tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5598883894140893389.post7216263261390405132..comments2024-01-02T22:01:12.976+00:00Comments on Avedon's Sideshow: The week that wasAvedonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04702100335744054401noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5598883894140893389.post-373330733014068482013-06-11T18:36:42.740+01:002013-06-11T18:36:42.740+01:00Just curious, is there anyone abroad who can not a...Just curious, is there anyone abroad who can not access those Vimeo and YouTube links?CMikehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13481861530761114492noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5598883894140893389.post-88444662657151255772013-06-11T13:43:26.322+01:002013-06-11T13:43:26.322+01:00First, thanks for all the links, CMike - my memory...First, thanks for all the links, CMike - my memory is spotty, but I don't think I recall <i>Everything is a Remix</i>. <br /><br />Not sure how differently you see my position on copyright, as an author, from your own. I maintain that as long as someone is going to be making money from publishing my works, I might as well be among those collecting, but since I'm not (a) an author of fiction or (b) creating work solely intended to make me money or secure me tenure at some university, having my stuff replicated all over the web doesn't hurt me and I'm delighted that some people want to do it and are increasing the number of people who will read it. <br /><br />I like to be credited, of course, but the ideas themselves eventually do come loose from their point of origin and eventually appear in other forms. And that, of course, is the point - to get the information out there to as many people as possible, to make them think about these things and maybe building on whatever I've produced. I don't <i>ever</i> want to see my copyright used to stop that from happening. <br /><br />And, as an author, I love it when people read my stuff and think about it and even consider it worth proliferating, even if they aren't paying for it. If that weren't the case, I wouldn't be blogging. <br /><br />Whit Diffie says he doesn't believe that a copyright holder should be able to prevent someone else from publishing the work. He's not suggesting (so far as I know) that others shouldn't pay appropriate royalties, but he thinks if someone is willing to, say, pay the Doors for the use of "Strange Days" in some other work (including an advertisement), the Doors shouldn't be able to stop them from doing it. The point of copyright isn't to maintain the purity of the work (impossible), it's to reward the creator (monetarily) for having created. I think he's right about that, even though I'm wholly sympathetic to the Doors' desire not to see their works in advertising for cars or burgers or headache medications.<br /><br />I think it's absolutely mad to prevent music or movie clips from appearing on YouTube. Madonna won't miss the money, but thousands of creators are being denied promotion by all those take-down orders they didn't even ask for.Avedonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04702100335744054401noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5598883894140893389.post-7437299984637084362013-06-11T09:59:36.277+01:002013-06-11T09:59:36.277+01:00...continued
But first I will nit-pick at one of ...<i>...continued</i><br /><br />But first I will nit-pick at one of Ferguson's factoids, the one about Elisha Gray having submitted his competing caveat on the same day that Alexander Graham Bell submitted his patent application for the telephone. Putting aside the earlier work done by others in developing their own versions of this technology, I think it pegs the irony needle that, given that it's been estimated that the now expired telephone patent remains the most valuable patent ever to have been issued, Bell may have pulled off the biggest "strictly business" crime of all time in securing it as his.<br /><br />I would recommend the Seth Shulman book on the subject. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Telephone-Gambit-Chasing-Alexander/dp/B004JZWUIM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370452884&sr=8-1&keywords=telephone+gambit" rel="nofollow">[LINK]</a> Early on in the slim volume Shulman introduces a bombshell when he places two hand drawn illustrations side by side, one from a page from Gray's caveat, which was submitted to the Patent Office on February 14, 1876, and the other from a page in Bell's personal diary which was entered therein on March 3, 1876. If you're interested take a look at the two illustrations reproduced at the bottom of page 2 in Part 2 of some extended excerpts from the Shulman book. <a href="http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2008/01/04/the-telephone-gambit-did-bell-steal-his-legendary-invention-part-two/" rel="nofollow">[LINK]</a> <br /><br />That said, this spot in Part 3 of Everything is a Remix is a good place to start watching the series. <a href="http://vimeo.com/25380454#t=07m43s" rel="nofollow">[LINK]</a><br /><br />If you need a pop culture fix, or rather a 1977 culture fix, to keep you watching, begin at this spot in Remix's Part 2. <a href="http://vimeo.com/19447662#t=02m53s" rel="nofollow">[LINK]</a> Except for Chicago Dyke, you might want to watch past the credits for an analysis of a 2003 cultural artifact. (Here's that additional KB footage juxtaposed with its antecendents, the link address given at the end of the Part 2 segment no longer works. <a href="http://vimeo.com/19469447#" rel="nofollow">[LINK])</a><br /><br />The most vital point of Ferguson's whole argument comes, unsurprisingly, in Part 4. <a href="http://vimeo.com/36881035#t=1m53s" rel="nofollow">[LINK]</a> Somehow, in the space of several decades, we've been sold on what once would have been a perverse idea, that society has the moral obligation above most any other consideration to protect the copyright and the patent rights of corporations and even those of mortal persons if the latter are represented by expensive enough lawyers.<br /><br />This is all not just morally silly, it's wrong historically. Now I know Avedon and I do not look at these issues in exactly the same way as she is an author and I'm not but I think we can agree that copyrights and patents are themselves but legal concoctions created explicitly and solely to maximize the long-term benefits that will accrue to society <i>at large</i> from any inventions, techniques or methods, ideas, and reproductions from whomever or whatever are their sources.<br /><br />If society, in the broadest sense of the word, would be richer in the long run by not granting any copyrights or patents at all or by curtailing the amount of time any person or entity is granted the exclusive right to profit from certain types of manufactures, technologies, ideas or copies of creative works then these are the new rules that should be in place to govern the market- period.<br /><br />People who want to make the case that their intellectual property rights should be protected, for whatever length of time, should have to make the case that it is in everyone's (medium to) long-term interest to do so, not just that it's in their own interest and that they are deserving because of some overriding mystical libertarian imperative.CMikehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13481861530761114492noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5598883894140893389.post-35580105544247656842013-06-11T08:42:40.603+01:002013-06-11T08:42:40.603+01:00...continued
I don't know if a couple of year...<i>...continued</i><br /><br />I don't know if a couple of years back Avedon ever linked to "New York based filmmaker" Kirby Ferguson's <i>Everything is a Remix.</i> I believe Ferguson rolled out the four parts over the course of a year with none of them as long as sixteen minutes and the last one completed and uploaded sometime in 2011. Here it is in a complete but compressed 36 minute 25 second version on YouTube. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coGpmA4saEk" rel="nofollow">[LINK]</a><br /><br />The separate parts of <i>Remix</i> have stayed available at Vimeo over the years while a number of YouTube uploads have come and gone because of copyright challenges- I assume by those who own the rights to some of the footage used in the series and not by the Ferguson, himself. <a href="http://everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/" rel="nofollow">[LINK]</a><br /><br />In the original format about three quarters of the way through each of the first three parts the credits to start scrolling, cleverly locking the viewer into sitting through them in order to get on to the rest of the episode and, at the very end of each of these episodes, Ferguson passes the hat to finance his upcoming work. If only this were a viable way to finance alternative media.<br /><br />I'll provide three cued up links below as a sort of "CliffsClips" resource if you want to take a quick look to see if you're going to be interested in watching <i>Everything is a Remix</i> at all or if you want to save your busy self half of the 36 minutes it would take to watch the unabridged version straight through.<br /><br /><i>continued...</i>CMikehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13481861530761114492noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5598883894140893389.post-89733566219202439062013-06-11T08:18:40.507+01:002013-06-11T08:18:40.507+01:00In addition to the issue of copyright protection w...In addition to the issue of copyright protection which Avedon raises in the parent post, the patent troll issue is heating up. <i>Sideshow</i> sweetie Sam Seder is on the nuisance end of a suit being brought by plaintiffs claiming a proprietary interest in podcasting, a technology these trolls seem to be saying is, essentially, the dispersing of audio or audio/visual content over the Internet to an audience by any entity which is not a major media conglomerate. Seder retweets Felix Salmon <a href="https://twitter.com/felixsalmon/status/341995671085273088" rel="nofollow">[LINK]</a> who, in an update to his column, links to this <i>New York Times</i> article. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/05/opinion/make-patent-trolls-pay-in-court.html?ref=opinion&_r=1&" rel="nofollow">[LINK]:</a><br /><br />[Indent]>>>>> ...[V]exatious patent litigation continues to grind through our already crowded courts, costing defendants and taxpayers tens of billions of dollars each year and delaying justice for those who legitimately need a fair hearing of their claims. Trolls, in fact, filed the majority of the roughly 4,700 patent suits in 2012 — and many of those were against small companies and start-ups that often can’t afford to fight back.<br /><br />The problem stems largely from the fact that, in our judicial system, trolls have an important strategic advantage over their adversaries: they don’t make anything. So in a patent lawsuit, they have far fewer documents to produce, fewer witnesses and a much smaller legal bill than a company that does make and sell something.<<<<<[End indent]<br /><br />Of course, not all the news on this front is infuriating. Here's a story from the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/jun/05/samsung-patent-win-apple-iphone-4" rel="nofollow"><i>just deserts</i></a> section of the paper:<br /><br />[Indent]>>>>>Apple and Samsung have been fighting a war of attrition through the various patent courts in the US and around the world in which they have sought to ban and otherwise limit sales of each other's products in Europe, the US, Australia and Asia. The ITC decision is the most significant win for Samsung in the US after a series of losses and indeterminate rulings there.<<<<<[End indent]<br /><br /><i>continued...</i>CMikehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13481861530761114492noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5598883894140893389.post-5806301327648448782013-06-10T10:48:45.186+01:002013-06-10T10:48:45.186+01:00We're all delusional smacks of paternalistic e...We're all delusional smacks of paternalistic elitism. Of father, of the author of a handful of pppular fictions knows best. What I have read by Brin I found no more or no less enlightening than that of his contemporaries, a number of whom I've found to be quite distasteful, if not disstressing. Carl Sagan David Brin is not. Or Issaic Asimov.<br /><br />Though I'd not argue, stone to the bone on Ambien, Prozac, Viagra and crotch-shots on CNN/Fox Kool-Aid as they are, that the vast majority are indeed delusional. The Cult of Male Domination remains the Cult of Male Domination regardless the reinforcer, The Authority Figure, is a priest, porn star or author of popular fiction.<br /><br />No fear.Ten Bearshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06594307610015584119noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5598883894140893389.post-84440137547297023802013-06-09T19:36:59.364+01:002013-06-09T19:36:59.364+01:00Like tilting the balance of power. I liked Brin&#...Like tilting the balance of power. I liked Brin's contention that we're all delusional and it's important that friends and foes have the power to challenge what we're doing and why we're doing it. It's when power's one-sided that delusion rules.ksixhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15406854618914127269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5598883894140893389.post-9386467022540048622013-06-09T05:37:46.915+01:002013-06-09T05:37:46.915+01:00Like turning it back in their faces, regardless ho...Like turning it back in their faces, regardless how distasteful that may be.Ten Bearshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06594307610015584119noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5598883894140893389.post-14798233752571761952013-06-08T19:58:40.303+01:002013-06-08T19:58:40.303+01:00Two things David Brin said bear repeating - that t...Two things David Brin said bear repeating - that the enemy is aristocracy and that the more effective response to spying is to subject elites to the same level of scrutiny the rest of us are subjected to. (Sorry if I've paraphrased incorrectly.) I like that idea because it's playing more offensive than defensive, directing energy towards making them operate in the light rather than towards futile attempts to regulate what they're allowed to do in the dark. It was an interesting conversation but, really, isn't it time to evolve beyond Adam Smith?ksixhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15406854618914127269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5598883894140893389.post-66098513909492333322013-06-08T19:05:52.644+01:002013-06-08T19:05:52.644+01:00So the next Dr. Who is the twelfth and according t...So the next Dr. Who is the twelfth and according to holy writ the last regeneration. Unless they find a way to reset the character.<br />Given that the Dr. Who franchise is pretty darn lucrative I'm betting on a reset.<br /><br />William Hurt is possibly the pre-doctor, the guy with a name. So we pop him out of the grave have him regenerate and Bob's your uncle we start all over.<br /><br />All three new doctors have been pretty good. While I'll miss Smith as I did Tennant, I'm betting there's more than one actor able to play the part.<br /><br />River Song and a female Doctor; now that's a happy thought.Buzzcookhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10466134753394910191noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5598883894140893389.post-30643508576039492962013-06-08T00:42:29.730+01:002013-06-08T00:42:29.730+01:00Glenn Greenwald's big scoop: "NSA collect...<i>Glenn Greenwald's big scoop: "NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily Exclusive: Top secret court order requiring Verizon to hand over all call data shows scale of domestic surveillance under Obama" </i><br /><br />Accompanied, of course, by the shrill sound of Opologists hating on Glenn G.<br />~ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©https://www.blogger.com/profile/06252371815131259831noreply@blogger.com