You won't find any of them here; this post includes only all-natural ingredients (for some value of "natural"). Maybe swarming locusts just need some Prozac to keep from interfering with humanity's attempt to swarm the whole damned planet...
Congratulations, Governor Quinn
Posted on January 29, 2009Rod Blagojevich — not to mention that alien creature lying on top of his head — no longer occupies the Governor's Mansion in Springfield, Illinois. On a 59–0 vote, the Illinois Senate convicted him on the articles of impeachment, despite Blagojevich's impassioned plea in self-defense this morning...
Abridged Sausages
Posted on January 27, 2009Just a short, highly edited link sausage platter this morning. In the good news department, Neil Gaiman won the Newbery Medal for The Graveyard Book. Thus far, no confirmation from disinterested observers on whether he echoed the opening of his acceptance speech for a Hugo a few years back...
Saturday Sausage Platter
Posted on January 24, 2009It's been a relatively quiet couple of days, aside from bloviation over various award nominations (mostly from cretins who refuse to accept context as significant) and working on a couple of behind-the-scenes filings to help out a colleague. But that does not mean there is no amusement to be had...
Sausage Visuals
Posted on January 22, 2009More sausage links today... this time with pictures. Those of you who are squeamish about what the internet makes have been warned! The second half of Professor Baker's essay on what ails journalism (or is that Ailes? but that's an argument for another time) has appeared at Balkinization...
Cocktail Weenies
Posted on January 21, 2009Just a few small selected link sausages from the post-Inauguration pupu platter. Feeling lost in the publishing world? Find your station on this subway map of publishing. For some reason, though, you can't get here from there... perhaps because I'm obstinately not in New York, and therefore outside the reach of the subway...
Free at Last
Posted on January 20, 2009The oath has been taken. The "Inaugural Address" is merely a time-wasting coda. Aside from the protocol screwups (salutes to the President-elect under cover by uniformed military personnel; Dianne Feinstein's failure to welcome the Chief Justice and Justice Stevens); the offensive, sectarian "invocation" by the reprehensible Rick Warren; Aretha Franklin's substandard performance (at least in
His Grandmother's Hawaiian
Posted on January 19, 2009The predictable reaction to tomorrow's noon (EST) festivities in DC from friendly small-town people like Sarah Palin, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Ann Coulter (none of whom, by the way, lives in a small town) looks something like this: While I'm at it, maybe I'll move to Jesse Jackson's favorite city and join the Model-T Rainbow Coalition (you can be any color you want, as
Seised of the Post
Posted on January 14, 2009Well, the Illinois House voted again to impeach Blagojevich. The previous vote was at the end of the previous term; now that new representatives have taken office, they had to vote again. Once again, there was a single vote out of 116 against impeachment...
A Publishing Squeeze (5)
Posted on January 12, 2009[continued from 09 Jan 2009] Like a tube of toothpaste, this publishing squeeze is going to require a little bit of creative smooshing to get all of the product out. And that overextended metaphor may prove more accurate than anyone really wants to think about...
Today's Selection
Posted on January 10, 2009An unusually diverse smorgasbørd of internet link sausages. Only ten days until Obama's Crackberry addiction moves to the White House. Will the wingnuts have to call it the Half-Black House? Russian justice still sounds like something written by Kafka (although maybe — just maybe — it's because the victim this time is a lawyer)...
A Publishing Squeeze (4)
Posted on January 08, 2009[continued from 06 Jan 2009] The fourth common factor in the entertainment/publishing industry's problems is, in a way, a consequence of the third one. It is not a logically necessary consequence... but, in terms of human behavior, it is probably an inevitable one...
A Publishing Squeeze (3)
Posted on January 06, 2009[continued from 03 Jan 09] The third common factor in the entertainment/publishing industry's problems is its underlying culture of secrecy, which is only exacerbated by accounting more dubious than Bernie Madoff's. A few recent web-available items help illuminate this particular problem...
A Publishing Squeeze (2)
Posted on January 03, 2009[continued from 29 Dec 2008] The real question presented by the entertainment/publishing industry's problems is not "what?" so much as "why?". That the industry4 has significant financial (and other) challenges to look forward to should surprise nobody...
Bits of the Year That Was
Posted on January 01, 2009This is mostly just a collection of links to remind you of some of the news of 2008 that did not involve elections. Or casino finance. The world of letters and authorship lost a few leading lights. That's not all that surprising, as "leading lights" in the world of letters and authorship tend to be old, ill, crazy, or some combination thereof...
A Publishing Squeeze
Posted on December 29, 2008This is just a short, interim essay on the entertainment/publishing industry's problems. It is not comprehensive, by any means; it is, instead, an attempt to provide some alternate perspectives and explanations, and perhaps begin a dialogue. I have no hope whatsoever that it will actually push any reforms...
On This Day in History...
Posted on December 25, 2008Happy birthday to Sir Isaac Newton (1642). Happy coronation anniversary to William of Hastings (1066) and Charlemagne (800). George Washington crossed the Delaware (1776) and successfully routed Hessian mercenaries in Trenton, New Jersey. Apollo 8 began its trip back to Earth (1968)...
Stigmata
Posted on December 22, 2008Over at Professor Dorf's blaw, Professor Buchanan objects to Obama's selection of racist bigot Rick Warren to deliver the "invocation" at the Inauguration. I agree with Professor Buchanan's take on Warren, although I'm even more opposed... but on scientific, rather than social, grounds...
Impatience
Posted on December 22, 2008I'm ordinarily a patient predator, but Sandy Levinson definitely has a point about the inordinate delay between the election and actual change of governments. And W couldn't manage with our temperature at the moment; it's got a number of digits (Fahrenheit) he could understand, but that pesky minus sign in front of it is definitely beyond his comprehension...
Sausages Frozen Solid
Posted on December 21, 2008Early miscellany from the Ice Capades Practice Rink (that is, the local roads on the Silicon Prairie). W could even count to the temperature (Fahrenheit, since he has no concept of Celsius, let alone Kelvins... or damned near anything else scientific) without taking his shoes off! It's the 20th anniversary of Lockerbie; neither WaPo nor NYT even note it on their front pages.
Seasonal Graphic
Posted on December 20, 2008Snurched from Thomas Christensen's blog RightReading. In twenty years, this kind of thing may be all we remember Sarah Palin for... or at least we can hope so.
Icebergs
Posted on December 17, 2008This entry is not mere link sausages, so it won't look like it. There is an underlying theme: These items are each most significant for the hidden 7/8ths of the iceberg. First up, we have the initial note that Borders and HarperStudio have agreed to end returns...
Internet Sausage Guts All Over the Place
Posted on December 16, 2008More burst bangers, particularly at the beginning and end of the list. Political corruption is all relative, and often driven by who one's relatives are (since dynasticism seems to be a major marker for political corruption, or at least distortion)...
Scarred for Life
Posted on December 10, 2008Before jumping into the miscellany, I have only one thing to say about Blagojevich's arrest: Is anyone really surprised? Perhaps by the timing, but not by the substance. This is even more dubious than the usual collection of sausages! A pox on all their houses: On the Republican Party in general, for Richard Nixon (whose known conduct is remarkably similar to Blagojevich's charges), the Bushes
Mercenaries
Posted on December 08, 2008The legal profession does, in fact, have a uniform position on gay marriage... and, for that matter, just about every other significant social/moral issue. It's not a coincidence that two of the most famous non-noble mercenaries of the First Thirty Years' War were lawyers.
Fall Out
Posted on December 04, 2008Sometimes being right can be quite painful. At the time that Bertelsmann purchased Random House, I predicted eventual business-led consolidation in operations that would ultimately inhibit consumer choice by "streamlining" imprints and management. It's happening now...
Post-Thanksgiving Sausages
Posted on December 01, 2008These sausage links come from many different sources. I've inspected them to minimize sawdust content, but that's the absolute limit on Monday morning. And here I thought academic support at college was for college students, not "professional" athletes...
The 2008 Turkey Awards
Posted on November 27, 2008An annual tradition for over a decade! This is my list of ridiculous people from 2008 (so far). Pass me one of those rolls, please: The Greasy Gravy Award for oily publicity that makes the main dish inedible goes to the reprehensible soon-to-be-former Sen...
Product Recall!
Posted on November 26, 2008Starting with Monica Goodling (and, in all probability, most other graduates of That Law School) and progressing to John Yoo. Riiiiiiight. That has as much chance as, well, this "news item" of being true... I suppose I'd better get started on the turkey and accompaniments for tomorrow...
Sausage Time!
Posted on November 24, 2008And yes, I do know what that phrase really means. I lived Over There for several years, and I'm a Blackadder fan. It's all about the Benjamins. Or, more likely, it's all about the Doric columns, given that these stories come from Europe... and how much the purported beneficiaries are likely to see from them...
One Day in Life of Ivan
Posted on November 21, 2008Greetings from Gulag 43! Silicon Prairie has becoming superconducting — it is colder than politician's heart here at Gulag. Bad enough that, thanks to repainting over summer, storm windows not install properly and need encouragement with hammer to fit...
Google Library Project Settlement (4, continued)
Posted on November 19, 2008Book Bigotry (continued) The Settlement (in essay form)The Lawsuit (in essay form) The indigestible part is this: When it comes to intellectual property, we must discriminate... and we must do so on broad categories that concern the content and the characters, not the color of the binding...
Google Library Project Settlement (4)
Posted on November 18, 2008Book Bigotry The Settlement (in essay form)The Lawsuit (in essay form) There is another critical assumption that lies underneath this settlement; it is so fundamental that it does not surprise me that virtually no commentator — let alone party — has mentioned it at all...
Rules
Posted on November 18, 2008The third rule is Yog's Law: money flows toward the author. The fourth rule is to read the Writer Beware blog regularly, regardless of the kind of writing you do, and Making Light as you get close to submission time for book-length fiction. That's all for the moment, you pixel-stained technowretches: Back to your keyboards.
Burst Bangers
Posted on November 17, 2008Unscheduled headacheage (and two days of vertigo thereafter) sort of derailed me last week just as I was about to post most of the following tasty internet link sausages. Later today, there will be more on the Google Library Project settlement proposal...
You're Welcome — At Least Some of You
Posted on November 11, 2008My thoughts on Veterans' Day — as a veteran — are simple. Thanks for veterans is best expressed not on 11 November, but on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November: Election Day. The act of voting is the best thanks that can be offered to veterans, because in the end that is what we put our butts on the line for...
Earth Destroyed — Film at 11
Posted on November 11, 2008I must vehemently disagree with the attitudes underlying this post at PrawfsBlawg, a forum for law professors. Professor Johnson asserts that the Large Hadron Collider ("LHC") simply cannot be allowed to operate until judges approve of it.1 It is founded on the worst kind of argument from invalid analogy, perhaps most openly expressed in the middle of the essay as The argument that no one but
Sausages!
Posted on November 10, 2008These sausages are rather coarsely ground. Or just plain coarse. Yet another publishing insider proclaims that electronic content offers a fresh start for publishing. Unless and until that "fresh start" includes both (1) the will and ability to ignore SEC reporting requirements (which focus on short-term "profitability" for some meaning of "profit") and (2) the will and ability to let editors
Google Library Project Settlement (3)
Posted on November 08, 2008An Ass Out of U and Me There is still one more step to take before diving into the substance of this bad settlement: Making the implicit assumptions explicit, and seeing if those implicit assumptions are valid. Here are the most critical ones. Some of them concern the procedural issues discussed previously, but most are at least partially substantive...
November Surprise Sausages
Posted on November 05, 2008These sausages aren't quite as late as the last batch... but they're mostly overcured, oversalted, and over here. Libel suits are often exceptionally silly. Sometimes that's because the statement at issue is itself silly, or at minimum inadequately considered...
Truman Defeats Dewey
Posted on November 04, 2008Congratulations to President-elect Barack Obama. He ran a smart, centrist campaign. I am actually much more encouraged by two aspects of national voting patterns — based on incomplete returns, admittedly, but I seriously doubt that any changes from the incomplete returns to the final counts will affect these conclusions...
Vote
Posted on November 03, 2008Early. And, if you're near Chicago, Kansas City, or South Florida, often... if only to keep up your region's reputation. There are no excuses for not voting (if you're dead, see the previous paragraph). Except if you're in North Carolina: Neither of your senatorial candidates seems to understand that the public display of conservative protestant christianity is not a qualification for office.
Google Library Project Settlement (2)
Posted on November 01, 2008Before diving into the substance of the settlement itself, we need to reexamine another procedural issue: Class representation. Let's take a look at the purported class representatives and see how adequate they really are. It's relatively easy to dispose of the "representativeness" of the publisher subclass: It's not even close to acceptable...
Google Library Project Settlement (1)
Posted on October 30, 2008On 28 October 2008, the Authors Guild1 and Google announced a proposed settlement of litigation over the Google Library Project. The AG sued Google and the University of Michigan for their scanning of books in the UM libraries in 2005 without seeking prior authorization from the publishers, authors, or other rightsholders...
Sausage Time
Posted on October 29, 2008Some of these sausages are a bit overcured, but that's teh internets for you. And it's also the result of being sick for a week and expending what energy I had on other things (like the dishes). But, before jumping into the miscellany, I'm not ignoring the "settlement" between the Author's [sic] Guild and Google; I'm merely saving it for a screed all of its own...
Mistaken Federalism (Part VI — the End)
Posted on October 20, 2008[continued] Andre Norton's estate will continue to provide amusement for those of us with particularly eclectic (and sick) senses of humor for quite some time. The situation includes a catalog of "don't do this with your own estate!" problems. If you have a business entity set up to handle your intellectual property, don't refer to its possessions in your will! Ms Norton did, but it wasn't
Mistaken Federalism (Part V of VI)
Posted on October 16, 2008[continued from 12 October; posting delayed by technical difficulties] Now it's time to look at the real problem with the Tennessee Court of Appeals's decision: It lacked the legal power to issue the decision in the first place. This is where the "mistaken federalism" of this series of posts' title comes from...
Mistaken Federalism (Part IV of ???)
Posted on October 12, 2008[continued from 11 October] My point 3 is where — with all due respect — the Tennessee Court of Appeals's opinion begins to break down into the sorts of meaningless, or in any event insupportable, distinctions that tend to give law a bad name. It is fairly clear, and self-evident to anyone with half a brain, that not every term found in Andre Norton's will has an internal definition...
Mistaken Federalism (Part III of ???)
Posted on October 11, 2008[continued from 10 Oct] One quick correction to a much more famous and eminent blogger: This is not the end of the controversy over Andre Norton's will. Dr Horadam could appeal this opinion from the Tennessee Court of Appeals to the Tennessee Supreme Court...
Mistaken Federalism (Part II of ???)
Posted on October 10, 2008A while back, I started to describe a hypothetical instance based on a pending probate matter. Before I could get very far, though, I was consulted by a claimant in a way that — thanks to the procedural posture of the matter — made further comment at that time inappropriate...
Too Many Sausages, Not Enough Caffeine
Posted on October 06, 2008I took advantage of early voting and cast an absentee ballot,1 so I'm going to slightly dial back the election rhetoric. One reason that I voted early was to avoid my newly designated polling place: A church. And, of course, the nearly-wingnut country clerk who designates polling places completely blew off my objection, since he's never seen a religious conflict in action, and has made plenty
Fish Wrapper
Posted on October 04, 2008Final debate wrapup, starting with some amusement before getting into the serious stuff: The real problem with these debates is that although they are supposed to help educate the American voting public on the candidates, they have degenerated since the 1960s into a further opportunity to evade — to prevaricate — to delay, delay, delay, hoping that one's opponent is the first one to commit a
Lyin' Like Dogs
Posted on October 02, 2008During a momentary break in the football game (still 0:0 near the end of the first half), I flipped for a moment to the Veep Debates. And I saw these two morons screw up an easy question at my alma mater. Gee, guys, just how stupid does one need to be to answer a very straightforward question about whether Israel should adopt "the [so-called] two nations solution"? The pitbull wearing lipstick
Not Exactly a Lot of Money These Days
Posted on September 29, 2008Is it just me, or does the current "financial crisis" resemble Dr Evil's ransom demand? Well, given that the House just narrowly rejected the bailout bill in its current form, maybe it's just the news cycle being held hostage. But then, nobody is looking at the linguistic irony involved in this nonsense...
And the Debate Winner Is...
Posted on September 27, 2008Lawrence O'Donnell. For all the faults of the "live debate" episode of The West Wing, this is what I — as a voter — wanted to see: Candidates who actually engaged each other's policies instead of vacillating between personal attacks and mealy-mouthed promises with virtually no substance to them...
Not That Paul Simon
Posted on September 26, 2008... the groovy one. In anticipation of tonight, I'll be watching two old episodes of The West Wing. Sittin' on a sofa On a Sunday afternoon, Gonna hear the candidates' debate, Laugh about it, Shout about it, When you've got to choose, Every way you look at it, you lose...
One Sausage Marginally Fit for Human Consumption
Posted on September 25, 2008I'll save the dangerous link for the middle. Don't blame me. I voted for Bartlet... and now he's advising Obama in one of the more creative, and interesting, comments on the current election process that I've seen. That, however, does not even begin to illuminate the problems with biology and politics...
Genius
Posted on September 23, 2008After the idiocy of the last few days — a constitutionally defective plan for unreviewable blank checks for the finance industry is only one example, not to mention arguments over pigs and lipstick — it's a relief to see recognition of genius. That's certainly not normal for an election season! Actually, it is; it just ordinarily slips beneath the radar...
Method Instead of Madness
Posted on September 18, 2008I'm not a big fan of organized religion. I don't claim that the scientific method is the only possible method of reasoning. Sometimes, based on other values, one must make seemingly irrational choices; consider, for example, the hearsay rule in evidence, which has no scientific basis at all — it is a value-based rule coming from notions of fairness...
Yet Another Survey
Posted on September 17, 2008Snurched from Professor Froomkin: You have been invited to take part in an academic research study to learn more about the psychological bases of political attitudes and voting behavior. This study is headed by Professor Yaacov Trope, Department of Psychology, and conducted by Margarita Krochik, a doctoral student in the Department of Psychology...
Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun
Posted on September 15, 2008On the good "celebrity news" front, George Takei (Lt, later Capt, Sulu) got married over the weekend. The universe did not come to an end, so maybe the getting a marriage covered by the Daily Mail doesn't signal impending doom. But, in addition to David Foster Wallace, we've also just lost Richard Wright, the keyboardist of Pink Floyd...
Variety Pack
Posted on September 15, 2008We've got smoked internet links, raw internet links, and not a few rancid internet links today. It's really, really hard not to lead with the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, which comes from derivative pseudosecurities as a way of life. In other words, the financial markets are finally paying the price for elevating gambling above economics...
Rodney King Wasn't Here
Posted on September 14, 2008After having the crap beaten out of him on a videotape that made its way into the national consciousness (not to mention a rather disturbing, if sub rosa, indictment of the way juries get selected), Rodney King still managed to beg those outraged by the acquittal of his assailants to stop destruction...
Harry Potter and the Copyright Infringement
Posted on September 08, 2008Judge Patterson issued his post-trial ruling in the Harry Potter Lexicon case today. I'm not going to set forth an extensive analysis here; I just want to note a few things that this opinion does not do and/or proclaim. Contrary to the whingeing (and outright screaming) that you're going to hear, this is not a rejection of fair use as a concept...
Planet of Origin Not Guaranteed
Posted on September 08, 2008A truly bizarre selection of miscellaneous sausages today. No guarantee of meat content, species content... or planetary-origin content. These links have not been approved by the USDA, or in fact anyone else, and NASA wants to determine their possible extraterrestrial origin...
Princess Monochromé
Posted on September 07, 2008Last week, the elder remora (among several thousand others) received a prankish e-mail that had been spoofed to look like it came from the chancellor. The e-mail was rather anti-frat/sorority. It took me less than 30 seconds to show the remora how it had been spoofed, and that even the purported source was itself spoofed...
Misunderestimation
Posted on September 07, 2008Just a couple of thoughts on politics today; miscellany tomorrow. I really do not think that Sarah Palin is about winning the White House in 2008. McCain and his campaign have displayed plenty of unbridled arrogance before; they really don't think that Palin's presence on the ticket will change the result this time around...
Screw the Lipstick
Posted on September 04, 2008So Sarah Palin is going to be McCain's pitbull, constantly attacking the opposition in audacious, more audacious, always audacious words... and non sequiturs. This is not something that I find attractive. She — and the Inner Party — are following the path foretold by the great political philosopher Gabriel: There's safety in numbers When you learn to divide How can we be in If there is no outside
Internet Sausage Barbecue
Posted on September 02, 2008These sausages may appear a bit underdone, because — proving that Murphy loves nothing more than a barbecue — my gas-powered grill ran out of propane yesterday while I was doing the chimichurri. Values voters have gotten a real hint of what the actual, no-shit values of the Republican party are through several recent "revelations" regarding Sarah Palin's family...
The Internet Is for Porn, Part XVII
Posted on September 01, 2008Various efforts to deal with internet piracy have proven yet again an essential part of making the 'net safe for porn. You may have heard about a recent decision in a lawsuit filed by IO Group, a distributor of porn films, against Veoh. When I read the actual opinion, I had flashbacks to 2002, when I was writing the appellate briefs against AOL...
No Rebel Yell
Posted on August 30, 2008Now that the Jackass National Convention is over, and McCain has removed all possible suspense from the Heffalump National Convention by naming a gun-toting fishmonger as his VP candidate, it's time for some miscellaneous snark hereabouts. Selecting the right "balancing candidate" for a ticket under the modern Electoral College system — for the first few elections, President and
Back to School Edition
Posted on August 27, 2008And here's a Back to School Edition of tasty internet sausages. They're links; they're tasty; and you really, really don't want to see them being made. Let's start off with a true back-to-school item: the fiftieth anniversary of instant ramen, that dietary staple of university students everywhere (probably even in other galaxies)...
The Rest is Rock and Roll
Posted on August 25, 2008And so I have no rumblerumble of teenaged feet around the house today. The elder remora is off to university (but he's living at home, so come 2:30 or so...). Thus, the miscellany is a day late. I think I'll lead off with an article on the purported death of the semicolon; it seems all too appropriate, too easy, too timely; and it provides a great segue into A piece on the trials and
Unqualified
Posted on August 22, 2008John McCain is a member of a class of persons who are unqualified to be President of the United States. This has nothing to do with ideology, or age, or ancestry, or gender, or the number of houses he does (or does not) own, or links to lobbyists, or anything else like that...
Venom Warning
Posted on August 19, 2008I am really getting pissed off at the intellectual — bordering on actual — dishonesty that seems to be the editorial standard at Reed Business Information, publisher of Variety (and, not incidentally, its "competitor" The Hollywood Reporter, and of Publisher's [sic] Weekly)...
Last of the Summer Sausages
Posted on August 17, 2008It's getting weird around here... First, just a couple of observations of the surroundings here on the Silicon Prairie. Given the new and (not surprisingly) awful Star Wars cartoon's appearance this weekend, I shouldn't have been too surprised to see a Prius with the license place YAVIN 4 on the road this morning...
Adams Family Valuation
Posted on August 13, 2008Just a bit of irony coming from a problem with the publishing industry... Since the Authors Guild [sic] has (rather unwisely, IMNSHO) gone public with its intent to "study" accounting practices at F&W Publication, I feel able to engage in unlimited snarkery...
Dancing Fool
Posted on August 12, 2008The University of Illinois Alumni Association has extended a "free" membership to all alumni. I'm going to decline. I'm not a paid member, and won't become a "free" member, because the Alumni Association is... full of crap is probably the nicest thing I can say about it...
Chorizo of Doom
Posted on August 10, 2008They're of dubious origin, they're nonetheless quite tasty, and they come in links: That's why they're sausages. Once upon a time — supposedly — literary criticism mattered in the grand scheme of Things. Yeah, I'm convinced. This really reflects a problem in historiography more than anything else: Due to social concerns as much as anything else, the only discourse that has survived in a
The Hugo Awards
Posted on August 09, 2008Congratulations to the (literary) Hugo and officially-not-a-Hugo recipients, announced earlier this evening. Mary Robinette Kowal received the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer... which marks the first time in quite a while that a sitting SFWA officer (she just began her term as Secretary a month ago) has won a Hugo...
...With Credit for Time Served
Posted on August 07, 2008After all of this nonsense, sixty-six months for Hamdan after he was convicted of the lesser offense of providing support to a foreign power, rather than the active participation in terrorist acts and conspiracies with which he was also charged. I do not think it is a coincidence that the military court (equivalent to jury — in military justice parlance, the "court" is the trier of fact, whether
A Dark and Stormy Early Afternoon
Posted on August 07, 2008The 2008 "Winners" of the Bulwer-Lytton Contest have been announced. It's a particularly disappointing set of entries this year... at least in terms of absolute badness. I've been forced to suffer through much worse examples in legal writing recently...
Internet Sausage Jambalaya
Posted on August 03, 2008A jumbled up Sunday... which shouldn't really surprise anyone. On the war crimes front, former Serbian leader Karadzic arrived at Den Hague for trial, and indicated that he'll defend himself vigorously against the charges. But a conviction of Karadzic is not the most important indicator of the usefulness of war-crimes indictments...
Road to Moscow
Posted on August 03, 2008Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) died earlier today at 89 in Moscow. Most major papers have printed stories with roughly the same slugline: that his writings made the world aware of the "problems" of communism in the Soviet Union. So sayeth the International Herald-Tribune, the Washington Post, The Times (London), even The Guardian, to list just a few English-language dailies...
Pity the Poor Farmers
Posted on July 31, 2008This entry may be a bit heavy going, as it largely concerns theoretical issues that may seem of dubious application to writers' interests. Trust me, though: It will all seem more important by the time you slog through it. First up is an antitrust case on mergers between organic food chains...
Our Liberal Media
Posted on July 30, 2008So this is the result of the liberal media conspiracy: Doesn't look too ideological to me...
We Appreciate Your Patronage
Posted on July 28, 2008Once upon a time, the US government was so corrupt that it made Chicago hiring practices look honest. That was about two years ago, when Monica Goodling, Esq. was busy trying to simultaneously surpass the Grant, Pendergast, and first Daley administrations at political patronage hiring at the Department of Justice: In sum, we concluded that the evidence showed that Goodling violated both federal
Sunday Sausage Sale
Posted on July 27, 2008I have lots of sausages on offer this morning, but from fewer batches. They're all kosher, USDA-inspected, and guaranteed not less than 50% Earthling. Scalzi (correctly) states the limits of the First Amendment on his blog. I leave to your judgment, though, whether it's Scalzi or the chattering m/classes who is/are out of line...
Ourubouros
Posted on July 26, 2008Earlier this week, WaPo carried two articles on various aspects of military affairs that really pissed me off, for two entirely different reasons. First up, we have Congressional hearings on gays in the military in which — as usual — the most strident voices opposing gays in the military never, themselves, served — and have agendas for which the military is merely a tool to greater power for
Head-Banging
Posted on July 24, 2008Banging my head against a brick wall would probably be a relief right now. Literally (and literarily, given the disappointments of the last couple of novels I'd been looking forward to for a while). So we'll just take a jump to the left into that wall, since it's hard to go Left from where I am...
The New "Dr" Death
Posted on July 22, 2008At least one can be reasonably objective about this particular war criminal (unless, that is, one is a political supporter): Radovan Karadzic, the former leader of Serbia who bears ultimate command responsibility for significant "ethnic cleansing" in the former Yugoslavia, was arrested on Monday and will be turned over to the international war crimes tribunal in Den Hague for trial on
An Incomplete Boob Job
Posted on July 21, 2008The Third Circuit demonstrated that the FCC's "boob job" over Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" was, well, a case of the emperor's new clothes. (Do you think that's a mixed enough metaphor to start a Monday morning?) It's not nearly as mixed as the FCC's own rationale, as the Third Circuit's opinion reversing the FCC's fine shows...
8720A
Posted on July 20, 2008Today, my brain is the sausage, after a migraine attack. There isn't a lot of variety in the links for today... Tor Books, the leading publisher of speculative fiction in the US, now has a new, community-oriented website live. Hopefully, it will be kept better updated than the Tor Books "official" site...
Batman Continues
Posted on July 18, 2008And Robin, always remember to wear your safety belt! Sorry, but I grew up during the Adam West era of live-action Batman, so the goofy safety tips will always seem appropriate... particularly when observing the Lamborghini scene in The Dark Knight. I took both remoras along today...
Negligent Publication
Posted on July 16, 2008The Ninth Circuit issued an opinion yesterday in an insurance-coverage dispute that has some interesting implications for authors. "Interesting," that is, in the sense of the Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times"... because the language being interpreted also appears in many publishers' errors-and-omissions ("E&O") policies...
An Extra Serving of Sausages
Posted on July 15, 2008There is so much dead animal waiting to be ground into tasty interthingy links this week that I'm celebrating the bounty with an extra peek into the smokehouse. Some of this, though, isn't really ready for consumption yet — it's tough going. Speaking of dead animals, Jaws was really offended by this item on dead sharks and "art"...
Sunday Sausages
Posted on July 13, 2008I'm moving the weekly roundup of miscellany to Sundays for a variety of reasons, mostly having to do with changes in the schedule in the real world (or as close as things get to the "real world" in Chambanana, anyway). Today, I've chosen a somewhat schizophrenic abstract-concern-to-concrete-issue organization...
Lassie Rights Come Home!
Posted on July 11, 2008It appears that Timmy has fallen down the well again. But Lassie's copyrights and related literary rights have come home... sort of. The Ninth Circuit issued a ruling today in Classic Media, Inc. v. Mewborn, No. 06–55385 (9th Cir. 11 Jul 2008) that bears some careful consideration by literary heir...
Right Result, Wrong Reason
Posted on July 10, 2008Professor Patry thinks I will disagree with his praise for a copyright decision imposing attorney's fees on a losing plaintiff. In a sense, I do. My disagreement is not with the result, but with the reasoning... and the basic rationale. The problem here is that Judge Posner's decision rather misleadingly seems to concern only copyright law, and will thus be twisted all out of recognition by both
Throw Another Sausage on (the) Barbie
Posted on July 08, 2008Yet again, tasty bits of tasty animals ground into sausages for your enjoyment. Don't look too closely at how they're made, though... especially this week. I offer no guarantees as to species! The National Law Journal has a series of articles proposing various versions of "legal education reform" this week...
Denver Police Brace for Convention
Posted on July 06, 2008... so says the headline. However, they mean the unruly Democratic National Convention, not the World Science Fiction Convention (which is this weekend in Denver). The police aren't worried by Imperial Stormtroopers, Klingons, and Spartan Marines — just longwinded tales tolds by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing...
The REAL "Mission Accomplished"
Posted on July 04, 2008Today's gluttony will consist of a vegetarian barbecue, unless the vegetarian crawls out of the damned marinade again (cows are vegetarians). But before that, a few thoughts on the difference between a declaration and a victory. The relatively recent criticism of George III — our George III, that is — for his declaration of "Mission Accomplished" should be some food for thought on this day that
Summer Sausage
Posted on July 01, 2008Another overload of miscellaneous animal parts ground into a tasty summer sausage this week, in anticipation of this Friday's forthcoming celebration of declaring "mission accomplished" some 230ish years ago via a festival of gluttony, drunkenness, charcoal-starter accidents, and explosives...
New Copyright Registration System Live
Posted on July 01, 2008It's alive... or, at least, it's on teh interthingy. The US Copyright Office's new eCO system for online and online-assisted registration is now live. Highlights: No matter what certain sites say, this does not change any of the legal rules concerning registration...
Long Knives
Posted on June 30, 2008A song for today: Al Stewart — "The Last Day of June 1934" In other news, the Eleventh Circuit has apparently decided that a "revision" means "whatever the publisher decides, as long as it doesn't mix stuff with another publisher." In a 7–5 en banc decision, that court has just decided that the National Geographic CD-ROM set is a mere "revision" of the print magazine, and that therefore
Dr Fielding — Code Sand
Posted on June 29, 2008Twenty-seven years and a few days ago, the New York Times began publishing the Pentagon Papers — a supposedly top secret collection of historical documents discussing the entry of the US into Vietnam. The Pentagon did learn one thing: Historical documents of this nature will find their way out...
Real Football
Posted on June 28, 2008I'll be glued to the screen tomorrow from 11am Central, watching a football double-header: DC United v. LA Galaxy, followed by Germany v. Spain. No sissy helmets; no tea-breaks every ten seconds; no waves of substitutes. And there should be plenty of goals, or at least chances on goal, as the only one of the four teams in question with much defensive prowess is Germany...
Selling Art-House Films to Eskimos
Posted on June 27, 2008In the last few days, articles have appeared (in places where almost no one will read them) rationalizing why nobody's going to art-house movies or making any money on them. There's a much simpler explanation: Going to an art-house theater is a horrible experience that a film's excellence has a great deal of difficulty overcoming...
You'll Know We're Americans By Our Guns
Posted on June 26, 2008I'm not going to say a lot about the substance of Heller. (For what it's worth, I don't object all that much to long arms that might, at least in theory, be useful for hunting and hunting only; it's bad military practice to have militia store their own weapons...
Copyright Office Upgrading to 1980s Technology!
Posted on June 25, 2008It's not quite that bad, but it sure seems that way. As of 01 July, the Copyright Office will deploy a new online system for registering copyright in most textual works. The description of the system does sound very 1982ish to me: Almost identical to the initial entry of personnel information in the military...
Jockey Shorts
Posted on June 25, 2008The "sexier" version of legal briefs. Believe me, you don't want to see middle-aged lawyers wearing thongs... The Supreme Court appears to plan on ending its term tomorrow (Thursday), issuing opinions in both Heller (the DC gun-control case) and the latest iteration of the election finance cases (which would be much easier if it would just overrule Buckley v...
Quoting Scripture
Posted on June 24, 2008Just juicy miscellany today... with a comment at the end. The publishing industry is filled with inept businesscreatures who don't understand their own business; consider these publishers whingeing about low profits as barrier to innovation. Hmm...
RIP Cardinal Glick
Posted on June 23, 2008This may not be safe for work, but it bloody well should be, under the "sticks and stones" theory of the First Amendment. RIP, George. Hopefully there's no FCC wherever you are now.
Putting the "Dis" in "Intermediation"
Posted on June 22, 2008This is just a short observation. As an academic by nature, I could go on (and on, and on, with virtually endless footnotes, exceptions, snide remarks, etc.) with this theoretical discussion — certainly long enough to lose the point. As I don't wish to lose the point, I won't do so; that will make what follows seem rather conclusory...
Saturday Amusement
Posted on June 21, 2008While waiting for the Supreme Court to misread the Second Amendment in Heller — and, no matter which way the Court jumps, it will involve an untenable reading — I glanced through a not-quite-local paper and found some amusement. I just had to share a couple of items...
You Can't Say Seven Words on the Internet?????
Posted on June 18, 2008I think the Associated Press has been hanging around the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals for much too long now. The Sixth Circuit has by far the most restrictive view of fair use of any of the geographic circuits; I guess that the AP decided that five words is the same as three notes...
A Mass of Miscellany
Posted on June 17, 2008Rather a large crop of miscellany, first, then an expansion on yesterday's note. The ill-advised Canadian copyright bill — as is usual for initial drafts of intellectual property legislation — reflects the phenomenon of "agency capture" all too well...
Just a Word Before I Go
Posted on June 16, 2008Urggh. I've been rather out of it for the last several days, and it's not much better today, so I'll confine myself to a little bit of sniping instead of full treatment on a few items. I think (hope!) things will be better by tomorrow, so you can look forward to Tuesday miscellany...
The Rule of Law Still Has Meaning
Posted on June 12, 2008I'm still digesting the entire opinion in Boumediene v. US, No. 06–1195, issued a few minutes ago. Based on the syllabus, though, it is excellent news for the rule of law: 1. MCA § 7 denies the federal courts jurisdiction to hear habeas actions, like the instant cases, that were pending at the time of its enactment...
Promises, Promises
Posted on June 10, 2008Life. Can't live with it... wait a minute. It's that most-dangerous time of the year: June. The end of the Supreme Court's term. Yesterday, the Court issued two opinions of interest. Or, at least, I find them interesting. In Bridge v. Phoenix Bond and Indemnity Co...
Command Irresponsibility
Posted on June 05, 2008There's a fascinating contrast between the firing of the USAF Chief of Staff and Secretary, essentially on "command responsibility" grounds over the quivering quiver incident last summer, and the continued refusal to hold senior military leaders accountable for either GITMO and military tribunal problems or mistreatment of captives in Iraq...
Rebel Yell
Posted on June 05, 2008I'm moderately pleased that the first round of this electoral dogfight is over. Now... the main event! Well, not quite. We still need to learn the undercard: The candidates for Vice President. I'm against having Ms Clinton as Vice President for several reasons...
A June Moonshot
Posted on June 03, 2008Life interferes again. The eldest remora has now graduated from high school, and is busy being a surly teenager in his room all day now. Not, however, without homework: As his school did not teach him proper documentation practices for writing papers, I've given him a homework assignment comparing and contrasting this classic with this contemporary retelling...
Tuesday Night Titans
Posted on May 27, 2008One more wakeup and the oldest monster is done with high school. Which means I'll have to feed him all day, every day, all summer. Today on Tuesday Night Titans, we have John "Blindman" Milton versus Will "The Hard Bard" Shakepeare for the Intercontinental superheavyweight title! That, however, begs the real question: Isn't there room for both? Can't we have them tag-team against Dan Brown "
Nobody Sees Not Dead People
Posted on May 26, 2008The real problem with Memorial Day is that it celebrates (if that is the right word) fatalities. At least in theory, the living have a different holiday — Veterans' Day, which should be moved to the first Tuesday in November and be made as mandatory as July Fourth...
Reversals of Fortune
Posted on May 20, 2008The "news," such as it is, consists mostly of reversals of fortune. None involving David Marriott, fortunately. One of the constant laments of unpublished writers concerns how hard it is to get out of the slush pile — the veritable, and all-too-often literal, mountain of unsolicited manuscripts sent to publishers — and into consideration by editors...
Unreal Estate (8)
Posted on May 18, 2008Returning to the theme of "what is not work for hire" (and, thanks to the unanticipated delays caused by Life, you might want to review the consolidated "essay" version of the preceding entries)... A closer look at two of these groupings of excluded works will also prove helpful when later considering "contracting around" the issue...
Identity Politics
Posted on May 17, 2008It sure was easier when old white guys were the only ones running for office. Now we have to figure out which of their puppets is going to get us the "right" set of old white guys who will actually be running things. (HT: The Perfesser)
Just as Dead as That Squirrel
Posted on May 13, 2008Just a few miscellaneous items today. I promised more posting yesterday. The local squirrels and wind had other ideas... The line-repair tech came out, and it took over 45 minutes to replace the line going into the house. The squirrels — probably in retaliation for Lucy chasing (and occasionally catching and eating) them — had begun the process by chewing up the insulation and nibbling on the
Darkness Slightly Before Noon
Posted on May 11, 2008...or, at least, Internet silence. The wind has been so bad here today that from about 1000 until now, I've had essentially no Internet service. In turn, that means that I couldn't finish up the research on two essays, or post other stuff, or finish long-overdue maintenance on the main site, or anything else...
Absolutely Ridiculous (I Don't Paint)
Posted on May 06, 2008I'm down to one teenaged kid. The other one is officially an adult now. Speaking of which, he got mail from the Selective Service Administration a few days ago. Just as I was handing it to him, an all-too-appropriate song popped up on the random play...
Almost May Madness
Posted on April 30, 2008Almost May. Definitely madness. Since you're reading this blawg, I have to assume that you have some grasp of international IP issues. Improve that grasp with Professor Patry's comments on the new Special 301 list from the US Trade Representative...
Annoyances Part 27
Posted on April 26, 2008Migraines. 'nuf said. Al Sharpton. There's only one kind of "reasonable doubt" that matters to him: that in favor of a melaninically enhanced defendant from the 'hood. Hint: {Not guilty}beyond reasonable doubt ? {innocent} especially for a crime requiring a specific mens rea (state of mind and/or intent)...
Spring Sausages
Posted on April 22, 2008An even-more-hectic-than-normal Tuesday, coupled with a very blah week in the entertainment industry and elsewhere, has resulted in a short miscellany list for today. Lucy Literary is back! My dog is a literary agent. The "War on Terror" (or is that "War of Terror"?) tried to claim another victim, but the least-dangerous branch of government wasn't buying it...
Unreal Estate (7)
Posted on April 21, 2008Now that I've explained what types of works can legitimately fall into the WFH classification, it's time to look at what cannot. A work by an employee that is not within the scope of his/her duties does not meet the requirements of subparagraph 1...
Weekend Update
Posted on April 20, 2008Mostly administrative stuff today — Warped Weft is back on line now. I can tell that all three of you are thrilled.
Unreal Estate (6)
Posted on April 19, 2008So — after much too long an interval — I'll return to trying to make some sense of WFH under the Copyright Act. At the moment, we're trying to figure out what the following acceptable categories of WFH really mean: (a) a contribution to a collective work; (b) a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work; (c) a translation; (e) a compilation; Unfortunately, my usual method of interpreting
Beware the Ides of April
Posted on April 15, 2008Slightly late Monday Miscellany. On Tuesday. (So sue me — I need the business ;-) First, let's get one thing out of the way: I know perfectly well that technically, the Ides of April does not fall on the fifteenth. It's just so appropriate, though...
John Yoo, Ignorant Slut
Posted on April 15, 2008Between being sick of late and being sickened by the memorandum itself, it has taken me quite some time to both properly work my way through the Yoo Memorandum (PDF image, 5.6mb) and write this in a way that will keep from frying too many semiconductors...
Friends, Romans, Country Bumpkins
Posted on April 13, 2008...lend me your browser windows. I come here not to defend Barack Obama's purported "bitter bit," but to praise it. He was correct, and there's nothing wrong with that, nor any shame to anyone in admitting it. Now, before y'all lynch me, understand that I live in the middle of small-town America; in farm country...
Unscheduled Phlegmatism
Posted on April 12, 2008...with phlegm, naturally. My annual respiratory infection arrived a couple of weeks early this year (thus the recent quiet, as on the Internet no one can hear you cough). So, just a couple of weird items: In the local library parking lot today, I witnessed a guy parking his suburban assault vehicle in a compact-car-only spot...
Fifty-Seven Communists
Posted on April 06, 2008Just catching up for the moment. First, an annoyance: Will cookbook editors please do some shopping outside of the New York City metropolitan area, or better yet outside of Boswash/LA, before approving descriptions of recipes? The next time I see a recipe for something that should be simple — such as a rack of lamb — beginning with "Have the butcher?" I'm going to take a field trip to the
It Was Forty Years Ago Today?
Posted on April 04, 2008? but this is not an essay about the Beatles. It's merely a note of one of the shattering events of the year in which America refused to confont its past, its present, or its future, and continues to pay for the consequences. On a hotel balcony in Memphis, They shot Dr Martin Luther King, Jr...
Non-April-Fool's Miscellany
Posted on April 02, 2008I'm issuing a bumper crop of miscellany today; I'm holding one item that particularly outrages me for later today (the short version: "What part of 'support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic,' did you not understand, Mr Yoo?")...
Almost Moving Day
Posted on March 28, 2008It's been a bit busy here, getting the Voracious Teen ready for a trip, dealing with the Less Voracious (But Still Hungry) Teen on his Sprin Break, and doing all kinds of miscellany. So, I offer the following items for your consideration: The old domain will be reopening at a new address over the weekend, including the Warped Weft (quasiessays from this blawg)...
Unreal Estate (5)
Posted on March 25, 2008Some of the types of works covered in subparagraph (2) of the definition of WFH are fairly obvious, and fairly easy to dispose of. Some, however, are not. Recall that I have rearranged the subparagraph for clarity: (a) a contribution to a collective work; (b) a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work; (c) a translation; (d) a supplementary work, that is a work prepared for publication
The Madness of March
Posted on March 24, 2008It's a grumpy Monday here in Sharkville. Four thousand (directly attributable) deaths in Iraq and no exit strategy in sight. Politicians continue to prove that they are the perpetual "Me Generation;" no matter their age(s), they and their handlers make kindergarten recess look sedate, well-behaved, and mature...
Unreal Estate (4)
Posted on March 23, 2008It's time to start working through subparagraph (2) of the definition. This oddly-structured monstrosity has a number of landmines waiting in it for both creators and their patrons. Patrons? This marks one of the not-so-subtle attempts to disguise what the WFH aspect of US copyright law is really doing...
Friday Freakout
Posted on March 21, 2008Just more miscellany today. I'll return to unpacking the WFH definition over the weekend, but there's so little to do and so much time to do it in. One of the great fictions in the public understanding of defamation law — and, unfortunately, in the community of authors — is that labelling something fiction insulates one from liability for libel...
RIP Sir Arthur C. Clarke
Posted on March 18, 2008According to a story on CNN, Sir Arthur C. Clarke has just died in a hospital in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Although he was never renowned as a stylist, Clarke was one of the big-idea-as-another-character giants of mid-twentieth-century fiction. Not just speculative fiction, either...
Tuesday Twaddle
Posted on March 18, 2008Most of the miscellany has already gotten more comment elsewhere than I've had time for this past week. The Voracious Teen is on spring break, meaning that I have to feed him that much more often (constantly; I thought it was tough when he was an infant...
Unreal Estate (3)
Posted on March 17, 2008Let's turn back to subparagraph 1 and try to define a few critical terms that mean both more (and less) than the entertainment industry would have them mean. an employee seems pretty straightforward, right? If I work for Company X, I'm an employee of Company X, right? Well, not exactly...
Unreal Estate (2)
Posted on March 16, 2008(continued from 15 March) I'm going to start analyzing that ungainly mess by trimming away some of the simpler pieces first. The best way to do so is to recognize that a single narrative sentence frequently is the least effective way to communicate, particularly when communicating a list that itself consists of compound parts...
Repeating History
Posted on March 16, 2008Forty years ago today, American troops slaughtered 500 or so — nobody will ever know the exact number — civilians in the midst of an undeclared war in a nation in which almost none of the troops spoke the language; in which it became increasingly difficult to tell friend from foe; in which we had no clear political or military objectives...
Unreal Estate
Posted on March 15, 2008The archives (etc.) will shortly be moving to a new home. Fortunately, that does not require renting a U-Haul, or anything like that. It's really no less annoying, but nonetheless it's somewhat smoother. * * * And now, the beginning of a short assignment...
Better Dead Than Red
Posted on March 13, 2008While pondering the irony that in the 1950s, we worried about "reds" as "commies," and in the early 21st century we worry about "reds" as "heffalumps," here's some not-safe-for-work redneck pondering on Eliot Spitzer for y'all. Which leads to an obvious question: If Nashville really is the "capital" of country music, why can't Dickerson compete with the Ku'damm? HT: The Perfesser.
Kissinger May Have Been Right
Posted on March 12, 2008... that "power is the ultimate aphrodisiac." That, however, is no excuse for forgetting some pretty damned basic biology: Gonads don't contain any nerve endings that have any processing power, so thinking with them is not a very good idea. Maybe the lack of scientists in politics is inhibiting this simple meme? Of course, the gonads will probably disagree...
Sausages No Longer in Pants
Posted on March 11, 2008The taste of music critics is usually better with even catsup, although something spicier to offset the strange combination of blandness and rot works better. Unfortunately, the article in question fails to get to the real cause of the problem: Music critics listen critically; the general public listens with less than a quarter of an ear (and a lot lower proportion of brain), all too often
Magical Unrealism
Posted on March 09, 2008I have some very unnice things to say about ongoing controversy over the Margaret Jones (Seltzer) "gangland memoir" Love and Consequences. There's plenty of blame to go around here; some of it involves irrational expectations, some of it involves corporate dynamics, some of it involves outright deception...
Sold the Buick
Posted on March 08, 2008Today, a post-flu set of miscellany. Tomorrow, some not-very-nice comments on the latest (or, at least, most recently revealed) pseudomemoir. In one of the more disturbing relics of McCarthyism that one might find, California requires teachers — even at the university level — to sign a loyalty oath...
Buying the Buick
Posted on March 03, 2008It's definitely still winter around here, influenza and all. Bleah. Herewith, therefore, a Bought the Buick special edition of the Monday Miscellany. Joanne Rowling is finally speaking out on her lawsuit seeking to halt a fan-created "lexicon" on Harry Potter...
Related Law Questions
Can driving accident be cause for termination?
If your state is an at-will state, the company can fire you for any reason or fo...
Do I still have to pay a bill that arrived 3 years late? I bought a custom chair 3 years ago. I paid for half of the chair when I made the purchase ($450). They were going to send me a bill for the second half. I never r
Are you asking for the moral answer or the legal answer? Morally, well, what do ...
What should I do if there is an error on my credit report?
You're entitled to a free copy of your credit report once a year (and under cert...
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Can driving accident be cause for termination?
If your state is an at-will state, the company can fire you for any reason or fo...
Do I still have to pay a bill that arrived 3 years late? I bought a custom chair 3 years ago. I paid for half of the chair when I made the purchase ($450). They were going to send me a bill for the second half. I never r
Are you asking for the moral answer or the legal answer? Morally, well, what do ...
What should I do if there is an error on my credit report?
You're entitled to a free copy of your credit report once a year (and under cert...
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