Apparently Shawn Crawford who won the silver medal in the 200 meter race has given his medal to Churandy Martina. Martina finished second to Crawford but was disqualified for running out his lane. Crawford explained “[I]f a guy is 10 meters in front of me, I don’t care if he stayed in the middle of [...]

[Read more →]

Yahoo! is closing its online storage service Briefcase. According to CNET the service started about ten years ago. Now Yahoo! is telling customers that they have until March 30 to “to retrieve or delete their documents.” As some of you know, I have been writing about who owns material stored online. My piece, Property, Persona, [...]

[Read more →]

In right of publicity news, Gene Simmons objects to his likeness appearing on skis without his permission, which seems neither surprising nor controversial.  The fact that Gene Simmons has an image worth protecting is noteworthy, however.  Count KISS among those 70s acts (along with the Village People, Gloria Gaynor, and John Travolta) whose cultural impact has [...]

[Read more →]

Context here:

[Read more →]

Bruce Sterling, at Seed magazine, on panics for 2009:
I’m always impressed by people’s behavior during massive panics. They rarely believe or admit that they are panicked. Instead they assure one another that at last the wool has been lifted from their eyes. They are seeing the clear daylight of rationality after years of delusion.
But a [...]

[Read more →]

It’s Super Bowl week here in Pittsburgh, and under the local bloggers’ code all posts must have something to do with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Fortunately, there is no shortage of IP-related blog fodder when it comes to Steelers-mania, and today’s Times brings the best of all possible examples, a story that recounts the true meaning of [...]

[Read more →]

Story here.

[Read more →]

ABC News recently reported about the practice of some funeral homes to webcast funerals, in a story with the somewhat awkward title: “Funeral Webcasts Gain in Popularity.” Less popular by far was the decision by a newspaper to have one of its reporters live blog the funeral of a 3-year-old boy killed in a tragic [...]

[Read more →]

The Google Maps car took out a baby deer, and it recorded the entire process for all Google Maps users to see. Found this sad story here. This site reports: “Google, citing “high demand,” has blocked out the image. Whether this is temporary or they’re scrambling to replace the original shot is to be seen.”

[Read more →]

Some people in Pittsburgh are bumming. I am too a little bit. I liked that pickle.

[Read more →]

The film Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten was on cable recently, and I was lucky enough to catch it. First, I love the Clash and Strummer’s work in general. The film traces his history, and the story about how he and his views evolved is rather interesting.
For example, in one period, Strummer and his [...]

[Read more →]

Via.

Via.

[Read more →]

Whatever else is going on with photos and posters, it sure seems like there is a lot of “fair use” of Obama’s face!

[Read more →]

The Pittsburgh Steelers are on their way to a seventh Super Bowl appearance, and their international fan base is well on its way to raising its intensity level from the baseline (absolutely manic) to 11.
The Steelers songbook is filled almost to the brim by virtue of earlier trips to the big game and the local [...]

[Read more →]

A pair of comments via the New York Times — David Carr, in the paper, and Michael Cieply, in the Carpetbagger blog – make two related claims.  One is that Academy Award nominations (including those released yesterday) betray a distinct tilt away from bigger, commercial, Hollywood films and toward more independent, auteur-ish films.  Two is that the [...]

[Read more →]

International Society for the History and Theory of Intellectual Property
CALL FOR PAPERS
First Annual ISHTIP Workshop
The Construction of Immateriality
Practices of Appropriation and the Genealogy of Intellectual Property
Bocconi University, Milan Italy
26-27 June 2009
This workshop will explore the making of “intellectual property”, understood broadly as the myriad legal and non-legal processes by which individuals and groups are credited [...]

[Read more →]

The Copyright Notice at Whitehouse.gov says:
Pursuant to federal law, government-produced materials appearing on this site are not copyright protected. The United States Government may receive and hold copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise.
Except where otherwise noted, third-party content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Visitors to [...]

[Read more →]

From the AP and the Chicago Tribune:
Beanie Babies maker Ty Inc. sells Sasha, Malia dolls  but denies Obama girls are inspiration
CHICAGO (AP) — The company that makes the popular Beanie Babies is hoping for two more big winners with dolls named “Sweet Sasha” and “Marvelous Malia.”
But, no, the names do not refer to President Barack [...]

[Read more →]

Hard to believe that this is for real but apparently it is.

[Read more →]

[Read more →]