Copyright Law

Icebergs

Posted on December 17, 2008
This 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, 2008
More 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, 2008
Before 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, 2008
The 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.

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Fall Out

Posted on December 04, 2008
Sometimes 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, 2008
These 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, 2008
An 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, 2008
Starting 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, 2008
And 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, 2008
Greetings 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, 2008
Book 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, 2008
Book 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, 2008
The 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, 2008
Unscheduled 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, 2008
My 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, 2008
I 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, 2008
These 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, 2008
An 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, 2008
These 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, 2008
Congratulations 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, 2008
Early. 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, 2008
Before 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, 2008
On 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, 2008
Some 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, 2008
A 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, 2008
I 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

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