Copyright Law

GBS: General Comments on the Fairness Hearing

Posted on February 19, 2010
First, here are a few others' summaries of the chaos of the fairness hearing before Judge Chin yesterday (18 February, alphabetical order): Andrew Albanese at PW asserted that "For his part, Chin gave only slight clues to his thinking, telling the parties at the outset of the hearing he had both 'an open mind' and, at the end of the hearing, that he had 'a lot to think about...

Cognitive Dissonance

Posted on February 17, 2010
Just a couple of double-takes from the last few days: At the library, on the new books shelf, I spotted The Sexually Transmitted Disease Sourcebook right next to Living With AIDS, and was tempted to see if the former might have a condom on it. Illinois has joined the list of desperate states participating in MegaPowerBall...

Some Snow Day This Is

Posted on February 15, 2010
Just a few quick notes today - single parents don't get federal holidays... It looks like Southwest Airlines has decided that Amazon is the model of appropriate public relations. It's not just that Southwest threw Kevin Smith off a flight for taking up too much space...

Karaoke Night!

Posted on February 11, 2010
At many of the local bars in Campustown, Thursday is karaoke night. With special thanks to cyclobenzaprine, I offer the following commentary on the public reaction to the Amazon/Macmillan kerfluffle, aka AmazonFail 3.21 - and in particular, to those who took Amazon's side because e-books should never cost more than $9...

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Sausages Dusted With Snow

Posted on February 10, 2010
"Snowpocalypse," eh? It looks pretty normal for February to me. Sure, DC is shut down; but it's the home of so many snow jobs that one can't tell the difference... Here's a fascinating look at one author's collaborative process that is even more interesting for what it notes about a "behavior v...

The Disintermediation Tango

Posted on February 08, 2010
This is going to get rather convoluted - even for me, even for Monday morning - so consider yourself warned. Anybody left? (Around here, that probably means "everybody is leftist," as my few conservative readers tend to ignore anything I say is complicated...

Google Book Search Settlement

Posted on February 05, 2010
Update: DOJ Not Satisfied With the Amended Settlement The Settlement (in essay form)The Lawsuit (in essay form) The Department of Justice has filed an objection to the Amended Settlement (Doc. 922, 04 Feb 2010). Before jumping into that objection, I'd like to reemphasize something that it is not: The opinion of the Register of Copyright...

Somewhat Off-Topic Musings

Posted on February 03, 2010
If I can draw your attention away from the train wreck/continued nuclear implosion represented by the Macmillan/Amazon to a couple of things that actually matter for a moment... Today is National Signing Day for football players. It's a tremendously offensive day, particularly to those of us who are parents of disabled children...

Blah Blah Blah Trixie Blah Blah Blah

Posted on February 02, 2010
There's not an awful lot going on here at the moment; seeing this truly ghastly $7,000 sex robot has left me, umm, let's just leave that alone, OK? I'm not sure that I want to know. Meanwhile, the Amazon/Macmillan kerfluffle continues to generate lots and lots of ire on teh internets without anyone coming any closer to reaching a conclusion, let alone a resolution...

Inherited Sausage Platter

Posted on February 01, 2010
An AmazonFail sausage platter would probably consist only of sulky 5-year-old whingeing and quite a bit more fail. Wait a minute... After AmazonFail 3.21 this past weekend, I can't resist yet another update. There has been some misunderstanding of "reseller" and "consignment" floating around the net; one of the more-rational examples occurs in the comments following a post on Charlie

GBS Musings

Posted on January 31, 2010
Tangent: AmazonFail (version 3.21) The Settlement (in essay form)The Lawsuit (in essay form) Depending on how one counts, this is either the second or third major AmazonFail arising from egotistical - and ultimately stupid and self-defeating - mass delistings of material by Amazon...

GBS Update

Posted on January 29, 2010
The Settlement (in essay form)The Lawsuit (in essay form) Just a quick update on the fun and games: Yesterday (28 January) was the deadline for objecting to or opting out of the GBS Amended Settlement. I've had endless microseconds of amusement reading the submissions this morning, which largely track what I've been complaining about since the lawsuit was first filed...

There's Too Much Confusion Here

Posted on January 29, 2010
Well, I can't get no relief (streaming audio) Sarah Weinman offers a most cogent - and interesting - comment on Salinger's demise (which also applies to that of Howard Zinn, let alone that of Louis Auchinloss... remember, although you can't libel the dead, the dead can commit libel)...

Read Some Gawdawful Rubbish Like You Always Do

Posted on January 27, 2010
Here's a tidy cover for this untidy sausage platter. Consider the potential evil of librarians (HT: Ann Bartow at Madisonian): And now, lifting the lid: If you speak three languages, you're trilingual; if you speak two languages, you're bilingual; if you speak only one language, you're an American, and "neurally disadvantaged" compared to much of the world...

Lazy Monday Afternoon Sausages

Posted on January 25, 2010
Well, not lazy, precisely; I've actually been doing other stuff while these rotted aged... Late-breaking news bulletin from across the pond: bean-counting managers are ruining the music industry, while at the same time artists/writers/musicians are stacking shelves at the corner store...

Liar!

Posted on January 22, 2010
One large internet sausage link (with bite-sized nuggets in it!) and a few others... One of the main principles of debate is that you need to state the name of your opponent correctly. Apparently, that news has not filtered through to Kevin Weiss, the CEO of Author Solutions (the vanity press operation)...

It Really Is Money That Matters

Posted on January 21, 2010
There was a reason that I put that particular video into yesterday's entry: Anticipation of this morning's opinion from the Supreme Court in Citizens United. The Court held (in a 5–4, archly partisan decision) that: Distinguishing wealthy individuals from corporations based on the latter's special advantages of, e...

Frosty's Fate

Posted on January 20, 2010
Our six inches of snow (of course, down on Frat Row they're insisting that it was eight inches) is finally melting off here. Is the false lure of "professionalism" attributable to a truth explained by a professional musician and composer? It's more than money that matters...

Monday Sans Caffeine

Posted on January 19, 2010
It's still Monday; at least it sure feels like Monday. I'm shocked - shocked, I say - to find credible documentation (and admissions) that the FBI broke even the TRAITOR Act with wiretap requests based on phony terrorism "threats". It almost makes one long for the Hoover era, when at least everybody admitted what was going on...

These Sausages Still Quite Grumpy

Posted on January 15, 2010
Surprised? You shouldn't be. Some advance notes on human rights for Dr Martin Luther King's birthday, officially celebrated on Monday 18 January: In his monologue last night, Craig Ferguson smacked Rush Limbaugh - always a soft target on human rights issues - around pretty well...

A Very, Very Angry Sausage

Posted on January 12, 2010
Professor Ribstein, through no fault or intent of his own (he was making a valid - probably unsound, but valid - point about the relative merit of different pay levels within the legal profession), has really, really pissed me off... through an uncritical quotation from an ignoramus named Erin Smith, who in turn bloviates: Until you've done it, you can't underestimate the toll it takes

Sausages Seasoned With Scare Quotes

Posted on January 11, 2010
Another binary day (the six-digit date is all 0s and 1s). That said, it's Monday. Two fascinating, sideways-like comments on today's NYT editorial page: Paul Krugman comments on the "fact" that Europe's "socialist" economies are substantially worse off than the US's "archly capitalist" one, while the editorial board comments on "privatization" of war efforts as if it's somehow a new

Post-Holiday Sausage Platter

Posted on January 04, 2010
Somewhat overdue post-holiday sausages... and, as much as nobody really wants to watch any sausage being made, you really don't want to understand how these were made. And stored. And shipped to you. Unlike the stereotypical law professor, I don't play hide the ball under the guise of "soft Socratic dialogue" (whatever the hell that means)...

Meet the New Censors, Same As the Old Censors

Posted on January 02, 2010
Today's entry from the Department of Misplaced Priorities concerns The Who and the Super Bowl. And one-issue politics. And idiots who cannot manage to distinguish between "artist" and "artwork," or "performer" and "performance." One supposed child-advocacy organization in Pompano Beach, near where the Super Bowl will be played next month, requested that the NFL disinvite The Who due to Pete

Mathematically Challenged

Posted on January 01, 2010
This is really a losing argument: The decade isn't over yet. I don't begin counting with "zero" (except, of course, my checking account...); hell, I don't really like counting from the inaccurately calculated birthdate of a mythological figure, whether starting with zero or one...

Only Three of Them?

Posted on January 01, 2010
The 02 January Grauniad contains an absolutely wonderful, meaty slugline in the books section: George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Karl Rove have all chosen to publish their memoirs in 2010, thereby ensuring that at least three of them will be on the remainder piles by Christmas...

On Eradicating Trenchfoot

Posted on December 25, 2009
My thought for the day. It's an impossible dream, but still: Here's hoping they can come home soon - and that "world leaders" find an appropriate way short of war to resolve their differences that does not involve either isolationism or totalitarianism (and yes, that includes you, religious hierarchies; regardless of your purported supernatural mission, you're stuck living in the world with the

GBS Settlement

Posted on December 24, 2009
Interlude: Abandoning Ship The Settlement (in essay form)The Lawsuit (in essay form) Technical difficulties (with my back) have really cut into my blawgging time this past week. In any event, I leave you with this, umm, "dialog": In her usual, understated fashion, Ursula K...

From Near the Crest of Mt. Crumpet

Posted on December 18, 2009
You won't find me stealing toys down in Whoville at this time of year. I have minions to do that sort of thing for me when it's necessary. Or just plain fun. Stanley Fish doesn't understand himself. This will come as no surprise to anyone who has actually read his theoretical writings with, well, a theoretical eye; but his defense of Sarah Palin's "autobiography", leading to a further

Writer's Cramp

Posted on December 15, 2009
The thought for the day:

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