Maine Event

Yesterday, voters in Maine voted to strip marriage rights from gays and lesbians, which had been granted by the passage of a law in May. Maine's version of California's woeful Proposition 8, which rejected gay marriage in last year's general election, was backed by the usual suspects, including the National Organization for Marriage, of the infamous "Gathering Storm" ad. Pretty pathetic.

It's time to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). The notion that this crucial civil rights issue should be left to the voters of each state to decide is ludicrous. What would have happened if we had allowed each state to decide when to grant civil rights to blacks? If there had been no Civil Rights Act?

Maybe someone can explain to me - slowly and using small words, because I'm a bit dim - how this is different? DOMA, and "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" with it, enshrined prejudice in law. It's time to move on and grant to LGBT people the equality they are owed under our Constitution. If some people in the country don't like it, tough. Change is hard, but this change is inevitable, so we might as well get used to it, and get on with it.

Allowing gays and lesbians to marry under civil law will strengthen families, not weaken them. It will help children, not harm them. It will have no impact on religious freedom in the U.S. whatsoever. To oppose these civil rights is to be an opponent of civil rights, period. It is shameful, it is irrational, it is wrong.

Vegemite, Delicious Vegemite

Saw on Boing Boing today a mention of a ludicrously restrictive Terms of Use agreement over at the Kraft Corporation site for their product, Vegemite, apparently a delicious Australian spread that I have heard mixed reviews of, let's say, from people who have actually eaten it, which I have not. Evidently, you are not allowed to link to the site "in any way whatsover."

And you can check it out on their site by following this link.

The Mastick House

Passed by here on the weekly bike ride. The sign in the yard caught my attention. If you click through on the picture, you'll see a bigger size and you'll be able to read it, hopefully. As if the school board recall effort and lawsuit over the gay anti-bullying curriculum wasn't proof enough, this picture further demonstrates that there are idiots everywhere.

In case anyone is wondering, the answer to the question posed by the sign is Hawaii. The question refers to Barack Obama's birth certificate.

Lego of My First Amendment Rights!

This story is a week old now, but I've been away and I had to make a comment about it, because it's just ridiculous and a perfect example of corporate censorship due to abuse of intellectual property law. Here's the rundown:

Spinal Tap has been on tour, a kind of acoustic, old-timers tour (called "Unwigged and Unplugged"), which is pretty funny in and of itself. In addition to playing Tap songs and Folksmen songs, they joke around and show videos and stuff. Here's one of the videos, which was made by a high school kid and uploaded to YouTube and which Tap loved:



They loved it so much, for obvious reasons, that they actually played it at their shows. So this was all fine and good until it came time to put out a DVD of the tour, which would have included some of the kid's Lego video. Long story short, Lego balked.

Julie Stern, a Lego spokesdrone, told the New York Times, "We love that our fans are so passionate and creative with our products. But it had some inappropriate language, and the tone wasn't appropriate for our target audience of kids 6 to 12." (Because corporations apparently have the right to dictate, under the threat of a lawsuit, how consumers use their products.) The article continues:

"Kia Kamran, an intellectual property lawyer representing Spinal Tap, said the band could have prevailed had Lego sued alleging copyright infringement, because Mr. Hickey’s video does not show the brand’s logo and is satirical. But the band did not deem the fight worth the expense, he said. 'In my heart of hearts, I do think this is fair use' of copyrighted material, Mr. Kamran said."

And, after explaining that numerous Lego parody videos exist on YouTube, some with much more "inappropriate" content and pointing out that Lego has not attempted to take them down, the article returns to the aptly named Ms. Stern:

“'YouTube is a less commercial use,' Ms. Stern said. 'But when you get into a more commercial use, that’s when we have to look into the fact that we are a trademarked brand, and we really have to control the use of our brand, and our brand values.'"

Finally, the kid (Coleman Hickey, now 16) who made the video, after acknowledging his disappointment says, "It’s not like I was going to get any money for it, but it’s too bad. Lego has the right to do that, but it’s unfortunate that they don’t have a little more of a sense of humor.”

First of all, young Coleman, Lego does NOT have the "right" to do this. It is not your fault that you think this is the case, because we have allowed corporations to control the way young people are taught about intellectual property and the propaganda that they release is almost never challenged by the news media (which are, of course, almost entirely owned by the same corporations). Lego is merely throwing its weight around because they judged, correctly, that Spinal Tap would not want to pay the gigabucks required to fight them in court - NOT because they thought they had a legitimate case. Who can blame the band? Tap is three comedians in their 60s milking their most popular act prior to retirement. Lego is a privately held Danish company worth hundreds of millions, if not several billion, dollars.

Yeah, it's unfortunate that Lego doesn't have a sense of humor; it's more unfortunate that corporations are allowed to strong-arm artists (whether they are corporate artists or not) and effectively prevent them from exercising their First Amendment right of free speech without getting smacked down. The term for this is "prior restraint."

Second, the writer of this article blithely goes along with - or even creates - the impression that Lego was somehow asserting copyright in this case, by attributing the notion that, if Tap had used the video and Lego had sued, the suit would be based on a claim of copyright, to an IP lawyer (notice, however, that he's not actually quoted saying that). But that's a highly specious assertion.

The United States Copyright Office defines copyright as "a form of protection grounded in the U.S. Constitution and granted by law for original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression. Copyright covers both published and unpublished works." Further, copyright protects "original works of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works, such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software, and architecture. Copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation, although it may protect the way these things are expressed."

Note that plastic toys do not seem to be one of the protected categories. However, this is not made explicitly clear, as it would perhaps be a waste of time to attempt to list all of the specific things in the world copyright does not protect. Plus, since copyright applies to artworks like sculptures, perhaps a lawyer could make the case that Legos are sculptures and therefore subject to copyright.

It doesn't matter, though, because this dispute is not about a copy of Legos. It's about a depiction of Legos in a video and whether that video can be incorporated into another video. Legos used to be under a patent that prevented other companies from marketing similar plastic bricks, but that patent expired in 1988. Trademark law prohibits someone from calling their similar plastic brick a "Lego," but not from calling it anything else. Trademark certainly does not have anything to say about your "brand values," whatever the fuck that corporatist oxymoron is supposed to mean. Nope, all trademark means is that someone can't make the exact same thing that you do and call it the exact same thing that you call it.

Common sense - and case law, which is mostly all we have to go on in this type of case, since there is not much that is explicit about IP laws and these cases can only be decided by going to court - would seem to suggest that neither copyright, trademark or patent protections apply in this case. Maybe look at it this way: If you owned a Mustang, what's happened here is the equivalent of the Ford Motor Company telling you can't put your Mustang in a movie. If you are under the impression that this is Ford's "right," then you, too, have succumbed to the aggressive propaganda by which corporations have been siphoning up our rights as citizens when it comes to freedom of expression.

As a kid, Legos were my favorite toy, for many years. Now, they largely suck because they went from being a highly interchangeable creative building toy to being sold in super-specialized packs with much less interchangeability and much more cross-branding. That alone is a real shame; but what the company has done in this instance is simply a disgrace.

U.S. Airways: Worst Airline Ever?

So, I'm leaving today on trip for a few days. I'm flying from Oakland to Albany, New York. In order to do this, I have to fly to Phoenix, then Detroit, then Albany. It's going to take twelve hours and three flights. There was no simpler way.

Last night around 7 PM I get a robo-call from U.S. Airways letting me know that my first flight has been canceled. Instead of leaving at 9 AM, they are going to put me on a flight at 6, meaning getting up at 4 AM. The reason given for the cancellation is "routine, scheduled maintenance." So, I got up at 4 - and so did my wife and infant son, because she's driving me to the airport.

I went to the U.S. Airways website. My new 6 AM flight has been delayed. It now leaves at 8:50. I called the phone number to confirm and the reason given for the delay is that "the crew was required to complete a mandatory rest period."

I want them to maintain their planes; I want the crew to be rested. But this kind of thing is just a perverse jerking-around of a customer who is already paying too much to make a ridiculous all-day tour of the country, compounded by Orwellian lies. Insult to injury, I think that's called.

If you can avoid flying U.S. Airways, do so. But, like me, you probably can't.

Additional thoughts

The previous post limns my disgust with Ben Stein's piss-poorly reasoned pro-Intelligent Design film, Expelled, although I didn't go into much detail on what I felt was so weak about his argument. Today, I've read an interesting piece by The Ethicist, in his weekly "Moral of the Story" column. On the subject of the current war over health care in the Congress, Cohen asks, "Is some debate so suspect as to be unethical?"

That's an interesting question - what he means is, when you're a politician or political operative making public statements and arguments on a contentious topic, such as whether there ought to be a "public option," do you have any kind of ethical responsibility to argue from logic employing truthful information or is it permissible to just lie your ovoid, turd-blossomy head off?

What do you think The Ethicist has to say about that?

As it relates to the Stein film, if you watch it you'll notice that the smug, arrogant, condescending Stein is about as lazy and partisan in his approach to his issue as many Republicans have been in considering the health care issue. It's as easy, and as devoid of any actual meaning, to simply say that Obama's a "socialist" as it is for Stein to hint that those who agree that evolution is science fact are Nazis. Or tantamount to Nazis. Or whatever he was saying.

Okay, I'll talk about copyright for a second

I have so far largely avoided talking about one of my pet issues on this blog, namely the tangle of thorns known as the current take on copyright law in the U.S. I've avoided it mostly so I wouldn't end up writing only about this topic, though I have mentioned it on occasion, because in my experience people hate this issue and find it incredibly boring. I'd like to tackle it at some point, though, and try to make it interesting to people, and try to make it matter to them. I think fixing our broken copyright system matters a great deal and gets to the very heart of our democracy, our First Amendment right to free speech.

Today, though, I just wanted to mention a very specific case. Back in February, I wrote about the Oscars which had just been handed out. At the time, I embedded a YouTube clip from the broadcast of a skit performed by Seth Rogen and James Franco as their Pineapple Express characters. It was a hilarious skit, one of the (few) highlights of the telecast and, after watching PE again the other night, I wanted to watch the skit again.

Alas, when I went to my post to watch the embedded clip, I clicked on it and got this message instead: "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by AMPAS Oscars." In other words, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which hands out the Oscars and produces the awards show, did not authorize that clip to be shown on YouTube. I'd like to point out a few things about this:

First, if you followed the above link back to that post, you'll notice I have reembedded the clip from a different website. AMPAS's takedown request was completely useless, even though it seems to have been effective with regard to YouTube, because there are hundreds of other video sharing sites on the Web and once a popular clip has been passed around it's as near to impossible as makes no difference to take it down. The fast Google search I performed to find the clip somewhere other than YouTube yielded dozens of sites on the first results page. Bottom line: this brand of corporate censorship - oh, what? you think that's not the right word? you want me to grab a dictionary? - literally does not work.

Second, I'd like to know by what reasonable calculation the Academy loses one stinking dime by allowing fans to share a clip like this. I don't see it on their website. I don't see it exclusively licensed to another site, like Funny or Die. Is AMPAS going to release the clip in some other form, for instance, an Oscar highlights DVD? Maybe they will - and if that's the plan, would someone walk me through how leaving the clip up on YouTube fucks up that plan? Maybe you think that the argument is that no one would buy the DVD, or download, or whatever, if the clip was available for free. Really? How do you know that? How do you know that the kind of person who would actually buy such a DVD even knows that YouTube exists? How do you know that, even if they know the clip is on YouTube, that they wouldn't buy the DVD for the far superior quality and for all the other clips that such a DVD would theoretically contain? The truth is, no one has any idea but I would suggest that the tiny little market for such a DVD would not be hurt - in fact, with the right kind of promotion, it could be helped - by allowing that clip to be seen online.

Third, fuck AMPAS and its cadre of overpaid lawyers, billing hours just to justify their retainers. This is the kind of reflexive, thoughtless, overzealous, anti-consumer, anti-fan copyright protectionism that we, the people, need to crush like a mob hit in a trash compactor. This is the toughest aspect of the problem, though - getting "the people" to care about any of this. Much in the same way that some people are not in favor of taxing the wealthiest Americans a bit more to provide important services for poorer people because they think they themselves are going to be rich someday, even though there is almost no chance of that (amidst many other, much better arguments for the stupidity of their position), other folks think that the draconian copyright protections lobbied for and won by the media corporations might help them out when they create valuable content one day. Which they almost certainly will not. The "common sense" argument, that, well, of course AMPAS should take down the content, because it's their property, deserves a longer dissection than I feel like doing right now, but I will come back to it.

Fourth, and finally, at some point a different kind of common sense will have to prevail, by which media corporations will realize that they aren't getting anywhere with this type of behavior. Like the political argument that says the war on terror has ended up creating more terrorists, the war on "piracy" will only create more pirates. That is, when I hear that some mom in the Midwest - whatever her true motives - did some minor music sharing and so now has to fork over a million bucks to the recording industry, it makes me want to steal music and give it away to everyone I know. Ah, but will I actually do so? So, my hating the industry for being total dicks, so long as I don't steal anything, is of no concern?

Madoff sentenced to hell

Or maybe not quite hell - Bernie Madoff got 150 years today - but if hell had been an option, I'm sure that most people would have cheered such a sentence. Or, perhaps, like Prometheus, he could have been chained to a rock at the end of the world for a few thousand years with his guts eaten out of him every day by vultures, only to be replaced overnight so the punishment could begin anew each day. Would that have brought the money back?

Madoff is clearly a world-class asshole. I have a hard time understanding how he could have even perpetrated such a collosal swindle without being some kind of psychopath, in a certified, DSM-IV kind of way. What he did was despicable and disgusting, an infliction of suffering if not, as Judge Chin would have it, "extraordinarily evil," than at least ordinarily evil.

But I wonder, what is the price of freedom? I mean freedom in the sense of not being in prison. Can we put a price tag on the workaday freedom that we all take for granted? Being able to go outside, walk to the store, see a movie, make love to our wife, go to the library, call friends on the phone, have a beer, work? What is that worth?

Well, if Bernie's scam was worth $65 billion, and he got 150 years, the cost of freedom in the United States in 2009 is $1,187,214.61 per day.

Maybe that kind of reckoning doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it makes about as much sense, to me, as someone getting 150 years in prison - for any crime. That's supposed to make us feel better? That he won't even be up for parole until he's been dead for a hundred years?

We're told that this sentence, which was the harshest possible under the law, will deter other fraudsters. What a load of horseshit. Like I said, Madoff is probably a psychopath. What deters such a person from anything? This sentence is ridiculous mob-justice, period. What happened to life in prison, which is what this sentence is, of course?

Or what happened to letting the punishment fit the crime? Why not send Bernie to jail for a while, take every last penny from him (mostly already done, or underway) and everyone who benefited from his fraud and pay back as much of the money as possible. Then, let him out of prison and give him an electronic bracelet, a shitty apartment and a shittier job, perhaps something that involves actually working with, and having to touch, shit. When did the answer to every conceivable crime in this country become lock them up for ever!

The United States has the highest documented prison population in the world. Not per capita; the highest in raw numbers! China ranks second - and they have a population of 1.3 billion people. We need prison reform in our country, desperately; our habit of locking people up is a sad legacy, especially given our stated values as a nation and as a people.

It does not need to be this way in order to teach people like Bernie Madoff a lesson. Let's use some common sense. And while we're on the subject - I said what he did was terrible, even evil - but people might also want to consider that something that looks too good to be true, like double digit returns on investment for years at a time, probably is! I am not blaming the victims for Madoff's scam, but his fraud certainly does not seem to have been particularly sophisticated. It was garden variety bullshit and people just spread it around and spread it around for twenty years.

Insanely greedy bastards who rob people need to be punished. Doing so is also a fine opportunity to consider the ways in which greed blinds us all.

Finally, an end to music piracy!

Now that the latest trial of international digital music thief, Jammie Thomas-Rasset, has ended with a fine of $1.92 million levied against the Brainerd, Minnesota, mother of four, for having offered 24 songs for free download on the Kazaa file-sharing service, I must express some relief that digital "piracy" has finally been stopped once and for all! I have lost so much sleep over the last decade on behalf of the noble corporations that produce our music and other popular entertainment, just thinking about the sadness and sense of helplessness they must have felt as they've watched themselves get robbed again and again by their own "fans."

Real fans--for these despicable scofflaws do not deserve that name--know that the only morally correct way to consume media is to do so in exactly the way the giant media corporations tell us to. So if we have to pay $18 for a new CD of mostly filler from a mediocre band that cost perhaps $6 to actually make, so be it. Or if we have to keep buying the movies, music and television shows that we have already bought each time a new format is introduced, well, of course we'll do it. It's only fair.

We are here--the fans, the real fans--to prop up the old business models for as long as necessary--maybe forever! Consumers, after all, are not the leaders in the marketplace. Just because we have the capability and the technology to consume media the way we want to when we want to, there's no way we should do so until the corporations have given us permission. It's so cool of them that they are slowly beginning to do so, too! Now a lot of music can be bought on the iTunes store--movies, too! Of course, these files can't be given away, swapped, shared or remixed in the same way that, say, a CD could have been, but that's probably for the best--I mean, I'm sure that the corporations have the best interests of their fans at heart. If they think I don't really need to be able to copy and remix a digital movie--or that I should pay more for that ability--well, surely, they know best, right?

I do, I do trust them--the media corporations and their consortiums, like the RIAA--and I just know that they all do business fairly, with integrity, and without a whiff of greed. I mean, if they didn't--perish the thought--the people just wouldn't stand for it, would they?

Important Court Case

Finally, these guys are getting their day in court!

I do think the fashion in question is incredibly stupid-looking. But to make it illegal? Ah, the American funhouse...

Vermont and the National Organization for Marriage

Following closely on the heels of my last post, Vermont has now legalized same-sex marriage. Thanks to last year's political campaigns, I am on way too many liberal email lists for having signed this or that petition, or maybe even giving money somewhere along the line. So I get mail the other day, warning me about the existence of this video:



I only post this video because I don't think anyone viewing it on my blog is going to take to the streets in opposition of gay marriage from having seen it. It's pretty hilariously stupid. What I think about when I see this kind of bullshit is about the poor actors in the video. I mean, do they believe what they're shilling? or are they just whores, AKA desperate actors?

I frequently wonder myself whether I could make a commercial for an organization as detestable as this one. Some days I try to embrace the kind of hard-partying, hedonistic, omnivorous self-interest I admired so much in some of my old-school libertarian conservative buddies in college (looking at you, Lewis). Other days I can't muster the requisite self-loathing.

But if you start rejecting work on the basis of moral outrage and contempt for idiocy, how quickly your opportunities as an actor dry up.

And then there's the issue of Damon "Rainbow Coalition" Owens. Who is Damon Owens? For those of you who clicked through and actually read the linked article, I mean, holy shit: Opus Dei? That got weird pretty fast.

The capper for me is that this organization uses the acronym NOM, which was my acronym. Bummer. Thankfully, I don't think it's gonna catch on.

There's small print in the video as the "California doctor" comes on to tell her story of religious persecution at the creamy-smooth hands of the gays, which says, "The stories these actors are telling are based on real incidents. Find out more at www.nationformarriage.org" I note the lack of trailing period there, which I take to be a sign of anxiety. Will the kids find our website as easily as they can be recruited by Harvey Milk?

Won't someone please think of the children?

Really Proud of Iowa Today

Word comes today that the Iowa Supreme Court has overturned the state ban on gay marriage, making it the first Midwestern state to legalize the practice. This makes me proud, because I am a former Iowan. When I was in high school in Ottumwa, Iowa, I was one of the so-called "drama fags," for my participation in school plays, and I also got called a fag for wearing Birkenstocks to school a few years before they were cool. Thinking about that second example, well, I can kinda forgive it. I mean, I still think "fag" is a funny word - what I mean by that is it still has the capacity to sound transgressive in our absurdly P.C. world, which few words any longer can. When someone like Cartman says it, it's going to be funny, like it or not. And, you know, it's funny when you say it to your friends. Sorry.

I remember that I was putting up a poster for my literary magazine, Chautauqua, in the school cafeteria during study hall. There was a group of...what? Redneck heshers? I had moved to Iowa in 8th grade from Maryland and, even by the end of high school, I still thought of those folks as just Iowans. But redneck heshers works. So, there was a little gang of them nearby and they sent over one of their groupies to ask me if I was a "fag." I followed her back to the table to tell her boyfriends that if they had wanted to ask me out, they could just have done so. They didn't need to send their girl over to do it for them. They could not think of any clever responses, so I think they just told me to fuck off.

Here's the best part of the ruling, apart from that it's another repudiation of prejudice on the part of the courts and apart from that it allows gays and lesbians to get married:

"Same-sex marriages will be permitted in Iowa for at least two years, because the legislative process required to overturn the ruling would take that long. A constitutional amendment would require the state legislature to approve a ban on same-sex marriage in two consecutive sessions after which voters would have a chance to weigh in. Despite opposition to the ruling by Republican lawmakers, Democrats, who control the legislature, have given no indication that they intend to introduce such an amendment." (Davey & Robbins, NYT)

So the Mormons are going to have wait two years to force their bigotry on Iowans. Ha! Take that, Latter Day Dicks!

The Head of the Sinaloa Cartel is the New Drug War Billionaire

Following up from yesterday's post, about how our "War on Drugs" amounts to flushing tens of billions of taxpayer dollars down the toilet, where they are washed out to sea and turned into terns' nests, for which the terns are, no doubt, grateful, but which could probably be done more cheaply if tern-nest creation is our only goal, comes news today that Joaquin Guzman has made it onto Forbes' new billionaire's list.

Who's Guzman? Only the most wanted man in Mexico, a murderous drug kingpin, "one of the biggest providers of cocaine to the United States," according to Forbes' senior editor, Luisa Kroll.

From the AP: "Forbes said Mexican and Colombian traffickers laundered between $18 billion and $39 billion in proceeds from wholesale drugs shipments to the United States in 2008."

So how do you stop a criminal capitalist? The same way you stop any capitalist: gunships. No, wait, I mean, not gunships...what's it called? Oh, yeah: more capitalism! Legalization, Taxation, Regulation, Treatment = bye-bye cartels!

Local Developments in Fried Chicken

The KFC at the corner of Encinal and Jackson Park, the deep-fried stank of which has long enshrouded the surrounding blocks, has been knocked down.


What will take its place, you ask? The construction company, helpfully, has hung a sign on the fence. This has left me both amused and dismayed, AKA dismused.

Matt Zoller Seitz on Kevin B. Lee

Came upon a fine essay by critic and filmmaker Matt Zoller Seitz on The House Next Door blog, about more YouTube takedowns. This time, YouTube has apparently taken down critic Kevin B. Lee's entire archive of video essays because they make use of copyrighted film clips for the purpose of scholarly commentary. Rather than drone on about this myself, I'll just encourage anyone interested to read Seitz's essay.

OMG, UMG, WTF?

Amidst ongoing reports of the Universal Music Group's abuse of YouTube's automated Content I.D. system, which uses a digital "fingerprint" to identify copyrighted content and remove it from YouTube without regard for Fair Use, comes an article in today's NYT, which begins thusly:

"Google's YouTube and the Universal Music Group, the world’s largest music label, are in advanced discussions over a licensing agreement that could lead to the creation of a premium site for music videos, according a person briefed on the talks."

The backstory here is that the sub-divisions of the sub-divisions of the media leviathans that control all the world's music, probably going back to our simian ancestors' rhythmic stick-banging, if they had their way, had worked out a way to accept uses of their music tracks in YouTubers' uploads, namely by running advertising against those videos on the YouTube site. This arrangement was worked out as a way for the labels to avoid looking like Super-Colossal/Special-Gigantic Dickheads for, say, taking down 30-second videos of toddlers dancing around to music by Prince (even though such a use is absolutely, unequivocally and obviously an instance of Fair Use, a legal principle neither the music labels nor the film and television studios appear to grasp, and not a violation of copyright in any way).

Except, apparently, UMG decided there wasn't enough money in this arrangement which, to be fair, would also have allowed potentially infringing uses to stay up and generate ad revenue. So now UMG has changed its policy to Automatic Takedown when the Content I.D. system finds one of its songs on YouTube. This has led to the usual indiscrimate corporate censorship, in which even uses of Universal content falling under Fair Use result in robot takedown with the added chilling effect that the victims are afraid to seek redress because they don't want to be sued by the Big Bad Wolf. Don't think this is happening? Well, here's an example:

This viral video, made by DustFilms, was a smash on YouTube until UMG took it down. Now it's a smash on Funny Or Die.

Take on Me: Literal Video Version - watch more funny videos

Parody has long been acknowledged as Fair Use - and it's not even one of those difficult-to-figure-out Fair Use cases. The US Supreme Court, in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., a landmark case, held unanimously that a parody that reproduces a substantial portion of a copyrighted work, even for profit, is still protected speech under the Fair Use clause of the 1976 Copyright Act. DustFilms' amusing series of "literal" music videos are clearly parodies. Case closed.

So, automated takedown or not, YouTube's removal of this video (and subsequent "literal music videos") at UMG's request is nothing less than illegal corporate supression of protected speech. The trouble is, when this kind of thing happens, no small-time artist has the financial ability to take on Universal's legal machine. This is where we are today with copyright in America. The corporations that control the vast majority of the intellectual property that makes up our popular culture - which many would suggest is the stuff of our collective consciousness as a people, and very much a subject for art and criticism - are rich enough to illegally cock-block anyone who dares to create that art or criticism.

I know this firsthand, after having worked at a smallish media corporation with a giantish fear of being sued for infringement and seeing the chilling effect, every single day, of that fear on the media we were trying to create. That's bad enough, but at least that company had a legal department and a world-famous top executive; hell, if we had gotten sued, we could have noisily fought back. Individual artists rarely have that chance.

Then today comes this news that UMG's new "solution" for this "problem" is to start a new "premium" website with YouTube for their music videos. Sigh. Just what we need, another fucking online video site.

I get that these old media companies are desperately trying to navigate the uncharted waters of the new media space - or rather, are desperately trying to ignore the long-existing charts because they don't like the lay of the land and hope to miracle some kind of Northwest Passage through it - and it's not easy to do. Nor is it easy for them to watch their old business models crumble all around them. I can sympathize with them, if I screw up my face and squeeze my eyes shut and clap really loud and believe in fairies, just a little bit.

Maybe this UMG/YT premium site will be the answer to old media's prayers. But if it incorporates the same censoring, restrictive, Big Brother-ish, anti-fan oafishness of their efforts so far, there's little chance of success.

Streaming Bullshit, a Rant

From an article in today's NYT called "Digital Pirates Winning Battle With Studios":

“Streaming has gotten efficient and cheap enough and it gives users more control than downloads do. This is where piracy is headed,” said James L. McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research. “Consumers are under the impression that everything they want to watch should be easily streamable.” [emphasis added]

This points to one of the most infuriating aspects of the whole online "piracy" issue. We live in a society that, in certain sectors, elevates capitalism and the "free market" to the level of divinity, and all compassion, virtue, humility, morality, common sense, intelligence and even life itself is to be sacrificed, as the ancients would spill the guts and blood of goats and sheep on the marble temple mount, to this fearsome godhead - let us consider finance or the oil industry or pharmaceuticals - whereas, in other sectors, we believe in crushing into dust any emerging market that threatens the present business model, no matter how dead that model may be. I'm talking about you, Hollywood - which today means a handful of giant international conglomerates.

Is it possible, has any of these brilliant analysts even stopped for a second to consider, that if "consumers are under the impression that everything they want to watch should be easily streamable," that consumers might be right? As far as the MSM is concerned, the only people who would put forth this argument are wild-eyed, long-haired, dirty-hippie anarchist pirates - a word that is used to make ordinary college students sound as dangerous and criminal as those crazy motherfuckers in Somalia who hijacked that oil tanker a couple months ago.

Do you think college students are as dangerous as those crazy motherfuckers in Somalia who hijacked that oil tanker a couple months ago?

Just as suing Napster, P2P software companies and, eventually, music fans themselves did absolutely nothing to help the music industry (1) stop music file-sharing or (2) save its business model or (3) not look like miserable cunts, so will trying to stop "piracy" completely and totally fail to save Hollywood's old business model. Yes, the stakes are THAT low - this is just about a freaking business model!

Capitalism is, by fucking definition, about rooting out and CAPITALIZING ON emerging markets; once a business model fails, a company that clings to it is doomed to fail, too! Didn't you pricks go to business school? Sorry, I mean, didn't you pricks go to elementary school?

But what's much worse is the way the MSM is telling only the studios' version of the story. It makes sense, of course - it's the same industry. That doesn't mean it's not a disgrace.

More on radiant asshole Phelps

According to other Alameda bloggers, Fred Phelps' group, Super Idiots Supporting Public Assholery, or SISPA, will not be coming to protest the high school's production of The Laramie Project, after all. Frankly, I am a little bit disappointed. I love a circus.

Apparently, though, his group will be in Hawaii to protest the funeral of Barack Obama's grandmother, which is so absurd as to almost be funny, as if Tina Fey had written the line, except that it's not funny because it's real.

People like Phelps, though, are clowns. I mean, why would anyone take them seriously? The answer, I think, is that we all love a circus. Human beings are, essentially, bored to death.

From the OMFG Department...

There's word that radiant asshole, Fred Phelps, might be in town, in spirit if not in person, to protest the local high school's production of The Laramie Project this Friday. He's the "God hates fags" guy.

We heard the news via porch-flyer. There will be a counter-protest on November 14, 2008; from the flyer:

"6PM at Alameda High (located at 2201 Encinal Avenue)."


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Not to be cynical, but could this be a kind of "wild marketing" campaign? I suppose it is, whether by design or not - God may hate fags, but he loves wild marketing.

But seriously, folks, I'm reminded of a scene from Manhattan. Woody Allen is at a party with a bunch of douchey elites:

Isaac Davis: Has anybody read that Nazis are gonna march in New Jersey? Ya know? I read it in the newspaper. We should go down there, get some guys together, ya know, get some bricks and baseball bats, and really explain things to 'em.

Party Guest: There was this devastating satirical piece on that on the op-ed page of the Times, just devastating.

Isaac Davis: Whoa, whoa. A satirical piece in the Times is one thing, but bricks and baseball bats really gets right to the point of it.

Party Guest Helen: Oh, but really biting satire is always better than physical force.

Isaac Davis: No, physical force is always better with Nazis.

Smoking and the P.C. Left Coast

One thing that's come up a bit this week is the political correctness of life in the urban centers of the West Coast. I grew up "back East," as they say, not in one of the great bastions of curmudgeonly East Coast assholery, like New York or Boston, but some aspects of coarse East Coast forthrightness stuck with me. I love living in California and I especially love the Bay Area, but the culture here can be smug, self-righteous and politically correct to a gagging degree.

Smoking is just one of the ways this manifests. I am a Democrat, even a liberal, but I have some libertarian principles as well, and one thing I cannot stand is public hysteria that tries to interfere with my right to do what the fuck I want to do. I struggle with smoking; I don't really want to do it, but it has me in its grip. In the next year, I will quit smoking, as circumstances have arisen that should finally motivate that. But it's also one of those issues where I think people need to calm the fuck down and let people be. There is now, among certain crowds, an unhealthy social snobbery about smoking, the kind that says, " I am better than you because I don't smoke." Out here, people pride themselves on their open-mindedness; what that means is, rather than actually confronting opinions with which they disagree, because everyone is free to their own beliefs, they will just remain silently, smugly superior.

The refreshing thing about the attitude on the other coast is that it's both more in-your-face - well, fuck you, buddy! - and accepting - now, let's get a drink, asshole! Out here, if you don't agree with someone, you just roll your eyes and back away, and go be with the people who share your exact convictions.