Copyright Law

Bread and Sausages

Posted on August 09, 2010
... because the masses need to be tamed, and it's too damned hot for the circus. I'm a little bit late in noting this, but Professor Baron's fascinating blog Language Log has an interesting article that actually documents the history of the futile attempts to impose a gender-neutral singular pronoun on English...

A Real Boomtown

Posted on August 06, 2010
As my barely awake brain shambles towards Hiroshima today... The New York Times Magazine has posted a long - probably too long, as there's quite a bit of repetition and fluff in it - article on BMI's system for extracting licensing fees from recorded music venues like bars, restaurants, strip clubs, etc...

Après quelqu'un d'autre

Posted on August 05, 2010
Lots more yesterday than today, eh? Equality is always supposed to be good, right? How about debates concerning a book that advocates greater economic equality as a foundation for a stable society - shouldn't access to those debates also be equal? That's the fundamental problem with what the authors of that book propose: Access to peer-reviewed journals (both for authors who want to

Overcooked Link Sausages

Posted on August 04, 2010
Lost yesterday's sausages to car repairs. Urghh. And today's are offered in an environment already approaching a double-triple (triple-digit humidity and temperature {Fahrenheit ? as much as I wish the US would adopt the metric system, it hasn't yet})...

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Proposition 8 Struck Down

Posted on August 04, 2010
Dorothy need not surrender. The Friends of Dorothy won... so to speak. And Judge Walker, by doing his job and doing it well, like Judge Jones before him via Kitzmiller, has guaranteed that he cannot be confirmed to an appellate court. There is going to be a lot of analysis forthcoming on why the result is or is not right, and does or does not signal the end of Western civilization...

Bleary Eyed Monday Link Sausages

Posted on August 02, 2010
It's Monday. I'd say "get over it," but I'm not sure that anybody ever "gets over" Mondays; the rest of the week is just recovery, until Sunday night, when the realization that the next day is Monday really hits. In any event, unusually for August - one of the two month-long holes in the publishing calendar - there's actually relevant publishing news today...

Elmer Fudd, Associate Publisher

Posted on July 29, 2010
From goofy IP litigation link sausages to goofy (goofier?) publishing link sausages in one day. Is anybody really surprised? There's some evidence that the 'net is suppressing sales of celebrity tell-alls, but you'd never know it by what publishers are actually putting out...

Donald Duck, Litigation Associate

Posted on July 28, 2010
Today's unavoidably detained theme is "goofy IP litigation." I could easily fill two or three platters with sausages like these... every week. But that would be both boring and too easy. Sometimes damages claims have to be excessive to get noticed, like a recent shocking case from Russia...

An Unremarkable Platter

Posted on July 27, 2010
... unless, of course, you're a USDA inspector of internet link sausages, in which case I'm unavailable and in a meeting. Publisher overdiversification, like that at Pearson (corporate parent of Penguin), has some interesting, odd, and on the whole negative effects...

Link Sausages Slouch Toward Bethlehem (PA)

Posted on July 26, 2010
Just slouching out of the weekend, here... Given that ComiCon was this past weekend, one might think that there would be jokey magazine covers with pictures of supervillains on them, and that superheroes would be ready to respond. Unfortunately, the cover to the right is no joke; and those aren't fictional or comic supervillains...

The 15% Solution

Posted on July 23, 2010
I'm still shaking my head more than a bit over the Andrew Wylie/Kindle fiasco, not to mention the industry in general's reaction or, specifically, Random House's reaction. There are just so, so many things wrong with both the initiative and the reactions...

Recursively Linked Sausages

Posted on July 22, 2010
Today's link sausages are all, themselves, links: Between past and present; between individual and group; and so on. To slightly paraphrase Mark Twain, "the man who doesn't use his classical education has no advantage over the man who doesn't have one...

What Part of "Ambiguous" Did Barbie Not Understand?

Posted on July 22, 2010
In this day and age, authors can very, very seldom support themselves solely on their freelance writing. For every John Scalzi out there, there are dozens of Jay Lakes and hundreds of far-less-luminary authors who maintain day jobs (whether by choice or by necessity)...

Highly Theoretical Link Sausages

Posted on July 21, 2010
... but not so theoretical that they're meaningless. At least, I hope not. Two seemingly unrelated pieces that actually concern the same thing: the increasing ease of making copies, b/w Disney now demands merchandiseability as a condition of filmmaking...

Wolf

Posted on July 21, 2010
The Shirley Sherrod fiasco involves, as the WaPo incompletely notes, more than a few villains and incompetents. What I'd like to point out now, though, is the most dangerous aspect of the entire affair: The boy who cried wolf. I'd like to think, as a longtime Illinois resident, that I know something about political corruption...

Link Sausages With Arsenic Sauce

Posted on July 19, 2010
I think the Grinch is in a better mood than I am this morningafternoon. From the department of "Really? I Never Would Have Guessed!": The WaPo has a major investigative report on growth of the intelligence community since 9/11... and has the temerity to somehow act surprised...

Appearances Matter

Posted on July 16, 2010
It's Visual Arts Day on the sausage platter, with many appetizing visual accompaniments to the usual platter of sarcastic, cynical link sausages. We'll start with this one, which reflects reality all too well: But I suppose that's better than the antics of some of the people who aren't in Congress, but think they should be...

The Link Sausages Between

Posted on July 15, 2010
It's raining hamsters outside today, and there's a forecast for chihauhuas and kittens in the next couple of hours. Thus, I'm trying to get this posted between - between necessary errands (like getting remora chow) and between 'net outages. Sigh...

Pot, Meet Kettle

Posted on July 13, 2010
Today's link sausages all have a considerable aspect of "Pot, meet Kettle: You're both blackmelaninically enhanced". The first and last arise through a crunchy fond of delicious irony, the middle one through a rhetorical failure that, on examination, becomes a problem with some substance...

Post-World-Cup Link Sausage Platter

Posted on July 12, 2010
Post-Cup sausages after a disappointing match. I strongly suspect that both teams would have played a cleaner game (mostly the Netherlands, but Spain was far from uncynical) had Mr Webb been able to count on two more pairs of eyes on the respective goallines...

Mad Link Sausages

Posted on July 08, 2010
It's not just scientists who get mad this way, though: Consider authors - who start out mad - being told that they should be satisfied with the "honor" of being published in venues that nobody has ever heard of... The Atlantic offers eight theories on why college students study fewer hours each week...

Creutzfeldt-Jacob Link Sausages

Posted on July 07, 2010
Lost yesterday to a migraine attack. Normally, the mashed brain bits are exactly what would end up in the sausages, but there was a USDA inspector nearby, so... I'm worried about alien invasions now: Aliens' first chance to see us is I Love Lucy, and we're all dead if they have any sense and consider her a threat to the galaxy...

Slightly Singed Post-Barbecue Link Sausages

Posted on July 05, 2010
At least the vegetarian didn't crawl out of the marinade this year... Sometimes paintings get altered or misattributed... and that's when galleries' fun begins. It's a problem that is far from unique to painting; consider that entire last scene in Amadeus with the similar "alterations" of the Requiem, or the continuing controversy over "Shakespeare" (hopefully not to be extended in a

World Cup 2010, Match Day 21

Posted on July 03, 2010
Today, they'll set up the other semifinal. Argentina 0:4 Germany - A thoroughly deserved domination and beatdown. This was the epitome of the team game overcoming street ball, even more than yesterday's Brazil–Netherlands match. All four of Germany's goals had that inevitable look of the training ground to them; they may have required skill, they may have required a cool head, but they were

Surprise! (Not)

Posted on July 02, 2010
No, I'm not really surprised by any of this. And if you read this blawg, you're probably cynical enough that you aren't either. But the wide-eyed credulousness common to contemporary journalism (etc.) appears rampant... How many bars? Well, less than the display showed: Apple admits that the formula used to calculate signal strength has always overstated signal strength for the iPhone

World Cup 2010, Match Day 20

Posted on July 02, 2010
First, before getting into today's matches, some (over?)intellectualization (not that any of that ever happens on this blawg) on law, football, ethics, and technology from Professor Madison that is a lot more astute and realistic than what I've been hearing/reading from purported "knowledgeable commentators" about this edition of the World Cup...

Link Sausages and Ponies

Posted on June 30, 2010
These link sausages are mostly of the "biter bit" variety... which has nothing whatsoever to do with long pig. I think. This is obviously a culture-specific (and even subculture-specific) meme: using classical music to disperse teenage loiterers...

Preoccupied Sausages

Posted on June 29, 2010
Lots of remora and personal duty today - so much that there won't even be a World Cup update later (I'm writing this in a waiting room, and missing major portions of both matches). Arrests of an alleged Soviet Russian spy ring are leading to entirely predictable results, whether we're actually concerned with the Soviets, the Russians, or indeed anybody else...

Mob Rule Link Sausages

Posted on June 28, 2010
Before going face-first onto the sausage platter, this last scheduled day of the October 2009 Term, two deaths to note: Martin Ginsburg, husband of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg; and Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV), one of the primary reasons that the Senate should have a mandatory retirement age (due to his abuse of the system, regardless of my occasional agreement with his ideology).

World Cup 2010, Match Day 18

Posted on June 28, 2010
Once again, I missed good parts of these matches with remora duty. But they did have a common theme: A confident, well-organized, high-skill team toying with an opponent without quite enough justification. In the first match (Netherlands 2:1 Slovakia), the vastly superior Netherlands tried playing with its food and could, on a different day, have suffered an embarassing draw leading to extra time

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